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Five Ideas That Will Reinvent Computing
prostoalex writes "PC Magazine looks at 5 ideas that will reinvent computing. IMAX-quality movies at home with new projectors, a mid-air mouse that requires no flat surface, a home quantum computer, a router-based peer-to-peer system, and a man-made brain all made the list."
Bad phrase: "Reinvent computing".
Good phrase: "Reinvent the wheel".
http://www.pcmag.com/print_article2/0,1217,a=20978 3,00.asp
Warning: Obnoxious javascript popup on the opening page. Not blocked by Opera. Make sure your noscript or whatever is turned on.
"IMAX-quality movies at home with new projectors, a mid-air mouse that requires no flat surface, a home quantum computer, a router-based peer-to-peer system, and a man-made brain all made the list."
Surely you just need a bloke with a pen and a piece of paper to make a list.
Printer Friendly
http://www.pcmag.com/print_article2/0,1217,a=20978 3,00.asp?hidPrint=true
Idea #6 would be: online articles without numerous page impressions.
A hand-carried fusion reactor, unless you want to take down the grid with those ideas...
I took the liberty of copying and pasting the meat of the article here. WAY too many ads and click-thru's for my liking.
IMAX at Home
=============
You thought LAN parties were fun? Get ready for the projector party. At HP Labs, Nelson Chang and Niranjan Damera-Venkata have spent the past few years developing a technology that reinvents the notion of a home theater. With Pluribus, you can build a cineplex-quality image using a handful of ordinary, $1,000 PC projectors--in less time than it takes to pop the popcorn.
The Midair Mouse
================
Your brand-new wireless mouse? That solves only half the problem. Sure, you're untethered, free to drive your PC from afar. But you still need a flat surface. You may be camped out on the couch or curled up in bed, but you're never more than half an arm's length from an end table or a lap desk.
Soap goes one step further: It works in midair. With this new-age pointing device, now under development at Microsoft Research, you can navigate your PC using nothing but a bare hand. You can lose the end table and the lap desk. You can even lose the couch and the bed, driving your machine while walking across the room. It's a bit like the Wii remote--only more accurate and far easier to use.
Extreme Peer-to-Peer
====================
In 1543, Nicolas Copernicus forever changed the way we view the cosmos. He put the Sun at the center of things--not the Earth. Today, at the famed Palo Alto Research Center, Van Jacobson hopes to lead a similar revolution, one that forever changes the way we view PC networking. He aims to put the data at the center of things--not the server.
With a project called Content-Centric Networking, or CCN, Jacobson and his team of PARC networking gurus are turning this model on its head. They're building a networking system that revolves around the data itself, a system in which a router can actually identify that Bode Miller video and act accordingly. Under the CCN model, you don't tell the network that you're interested in connecting to a server. You tell it that you want a particular piece of data. You broadcast a request to all the machines on the network, and if one of them has what you're looking for, it responds.
The Man-Made Brain
==================
It could be the most ambitious computer science project of all time. At IBM's Almaden Research Center, just south of South Francisco, Dharmendra Modha and his team are chasing the holy grail of artificial intelligence. They aren't looking for ways of mimicking the human brain, they're looking to build one--neuron by neuron, synapse by synapse.
"We're trying to take the entire range of qualitative neuroscientific data and integrate it into a single unified computing platform," says Modha. "The idea is to re-create the 'wetware' brain using hardware and software."
Their first goal is to build a "massively parallel cortical simulator" that re-creates the brain of a mouse, an organ 3,500 times less complex than a human brain (if you count each individual neuron and synapse). But even this is an undertaking of epic proportions. A mouse brain houses over 16 million neurons, with more than 128 billion synapses running between them. Even a partial simulation stretches the boundaries of modern hardware. No, we don't mean desktop hardware. We're talkin' supercomputers.
So far, the team has been able to fashion a kind of digital mouse brain that needs about 6 seconds to simulate 1 second of real thinking time.
Eagles may soar, but weasels don't get sucked into jet engines
... I can debunk this one for you right away.
Take your mouse. Hold it the air for five minutes. For extra effect, wave it about. Now imagine doing this eight hours a day. And being accurate.
Tired arm much? Using a 2D mouse is about accuracy and long-term usage. OK, the mouse isn't perfect, but hanging it in space significantly deteriorates both these properties.
The Wii controller is a whole different ball of wax - it's for using for a couple of hours at most, and you don't try clicking on unfolding menus with it.
'This writing business. Pencils and what-not. Over-rated if you ask me. Silly stuff. Nothing in it' - Eeyore
How about the concept that software is a service and not a product.
FTFA :
A gaming PC with dueling graphics cards can line up 12 projectors in as little as 5 minutesWhat if I don't want my graphics cards fighting it out to see who survives? Will it take only 2 minutes if they join forces instead of trying to kill each other?
Seems they are hovering around SL1 (Shock Level 1) with the exception of the AI which is in SL3 apparently. Dammit, I'm still waiting for my complete mental revision.
Most of these ideas look more like cool gadgets or specific applications to me.
Computing is everywhere now. I think a "re-invention" of it should probably be something that applies to the huge numbers of people who use computing as part of their everyday lives.
I was much more interested in these comments, which involve trying to fundamentally change the way in which we use our technology.
Peter
I cant help being reminded of those wonderful 1950s popular mechanics articles which predicted we would all be flying home in our flying cars to watch our 3D Tv while eating a robot cooked meal.
