People don't understand to an International government and an International chip monopoly the hardware is pennies. It's the software that costs $$$$. AOL, Intel, & Spain must have learned what the l33t kids have: Linux is a car with its doors unlocked, just waiting to be taken for a joy ride.
Unless we can actually turn it into a buisness model which doesn't involve restructing the world economy, it's going to be nothing more than a corporate scapegoat for those who don't want to pay the great MS monarcy's tax.
Great way to take over, but at what cost to the true fundamentals of what the system set out to be?
Linux has been reduced to a happy meal toy. I wish more people would understand the difference between open source and free...
There is certainly no shortage of culture nor material (look at the culture of Slashdot).
While I've never taken a CS history course, some introductory courses I have taken have included a short history of the topic. Starting with the representation of calculating with many rows of switches, to base four, to finally the binary system and stored procedures.
There are plenty of books out there about the history of the subject, and there probably has been a documentary.
Anyway, it's certainly possible, although I would question its extreme usefulness as the field changes to rapidly that what was only 10 years old sometimes has little to do with how things work today. And that's not taking into account how technical the field is and how less and less theory is being taught today. Increase the years and you increase the contrast. For example, a mechanical calculating machine has little to do with an electronic computer of today, and it may be difficult for some of your students to realize the connection.
While it's definitely useful to know the true roots of computing, I would question if this couldn't simply be learned by a course in standard computational theory using mathematical models?
Of course, our goals could be different.
"A history course is always useful."
All of the fore mentioned errors are those of technique. Of course there are going to be problems, like any technology in its infancy. Just like there were problems (and still are) with organ transplants, there will be problems with cloning. That doesn't mean anything is inherently baaaaddd, which is what the article makes it out to be.
This is just another article to scare the general public. The media likes doing that, and this is laden with religious innuendoes and scenes from science fiction. Science has always been held up by those who don't understand it, those who don't want it (because of lost industry -- see the industrial revolution), and those who think it's evil for whatever arbitrary reason.
Cloning a person isn't anything bad, even if it doesn't work 100%. The natural body makes mistakes too, just look at all the birth defects, genetic disorders, etc. It's just matter, so what would be different?
I think cloning was an issue which was just another area of research in genetic engineering until it became a political issue on the back of candidate cards, and they let the average Joe-blow hole and his frizzy hair wife have their 20 seconds of fame telling the world how bad it is. Or the president who uses such creative analogies as "...the warning light on the dashboard of America." have his say in it.
Ultimately, human and animal cloning will become the norm., despite the "errors" of first generation technology. I don't see it hindered by it at all; More like annoyed. All we need now is someone to make the first step, which you know is going to happen, before cloning starts to happen en masse--pretty soon it'll be at your local hospital.
Then, there will be another issue for everyone to concentrate on (e.g. world keeps turning, life goes on, blah blah)...
Love the media and frizzy haired, completely homogeneous general population.
You have a very difficult task indeed. Just hiring someone who knows 'C' and a bit of textbook Calculus (or whatever you were looking for) will be far from enough to go into scientific applications.
Usually, most science (even art) departments have a resident geek who knows the subject AND has been around computers enough to be a pseudo-expert (as good as any real expert of course).
Look around in your department before hiring outside help. You're going to find someone who is much more familiar, and even maybe interested, in the subject for which he is actually solving a problem for. Hiring someone who has been given a stamped CS education, or worse, a horrid vocational certification which are more and more popular, isn't going to be nearly enough, especially if you are heavy in the maths and numerical analysis. Science is so tied with computers today (see recent article), it's really hard to think there isn't one single person in a science, math related department who isn't a complete geek.
If it comes down to it, you're going to have to convince a student to take up programming or learn it yourself. It probably isn't as difficult as asking a CS major/graduate to take up your subject.
This would be a mistake, business wise. Your target audience is savvy businessmen who need to manage contacts and send e-mail. They don't want to debug while waiting in line at the Grocery store or run an ultra-stable web server.
