The mask has to be perfect and the camera which prints the mask on the wafer has to be perfect.
When chips were made with four or five micron lines on them on six inch wafers you could make a mask out of a piece of glass with all the chips on it patterned in chrome. Even then about 15 years ago the camera which shone a light through this mask had to scan across the wafer. The wafer and the mask sat on a U shaped chunk of metal and the lenses and light source sat there as the U swung through the sweet spot of the lamp and lens and a narrow slit of light scanned across the wafer. No optics on this planet could focus the whole mask across the whole wafer at once.
To get to narrower lines the problem is that the optics cannot focus the mask at the edges, any slight temperature change causes the mask to expand or contract and ditto the wafer, hence a missmatch between layers.
To print anything smaller a new technology was developed to solve this alignment problem, the stepper. A stepper has a mask with a few or only one chip on it and the mask, lens and the light are stepped across the wafer, or to be more accurate the wafer is stepped underneath the camera on a laser interferometer driven table. and at each step the camera looks for alignment marks on the wafer and jigs the wafer around until it is aligned to the layer below. Because the mask is smaller and the area being exposed at any one time is smaller then the misalignment problems can be overcome.
Up until recently it has been acceptable to use visible light and a mask that looks like the pattern of wires or whatever you are printing on the wafer. However the lines in todays microprocessors are smaller than visible light. This means that becase of the wave like nature of light there are interference patterns produced when you try and shine a light on such narrow lines on a mask. This means that the image projected onto the wafer ends up missing some bits and having extra bits of lines where they shouldnt be. The solution to this was to use light at higher and higher frequencies to start with - hence the ultraviolet stepper and even electron beams driven like the dot on a monitor to write out the circuit - the wavelength of an electron beam is way higher than light which is good but it takes ages to write out all those millions of transistors. (Electron beam writers have always been used to make masks since the very very early days).
To get round the wavelength of light problem we now have masks which are written as a kind of interference pattern themselves (- I think this is what the article means by fuzzy masks). Shine light through this pattern of lines with missing bits and extra bits and the wave patterns reconstruct themselves at the surface of the wafer into the pattern of the microprocessor that we wanted.
I think that the length of this explanation probably shows why the article is confusing on this point - there's a lot of detail missed out:-)
You could make them square but the manufacturing process to make the wafer pulls a crystal out of molten silicon and rotates slowly as it is pulled out. The resulting single crystal Boule is a cylinder, so you start with a round slice of silicon and would have to throw away a lot of it to create a square.
The corners would also be a little fragile and the manufacturing equipment used to process the wafers would need to establish a plasma for example across the wafer all the way out to the corners - wasting the potential processing area in the pieces that have been thrown away. As increasing the wafer size by a couple of inches seemed to multiply the cost of the manufacturing equipment by ten each time it happened in the past I guess there has never been an economic incentive to use square wafers despite the mismatch between the chip shape and the wafer.
Square ( or rectangular) because the silicon crystal lattice wants to break along perpendicular directions and square because a diamond wheel doesnt change directions very easily. Any other shape would result in more broken chips and lower yield and higher prices.
Also misses the huge amount of measurement and inspection needed to establish statistical process control of the physical and mechanical processes that the Etching Depositing and implanting equipment performs at each layer.
Repeatability is the name of the game and you have to use all kinds of sophisticated measuring devices like Scanning Electron Microscopes, Laser particle scanners and electrical device measurements in the scribe lanes between the chips at each layer to keep the whole process running sweetly.
One machine with a slight gas leak can scrap millions of dollars worth of wafers in a couple of days. It can be a pretty buzzy environment to work in.
Pretty good for an article in words though. Though also misses out geeky things like seeing a purple ion beam (Yup, Star wars but for real - if it got out of alignment and scanned the wall a satifying yellow spray of molten metal spurts out ) in vaccum scanning across a wafer and silver cylinder cryopumps sitting there wheezing away, snatching every last gas molecule into their ultra low temperature guts. There are more space age high tech physics machines in todays mega-fabs than most countries have in all their universities put together. Very cool, glad I used to work in them.
You have picked the wrong enemy, the indians will quite happily work for anyone who hires them and have no wish to do you any harm.