The present is never the future you thought it would be.
Everybody predicted talking computers able to predict the future, but nobody predicted YouTube or predictive texting.
Old COBOL programmers never die. They just code in C.
That's what it comes down to. We already have computers that calculate faster than anything we combined have. They just cost more than we combined have, too. These ideas all sound nice and pretty, but generally what it comes down to is cost. 12k for a home entertainment? Who can afford that? Who'd WANT to afford that? Especially with probably no movies to see on it in the forseeable future, since studios won't allow ... I digress.
Any prediction past 5 years in the future of IT is a pipe dream. Accept that. Think back, say, 10 years. You know, when the Internet was the next hot thing and broadband was the dream. When we sucked our data through 56k modems. When the first FTP servers sharing music appeared. When Napster came to fame. What was the prediction? That Napster is so hot it smokes and that it will soar. That on the internet we'll all make a ton of money with ads on our pages. That in 10 years (i.e. today) the corner store is gone and we'll do all our business on the net. We'll all be having fiber to our homes and watch our movies online, hell, all our data will be online, since loading it from the HD is just as fast as accessing it on the 'net.
Well, some of it came, but compared to the explosions predicted it was at best a greasefire. Yes, you can shop on the net, and Amazon surely dealt a serious blow to book stores, but otherwise, the economy didn't suddenly go full force online. Music sharing is a topic for lawyers rather than technicians, and Napster kinda-sorta folded (yeah, it still exists, somewhere, somehow, but nobody cares anymore). Fiber is a dream for most people, and while the net speed went up, it's a far cry from what was predicted. Services that store data online are currently starting to get started, but they're far from being a HD replacement, at best, they're offsite backups (and even as such they suck, due to space limitations).
Technical issues actually went to the background, replaced by legal problems and privacy concerns. Nobody predicted that, IIRC.
So doing a prediction up to 2020 is kinda pipe dreaming. You have no idea what obstacles will come in our way, you can't even imagine what kind of problem we will have to deal in 2015 already. For all I know, it could happen that Google gets bought out by some megalomanic and insanely rich guy who then starts to milk it for private data. Can it happen? For sure. Will it happen? Who knows.
All I know is that predicting the IT future is a business best left to fortune tellers. At least they don't have to fear for their credibility when their predictions are so way off that it's not even funny anymore.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
... for retarded definition of "computing".
I guess by "man-made" they mean artificial and that it will REVOLUTIONIZE(tm) computing since these artificial brains are going to be built in to every PC. Where did I hear that before? I think at the time they grossly overstated the capacity of computers such as the original IBM PC. So perhaps Moore's law applies to hardware, it surely doesn't apply to exaggeration.
Anyway, who needs an electronic brain? Now I can at least yell "idiot" to MS Word when it joins sections or splits pages without it getting offended. Can you imagine Clippy looking angry and saying in this cute cartoon like blob "Now I'm not going to erase your document, you asked for it".
Gyroscopic mice have been around for years (pioneering the same tech you now see in the Wii remote and PS3 SIXAXIS). You really wouldn't want to use one unless you're doing a presentation or similar since you'll just hurt your hand and wrist waving the thing around in mid-air.
Although I must agree it is a very interesting and challenging project, I'm not convinced it will see much use in the biological research world. For starters there is one particular reason I have my doubts (from the article):
"The project is particularly daunting when you consider that modern neurology has yet to explain how the brain actually works. Yes, we know the fundamentals. But we can't be sure of every biological transaction, all the way down to the cellular level. Three years into this Cognitive Computing project, Modha's team isn't just building a brain from an existing blueprint. They're helping to create the blueprint as they build. It's reverse engineering of the highest order."
Although reverse engineering might seem as the perfect way to find out how something works from a technology point of view, this isn't necessarily true from a biological point of view. The thing is that when you reverse engineer a piece of technology you are completely certain about the underlying core principles because the technology you are reverse engineering is actually man made. With biology this is not the case.
I work in a research group that (amongst other things) tries to reverse engineer simple cellular pathways of a complexity scale that is that is far smaller than the actual function of the brain and even those attempts, although producing results, do not always conform with biological reality.
Furthermore, and I know this from experience, computer scientists and mathematicians tend to underestimate the actual complexity of such systems and the variability of biological systems within species and even within the same organism. It's not just a matter of mathematically connecting nodes in a neural net.
Let's be reasonable here, because the important aspects of the system biology of relatively "simple" biological systems remain largely elusive and difficult to simulate at the moment because not every core principle is known it seems a bit over confident to claim to simulate one of the most complex systems known without even having a complete rule book in your hands.
Nevertheless, an interesting project.
In Soviet Russia elephant rides you!
The "router-based peer-to-peer system" isn't all that revolutionary: the load-spreading system they describe is similar in many ways to a system of caching web proxies (good) mixed with Steam (evil). The article also describes a content-centric model of accessing data as opposed to a server-centric model, and that's kind of cool, but I don't have a whole lot of faith in that sort of thing right now.
What I THOUGHT they were talking about when I read "router-based peer-to-peer system" was ISPs and backbone services finally implementing multicast. Give any p2p software author a network where multicast actually works and you'll definitely see a revolution.
Quick... someone send a memo to Microsoft to let them know someone did this years ago. Nip over to your local computer shop and pick up a Gyration Ultra GT. Only problem is that your arms feel knackered after about 5 minutes of use. Pointless.
D.
