I understand your arguments completely, mainly (1) why should M$ be forced to support any competing technology and (2) why Java?
The answer to (1) is that the Windows monopoly has extended so much that there is little room for competing technologies to gain any market share, regardless of how innovative those competing technologies are.
The answer to (2) is simply because so far it has been the most successful (by far) approach to universal computing. Note that had such technology been something else, I would have welcomed it instead Java; I used Java as an example because of its ubiquituousness.
You might argue that should everyone adopt Java what will happen is that we'll just be trading a monopoly (Microsoft) for another (SUN), but there's one crucial difference: ANY vendor can implement a clean-roon implementation of Java, and the architectural decisions of Java itself are not driven by SUN, but by a joint industry forum which was started long ago by Sun to address such an issue.
To see how M$'s decision to remove Java from the desktop has definitelly cut people off from innovating, read on...
Today, if I dare release a new application to be made cross-platform (i.e.: Java), I'm forced to include the Virtual Machine runtime (which is several Megabytes, and requires instalion steps beyond most normal user's abilities), and this GREATLY reduces the appeal of my application versus a competing windows-only application, even when mine can do all the Windows app can, PLUS it can run unchanged on Mac, Unix, or Mainframe machine. This is more true today with 1Ghz machines that make the overhead of a VM practically negligible.
So here we have a more innovative product, and that can do the most good for the market, and yet it cannot succeed because Microsoft did not include an up-to-date VM.
You might ask now, "what do you mean that it can do 'the most good' to the market?". By that I mean for example, that if cross-platform applications proliferate, people would be less tied to the Wintel platform and be more likely to adopt more innovative alternatives (like Mac OS/X or Linux). Note that the #1 reason cited by people who use PCs, but like Macs, is "I wish I could use a Mac but the applications I need do not run there". This statement can easily be proven to be true by realizing that by and large the Mac user base is composed of media professionals, the reason being that the Media market (i.e.: Photoshop, ProTools, etc) is the only industry that to some extent has gone through the pain of making different versions of their products for Macs and PCs. This in itself is why a VM is good for the market: It reduces developer's costs to produce products for different platforms, and gives incentives to hardware makers to make better products not tied to one particular vendor (i.e.: Intel).
Standardization is good, because ironically (and fortunatelly) opens up the ground for competition by leveling the playing field.
Don't you all think modem and network equipment makers should have thought of this a LONG time ago, and made those LEDs blink at a CONSTANT rate when there is traffic activity, as opposed to the rate the bits pass by???
Let's hope CISCO, Netgear, CLynk, 3COM and all the others pay attention to this issue...
Check this code to see why RMI is cool
on
Java RMI
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· Score: 1
This is why RMI is cool: In Java when you have a local object and want to instantiate it and then call a method on it, you do something like this:
FooClass foo = new FooClass();
foo.myMethod();
Now in RMI to call a method on a REMOTE class you simply do this:
FooClass foo = new FooClass();
foo.myMethod();
Yes, it's the same. I admit I left over about 2 lines of code needed in your declarations (basically a URL pointing to the remote server), but this simple pseudo code example gives you a glimpse at the simplicity of working with RMI: basically all remote objects look like local objects, which makes programming EXTREMELLY simple. Try that with SOAP/CORBA/DCOM. Note that I do admit SOAP has its uses in Web Services, but for transparent programming, RMI is amazing.
On a side note, XML and its siblings (SOAP, UDDI, WSDL, etc) are being implemented in such a way as to make working with XML/SOAP as simple as the RMI example above (another great reason to use Java).
I cannot believe these industry "expert" groups. They claim that the main reason for using red lasers is cost. However, they seem to "forget" that using a low-bit rate technology as opposed to a blue laser actually will INCREASE costs since supporting MPEG-4 will require higher processing power, and thus more powerful and more expensive silicon.
BUT most important to consumers is the fact that MPEG-4 compression is just NOT SUITABLE for high-definition content which is meant to be seen on a decently large screen (29 inches and above). MPEG-4 simply produces too many artifacts (even today with low-bit-rate MPEG-2 you can see on cable how dark images in motion seen to leave a "ghost" behind).
So now the REAL REASON why they (the content providers) still want to pursue red-laser: They get to give consumers a low-quality version of the video image!!! By doing this they feel they are protecting their investment, while in reality they are simply giving consumers a low-quality solution.