If you insist on having an enemy then you should be considering the ethics of your business processes which insist that instant profit overides all other considerations.
The "American way" has been very sucessfull in terms of the ability to generate wealth, so much so that the rest of the world still lags behind. However your complaint indicates that there is a fundamental flaw in the system. You believe that you are at war with the competition, this is not true. What is lacking is the ability to co-operate for mutual benefit. As any evolutionary game playing simulation indicates the survival of most species is significantly improved by co-operative activities rather than unadulterated competition.
Inevitably Capitalism is the Darwinian survivor, in this century it could well consume America as the third world takes advantage of globalisation and takes our wealth from us.
The pace of change is hotting up and although there are new jobs in new industries - you wont get into them whilst ageist hiring policy is still the norm. Most high tech workers could easily adapt to working in Bio tech or whatever the next big thing may be - but you wont get in unless you graduated yesterday. This is a serious gap in all western economies, not only is it impossible to change professions but it is also - inevitably - impossible to retrain for new industries.
So having thrown generations of highly skilled manufacturing workers into the trash we are about to throw generations of highly skilled high tech workers into the trash. Sadly this is not going to change unless people start getting organised and changing the way our education system and our businesses work.
Outsourcing to developing countries addresses some of the wealth imbalances in the world and can only be viewed as a positive thing if their economies improve to the point where they can supply clean water to the whole population etc. However we should be looking for smart ways to help ourselves and since we have democracy this should be coming from our politicians.
So far all I hear is a deafening silence, no change from when the manufacturing jobs went.
Today not only can you not expect to have a job for life, but its doubtfull whether your particular skill and expertise will be needed in ten years time.
Still around because there are millions and millions of the things installed in all the machines sold in the last 10 years. USB drives are great for the daily tasks, carrying your work arround with you for example. But I bet even you dont have a shoebox full of the things with various drivers etc etc. Their time hasnt quite come yet I think, still quite expensive.
This is because DVD's cost twice as much as VHS tapes (and a dvd recorder is nearer $200 than $40).
We are told that the price of DVD's are higher because of added content, if thats the case I wonder why you cant buy them at VHS prices without the added "content"....
Time doesnt "move on from the format" easily when you can see that you are being ripped off.
In 1933 James Thurber drew a brilliant cartoon "Her own mother lived the latter years of her life in the horrible suspicion that electricity was dripping invisibly all over the house". And a drawing of an elderly woman staring up at a chandelier that's missing a light bulb -- and little lightning bolts are falling from it like snow.
Ive searched for it, cant find it, one of the funniest things I can remember.
Totaly agree. Tubes sound good, so do vinyl recordings, digital recording is omly just getting there. I gave up buying music for a long time when the CD came in. You make a very good point about the longevity of early digital recording too. On the other hand digital synthesis has spawned some great music so I still think its had a positive effect overall.
Makes you wonder whether we realy want all the stuff being put in mobile phones too, seems you cant buy a mobile at the momment that just makes calls and does a bit of texting. Sure I want a pocket webserver videocamera mp3 player box... I just dont want them in my mobile phone
- All you need is a built in GPS transmitter to prove that you didnt do the robberies !! Only best make sure you dont wear a tin foil hat in case it absorbs the transmissions !!
Thats why we are innocent until proven guilty and convictions are tested against reasonable doubt.
Except that President Bush seems hell bent on ignoring these principals in the case of Iraq and Guantanamo Bay. It appears that your fear of a national law enforcement database is well founded with your present leaders policys. Self defence is supposed to defend you, not destroy your freedom.
Dead right dude, looks like they pulled the plug already
MATRIX -- Gov. Olene Walker announced Friday she has appointed an oversight committee to evaluate security, accessibility and privacy issues of the Multi-state Anti-Terrorism Information Exchange.
On Thursday, Walker asked the state Department of Public Safety and other agencies to stop sharing information with MATRIX until the oversight committee can evaluate the programand make recommendations about Utah's participation.
The committee is made up of Gary Doxey, the governor's chief of staff; Val Oveson, state chief information officer; Kirk Torgensen, chief deputy to the attorney general; Senate Majority Leader Mike Waddoups, R-Taylorsville; Senate Assistant Minority Whip Gene Davis, D-Salt Lake City; Rep John Dougall, R-Highland; and a resident who hasn't been named.