A handheld PC is an environment where complete stability isn't at the top of the list. Usability and functionality is. And, this is, unfortunatly, where Linux is most lacking.
Leaving a traditional OS would also represent venturing out on your own in terms of the giant marketing machine these companies create. Like I said before, non-technical types aren't interested in the finer points of Linux. I'm sure most don't even know the difference between Palm and WinCE/PocketPC. They like the big full page ads, and the familiarity with the desktop environment or the good functionality.
We don't need to put Linux on everything...don't make the same mistake Microsoft did/is.
Get a Casio Cassipeia with the CompactFlash camera extension, and use the Brighthand article found here or here to get your wireless connectivity.
Get any of the freeware FTP programs (some have timed upload of a specific directory), set the camera for captures every few seconds, and you have yourself a completly isolated webcam the size of (roughly) a PDA.
An alternative which involves a base station would be a video camera with a high range transmitter (a few miles). This could take the signal to a much powerful connection, where you could, say, stream the video...
This question ranks up there in such fields as what if an asteriod struck the Earth and other random Hollywood plots. All you need now is a drilling crew and you have yourself a movie.
I guess people just have a natural fascination with best case/worse case, when, in reality, things usually happen in between.
Of course it's an interesting thought experiment, but, lets face it, there isn't really anything which would be that selective in its destruction, which wouldn't involve something more important than the "reset" of all electronic systems. Yes, we are still alive after Y2K.
Something happens that big on a global scale and you're worried about legacy systems?
Freespace optics is fun. Ahh...the days of modulating a HeNe with FM radio...
Actually, there are significant challenges, especially if it's limited to 100 mW. I should
also mention 100 mW IS NOT eye safe. In fact, you can readially feel 100 mW of any wavelength on your hand. Remember, your eye focuses things. Would you like 100 mW per few mm^2 on your retina?
I'd also be interested in atmospheric affects including interference from solar and harmonics of streetlamps interfering with the modulated signal. They're going to need to do some very good noise reduction, but its definatly possible.
Divergence would also be an issue. The pencil thin 100 mW beam will soon be spread out tens of feet over several miles, even when collimated very well. Can they manage to detect a few hundred microwatt signal further
distorted by transient conditions?
Another issue is line of sight. How are they handling this? Most cities and rural areas don't have a 5 mile line of sight
at any height or location. I can hear it now:
"Tell that guy to move his truck! He's blocking my Quake game!"
This seems like a technology better left to the universities, special conditions, or enthusiasts.
It might also be an OK idea for transmitting between ISP buildings. In a case where two buildings were across a busy street, it would be very easy and fast to connect the two networks via laser, instead of pushing expensive cable. Remember that you can modulate most diodes (even >100mW) in the gigabit range. There are also a few places where a few tall buildings sit in deserted places, seperated by several miles. This would be a good solution -- as long as it has line of sight.
I just don't see it as practical
technology for consumers. Possibly beaming to a satellite would be better, but even a multi-watt Argon can't penetrate clouds, and then
there is the reception issue. It just doesn't pan out.
Has anyone noticed the shifting of power between the CPU and GPU? Once all we had was a RAMDAC. Now we have SIMD, FPU, programmable GPUs running at faster and faster clocks. Tom's article goes all the way to say GF3 kicks P4's SIMD engine even just in theory, running at 1/5 of the clock.
Graphics is getting more expensive, too. A $600 graphics card compared to a $300 state-of-the-art processor.
What about that massive die size and transistor count? Can you argue by this the GF3 is more complex than the CPU now?
Maybe as process sizes decrease and high DIE size yields increase, it would be better just to stick the GPU and CPU on one chip. Or maybe put them on a processing bus so the GPU will "look" like another CPU? Somethings isn't right when the most complex part of the system isn't even on the system bus. I would predict this is the last card which is satisfied with the AGP 4x bus and the current system configuration.
It's obvious you appreciate the virtuies of remote administration. It makes your life easier.
