Britain recently made it legal for insurance companies to discriminate on the basis of the results of a genetic test for Parkinson's Disease. Presumably, permission to do so with other genetic
diseases will soon follow. Couple this with a government-run DNA database, and you really have to wonder what the hell is going on.
Problem: Even if we'd like to be able to use DNA for law
enforcement, we sure as hell don't want the DNA to be used by medical
insurance agencies or others for genetic profiling. What
happens when someone cracks into the DNA database?
Possible Solution: Could a cryptographic one-way hash on the DNA be
used to prevent these abuses? You take the DNA data and perform
the one-way hash and only store the results of the hash in the
database. The cops analyze the crime scene DNA and apply the same
hash function. The cops can then see if any of their suspects match
the crime scene DNA by comparing the hashed values.
This approach allows for identification, but the hashed signature of
the DNA should be useless for genetic profiling.
I presume DNA matching is more complicated than a simple binary
comparison. It should be possible to use a hash function tailored
specifically for encoding DNA. However, I'm certainly no expert on
DNA or cryptographic hashes.
I don't know if using a DNA data-bank in criminal cases is a
desirable thing or not. However, I do think that a DNA database is
inevitable in some form. We should be sure to mandate that the form
it takes preserves our rights and freedoms as much as possible.
An important application of new process technology is that you can make a faster chip, or use the same process technology to create lower power processors. We might not need more performance for many applications, but high performance at 500 mW is still interesting.
Yes, IBM's 9S is more advanced than the current 8S2 process. However the current process (8S2) already uses copper wires and SOI, and the low-k dielectric is already in use in IBM's C-11 ASIC process. In addition C-11 has embedded DRAM on chip.
IBM seems to be fighting with Intel and AMD for the lead in process technology. Remember IBM is also fabing the next generation of Alpha processors as well as Transmeta's Crusoe.
Re:Apple's statement on x86 OS X : help us
on
No Love For Darwin?
·
· Score: 2
Back in the day, NeXT supported "fat binaries." The idea was that any
binary could contain object code for multiple types of processors.
The loader looked at the binary and knew which part of the object file
to load and execute. The NeXT development tools used a GCC-based
cross-compiler to generate fat binaries that ran on NEXTSTEP/SPARC,
NEXTSTEP/PA-RISC, NEXTSTEP/x86 and the original black hardware. All
in a single build, by simply checking a couple of extra check boxes.
I believe fat binaries are still supported as part of Darwin, and thus
are also part of MacOS X. If Apple can convince vendors to ship
PowerPC/x86 fat binaries when they first start shipping MacOS X, it
would allow Apple to start selling x86 hardware with a large installed
base of software right from the start.
The article says the system will have 10 GBytes/second of memory bandwidth and a 45 GBytes/second multiprocessor interface. The article estimates the cache sizes as 1.5 MB for the shared on-chip L2, and 32MB for the off-chip L3 cache. Each processor die has 5,500 pins and attach directly to a multi-chip-module (MCM).
The article also suggests that the system will support up to 32 processors (2 per die x 16), and even more processors using clustering technology.
Looks like this is going to make for a fast server system.
Slashdot Mirror
Problem: Even if we'd like to be able to use DNA for law enforcement, we sure as hell don't want the DNA to be used by medical insurance agencies or others for genetic profiling. What happens when someone cracks into the DNA database?
Possible Solution: Could a cryptographic one-way hash on the DNA be used to prevent these abuses? You take the DNA data and perform the one-way hash and only store the results of the hash in the database. The cops analyze the crime scene DNA and apply the same hash function. The cops can then see if any of their suspects match the crime scene DNA by comparing the hashed values. This approach allows for identification, but the hashed signature of the DNA should be useless for genetic profiling.
I presume DNA matching is more complicated than a simple binary comparison. It should be possible to use a hash function tailored specifically for encoding DNA. However, I'm certainly no expert on DNA or cryptographic hashes.
I don't know if using a DNA data-bank in criminal cases is a desirable thing or not. However, I do think that a DNA database is inevitable in some form. We should be sure to mandate that the form it takes preserves our rights and freedoms as much as possible.
Yes, IBM's 9S is more advanced than the current 8S2 process. However the current process (8S2) already uses copper wires and SOI, and the low-k dielectric is already in use in IBM's C-11 ASIC process. In addition C-11 has embedded DRAM on chip.
IBM seems to be fighting with Intel and AMD for the lead in process technology. Remember IBM is also fabing the next generation of Alpha processors as well as Transmeta's Crusoe.
I believe fat binaries are still supported as part of Darwin, and thus are also part of MacOS X. If Apple can convince vendors to ship PowerPC/x86 fat binaries when they first start shipping MacOS X, it would allow Apple to start selling x86 hardware with a large installed base of software right from the start.
I found this old post by Paul Marcos
BTW: Why doesn't Linux support this kind of thing?The article says the system will have 10 GBytes/second of memory bandwidth and a 45 GBytes/second multiprocessor interface. The article estimates the cache sizes as 1.5 MB for the shared on-chip L2, and 32MB for the off-chip L3 cache. Each processor die has 5,500 pins and attach directly to a multi-chip-module (MCM).
The article also suggests that the system will support up to 32 processors (2 per die x 16), and even more processors using clustering technology.
Looks like this is going to make for a fast server system.