Dougall, an electrical engineer, said he was asked to be on the committee because of his technology background. He was asked to sit on the committee less than 30 minutes before it was announced.
State agencies began participating in the federal pilot program, providing information to the Florida Department of Law Enforcement, which is acting as a repository, in December 2003. MATRIX enables law enforcement officials to access information that is already available more quickly and efficiently.
The information provided includes criminal history record information, motor vehicle title and registration information, driver's license records, and Department of Corrections' offender records and images.
MATRIX is approved and funded by the Department of Homeland Security. Utah hasn't put any money into the program, Walker said.
Followers of a church tend to sign up to the concept of faith. It is not surprising that skeptics tend to be suspicious of people who have to juggle between faith for one social organisation and reasoned debate when evaluating government.
Interesting, though it doesnt alter the fact that its getting easier/cheaper to obtain that information - remember that "only 10 computers would be enough for the whole world" at one time. I think that the potential for abuse will grow exponentially along with technology. Lets say that in 20 years time I decide whether to treat your heart condition based on a data mine of your consumption pattern of bad food and decide not to treat you because your data shows you to be a reckless bad person who eats too much of the wrong stuff and I dont want to waste money on bad people... Where will it all end.
Also, I cant for the life of me understand why people keep going on about right wing and left wing politics. I thought that Left Wing politics died with the old Soviet Union and by deffinition the polar opposite Right Wing. I thought the new politics was "Big Business" versus the "Anti Globalisation" crowd. Heck I must be getting old, cant understand whats going on anymore, did they ever find those weapons of mass destruction by the way?......
"But, most of the information is just common information that has to be collected"
Reminds me of the debate the other day on whether toll booth payment cameras should be used to trap speeding motorists on the highway. After all the information is "public knowledge". As you say its all in how the information is compiled and used.
(Your public mockery of a poster on the internet has been noted by the web bots of the SuckYourBrainOut corporation and will be made available to the recruitment psychologist at any place of work you apply for in future. From an analysis of previous profiles fitting yours we advise you that your most likely next occupation will be sitting in a shack living of of trash from the municipal dump as your profile is unemployable. If the roof leaks we suggest wearing a tin foil hat....)
And its an interesting question what criteria are going to be used to identify all the "bad people" in this cross referencing. One day you could well find that you have become a second class citizen because the datamining filter is only 90% accurate and the business that wont do business with you will be unable to tell you why they cant do business with you. And you wont have a clue how to fix the problem. Scary isnt it.
The sad thing is that no conspiracy is required, this is inevitable and unstoppable because even if the state isnt going to do it ebusiness will.
However now would be a good time to decide how much data can be collected and kept for the entire life of an individual and who can do that collection.
My gut feeling is that each single piece of information needs to be fought over and an ongoing battle between the individual and other parties should begin.
Consider the fact that it would be a trivial if expensive excercise to record every single keystroke you ever type, every purchase you make, every conversation and movement you ever make on camera, every person you know, every email sent, every website visited, every late bill, every parking fine, every day off sick. All at the mercy of datamining software. The ironic thing is that the realy bad people who law enforcement want to catch probably wont be on that database because they will live on the margins of society and use stolen identities.
A record which knows more about you than you do yourself and its all online down at your local police headquarters. Not that the police are necessarily bad guys, trouble is that AdvertisingDotCom will have the same thing as the police have on their database and all they care about is owning your money. I thought slavery had been outlawed but it looks like we are about to bring it back in the name of economic efficiency.
Time to wake up and get on the civil liberty bandwagon.
"anti-business liberals like you that have almost completely stiffled innovation"
I dont see any problem with innovation, it keeps commin at ya baby.
What I do see is a conflict between greed and responsibility.
For example, however much I fantasise about making a living by putting people like you, whom I dissagree with, in car crushers and making off with your worldly possesions. My society has made this activity difficult to persue - having taken a responsible decision to legislate against it and create various disincentives that stop me.
But just think how much more efficient the evolution of ideas would be if you could just kill anybody who disagreed with you!!
Although improved efficiency isnt necessarily an optimum method of discriminating between ways of doing things, what if I were to get you first before you got me, Eh?