However, a clear distinction must be made: remote administration IS NOT SUPPORT.
It's a repair service.
When you go in and make the screen fly on a bewildered user to fix a problem, you have to ask yourself are you fixing the real problem or the immediate problem? Give a person a fish, and they won't go hungry; teach them to fish and you feed them for life.
Phone support is more tailored to teaching users what they have done wrong, getting them more familiar with the system. Remote Administration destroys the learning experience. This results in more unknowledgeable clients having more and more problems because they haven't realized what they're doing wrong.
An ideal situation would employ both forms, where you both show visually what to do, and explain the reasons for doing it. It may be harder, but you will get less calls for support!
I can think of several good reasons why this is a great idea:
- There is quite a good possibility the same caliber of advanced Google search algorithms and the use of linux clustering processing will be applied to the Deja archive, and, more importantly, the Usenet itself. Deja's service was fine in simple boolean terms, but as the archive grows there needs to be something much better than that. The result will be better quality percent hits == better results.
- Google will create popularity for the Usenet. As far as I know, this is the first major integration of a search engine with Usenet -- about time!
- The storage capacities of Google are much greater than Deja's could ever be, and with their web search frontend, the possibility for expanding is limitless. This means no more dropped archives.
- Google is very efficient at everything they do, and their HTML is simple, clean, and fast loading on just about anything. This will provide extended portability, increased functionality, and information usage efficiency.
(some) cons:
- The Deja threaded interface was good, a little bloated, but still good. Google's BETA interface, well, it sucks. Hopefully this will be improved. I would really like the ability to choose between flat view and thread on the fly -- ala old RemarQ and Deja together. Also, we will have to see how they handle the community model with posting and such. Should they go about creating an entire user community for Google or just for Usenet? There are cons and pros to both, however there are many possibilities which open up with this integration.
Hopefully the great information resource which is Usenet, arguably the largest online forum community on the Internet, will be preserved and taken to new levels by Google (similiar to what they did with the search engine industry).
What type of actual speed and latency can we see from these things? I mean, in three or four years, will they be able to compete with.5 ns access times and 100's of gigabytes of multiple-pumped bandwidth?
For memory, speed has always been the number one concern. The very definition of memory is volatile, and any non-volatile storage devices created recently or as proof of concepts still haven't been fast enough, otherwise we wouldn't need memory at all. A good memory system's job isn't permanent storage -- it's getting data to the system as fast as possible.
Being able to have an "instant on" PC would be great, but creating non-volatile memory isn't the way. Convergence amoung permanent storage and memory is also great, but the very definition of semiconductor devices in any method demand fast switching, volatile devices to deliver the speed neccessary. Static or programmable elements have physical constraints which don't follow the progession of increased performance over x months like some people here are counting on.
Ultimatly, you can have your "instant on" PC, as long as you don't mind slow memory. Volatile methods will always (for the most part) be faster.
Language is a good idea of the application of these "mirror" neurons. But basically what these types of neurons seem to do is to relate and create (or at least learn) the physcological concept of having a hand and immediatly being able to use it. It's like when a baby finds its hands for the first time by looking at others and then looking at themself. Instead of firing at random, they now represent discrete concepts -- moving your hand, picking something up, etc.
Throughout a society, there is always a thin, yet beneficial and usually very controversial and sometimes sick line which must exist. This line is the line filled with the pedophiles, KKK, extremists, racists, bigots, etc. which have an antagonistic stance. That is, most people at populous random wouldn't agree with their ideas, and some might even want to control them or stop them completely.
However, it is this line which presents a great wall from the flood of the great beast which is government control, censorship, and "mind control" (not by implants, unfortunately) from crashing through with well known affects. I think we all need to except that this line needs to exist.