If and once they provide this stupid red laser approach for high resolution video, what they effectively will have done is invite third parties to come with competing high-quality products (which sadly will probably will never be supported with popular content since there is a monopoly among the content providers and media player producers), OR some hackers will come up with a scheme to rip high-quality video out of HD broadcast (for TV or movie theatres) and distribute it in a competing format themselves over the Internet. In other words, Napster all over again because for the same reason as before: they industry is NOT thinking about what consumers want, and what consumers want is a high-quality display system to match their new TV.
I'm and international user, and it's a HUGE pain for us for pay for anything originating in the U.S.
I'd suggest/. support either (1) some kind of direct-payment option (best option) where we simply type in our credit card number, billing info, etc, OR (2) Yahoo Wallet which is easy to create by international users.
Note that it's been almost 2 years now that nobody I know from my country has managed to get a PayPal account (they seem not to want to make money - Their application form actually rejects some countries listed in their own drop-down country-selection list!).
In the worst case, allow payments by mail (certified check cashable in U.S. dollars by Slashdot.
It is my opinion that once Microsoft makes its Common Language Runtime a forced deFacto standard, and once they manage to implement it on other CPU architectures, they'll essentially have a hardware-independent Windows platform. Once that happens Microsoft will have sole leverage on the PC business. That means that Intel will NOT be needed at all for running future versions of Windows-compatible programs. Who knows, maybe this could spell a revival on new and innnovative CPU architectures, since they all will now be able to run the CLR. Side note: We *could* do this today with Java, but sadly Sun doesn't have the leverage Microsoft's monopoly does on the PC business.
This is what happens when you have a monopoly: One player who will eventually get lazy and stop innovation.
HOWEVER, things like the Java Virtual Machine (JVM), and most recently Microsoft's Common Language Runtime (CLR) should help us eventually write applications independent of the underlying architecture (I know you can do so with Java today, but Java does not drive PC sales like Microsoft's monopoly OS and Office suite currently do). Once we have a mass-market runtime environment between the CPU and the Applications, which CPU you have will not matter at all. That means that we'll have some competition back since now a company like AMD or Transmeta can trully create original products as opposed to products created to be compatible with the Intel instruction set. Of course on the other hand everyone will still be stuck running on Microsoft's CLR.
Let's not forget one thing people, the days of having to support a gazillion different devices on a PC are over. Today so long as a vendor supports, PCI, AGP, USB, Firewire, TCP/IP, etc, it is simply a task of writing a device driver for the OS. In other words, we're living in a world of standards.
If I were Apple, I wouldn't miss this opportunity to port Mac OS/X to Intel hardware for anything. This is Apple's true last chance at becoming a major player and not just a niche player.
I have NEVER owned a Mac, but if they port it to Intel you BET I'm installing it and using it if I can (i.e.: if I get applications for it). Although I've used Windows all my life I certainly openly admit that Macs are just much more advanced than Wintel machines in all respects but two: cost and application availability; port the OS to Intel and the cost barrier dissappears and anyone can now buy a $500 PC and run Mac OS/X, and once software vendors (specially Mac vendors with ties to the PC business) see a new revenue stream (potentially MUCH bigger than their traditional Mac business) in the Intel platform, the apps will come.
I'm very glad people have started to notice that this is the right thing for apple to do, I myself have been proposing apple port its OS to Intel for over a decade now. Let's cross our fingers and see what happens, I for one would be glad to finally not have to deal with an OS (i.e.: Windows) that I hate so much for being so awkward, slow, and buggy.
Oh yeah, one more thing for apple: Please DO ADOPT the two or even three button mouse with scroll wheel, one button just doesn't work as good as a one-button mouse regardless of what apple says.
You can do OS-independent process-hybernation...
on
UNIX Process Cryogenics?
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· Score: 2, Interesting
Something many people not familiar with J2EE (Java 2 Enterprise Edition) know is that when you have an application running in a Java container, it, and the state of all its processes get automatically saved and restored whenever the container, the OS, or the machine crashes. True, in practice some diligence is required from the programmer (for example, when you need to set obejcts to specific state upon re-instantiation), but the functionality is there, is OS-independent, and it's been proven and used daily in heavy-duty environments for a few years now.
I'm not very familiar with the deep technical details of Gnutella, but isn't there a limit on how far the "horizon" is (i.e.:how many users near by you can see)? If this is correct, all the mathematics here presented apply only in theory and not in practice, as what will happen is that (1) most queries will not be relayed past a "reasonable horizon", and (2) there exists a good (or high?) probability that as long as you're searching for "popular" files, that you will eventually find them.
Because of this basic and simple observation, I do not foresee gnutella to die anytime soon because of scalability reasons alone (however copy-protection issues are another story).