Most of these ideas are just gimmicks. One HUGE milestone only gets a footnote: non-volatile RAM.
Look at today's PC. Where is the bottleneck in 95% of all cases? The hard drive.
So, what could be the next killer feature? Non-volatile RAM (PRAM, FRAM, MRAM..). The immediate advantage is speed of course. But there is something much bigger.
Most of the time, loading a file is no longer necessary! Much of the boot time of today's OSes comes from loading stuff into RAM. This can be omitted with P/F/MRAM, reducing booting to device initialization. Also, suspend-to-disk comes for free.
Every single OS is based on the fact that there is a slow, but persistent memory (hard drive) and a fast, volatile one (RAM). They'd need a complete overhaul to fully exploit the new paradigm. Hell, almost all programs too. "Loading file to memory" is not necessary anymore, because the file already IS in memory! Thus, some sort of direct access is needed (unless the file is fragmented).
This sig does not contain any SCO code.
Sorry, but the article is just dumb.
How can you put quantum and organic computing on the same list as a hack to join up a bunch of projectors to make a larger screen and a fricking "beanbag" mouse that you wave about?
No folly is more costly than the folly of intolerant idealism. - Winston Churchill
Trackball.
Don't be crazy anymore!
Why not recreate the brain of a simpler creature? I assume insects have some sort of brain. If we need an artificial mammal brain, how about one that's blind, or has otherwise limited connection with it's environment. Seems like a waste of time reproducing all the hardware of the brain when much of it wouldn't be of use to a machine so simple as a computer.
Before these great brilliant minds of the 21st century start whacking away at making these technological monstrosities there are obstacles to go cross and barriers that have to be broken. One of these barriers is to stop calling technological achievements as "man-made" and pick a gender-neutral term.
"Man-made brain" -- what a terrible example of male chauvinism. Lets toss in a few aspects of modern humanity into the fray before we focus on computing and nerdware (tm). Solutions to some of these social problems are less than spectacular in technical complexity yet they are things which technocratic experts fail to talk about.
Thanks for telling me what they are, that way I don't read the article.
In Soviet America the banks rob you!
The mid-air mouse is a horrible idea! It sounds great until you actually try to hold your hand steadily in mid-air for longer than just few seconds.
(This sig intentionally left blank)
Saying this is going to reinvent computing is like saying habaneros are just a bit spicy. At the very least, this will completely overhaul civilization.
Most of these ideas are just gimmicks. One HUGE milestone only gets a footnote: non-volatile RAM.
Look at today's PC. Where is the bottleneck in 95% of all cases? The hard disk drive.
So, what could be the next killer feature? Non-volatile RAM (PRAM, FRAM, MRAM..). The immediate advantage is speed of course. But there is something much bigger.
Most of the time, loading a file is no longer necessary! Much of the boot time of today's OSes comes from loading stuff into RAM. This can be omitted with P/F/MRAM, reducing booting to device initialization. Also, suspend-to-disk comes for free.
Every single OS is based on the fact that there is a slow, but persistent memory (hard drive) and a fast, volatile one (RAM). They'd need a complete overhaul to fully exploit the new paradigm. Hell, almost all programs too. "Loading file to memory" is not necessary anymore, because the file already IS in memory! Thus, some sort of direct access is needed (unless the file is fragmented).
Wait, has anyone ever TRIED the whole 'theatre at home' thing? Even if you could sacrifice your entire living room to set up the gigantic screen, and arrange the seats to advantage, you -still- don't get the same experience as the theatre. The screen there is taller than your house and the volume and bass on the speakers would have the neighbors calling the cops.
I've only got a 37" TV and I decided not to replace it with a 50" Plasma because I just didn't have room for a bigger one. There's no way I could possibly put an IMAX-class screen in my house, even if it only meant keeping 1 wall clear to project on.
People go to the theatre for the experience and to get out of the house, and you just can't do that at home.
"If you make people think they're thinking, they'll love you; But if you really make them think, they'll hate you." - DM
How about the One Laptop Per Child project? Surely getting a couple of million kids learning a dynamic, reflective, truly object-oriented language like Smalltalk (Squeak) has to count for something, although the reinvention may be a couple of years from now . . . Learning Logo as a kid certainly broadened my experience of computing.
for the mid air mouse I think you'd be better off with something that recognises hand gestures instead (think Johnny Menomic) perhaps with some special gloves or rings to track the motion (this way you don't have to hold something in the same place for a long time)
another idea, something I saw on a Japanese film a while back (i'd be supprised if someone somewhere hasn't already invented this) was a mobile phone heatset type device that consited of 2 rings for fingers
one ring goes on the little finger, the other goes on the thumb
one acts as a mic, the other vibrates through the thumb for the speaker
this way when you want to speak on the phone just stick a finger in one ear and put the other next to your mouth - simple
the only problem comes when you need to use someone elses phone - have you got clean fingernails?
Maybe using a pair of 2D mouses?
Like one for X and Z (right hand) and another for Y and rotation (left hand)
It may sound awkward, but then again maybe in the future our kids will be laughing at us for not being skilled enough to use such setup.
Then again, 3D design apps have been using mouse + keyboard to do this for a long time without problems, so maybe this solution is overkill.
Good job, that man.
This concept was published in Make in one of their first year issues. It might have been the same guy and Microsoft just bought it out -- but it sure looks to be in the public domain. Here is a link to the Make article: http://www.makezine.com/blog/archive/2006/07/soap_ mouse.html
There is also a video on YouTube (search for soap mouse" on how to make and use one. It's basically just a mouse in a sock.