I am reminded of a children's book which attempts to explain the whys of the worst hate of all (IMHO) -- censorship -- "silencing". It starts out by eliminating groups of not well liked inhabitants of an imaginary forest (worms and toads). Everyone didn't like them anyway and thought they should best be left out of the forest and thought the place might even be better without them (who wants slimy worms and toads anyway?????). After all, they're not like me. So they were eliminated. It was really easy to do with so much support, and pretty soon there was a new replacement for the ugliest and the dirtiest. You can see where this is leading. At the end, there, (of course) was only one group left, and who was left to speak? Was this group the best? Had we finally "cleansed" society? Probably not, since the methods are arbitrary at best anyway, and related solely to a minority anyway -- what we set out to eliminate in the first place!
I think everyone can see the moral to this story, and the need for that barrier, which mad parents and hypocritical politicians try to cross everyday, in the pursuit of a "safer" community.
Which kind of community would you like to live in?
I don't see the improvement. Making the transistors more transparent won't improve display quality very much as current methods place the transistor in back of an LC cell. The big difficulty in the LCD display market is the liquid crystal material itself. The contrast ratio is directly related to the polarization changes in the specific liquid crystal molecule being used in the display. When a voltage is applied to a transistor, it causes the LC molecules in that cell to twist or isomerize. Light passing through the modifed LC will change the polarization. Put a polarization filter which, say, blocks linearly polzaized light on top of the LC layer and you have a light switch. Put colored filters and you have a colored display.
This is why manufactures have tried different variants of LC -- twisted neumatic, ferroelectric, etc. in hopes of improving the polarization efficiency (PI radians wavefront rotation or whichever polarizaiton method is being used - linear, circular, etc.). There are already transparent transistors using other methods, and there are even plastic, clear, flexable transistors which can be "printed" so I don't see what's the big deal. They're either reinventing an already existing technology because they don't have any truly new ideas or are hoping to claim already established methods as their own. Either way there is nothing new or novel here.
I have really big doubts about this movie. I haven't seen it yet, but I have a feeling it's going to be another over glorified script kiddy movie which likes to be trendy. Why did they have to have a "young hacker"? Doesn't that say anything right there that they're going for the same old hype?
As for the shots being Linux in the movie, I highly doubt this. There probably isn't any kind of operating system running in that sense and the monitors are just connected to a video deck which advances frames on director cues. I doubt Linux is ever functionally used in this movie at all, albeit a good deal of the movie may be about it.
Has anyone noticed the increasing number of Flash animations in Adverts by major online ad agencies? Maybe with the right hack using this bug someone could do *a lot* of damage. With a minimal, wide exposure package it wouldn't cost much either. But I assume there are safety precautions taken by the companies (?). After all, Java has been a problem for awhile with numerous security issues but we still see wide audience Java ADs all over the place. How many sites do those get funneled through anyway?
This happened to me. Well, not me exactly, but to my parents. When my father went to work for a new company he received health insurance for the entire family like usual. This particular company, however, was using pooled insurance with several other companies, which means they would pool in a certain amount of money based on their profits and their percent usage of the pool.
Myself having hemophilia, my treatments in the form of synthetic factor are extremly expensive, costing in the hundreads of thousands of dollars PER MONTH. This is more than many conditions, including AIDs and most cancers. You can imagine this was a huge drain and was quite costly to the company.
The solution in the company's mind was termination, but it was obvious this would be asking for trouble. So, they took the route *most* travelled and pushed my father out. They would find things to complain about, fire all his staff and make him frantic -- they basically made it like hell. He eventually quit, with these retaining these rumors.
So, in a way, it's similar to genetic discrimination in the other case. So it isn't just a "look what happened to that laddy" article, and I take real offense to that considering this is what most companies do all the time. And don't think your personal records are safe because insurance-company communication is very frequent, especially if they are close knit as in this case. Do you have a company logo on your insurance card or is does your company have any association with your insurance provider (if covered by your employment plan)? If so, it would be trivial for any one sufficiently high enough in the company to get ahold of anything medically about you, probably down to the linens used in your last clinic checkup.