Again let me stress that my observation here is based on the strong assumption that the "search horizon" is "reasonable sized" so as not to have to search the whole gnutella network.
Please be more thoughful in your replies. I just suggested the way things should be done, I never implied when it could be done or by how much. And yes, I still stand by my idea, which in the long run I'm is how things will be designed. Note that this idea of an optical bus is nothing more than an extension of SUN's "The Network is the Computer", and I can definitelly see a future for something like Jini to manage all these interconnects.
What the PC industry needs is an optical motherboard standard. By this I mean a way to have tiny SIMM-like cards, each for the CPU/BIOS, RAM, Networking components, HD/CD interfaces, USB interfaces, etc, and then have them all communicate via one unique serial optical interface. This way the cards can be made VERY small, and each one could be placed in any position (sideways, upside down, flat, vertically) inside almost any motherboard available. As a matter of fact, with this simple innovation anyone could easily copy the iMac (old and new) looks and still have a 100% Wintel machine. So the bottom line: We need a super high-speed "optical motherboard interconnect" technology to solve this problem, and trully revolutionize the PC architecture. I can actually imagine an "inside out" PC where all internal components are actually external components, with only one single special cable carrying optical data and electrical power among them.
I'd like to know how SUN views efforts like Mono to create an open source.Net for anyone to use. Will this have an effect in SUN possibly changing its mind on making Java open source? (note that I did not ask whether SUN will make Java open source or when). My concern is that Microsoft's Common Language Runtime (CLR) could one day undermine the efforts that have made the Java Virtual Machine (JVM) so popular.
This is incredible. I can already foresee the following uses for this technology: (1) Quantum switches and routers (no need for converting laser light to electrical impulses; i.e.: no D/A or A/D needed), (2) Quantum Holographic Security Images (show a hologram ONLY with a matching laser light), (3) awe-inspiring super-bowl displays (have the ceiling filled with these crystals before the show, and during the show excite them to release imagery), (4) Ultra large and fast storage (I can already imagine a PetaByte hard drive within this decade for a common PC), (5) a way for the military to store light on a flare which is sent over the enemy and then have all its laser light come out to view the enemy, (6) a new type of hologram which actually stores data in 3 dimensions inside a huge solid cube (as opposed to storing an image in a 2-D plate) and which would allow you to view its contents from a 360x360-degree angle (i.e.: from any view).
I think this is as revolutionary as the transistor or the laser itself.
Too bad/.'ers here (at least the first 18 posts) don't see the benefits of this.
How about a way to have a PC recognize the position of your fingers and hands. You could use this to manipulate shapes in 3D in a 3D rendering and animation program WITHOUT SPECIAL GLOVES. You'd simply gesture into something like 3DStudioMax, Lightwave, or Caligari TrueSpace and create shapes by molding them with your fingers.
Or wouldn't it be cool to develop a "hand gesture API" which you could use to say play a karate game??? Think about a 3D Bruce Lee in front of you kicking, and you moving your OWN hands in front of the monitor to block it (and if you wear those cool 3D shutter glasses now common on graphics cards you will essentially have a low-budget VR system).
Or how about a driving game where you use no driving wheel but rather simply move your hands IN THE AIR. The game could be smart enough to recognize when you shift your hands away from an invissible steering wheel to grab an invissible gear stick on your side.
Or how about a tool to allow people like Stephen Hawkins gesture expressions and small movements in the air and have the computer react to these actions (like moving a wheelchair around, turning lights on and off, calling on the phone, changing TV channels, etc).
These are, IMHO, the key points in the whole article:
"Like Aristotle, they [(the emergent propossers)]lean toward the notion that it is the equations that flow from nature instead of the other way around. Mathematics is just a tool for making sense of it all."
"[...]he ventured that the universe may have begun not in a state of pristine symmetry but in one of lawlessness. The laws of relativity and perhaps quantum mechanics itself would have emerged only later on."
"Ultimately, though, the two sides know that they are talking across a divide. Taken to its extreme, emergence suggests that all the fundamental laws, even quantum mechanics, may be secondary -- that at the base of reality is random noise."
Your needs sounds a lot like those of a Casino. Like someone suggested, check out EMC, this is how they really make their living.
BTW, EMC has a LOT of experience in this field, providing some gobernment agencies with massive storage (some satelites send to Earth several TeraBytes a day of information which needs to be stored for several months). I can assure you that if you're serious about what you want to do that they'll send some smart guy to your location for an in-depth interview with you and to come back later with a specific solution to your needs and a price quote.
Any PS2 extensions to support game controllers in Java???
