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Gates Says No to Implants
Tamas Feher from Hungary writes "The future of Slashdot's infamous Borg Bill thumbnail image may be in jeopardy after Microsoft founder William H. Gates said technology will one day allow computer implants - but hardwiring's not for him. 'One of the guys that works at Microsoft... always says to me 'I'm ready, plug me in,"' Gates said Friday at a Microsoft seminar in Singapore when he was asked whether computers would ever be implanted in the human brain. "I don't feel quite the same way. I'm happy to have the computer over there and I'm over here.' "
The Borg are a race of cyborgs in the Star Trek fictional universe. Some say the name 'Borg' is simply short for cyborg.
Borg are humanoids of different races that are enhanced with cybernetic implants, giving them improved mental and physical abilities. Although the cyborg concept has long existed in science-fiction literature, it is probable that the general concept of the Borg - a ruthless, aggressive race of bio-mechanical beings bent on galactic conquest - was influenced to some degree by the Cybermen, which featured in the popular British television series Doctor Who and who displayed similar rationales and methods as the Borg, including wanting to assimilate individuals to augment their race. They also bear significant resemblences to Fred Saberhagen's Berserker series.
The minds of all Borg are connected via implants to a hive, a collective mind, orchestrated by the Borg Queen and controlled from a central hub, the Unicomplex. According to themselves, the Borg only seek to "improve the quality of life in the universe" and add to their own perfection. To this end, they travel the galaxy, improving their numbers and advancing by "assimilating" other species and technologies, and forcing captured individuals under the control of the Hive mind by injecting them with nanoprobes. They harbor no ill will to anyone; they merely fulfil their biological or programmatic imperative to assimilate. As they say, "You will be assimilated - resistance is futile." They make good on that threat by their ability to quickly adapt to any attack to render it harmless. Thus, any successful defense depends on the ingenuity of the opponent to find a method to stop the Borg completely before they can neutralize it.
See also this cartoon.
Look, dude, your comments are Insightful, Funny and Interesting, but stop link-spamming with that link to your blog in your fake "sig."
I prayed about it, and God said, "Don't do it!" But I thought, "I know better."
Why don't you name a modern generic OS that is???
Other than an embeded OS none of them are ready for this kind of critical application, as many times as I've got Linux & Solaris to dump on me I wouldn't want that near my heart monitor either.
Did you notice the "IMHO" bit? Though facts that would prove that open source does in fact do that would be informative.
Debugging? Klingons do not debug. Bugs are good for building character in the user.
If you want a BSOD.... install BattleField 2 went years without ta BSOD ive had 2 since installing that damn game
Glad to see we agree in several things, however...
:S ...
1) Not possible, must use it to access Windowsupdate itself, for example. Even if you are not using it as your browser (which is good practice), it's the foundation for several OS features, and more to come.
2) Agree, I might, however, end users (grampa, random office guy, etc.) are not likely to do that.
3) 1.
4) Agree.
5) Again agree, not that bad on your desktop, in servers mean you have to work one nights or weekend
6) Agree, some might say you still have more control to remove or don't install components on other OS's.
7) Not critical, but coming from a company that has such a high position in the market, you might expect more.
8)
9) Between windows and other server OS's for example, or windows and other types of clients.
-MS discontinued MAPI support in Office mac, depending only on webdav, that offers limited functionality, and that's between two MS products.
-SMB Support in samba (used by Linux, MacOS, Commercial UNIX, etc) is reverse engineered, and even though it works great, often breaks with new features, until they catch up (without any documentation, again) like encrypted SMB with 2003 server.
10) Again, I might not use any, but companies shell out big $$ every couple of years for that.
11) Agree, but they should stop comparing competing products that already exist with the ones they plan to release in 2 years, it just makes them look bad.
Will add sig later...
I've been using WinXP pro since pre-launch, on multiple computers, with several hardware upgrades, and have never, ever, had a single BSOD
Maybe that's because WinXP's default behaviour is to spontaneously reboot rather than BSOD. It's probably happened a few times to you, and you probably just thought "WTF?" and then went on working after it restarted. I've seen XP boot up with the "... has recovered from a serious error" message many times.