And dont forget that the cancer cells that end your life are actualy more efficient than your own cells!! Otherwise they wouldnt take over and kill you right!
Why "business" has to be different from any other human activity just beats me.
Absolutely, this article is brilliant and a great example of why I cannot be bothered to watch television anymore. The hour long documentary wouldnt tell me any more than this article.
Even so the article contains hardly any technical jargon but still explains everything in detail - with explanations for all the odd things that we did know at the time, like the failure of the landing tire telemetry.
I wish the media could spend a little more time on the engineering and science behind news stories rather than dumbing down everything. I'm not saying that the "human interest" side of a story should be ignored, but it seems to me that the technical information density of most so called news is almost zero. Television is the greatest offender, even things like the Discovery channel seem to be regurgitating stuff I learned in high school through a serial com port.
Thank goodness for the internet and those mavericks who buck the trend and give us something to think about.
I agree, though it seems to be the lack of regulation of multinational businesses which abuse humanity rather than the governments open door for people like Linus which is the problem. His stay in the US has certainly benefited many worldwide.
We should resist the idea which many advocate that everything business does is ok and everything government does is not. The truth is rarely as clear cut.
It is ironic that the muslim world has a similar problem with agreeing with their mostly sane and reasonable governments policys. One of the reasons why it may be inappropriate to expect democracy to replace their current institutions and work "out of the Box". Their problem is that many of the people accept anything their religious leaders say as being ok and are deeply suspicious of their administrative governments. Nasty evil people sometimes get their hands on religious authority and promote fanatical policies whilst the population sits around saying "oh that must be ok because the religious leader sanctioned it". Capitalism and Islamism are both attractive ideas, administrative governance is a defence against the extreems of either.
A camel may be a horse designed by a committee or government department, but a committee is rarely as insane as people driven by an "ism" such as fundamentalism capitalism communism etc.
I fully support you in voting to improve the way H-1b works, it should not be open to abuse.
Slashdot Mirror
because the user interface isnt as simple as my nokia 5110.
The mask has to be perfect and the camera which prints the mask on the wafer has to be perfect.
:-)
When chips were made with four or five micron lines on them on six inch wafers you could make a mask out of a piece of glass with all the chips on it patterned in chrome. Even then about 15 years ago the camera which shone a light through this mask had to scan across the wafer. The wafer and the mask sat on a U shaped chunk of metal and the lenses and light source sat there as the U swung through the sweet spot of the lamp and lens and a narrow slit of light scanned across the wafer. No optics on this planet could focus the whole mask across the whole wafer at once.
To get to narrower lines the problem is that the optics cannot focus the mask at the edges, any slight temperature change causes the mask to expand or contract and ditto the wafer, hence a missmatch between layers.
To print anything smaller a new technology was developed to solve this alignment problem, the stepper. A stepper has a mask with a few or only one chip on it and the mask, lens and the light are stepped across the wafer, or to be more accurate the wafer is stepped underneath the camera on a laser interferometer driven table. and at each step the camera looks for alignment marks on the wafer and jigs the wafer around until it is aligned to the layer below. Because the mask is smaller and the area being exposed at any one time is smaller then the misalignment problems can be overcome.
Up until recently it has been acceptable to use visible light and a mask that looks like the pattern of wires or whatever you are printing on the wafer. However the lines in todays microprocessors are smaller than visible light. This means that becase of the wave like nature of light there are interference patterns produced when you try and shine a light on such narrow lines on a mask. This means that the image projected onto the wafer ends up missing some bits and having extra bits of lines where they shouldnt be. The solution to this was to use light at higher and higher frequencies to start with - hence the ultraviolet stepper and even electron beams driven like the dot on a monitor to write out the circuit - the wavelength of an electron beam is way higher than light which is good but it takes ages to write out all those millions of transistors. (Electron beam writers have always been used to make masks since the very very early days).
To get round the wavelength of light problem we now have masks which are written as a kind of interference pattern themselves (- I think this is what the article means by fuzzy masks). Shine light through this pattern of lines with missing bits and extra bits and the wave patterns reconstruct themselves at the surface of the wafer into the pattern of the microprocessor that we wanted.