Slashdot Mirror
People don't understand to an International government and an International chip monopoly the hardware is pennies. It's the software that costs $$$$. AOL, Intel, & Spain must have learned what the l33t kids have: Linux is a car with its doors unlocked, just waiting to be taken for a joy ride.
Unless we can actually turn it into a buisness model which doesn't involve restructing the world economy, it's going to be nothing more than a corporate scapegoat for those who don't want to pay the great MS monarcy's tax.
Great way to take over, but at what cost to the true fundamentals of what the system set out to be?
Linux has been reduced to a happy meal toy. I wish more people would understand the difference between open source and free...
There is certainly no shortage of culture nor material (look at the culture of Slashdot).
While I've never taken a CS history course, some introductory courses I have taken have included a short history of the topic. Starting with the representation of calculating with many rows of switches, to base four, to finally the binary system and stored procedures.
There are plenty of books out there about the history of the subject, and there probably has been a documentary.
Anyway, it's certainly possible, although I would question its extreme usefulness as the field changes to rapidly that what was only 10 years old sometimes has little to do with how things work today. And that's not taking into account how technical the field is and how less and less theory is being taught today. Increase the years and you increase the contrast. For example, a mechanical calculating machine has little to do with an electronic computer of today, and it may be difficult for some of your students to realize the connection.
While it's definitely useful to know the true roots of computing, I would question if this couldn't simply be learned by a course in standard computational theory using mathematical models?
Of course, our goals could be different. "A history course is always useful."
All of the fore mentioned errors are those of technique. Of course there are going to be problems, like any technology in its infancy. Just like there were problems (and still are) with organ transplants, there will be problems with cloning. That doesn't mean anything is inherently baaaaddd, which is what the article makes it out to be.
This is just another article to scare the general public. The media likes doing that, and this is laden with religious innuendoes and scenes from science fiction. Science has always been held up by those who don't understand it, those who don't want it (because of lost industry -- see the industrial revolution), and those who think it's evil for whatever arbitrary reason.
Cloning a person isn't anything bad, even if it doesn't work 100%. The natural body makes mistakes too, just look at all the birth defects, genetic disorders, etc. It's just matter, so what would be different?
I think cloning was an issue which was just another area of research in genetic engineering until it became a political issue on the back of candidate cards, and they let the average Joe-blow hole and his frizzy hair wife have their 20 seconds of fame telling the world how bad it is. Or the president who uses such creative analogies as "...the warning light on the dashboard of America." have his say in it.
Ultimately, human and animal cloning will become the norm., despite the "errors" of first generation technology. I don't see it hindered by it at all; More like annoyed. All we need now is someone to make the first step, which you know is going to happen, before cloning starts to happen en masse--pretty soon it'll be at your local hospital.
Then, there will be another issue for everyone to concentrate on (e.g. world keeps turning, life goes on, blah blah)...
Love the media and frizzy haired, completely homogeneous general population.
You have a very difficult task indeed. Just hiring someone who knows 'C' and a bit of textbook Calculus (or whatever you were looking for) will be far from enough to go into scientific applications.
Usually, most science (even art) departments have a resident geek who knows the subject AND has been around computers enough to be a pseudo-expert (as good as any real expert of course). Look around in your department before hiring outside help. You're going to find someone who is much more familiar, and even maybe interested, in the subject for which he is actually solving a problem for. Hiring someone who has been given a stamped CS education, or worse, a horrid vocational certification which are more and more popular, isn't going to be nearly enough, especially if you are heavy in the maths and numerical analysis. Science is so tied with computers today (see recent article), it's really hard to think there isn't one single person in a science, math related department who isn't a complete geek.
If it comes down to it, you're going to have to convince a student to take up programming or learn it yourself. It probably isn't as difficult as asking a CS major/graduate to take up your subject.
Best of luck!
This would be a mistake, business wise. Your target audience is savvy businessmen who need to manage contacts and send e-mail. They don't want to debug while waiting in line at the Grocery store or run an ultra-stable web server.