Parasitic Computing is an example of A.I.
on
Parasitic Computing
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· Score: 1
Parasitic Computing is a great example of what will happen once machines (or the Internet itself) become intelligent and self-aware. They could use the Internet in ways we could barely guess or understand in order to do data computations, data transportation, or data storage (the only 3 things any living creature needs).
Ok guys (and girls), I'm sure we all have a favorite programming language, and use our favorite tools for our everyday programming tasks, but at least professionally, I have to admit that Java is today a time and mission-critical-proven platform.
Some say that Java is slow, or doesn't have all the bells and whistles of other languages, but as a professional programmer I have yet to find Java slow (specially on distributed apps), or restrictive on what I can do.
I think what has made Java what it is today is that it is easy to use and learn, it is strongly object-oriented, applications DO run on multiple platforms without modifications (cannot say the same of the old AWT technology, but that's from the old Java days), productivity goes way up, and maintenance way down (just garbage collection and no pointers have saved us millions of dollars), and it is easily expandable (notice the evolution from applets to applications, from JSP to J2EE, support for XML, etc).
I only wish the Linux and open-source community embraced it as it should, since linux-java could be the foundation for a great trully standardized Web Services platform (and please, do not mention Apache, php, etc, those do not represent an integrated, well-understood platform).
This is what I did (and which apparently stroke a cord on my friends, they all did it too, 8 of them): Just take your Visor leather case to one of those places where they fix leather stuff, and ask them to add a piece of leather on the back of it so that you can insert your belt through it and wear it as a cell phone hanging on your side. It's the best investment I've made recently. I'm surprised such a similar thing hasn't come out from the commercial world yet.
If I was in court trying to explain to normal folks what smart tags were, I'd explain it like this:
Imagine you have your own "mon and pop" store. You buy things from others and place them on the stand to sell to your customers. Obviously you have to sell a little more expensive since you're a small business.
Well, how will you feel if Microsoft came into your store, without your permission, and on top of EVERY item you sell, puts their own tags offering a better offer (which includes Microsoft's price, phone number, URL, etc)???
Well, that's EXACTLY what Smart Tags do in real life on other people's sites.
With this, Microsoft alone could drive out of business 95% of all competing small businesses (and maybe many of the medium-size and large ones too).
I don't know about you, but I see this as an invasion to the original web designer's work. It's like showing "stuff" the original website designer did not intend to show. It's almost just as going to the Louvre and spray-painting the Mona Lisa with the words Microsost.
This is a true story: Not long ago I was joking about how one day we all might wearing underwear with the Microsoft brand name on it. Well, I honestly do not think that is so far-fetched after all!!!
Slashdot Mirror
I understand your arguments completely, mainly (1) why should M$ be forced to support any competing technology and (2) why Java?
The answer to (1) is that the Windows monopoly has extended so much that there is little room for competing technologies to gain any market share, regardless of how innovative those competing technologies are.
The answer to (2) is simply because so far it has been the most successful (by far) approach to universal computing. Note that had such technology been something else, I would have welcomed it instead Java; I used Java as an example because of its ubiquituousness.
You might argue that should everyone adopt Java what will happen is that we'll just be trading a monopoly (Microsoft) for another (SUN), but there's one crucial difference: ANY vendor can implement a clean-roon implementation of Java, and the architectural decisions of Java itself are not driven by SUN, but by a joint industry forum which was started long ago by Sun to address such an issue.
To see how M$'s decision to remove Java from the desktop has definitelly cut people off from innovating, read on...
Today, if I dare release a new application to be made cross-platform (i.e.: Java), I'm forced to include the Virtual Machine runtime (which is several Megabytes, and requires instalion steps beyond most normal user's abilities), and this GREATLY reduces the appeal of my application versus a competing windows-only application, even when mine can do all the Windows app can, PLUS it can run unchanged on Mac, Unix, or Mainframe machine. This is more true today with 1Ghz machines that make the overhead of a VM practically negligible.
So here we have a more innovative product, and that can do the most good for the market, and yet it cannot succeed because Microsoft did not include an up-to-date VM.
You might ask now, "what do you mean that it can do 'the most good' to the market?". By that I mean for example, that if cross-platform applications proliferate, people would be less tied to the Wintel platform and be more likely to adopt more innovative alternatives (like Mac OS/X or Linux). Note that the #1 reason cited by people who use PCs, but like Macs, is "I wish I could use a Mac but the applications I need do not run there". This statement can easily be proven to be true by realizing that by and large the Mac user base is composed of media professionals, the reason being that the Media market (i.e.: Photoshop, ProTools, etc) is the only industry that to some extent has gone through the pain of making different versions of their products for Macs and PCs. This in itself is why a VM is good for the market: It reduces developer's costs to produce products for different platforms, and gives incentives to hardware makers to make better products not tied to one particular vendor (i.e.: Intel).