I think that the length of this explanation probably shows why the article is confusing on this point - there's a lot of detail missed out
You could make them square but the manufacturing process to make the wafer pulls a crystal out of molten silicon and rotates slowly as it is pulled out. The resulting single crystal Boule is a cylinder, so you start with a round slice of silicon and would have to throw away a lot of it to create a square.
The corners would also be a little fragile and the manufacturing equipment used to process the wafers would need to establish a plasma for example across the wafer all the way out to the corners - wasting the potential processing area in the pieces that have been thrown away. As increasing the wafer size by a couple of inches seemed to multiply the cost of the manufacturing equipment by ten each time it happened in the past I guess there has never been an economic incentive to use square wafers despite the mismatch between the chip shape and the wafer.
Square ( or rectangular) because the silicon crystal lattice wants to break along perpendicular directions and square because a diamond wheel doesnt change directions very easily. Any other shape would result in more broken chips and lower yield and higher prices.
Also misses the huge amount of measurement and inspection needed to establish statistical process control of the physical and mechanical processes that the Etching Depositing and implanting equipment performs at each layer.
Repeatability is the name of the game and you have to use all kinds of sophisticated measuring devices like Scanning Electron Microscopes, Laser particle scanners and electrical device measurements in the scribe lanes between the chips at each layer to keep the whole process running sweetly.
One machine with a slight gas leak can scrap millions of dollars worth of wafers in a couple of days. It can be a pretty buzzy environment to work in.
Pretty good for an article in words though. Though also misses out geeky things like seeing a purple ion beam (Yup, Star wars but for real - if it got out of alignment and scanned the wall a satifying yellow spray of molten metal spurts out ) in vaccum scanning across a wafer and silver cylinder cryopumps sitting there wheezing away, snatching every last gas molecule into their ultra low temperature guts. There are more space age high tech physics machines in todays mega-fabs than most countries have in all their universities put together. Very cool, glad I used to work in them.
Retail mostly.
Sounds like a neat co-operative activity to me, who exactly loses?
You have picked the wrong enemy, the indians will quite happily work for anyone who hires them and have no wish to do you any harm.
If you insist on having an enemy then you should be considering the ethics of your business processes which insist that instant profit overides all other considerations.
The "American way" has been very sucessfull in terms of the ability to generate wealth, so much so that the rest of the world still lags behind. However your complaint indicates that there is a fundamental flaw in the system. You believe that you are at war with the competition, this is not true. What is lacking is the ability to co-operate for mutual benefit. As any evolutionary game playing simulation indicates the survival of most species is significantly improved by co-operative activities rather than unadulterated competition.
Inevitably Capitalism is the Darwinian survivor, in this century it could well consume America as the third world takes advantage of globalisation and takes our wealth from us.
The pace of change is hotting up and although there are new jobs in new industries - you wont get into them whilst ageist hiring policy is still the norm. Most high tech workers could easily adapt to working in Bio tech or whatever the next big thing may be - but you wont get in unless you graduated yesterday. This is a serious gap in all western economies, not only is it impossible to change professions but it is also - inevitably - impossible to retrain for new industries.
So having thrown generations of highly skilled manufacturing workers into the trash we are about to throw generations of highly skilled high tech workers into the trash. Sadly this is not going to change unless people start getting organised and changing the way our education system and our businesses work.
Outsourcing to developing countries addresses some of the wealth imbalances in the world and can only be viewed as a positive thing if their economies improve to the point where they can supply clean water to the whole population etc. However we should be looking for smart ways to help ourselves and since we have democracy this should be coming from our politicians.
So far all I hear is a deafening silence, no change from when the manufacturing jobs went.
Today not only can you not expect to have a job for life, but its doubtfull whether your particular skill and expertise will be needed in ten years time.
Still around because there are millions and millions of the things installed in all the machines sold in the last 10 years. USB drives are great for the daily tasks, carrying your work arround with you for example. But I bet even you dont have a shoebox full of the things with various drivers etc etc. Their time hasnt quite come yet I think, still quite expensive.
This is because DVD's cost twice as much as VHS tapes (and a dvd recorder is nearer $200 than $40).
We are told that the price of DVD's are higher because of added content, if thats the case I wonder why you cant buy them at VHS prices without the added "content"....