A handheld PC is an environment where complete stability isn't at the top of the list. Usability and functionality is. And, this is, unfortunatly, where Linux is most lacking.
Leaving a traditional OS would also represent venturing out on your own in terms of the giant marketing machine these companies create. Like I said before, non-technical types aren't interested in the finer points of Linux. I'm sure most don't even know the difference between Palm and WinCE/PocketPC. They like the big full page ads, and the familiarity with the desktop environment or the good functionality.
We don't need to put Linux on everything...don't make the same mistake Microsoft did/is.
Quite simple:
Get a Casio Cassipeia with the CompactFlash camera extension, and use the Brighthand article found here or here to get your wireless connectivity.
Get any of the freeware FTP programs (some have timed upload of a specific directory), set the camera for captures every few seconds, and you have yourself a completly isolated webcam the size of (roughly) a PDA.
An alternative which involves a base station would be a video camera with a high range transmitter (a few miles). This could take the signal to a much powerful connection, where you could, say, stream the video...
This question ranks up there in such fields as what if an asteriod struck the Earth and other random Hollywood plots. All you need now is a drilling crew and you have yourself a movie.
I guess people just have a natural fascination with best case/worse case, when, in reality, things usually happen in between.
Of course it's an interesting thought experiment, but, lets face it, there isn't really anything which would be that selective in its destruction, which wouldn't involve something more important than the "reset" of all electronic systems. Yes, we are still alive after Y2K.
Something happens that big on a global scale and you're worried about legacy systems?
Freespace optics is fun. Ahh...the days of modulating a HeNe with FM radio...
Actually, there are significant challenges, especially if it's limited to 100 mW. I should also mention 100 mW IS NOT eye safe. In fact, you can readially feel 100 mW of any wavelength on your hand. Remember, your eye focuses things. Would you like 100 mW per few mm^2 on your retina?
I'd also be interested in atmospheric affects including interference from solar and harmonics of streetlamps interfering with the modulated signal. They're going to need to do some very good noise reduction, but its definatly possible.
Divergence would also be an issue. The pencil thin 100 mW beam will soon be spread out tens of feet over several miles, even when collimated very well. Can they manage to detect a few hundred microwatt signal further distorted by transient conditions?
Another issue is line of sight. How are they handling this? Most cities and rural areas don't have a 5 mile line of sight at any height or location. I can hear it now:
"Tell that guy to move his truck! He's blocking my Quake game!"
This seems like a technology better left to the universities, special conditions, or enthusiasts. It might also be an OK idea for transmitting between ISP buildings. In a case where two buildings were across a busy street, it would be very easy and fast to connect the two networks via laser, instead of pushing expensive cable. Remember that you can modulate most diodes (even >100mW) in the gigabit range. There are also a few places where a few tall buildings sit in deserted places, seperated by several miles. This would be a good solution -- as long as it has line of sight.
I just don't see it as practical technology for consumers. Possibly beaming to a satellite would be better, but even a multi-watt Argon can't penetrate clouds, and then there is the reception issue. It just doesn't pan out.
Has anyone noticed the shifting of power between the CPU and GPU? Once all we had was a RAMDAC. Now we have SIMD, FPU, programmable GPUs running at faster and faster clocks. Tom's article goes all the way to say GF3 kicks P4's SIMD engine even just in theory, running at 1/5 of the clock.
Graphics is getting more expensive, too. A $600 graphics card compared to a $300 state-of-the-art processor.
What about that massive die size and transistor count? Can you argue by this the GF3 is more complex than the CPU now?
Maybe as process sizes decrease and high DIE size yields increase, it would be better just to stick the GPU and CPU on one chip. Or maybe put them on a processing bus so the GPU will "look" like another CPU? Somethings isn't right when the most complex part of the system isn't even on the system bus. I would predict this is the last card which is satisfied with the AGP 4x bus and the current system configuration.