And PC Magazine... what can I say? I haven't been there in a while and was amazed at all the crap on their web pages. One little block of text and the rest of the page is nothing but ad links. Very sad.
A quick read gave the impression of more of the same, nothing really new. What I'm still waiting for: SSD hard drives (under way, latest modell 64 Gig). clockless processors, holographic memory. All in the same box would be a revolution.
12 off-the-shelf projectors, for when one projector isn't noisy enough for you.
ccalam - acoustic versions of new songs.
I went to the soap homepage (http://www.patrickbaudisch.com/projects/soap/inde x.html) and watched the demo. DOA. The gyrations that guys hand has to make to control the mouse, and the speed of the cursor (I know, you can set that, but there's a limit to maintain precision) makes the propsect of using something like that for an extended period of time seem like a CIA torture technique. I use a "regular" optical moust with a wrist pad that has a wrist rest. It requires very little effort, and I can both zip across a 1920pixel screen and precisely pick points in CAD using the same settings. Plus I get three buttons and a scroll wheel (which, if you pan and zoom in good applications is a great movement saver).
In some ways it reminds me of a trackpad. Very cool looking and futuristic (back when they were first introduced) until you try to use it for anything, at which point it becomes a burden which slows down and degrades the accuracy of all of your pointing and selection operations.
Besides, once I get to eliminate my desk, end table, couch, and bed, where should I put my keyboard - or will they come up with a 60wpm on-screen soap-mouse-pick keyboard?
Is it just my observation, or are there way too many stupid people in the world?
As interesting as this would be, we all know that it will be mismanaged with digital restrictions.
Thanks for mentioning them all in the headline. Now I don't have to RTFA. :)
You bring up a fantastic point with the speed. Let's take it one step further.
This thing is pretty cool as far as making precise, small, or fine-grained motions. What if you combined it with a Wiimote, and used the Wiimote for fast motions?
It would be difficult, but an innovative combination of pointing approaches would allow one to take advantage of each approaches strengths.
:(){
1. IMAX at Home
How novel! How revolutionary! A very high-res screen! Let me be the first to predict the 70 GHz CPU, the 40 TB hard drive and the 100 Gbps home internet connection!
2. The Midair Mouse
Other people have pointed out why this idea is flawed, I mean come on, it's obvious enough..
3. The Perfect Machine
If I understand correctly, a quantum computer wouldn't be suited for home/office use, since it's good at performing pretty special kind of operations. Not to mention I don't think we're that close to the quantum computer at all..
4. Extreme Peer-to-Peer
FTFA : The classic point-to-point networking model is fundamentally flawed.
Of course not, it's flawed when it comes to broadcasting, but for anything else on internet, EVEN for video streaming on demand à la YouTube. Besides that, the whole "extreme" P2P isn't worthless, but it's no big deal, and then it will bring its lot of issues, and anyways, that's what caches and proxies have already done for a long time.
5. The Man-Made Brain
Despite the misleading title that suggest it's about strong AI wet dreams, it's pretty interesting, but yeah, not much to say about it..
You just got troll'd!
"In other words," said Benji, steering his curious little vehicle right over to Arthur, "there's a good chance that the structure of the question is encoded in the structure of your brain - so we want to buy it off you."
"What, the question?" said Arthur.
"Yes," said Ford and Trillian.
"For lots of money," said Zaphod.
"No, no," said Frankie, "it's the brain we want to buy."
"What!"
"I thought you said you could just read his brain electronically," protested Ford.
"Oh yes," said Frankie, "but we'd have to get it out first. It's got to be prepared."
"Treated," said Benji.
"Diced."
"Thank you," shouted Arthur, tipping up his chair and backing away from the table in horror.
"It could always be replaced," said Benji reasonably, "if you think it's important."
"Yes, an electronic brain," said Frankie, "a simple one would suffice."
"A simple one!" wailed Arthur.
"Yeah," said Zaphod with a sudden evil grin, "you'd just have to program it to say What? and I don't understand and Where's the tea? - who'd know the difference?"
"What?" cried Arthur, backing away still further.
"See what I mean?" said Zaphod and howled with pain because of something that Trillian did at that moment.
"I'd notice the difference," said Arthur.
"No you wouldn't," said Frankie mouse, "you'd be programmed not to."
*** Where are we going? And what's with this handbasket?
Actually, precision is one of the things I would be concerned about. Think about it - with a desk-bound mouse you can make relatively precise movements in two axes, as the third is constrained and the surface provides support for the device. With a hand held object, you must support it with the same fingers used to manipulate the device. Very few people have perfectly steady hands, which means decreasing the sensitivity to avoid shake - further aggravating the speed issue. Second, most of my mouse operations end in a click. My mouse doesn't move under the pressure required to register a click. It's one of the big problems I have with tapping a touch pad - enough sensitivity to allow useful mouse motion causes drag-clicks (i.e. - misses) with all but the most careful taps. That may not matter for a big Allow or Deny dialog, but for accurate cursor placement in graphics, dense text, or CAD, it's the kiss of prductivity death. Zoom and pan, I hear you cry? So I need to do an extra zoom/pan action to offset the click accuracy? How does that speed up my progress.
No, it's a fun looking device, but I think it may not be the mouse of the future unless a lot of other things change.
Is it just my observation, or are there way too many stupid people in the world?