Time doesnt "move on from the format" easily when you can see that you are being ripped off.
In 1933 James Thurber drew a brilliant cartoon "Her own mother lived the latter years of her life in the horrible suspicion that electricity was dripping invisibly all over the house". And a drawing of an elderly woman staring up at a chandelier that's missing a light bulb -- and little lightning bolts are falling from it like snow.
Ive searched for it, cant find it, one of the funniest things I can remember.
Totaly agree. Tubes sound good, so do vinyl recordings, digital recording is omly just getting there. I gave up buying music for a long time when the CD came in. You make a very good point about the longevity of early digital recording too. On the other hand digital synthesis has spawned some great music so I still think its had a positive effect overall.
Makes you wonder whether we realy want all the stuff being put in mobile phones too, seems you cant buy a mobile at the momment that just makes calls and does a bit of texting. Sure I want a pocket webserver videocamera mp3 player box... I just dont want them in my mobile phone
- All you need is a built in GPS transmitter to prove that you didnt do the robberies !! Only best make sure you dont wear a tin foil hat in case it absorbs the transmissions !!
Thats why we are innocent until proven guilty and convictions are tested against reasonable doubt.
Except that President Bush seems hell bent on ignoring these principals in the case of Iraq and Guantanamo Bay. It appears that your fear of a national law enforcement database is well founded with your present leaders policys. Self defence is supposed to defend you, not destroy your freedom.
Dead right dude, looks like they pulled the plug already
MATRIX -- Gov. Olene Walker announced Friday she has appointed an oversight committee to evaluate security, accessibility and privacy issues of the Multi-state Anti-Terrorism Information Exchange.
On Thursday, Walker asked the state Department of Public Safety and other agencies to stop sharing information with MATRIX until the oversight committee can evaluate the programand make recommendations about Utah's participation.
The committee is made up of Gary Doxey, the governor's chief of staff; Val Oveson, state chief information officer; Kirk Torgensen, chief deputy to the attorney general; Senate Majority Leader Mike Waddoups, R-Taylorsville; Senate Assistant Minority Whip Gene Davis, D-Salt Lake City; Rep John Dougall, R-Highland; and a resident who hasn't been named.
Dougall, an electrical engineer, said he was asked to be on the committee because of his technology background. He was asked to sit on the committee less than 30 minutes before it was announced.
State agencies began participating in the federal pilot program, providing information to the Florida Department of Law Enforcement, which is acting as a repository, in December 2003. MATRIX enables law enforcement officials to access information that is already available more quickly and efficiently.
The information provided includes criminal history record information, motor vehicle title and registration information, driver's license records, and Department of Corrections' offender records and images.
MATRIX is approved and funded by the Department of Homeland Security. Utah hasn't put any money into the program, Walker said.
Followers of a church tend to sign up to the concept of faith. It is not surprising that skeptics tend to be suspicious of people who have to juggle between faith for one social organisation and reasoned debate when evaluating government.
Interesting, though it doesnt alter the fact that its getting easier/cheaper to obtain that information - remember that "only 10 computers would be enough for the whole world" at one time. I think that the potential for abuse will grow exponentially along with technology. Lets say that in 20 years time I decide whether to treat your heart condition based on a data mine of your consumption pattern of bad food and decide not to treat you because your data shows you to be a reckless bad person who eats too much of the wrong stuff and I dont want to waste money on bad people... Where will it all end.
well said.
Also, I cant for the life of me understand why people keep going on about right wing and left wing politics. I thought that Left Wing politics died with the old Soviet Union and by deffinition the polar opposite Right Wing. I thought the new politics was "Big Business" versus the "Anti Globalisation" crowd. Heck I must be getting old, cant understand whats going on anymore, did they ever find those weapons of mass destruction by the way?......
"But, most of the information is just common information that has to be collected"
Reminds me of the debate the other day on whether toll booth payment cameras should be used to trap speeding motorists on the highway. After all the information is "public knowledge". As you say its all in how the information is compiled and used.