It's obvious you appreciate the virtuies of remote administration. It makes your life easier. However, a clear distinction must be made: remote administration IS NOT SUPPORT.
It's a repair service.
When you go in and make the screen fly on a bewildered user to fix a problem, you have to ask yourself are you fixing the real problem or the immediate problem? Give a person a fish, and they won't go hungry; teach them to fish and you feed them for life.
Phone support is more tailored to teaching users what they have done wrong, getting them more familiar with the system. Remote Administration destroys the learning experience. This results in more unknowledgeable clients having more and more problems because they haven't realized what they're doing wrong.
An ideal situation would employ both forms, where you both show visually what to do, and explain the reasons for doing it. It may be harder, but you will get less calls for support!
I can think of several good reasons why this is a great idea:
- There is quite a good possibility the same caliber of advanced Google search algorithms and the use of linux clustering processing will be applied to the Deja archive, and, more importantly, the Usenet itself. Deja's service was fine in simple boolean terms, but as the archive grows there needs to be something much better than that. The result will be better quality percent hits == better results.
- Google will create popularity for the Usenet. As far as I know, this is the first major integration of a search engine with Usenet -- about time!
- The storage capacities of Google are much greater than Deja's could ever be, and with their web search frontend, the possibility for expanding is limitless. This means no more dropped archives.
- Google is very efficient at everything they do, and their HTML is simple, clean, and fast loading on just about anything. This will provide extended portability, increased functionality, and information usage efficiency.
(some) cons:
- The Deja threaded interface was good, a little bloated, but still good. Google's BETA interface, well, it sucks. Hopefully this will be improved. I would really like the ability to choose between flat view and thread on the fly -- ala old RemarQ and Deja together. Also, we will have to see how they handle the community model with posting and such. Should they go about creating an entire user community for Google or just for Usenet? There are cons and pros to both, however there are many possibilities which open up with this integration.
Hopefully the great information resource which is Usenet, arguably the largest online forum community on the Internet, will be preserved and taken to new levels by Google (similiar to what they did with the search engine industry).
Let's keep our fingers crossed!
What type of actual speed and latency can we see from these things? I mean, in three or four years, will they be able to compete with .5 ns access times and 100's of gigabytes of multiple-pumped bandwidth?
For memory, speed has always been the number one concern. The very definition of memory is volatile, and any non-volatile storage devices created recently or as proof of concepts still haven't been fast enough, otherwise we wouldn't need memory at all. A good memory system's job isn't permanent storage -- it's getting data to the system as fast as possible.
Being able to have an "instant on" PC would be great, but creating non-volatile memory isn't the way. Convergence amoung permanent storage and memory is also great, but the very definition of semiconductor devices in any method demand fast switching, volatile devices to deliver the speed neccessary. Static or programmable elements have physical constraints which don't follow the progession of increased performance over x months like some people here are counting on.
Ultimatly, you can have your "instant on" PC, as long as you don't mind slow memory. Volatile methods will always (for the most part) be faster.
Language is a good idea of the application of these "mirror" neurons. But basically what these types of neurons seem to do is to relate and create (or at least learn) the physcological concept of having a hand and immediatly being able to use it. It's like when a baby finds its hands for the first time by looking at others and then looking at themself. Instead of firing at random, they now represent discrete concepts -- moving your hand, picking something up, etc.
Throughout a society, there is always a thin, yet beneficial and usually very controversial and sometimes sick line which must exist. This line is the line filled with the pedophiles, KKK, extremists, racists, bigots, etc. which have an antagonistic stance. That is, most people at populous random wouldn't agree with their ideas, and some might even want to control them or stop them completely.
However, it is this line which presents a great wall from the flood of the great beast which is government control, censorship, and "mind control" (not by implants, unfortunately) from crashing through with well known affects. I think we all need to except that this line needs to exist.