MAX-quality movies at home with new projectors - cool, but just an incremental advance, hardly a revolution.
mid-air mouse that requires no flat surface - useful if it enables us to get away from having to be at a desk to use a computer, but we're already close to being there thanks to notebooks, tablets, PDAs, smartphones, wearables, etc. These devices do need some kind of useful input device, but whether this is it remains to be seen.
a home quantum computer - Let's concentrate on building *a* quantum computer, first. Presently most home users don't even get all they can out of the computer they currently own and don't know how to use. Quantum computing is interesting and opens up new doors, the closest thing on this list to a real revolutionary advance, but what's the killer app for a home user? Unbreakable encryption? NP-hard problems solved in O(n) time?
a router-based peer-to-peer system - not exactly sure what that means, need to RTFA, but if we're talking embedding bittorrent engines in router firmware, we're already there, pretty much. What good is p2p if the content cartels will stop at nothing to make it illegal? I'd love to see all that latent bandwidth utilized and all the dark fiber in the world lit up with traffic, but without significant copyright reform I don't see it happening. Or, OK, it'll happen, but it'll continually be shut down and reinvented as technologies are sued and legislated out of existence.
and a man-made brain - this sounds like a 50's media description of the mainframes and supercomputers of the day. Again, haven't read TFA, but what is this going to give us? Humanlike AI? We have billions of people to talk to already, so what good is a person you can manufacture? Will we enslave it?
You see? You see? Your stupid minds! Stupid! Stupid!
Not to mention Big Brother surveillance/data mining -- government, corporate, and health care.
I guess a magazine intended to sell technology advertising can't talk about the negative aspects of technology.
Waving your hands in the air like you just don't care in order to operate your computer, huh. Where have I heard this one before?
mirrorshades radio -- darkwave, industrial, futurepop, ebm.
nothing new, get the gyro mouse from CompUSA (if you're lucky enough to still have a store near you) for 60 bucks. I've got one, and it certainly doesn't make things much easier, FPS gaming, for example, is much harder with one.
Still waiting on Serviscope_minor to wake up to fucking reality and realize that Jessica Price isn't going to fuck him.
The "What we have now only bigger", people are wrong and will disappear.
Deleted
this is not "news for nerds. stuff that matters."
I thnk we should give some credibility to Microsoft on this one, I find it pretty innovative.
Arent these five things not equal at all in terms of how they could change computing?
I mean how can you compare that "mouse" with quantum computers??
The first allows you to get rid of the mouse pad and the second could render today's cryptography useless...
I wonder who put these two side by side and thought they were as ground breaking.
While things like CP/M and MS-DOS (all the way to Windows) allowed the formation of a critical mass of compatible computers and thus, the formation of the whole software industry we know now, it also creates a huge amount of inertia.
That's why almost every computer sold today is, in essence, a remake of the IBM 5150.
This inertia cannot simply be ignored. People won't buy a computer that runs no software these days. One would have, at least, to port a desktop environment to it.
http://www.dieblinkenlights.com
The article is clear and utter BS. Poopoo de Toro.
This is akin to "Flying Cars Will Reinvent the Commute", "Water as Fuel Will End the Energy Crisis", "Slapping Wheels on Your Grandmother's Butt Will Make Her a Wagon".
Politics is the art of looking for trouble, finding it everywhere, diagnosing it incorrectly and applying the wrong fix.
Sounds like this Soap thing is an extension of the squirting fixation.
Early computers used non-volatile magnetic memory[1] in the place of RAM, which was really great in some cases. The memory was persistent, so if you lost power, the machine could pick up right where it left off, it was fairly resistant to radiation and/or EMPs, etc. However, if something went wrong in the program (esp. infinite loops), you had to stop the machine, physically remove the memory core (Typically on some kind of heavy drum in those days) and put it in another machine to overwrite the bad code. RAM was designed to be volatile precisely because the odds of some program going nuts (especially in a consumer device) and hosing the machine are relatively high. When that happens, the user needs to be able to recover control of the machine without requiring the use of another device to wipe the non-volatile memory and replace it.
While non-volatile RAM as persistent storage may prove an *excellent* replacement for our slow ferrous-oxide-based hard drives, I'd be very cautious about replacing our good ol' volatile "working-space" RAM just to take advantage of increased boot speed.
1) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magnetic_core_memory
Any plan which depends on a fundamental change in human behavior is doomed from the start.
I don't bother reading PC Magazinecrap.
Instead I read about the day when these thugs are in the War Criminal Zoo adjacent to the
Smithsonian Museum.
True speech input with language understanding might bring about a major shift, but I can't see it for just a better mouse.
--- Often in error; never in doubt!
Many of the things that really make lasting changes are things developed for people that are disabled. The classic case is the one handle faucet. It was developed to make it easier for disabled people to turn the water on and adjust the temp. Now they dominate the market. The breakthrough I noticed recently was robotic arms controlled by monkeys using a direct brain interface. I believe they were monitoring blood flow in the brain as they used controls to manipulate the arms. Eventually they used the monitor to control the arms as the monkeys manipulated the controls. The monkeys figured out that they didn't have to use the controls to move the arms. They were using their thoughts to control the robotic arms. They think it could lead to much better artificial limbs. I think it will lead to a computer interface without keyboard or mouse.
Is he strong? Listen bud, He's got radioactive blood.