(Your public mockery of a poster on the internet has been noted by the web bots of the SuckYourBrainOut corporation and will be made available to the recruitment psychologist at any place of work you apply for in future. From an analysis of previous profiles fitting yours we advise you that your most likely next occupation will be sitting in a shack living of of trash from the municipal dump as your profile is unemployable. If the roof leaks we suggest wearing a tin foil hat....)
And its an interesting question what criteria are going to be used to identify all the "bad people" in this cross referencing. One day you could well find that you have become a second class citizen because the datamining filter is only 90% accurate and the business that wont do business with you will be unable to tell you why they cant do business with you. And you wont have a clue how to fix the problem. Scary isnt it.
The sad thing is that no conspiracy is required, this is inevitable and unstoppable because even if the state isnt going to do it ebusiness will.
However now would be a good time to decide how much data can be collected and kept for the entire life of an individual and who can do that collection.
My gut feeling is that each single piece of information needs to be fought over and an ongoing battle between the individual and other parties should begin.
Consider the fact that it would be a trivial if expensive excercise to record every single keystroke you ever type, every purchase you make, every conversation and movement you ever make on camera, every person you know, every email sent, every website visited, every late bill, every parking fine, every day off sick. All at the mercy of datamining software. The ironic thing is that the realy bad people who law enforcement want to catch probably wont be on that database because they will live on the margins of society and use stolen identities.
A record which knows more about you than you do yourself and its all online down at your local police headquarters. Not that the police are necessarily bad guys, trouble is that AdvertisingDotCom will have the same thing as the police have on their database and all they care about is owning your money. I thought slavery had been outlawed but it looks like we are about to bring it back in the name of economic efficiency.
Time to wake up and get on the civil liberty bandwagon.
"anti-business liberals like you that have almost completely stiffled innovation"
I dont see any problem with innovation, it keeps commin at ya baby.
What I do see is a conflict between greed and responsibility.
For example, however much I fantasise about making a living by putting people like you, whom I dissagree with, in car crushers and making off with your worldly possesions. My society has made this activity difficult to persue - having taken a responsible decision to legislate against it and create various disincentives that stop me.
But just think how much more efficient the evolution of ideas would be if you could just kill anybody who disagreed with you!!
Although improved efficiency isnt necessarily an optimum method of discriminating between ways of doing things, what if I were to get you first before you got me, Eh?
And dont forget that the cancer cells that end your life are actualy more efficient than your own cells!! Otherwise they wouldnt take over and kill you right!
Why "business" has to be different from any other human activity just beats me.
You are human right?
Oh I see...
Absolutely, this article is brilliant and a great example of why I cannot be bothered to watch television anymore. The hour long documentary wouldnt tell me any more than this article.
Even so the article contains hardly any technical jargon but still explains everything in detail - with explanations for all the odd things that we did know at the time, like the failure of the landing tire telemetry.
I wish the media could spend a little more time on the engineering and science behind news stories rather than dumbing down everything. I'm not saying that the "human interest" side of a story should be ignored, but it seems to me that the technical information density of most so called news is almost zero. Television is the greatest offender, even things like the Discovery channel seem to be regurgitating stuff I learned in high school through a serial com port.
Thank goodness for the internet and those mavericks who buck the trend and give us something to think about.
"If H-1b/L-1 are so great, how come ..."
I agree, though it seems to be the lack of regulation of multinational businesses which abuse humanity rather than the governments open door for people like Linus which is the problem. His stay in the US has certainly benefited many worldwide.
We should resist the idea which many advocate that everything business does is ok and everything government does is not. The truth is rarely as clear cut.
It is ironic that the muslim world has a similar problem with agreeing with their mostly sane and reasonable governments policys. One of the reasons why it may be inappropriate to expect democracy to replace their current institutions and work "out of the Box". Their problem is that many of the people accept anything their religious leaders say as being ok and are deeply suspicious of their administrative governments. Nasty evil people sometimes get their hands on religious authority and promote fanatical policies whilst the population sits around saying "oh that must be ok because the religious leader sanctioned it". Capitalism and Islamism are both attractive ideas, administrative governance is a defence against the extreems of either.
A camel may be a horse designed by a committee or government department, but a committee is rarely as insane as people driven by an "ism" such as fundamentalism capitalism communism etc.
I fully support you in voting to improve the way H-1b works, it should not be open to abuse.