I am reminded of a children's book which attempts to explain the whys of the worst hate of all (IMHO) -- censorship -- "silencing". It starts out by eliminating groups of not well liked inhabitants of an imaginary forest (worms and toads). Everyone didn't like them anyway and thought they should best be left out of the forest and thought the place might even be better without them (who wants slimy worms and toads anyway?????). After all, they're not like me. So they were eliminated. It was really easy to do with so much support, and pretty soon there was a new replacement for the ugliest and the dirtiest. You can see where this is leading. At the end, there, (of course) was only one group left, and who was left to speak? Was this group the best? Had we finally "cleansed" society? Probably not, since the methods are arbitrary at best anyway, and related solely to a minority anyway -- what we set out to eliminate in the first place!
I think everyone can see the moral to this story, and the need for that barrier, which mad parents and hypocritical politicians try to cross everyday, in the pursuit of a "safer" community.
Which kind of community would you like to live in?
I don't see the improvement. Making the transistors more transparent won't improve display quality very much as current methods place the transistor in back of an LC cell. The big difficulty in the LCD display market is the liquid crystal material itself. The contrast ratio is directly related to the polarization changes in the specific liquid crystal molecule being used in the display. When a voltage is applied to a transistor, it causes the LC molecules in that cell to twist or isomerize. Light passing through the modifed LC will change the polarization. Put a polarization filter which, say, blocks linearly polzaized light on top of the LC layer and you have a light switch. Put colored filters and you have a colored display.
This is why manufactures have tried different variants of LC -- twisted neumatic, ferroelectric, etc. in hopes of improving the polarization efficiency (PI radians wavefront rotation or whichever polarizaiton method is being used - linear, circular, etc.). There are already transparent transistors using other methods, and there are even plastic, clear, flexable transistors which can be "printed" so I don't see what's the big deal. They're either reinventing an already existing technology because they don't have any truly new ideas or are hoping to claim already established methods as their own. Either way there is nothing new or novel here.
I have really big doubts about this movie. I haven't seen it yet, but I have a feeling it's going to be another over glorified script kiddy movie which likes to be trendy. Why did they have to have a "young hacker"? Doesn't that say anything right there that they're going for the same old hype?
As for the shots being Linux in the movie, I highly doubt this. There probably isn't any kind of operating system running in that sense and the monitors are just connected to a video deck which advances frames on director cues. I doubt Linux is ever functionally used in this movie at all, albeit a good deal of the movie may be about it.
Has anyone noticed the increasing number of Flash animations in Adverts by major online ad agencies? Maybe with the right hack using this bug someone could do *a lot* of damage. With a minimal, wide exposure package it wouldn't cost much either. But I assume there are safety precautions taken by the companies (?). After all, Java has been a problem for awhile with numerous security issues but we still see wide audience Java ADs all over the place. How many sites do those get funneled through anyway?
Sometimes, they alter the content on a Web site and write offensive material.
If I take a picture of my ass and deface the Department of Urban Development with it do I get the job????
[Press Here To Hack]
( ) AOL Screenname
( ) Government Web Site
Myself having hemophilia, my treatments in the form of synthetic factor are extremly expensive, costing in the hundreads of thousands of dollars PER MONTH. This is more than many conditions, including AIDs and most cancers. You can imagine this was a huge drain and was quite costly to the company.
The solution in the company's mind was termination, but it was obvious this would be asking for trouble. So, they took the route *most* travelled and pushed my father out. They would find things to complain about, fire all his staff and make him frantic -- they basically made it like hell. He eventually quit, with these retaining these rumors.
So, in a way, it's similar to genetic discrimination in the other case. So it isn't just a "look what happened to that laddy" article, and I take real offense to that considering this is what most companies do all the time. And don't think your personal records are safe because insurance-company communication is very frequent, especially if they are close knit as in this case. Do you have a company logo on your insurance card or is does your company have any association with your insurance provider (if covered by your employment plan)? If so, it would be trivial for any one sufficiently high enough in the company to get ahold of anything medically about you, probably down to the linens used in your last clinic checkup.