I think desktops capable of parallel processing - which can be 1000 times faster than currents PCs - hold a lot more promise for the near term.
s ktop_parallel_processor_developed
http://news.digitaltrends.com/news/story/13371/de
Serving your airship needs since 1995.
The gyrations that guys hand has to make to control the mouse, and the speed of the cursor (I know, you can set that, but there's a limit to maintain precision) makes the propsect of using something like that for an extended period of time seem like a CIA torture technique.
Watch it from 4:40 - 4:20 (the timer counts down). You don't have to rotate and fondle the thing all the time. You can hold it however's comfortable and just move your thumb on the surface, dragging the fabric along under your thumb. So your whole hand and wrist can stay stationary and resting and really, only your thumb moves. Button pressing is another issue, it looks like, but the idea is interesting.
---John Holmes...
Actually, you _can_ already do this, but it's still in it's early days yet. When get get as far as seamless support for geographic virtualisation, then we _will_ have revolutionised computing - we're getting there now, but it's still not quite there yet. Cluster each of the objects for failover reasons, and you have a system that at least in potential, has 100% uptime. You can even migrate 'stuff' off sufficiently resilient hardware, replace the failing component, and migrate back seamlessly.
Extend this into remote sessions, such as citrix environments, but with the extra cool that you actually can move the OS instance to be 'close' to the user in terms of network topology and bandwidth.
Of course, the irony is that this isn't so very different from what mainframes were doing, back in the day. I guess things really do come full circle.
The things this guy lists? Meh. They're gimmicks, not revolutions.
Screw the article....
1. All software talks to each other. It can be a little, or a lot. Instead of having to manually sync 20 different email address books, they all syncronize each other.
2. All hardware talks to each other. No more oddities of your device X not being able to syncronize with device Y.
Of course, with 1 and 2, security will need to be up-front otherwise viruses & worms will have a field day.
I know the above 2 are a bit vague, but it's better than a freakin' IMAX in your home. I doubt that's going to revolutionize anything except your credit card debt.
The first idea is IMax movies. I don't know if the rest of you know this but to even get a movie on IMax from a normal screen it has to be remastered at a higher bit rate. Well that's good for those movies that are currently in HD
Personally I prefer the 820 dollar setup I have a home. A 50 inch TV, a 5 disc dvd upconverter and a 5.1 surround sound system. Old movies that arn't remastered suffer, but imagine what they will look like on a imax projection?
Mouse in midair? We had that in the 90s. I actually had one. Here's the bad news. It didn't work well and was much more clunky and frustrating then on the desk. But the big thing is it's something no one wants. Want a better mouse? Touch screens, tablets. Period. Let's get away from these devices and make one or two necessary add ons (keyboard, touch screen monitor with mini speakers in it), rather then make fancier ones.
Then we get to quantum computer, man made brains, and p2p systems. All sound good but all probably would only add to the complexity of computing, not make anything that much simpler.
This is just like popular mechanics "technology of the future" We hear about it coming but when we actually get it (if we even do) the technology never lives up to the promises. Ever heard about what happens when the soldier of the future tech gets added to the army's units. Most of the time they try to ditch it at their first chance because it's heavy, and not as useful or reliable as their old tools. But it's the soldier of the future stuff right? Just more promises that never get fufilled. Personally I think the key is getting VR started and getting full virtual reality working. Once we have that you can have an IMAX, a full office, and a relaxation room in a 10' by 10' room and that's perfect. But VR is just another promise of the future that still hasn't materialized. Odd.
I might mention I own what might be called an air mouse. I bought it a few years ago. They called it the gyro mouse.
It's okay. It works well on a surface as well as in the air. There are rare uses for the gyro mouse, but I'd agree it didn't exactly revolutionize my computer experience. At best it is neat to use when guests come over, or I need to use my left hand (it feels about the same in either hand).
A more practical idea for a mouse is for Logitech to get off their collective arse, and make the original size of TrackMan, then mold it for lefties.
- Computerized flying car
- flying computer that follows you wherever you go
- internet access without an ISP, cable, or radio signal
- A computer with a wireless power supply
- a computer that can read minds
- and last but not least: a computer to replace the brain of anyone who voted this crap up in the firehose.
WTF is wrong with you people? Please stop subjecting us to this once fine but now worthless magazine!-mcgrew
"...a man-made brain..." I already have one.
No, the mouse won't re-invent computing, but the home imax projector? Man, that will change everything! University curricula will have to be rewritten from scratch!
Phiwum's law: anyone that names an obvious law after himself and then puts it in his own sig is just pathetic.
Bad phrase: "Reinvent computing".
Good phrase: "Reinvent the wheel".
Funny but none of the ideas they mention are going to reinvent either the wheel or computing. Computing (the way we make and program our computers) has not changed, in principle, since the days of Charles Babbage and Lady Ada. That's 150 years ago! Software is still based on the algorithm and we still look at a computer as a mechanism that executes one instruction after another. To reinvent computing, one would need to adopt a non-algorithmic, synchronous, signal-based software model. Unlike the Cell, our processors should be designed and optimized for the new software model. Not the other way around.
This week was IVR, the industrial virtual reality show, in Tokyo. SGI was showing a 4K SXRD projector (FWIW a 35mm slide is 8K, if you printed one at 4K it would suck, but 4K is 4 times better than high def.) and despite their very annoying switching between showing fact sheets in 2D (so your right eye felt blind in the polarized glasses) and 3D, what was cool was the window into the room to see what was driving it. They were using their Asterism high-end Windows machines (I think maybe 4, at least that was what the picture showed) networked to some number of NVIDIA Quadro PLEX rendering units (that's what I want for Christmas!). Having seen their infinite reality systems in the past I was not totally stunned, and in fact they had a very annoying ferrari 3D model that stuck so close to your eyes it hurt, but clearly they had built an interesting rendering network.
Many other exhibitors were also using these NVIDIA standalone rendering bricks and one booth I noticed was using two Dell PCs to drive a stereo view. Some were using 2 projectors superimposed on each other for higher contrast. So this stuff is all here already, heck I saw a Hi-Vision system using two superimposed projectors like 10 years ago, but easy self configuring and aligning systems that would let you plug in more pcs, rendering resources or projectors would be very cool.
Many other
OK There were so many things wrong with the first idea I couldn't get past it to the second.
/. users are above average, although I am not so sure about you.)
First off, how many people (other than the hardcore gamers) have a graphics card that can push 12 displays? The article quotes 12 but the illustration shows 6, which I think is still well beyond the average users display capabilities. (Comment all you want about your card being able to push 6+ displays. I assume that most
Second they mention a 16x9 projection size with a resolution of 4,096-by-2,304. Well IMAX can be 8 stories tall or larger in the case of the half dome screens. Seems like they are a little short, besides what is the largest uncovered wall in most homes? 20 feet tall? Then you are not even getting close to what IMAX can show. Also if I have done my math correctly that means each pixel is around 1 mm is size. That seems a little large to me compared to the crisp edge that film will give you.
Lastly IMAX isn't just about the big picture, 44 speaker groups in 6 clusters with 12,000 watts of power would make the average surround sound system go and hide under the bed. IMAX is an experience. From the really comfortable chairs to the sacrificial cost of popcorn and tickets.
From the weak concepts here to the lack of understanding of what IMAX really is I can only surmise that the Nelson Chang and Niranjan Damera-Venkata should have spent more of the past few years not trying to be IMAX but actually going to IMAX.
>Wait, has anyone ever TRIED the whole 'theatre at home' thing?
In 1995, for a friend's going away party we borrowed an industrial-strength projector, and watched the original Star Wars trilogy projected onto the (windowless) side of a white, 2 story house. It was a pretty good re-creation of the theater experience at home...lawnchairs, 20 or 30 people. Sort of like 'home drive-in movie' rather than 'home IMAX'.
From that video you link to, it looks like the person playing the FPS (UT something?) has some sort of keyboard on his belt (?). Although I definitely couldn't see anyone typing on such a thing.
Either way, I don't want something cute, I want something practical.
They call me the wookie man, I guess that's what I am
My wife and I have already created several brains. The process, while complicated, is actually quite enjoyable. In fact, we reenact the process several times a day.
"Saddam Hussein cavorts with terrorists."
Right now one of the main hurdles for a truly wearable computer is the lack of good input devices. At least for you mouse this could fix that problem. If we ever get to the point that a truly wearable computer with decent I/O capabilities become common then yes I would call then revolutionary as far as computer usage.
In retrospect, I suppose you could go two handed with the soap in one hand and a wireless chording keyboard in the other, but it really cuts down on the newbie-friendliness of the system.
Is it just my observation, or are there way too many stupid people in the world?
"4. A computer with a wireless power supply"
Like, a battery? Or are you talking about something like those flashlights you shake? I think using your computer like an Etch-a-Sketch would get old quickly, and would pretty much require using Flash storage instead of something with moving parts.
I see your informative link, and raise you a pithy comment.
This article is 1) dumb, and 2) so ad-heavy that, even with full ad blocking, only about 10% of the page is content. How did this make it onto Slashdot?
Going down the list, aligning multiple projectors is a marginal idea. That's something you do only when you can't get a single projector that will do the job. When there's content available for 2K x 4K projectors, somebody will make them. Not that many people can tell the difference between 1K x 2K and 2K x 4K, anyway. Raising the frame rate is more useful. Getting movies up to IMAX frame rates would do more than increasing the resolution. Existing hardware can go 75FPS with no problem; it's storing the data that's the bottleneck. Another 10x over BluRay and we're there.
Midair mice are not all that useful. If you want one, get a GyroMouse. Hold your arm straight out for ten minutes to practice, first.
Unclear what a "home quantum computer" would do. The author just likes the word "quantum". Sounds cool.
Do we really need BitTorrent in the router? Live events of great popularity can be multicast, which is already being done. Stored data of great popularity can be cached, which is what Akamai does. If you're synchronizing your calendar, it hardly needs to be in a huge number of locations. And Usenet solved the problem of moving data over each link only once, many years ago. The whole "p2p" thing is driven by piracy; it's a terrible way to move data around. The entire daily output of the RIAA could be distributed efficiently over Usenet and it would barely create a blip in bandwidth. (Maybe Google will just buy out the music industry, which is much smaller than Google, and put the content up in an ad-supported form.)
Emulating the brain at the neuron level is a research tool. If those guys ever get it figured out, there will be better ways to implement it. And as I've pointed out to AI researchers for years, there's enough compute power around to do low-level mammal brains, so do a good mouse that works as well as a real one. (Rod Brooks once told me "I don't want to go down in history as the man who created the world's greatest robot mouse." His one-step-to-human-AI project, Cog, was a flop.) It's not that we can't build the hardware; it's that we still have no clue how to organize it.
No one has perfectly steady hands. I did a project demonstrating this in high school with a photosensor, a laser pointer, and a simple program that kept track of two timers, one running from the first contact and continuing for a set time, and one that only ran while the photosensor was being activated. Don't remember the exact numbers I got from testing everyone in the class, but the best was something like 60%, and he held the laser pointer against his body for extra stability.
I see your informative link, and raise you a pithy comment.
I think interface design is one of the new frontiers of computing. Once someone (finally) cracks the natural voice interface problem with computers, I think we'll see a massive revolution in the technology, and how it is used.
Imagine the depth of penetration of computing technologies into the population if individuals could interact with the computer in a way which is natural to them? What kinds of searches could you perform, for example, on a huge database of information (say, the Internet), if you could ask the computer a specific question and have it understand you?
With so many literacy issues in our world today (especially in a globalized market), using your voice to command a computer versus having to type words in a manner grammatically logical enough to communicate your intent to a computer, well, I think it will change everything. Shit, 98% of the world can't even use an apostrophe correctly; can you imagine the same people trying to formulate an advanced search query via typing?
There's no need for the sock. For that type of activity, there's a "soap with a hole in it" mouse. Self-cleaning and all.
It sounds like PC Magazine is trying to 'reinvent' itself. Instead, it is becoming increasingly irrelevant by publishing such fluff. The print magazine is very thin these days and has little to offer. Editorial quality has gone way downhill.
...before you visit the link to the comic. Mine blocked a trojan.
one would need to adopt a non-algorithmic, synchronous, signal-based software model
That's like, wires, filters, negative feedback loops. You know, audio electronics and radio. Been around since the 19th century. Technology comes full circle, eh?
Do you have any basis for the value of a non-algorithmic model, or would you like to explain better what you mean by that?
You're not talking about stuff like LabVIEW G, are you?
THIS THING CAN TURN ON A DIME, MACROSSZERO STYLE ALSO FUCK BETA, ~NYORON
Just had to reply to this.
1. 2010 - using ten of the fastest supercomputers, a human brain is emulated.
2. 2020 - High end laptop computers now run as HB's (human brains). Robots can now get around on their own. Cars drive themselves. Truck drivers are out of work.
3. 2030 - All physical labor is now done by robots, including robot manufacturing. Robots build robots build robots, rinse, repeat.
The limiting factor after all this is ENERGY. You will need energy to do all this building, and so on.
<shouting>THIS WILL RADICALLY CHANGE THE WORLD. </shouting>
sig: Hello, World. (kinda takes on a different meaning now?)
The soap mouse is nothing like a Wiimote or gyroscope mouse. There's a YouTube video of how to build and and use one: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hohu8SSpduM
WTF? By 2020 I don't want to know we'll be working more! Silly PC-Mag--work != life. Geez, they're so corporate focused...
...how about zero tolerance for bugs before users get to them? It seems like all too often (Version % 10 == 0? BETA: NAN )
``Tension, apprehension & dissension have begun!'' - Duffy Wyg&, in Alfred Bester's _The Demolished Man_
Give it Cartman's personality and voice, and you'll get not stop entertainment. Screw you guys I'm going home.
here comes
1. iPhone
2. iPhone
3. iPhone
4. iPhone
5. iPhone
[1] See for example D. Bacon Phys. Rev. A 70, 032309 (2004)
You want to reinvent computing?... bring back the Commodore Amiga! It was probably one of the best desktop computers of all time.
FTFA:
& oe=utf-8&aq=t&rls=org.mozilla:en-US:official&clien t=firefox-a
"Soap goes one step further: It works in midair. With this new-age pointing device, now under development at Microsoft Research, you can navigate your PC using nothing but a bare hand."
Like say a GyroMouse.
http://www.gyration.com/en-US/Products.html
http://www.google.com/search?q=gyromouse&ie=utf-8
Midair mouse like pointing devices have been out several years now. I know the technology is a bit different but the functional effect seems not so new to me and would actually seem to be inferior to gyro based technology. Like I said a typical PC Mag article suckin up as usual to one of its favorite advertisers know for over hyped behind the curve inferior products and vaporware. Classic. And so it goes...
Wabi Sabi
Matthew
Why have to move your arm or hand?
/dotters are so straight...
There are mice (mouses) now that track your eye movements.
Problem is how do you watch your 500 channels of TV AND direct the mouse around the PC screen?
Perhaps someday we'll learn to direct our eyeballs independently as the chameleons have done.
Maybe even flick an annoying fly off the monitor's face as a tasty morsel...
Well, back to my disgusting Friday night consumption of pinoqachole. and other disgusting alcoholic hallucinogenics...
Gad..
.
- aqk
F U
I know this is somewhat off-topic, but reading about the simulated rat brain brought up this question.
Does anyone know of any research projects (at academic institutions) for large scale knowledge bases? How about practical large scale AI, like 'HAL'?
What do you mean my sig is repetitive? What do you mean my sig is repetitive? What do you mean....
There is another concept being thought out; The screen is in 3D and it is big enough that it might take whole empty space in your room. So when you move your mouse to a icon on your back, cursor will go through your body. so as softwares and anything else when you move it. Things will be projected 360degress surrounding you in 3d. Imagine that you are playing a game; A alien spits at you you actually see a slime on your shirt and acid is buring through your body and you see your gut hanging out, you see the bullet ridden ceiling and lights coming in through holes, you got shot in the head and you see black darkness.