Standardization is good, because ironically (and fortunatelly) opens up the ground for competition by leveling the playing field.
Don't you all think modem and network equipment makers should have thought of this a LONG time ago, and made those LEDs blink at a CONSTANT rate when there is traffic activity, as opposed to the rate the bits pass by???
Let's hope CISCO, Netgear, CLynk, 3COM and all the others pay attention to this issue...
This is why RMI is cool: In Java when you have a local object and want to instantiate it and then call a method on it, you do something like this:
FooClass foo = new FooClass();
foo.myMethod();
Now in RMI to call a method on a REMOTE class you simply do this:
FooClass foo = new FooClass();
foo.myMethod();
Yes, it's the same. I admit I left over about 2 lines of code needed in your declarations (basically a URL pointing to the remote server), but this simple pseudo code example gives you a glimpse at the simplicity of working with RMI: basically all remote objects look like local objects, which makes programming EXTREMELLY simple. Try that with SOAP/CORBA/DCOM. Note that I do admit SOAP has its uses in Web Services, but for transparent programming, RMI is amazing.
On a side note, XML and its siblings (SOAP, UDDI, WSDL, etc) are being implemented in such a way as to make working with XML/SOAP as simple as the RMI example above (another great reason to use Java).
I cannot believe these industry "expert" groups. They claim that the main reason for using red lasers is cost. However, they seem to "forget" that using a low-bit rate technology as opposed to a blue laser actually will INCREASE costs since supporting MPEG-4 will require higher processing power, and thus more powerful and more expensive silicon.
BUT most important to consumers is the fact that MPEG-4 compression is just NOT SUITABLE for high-definition content which is meant to be seen on a decently large screen (29 inches and above). MPEG-4 simply produces too many artifacts (even today with low-bit-rate MPEG-2 you can see on cable how dark images in motion seen to leave a "ghost" behind).
So now the REAL REASON why they (the content providers) still want to pursue red-laser: They get to give consumers a low-quality version of the video image!!! By doing this they feel they are protecting their investment, while in reality they are simply giving consumers a low-quality solution.
If and once they provide this stupid red laser approach for high resolution video, what they effectively will have done is invite third parties to come with competing high-quality products (which sadly will probably will never be supported with popular content since there is a monopoly among the content providers and media player producers), OR some hackers will come up with a scheme to rip high-quality video out of HD broadcast (for TV or movie theatres) and distribute it in a competing format themselves over the Internet. In other words, Napster all over again because for the same reason as before: they industry is NOT thinking about what consumers want, and what consumers want is a high-quality display system to match their new TV.
I'm and international user, and it's a HUGE pain for us for pay for anything originating in the U.S.
/. support either (1) some kind of direct-payment option (best option) where we simply type in our credit card number, billing info, etc, OR (2) Yahoo Wallet which is easy to create by international users.
I'd suggest
Note that it's been almost 2 years now that nobody I know from my country has managed to get a PayPal account (they seem not to want to make money - Their application form actually rejects some countries listed in their own drop-down country-selection list!).
In the worst case, allow payments by mail (certified check cashable in U.S. dollars by Slashdot.
It is my opinion that once Microsoft makes its Common Language Runtime a forced deFacto standard, and once they manage to implement it on other CPU architectures, they'll essentially have a hardware-independent Windows platform. Once that happens Microsoft will have sole leverage on the PC business. That means that Intel will NOT be needed at all for running future versions of Windows-compatible programs. Who knows, maybe this could spell a revival on new and innnovative CPU architectures, since they all will now be able to run the CLR. Side note: We *could* do this today with Java, but sadly Sun doesn't have the leverage Microsoft's monopoly does on the PC business.
This is what happens when you have a monopoly: One player who will eventually get lazy and stop innovation.
HOWEVER, things like the Java Virtual Machine (JVM), and most recently Microsoft's Common Language Runtime (CLR) should help us eventually write applications independent of the underlying architecture (I know you can do so with Java today, but Java does not drive PC sales like Microsoft's monopoly OS and Office suite currently do). Once we have a mass-market runtime environment between the CPU and the Applications, which CPU you have will not matter at all. That means that we'll have some competition back since now a company like AMD or Transmeta can trully create original products as opposed to products created to be compatible with the Intel instruction set. Of course on the other hand everyone will still be stuck running on Microsoft's CLR.
Let's not forget one thing people, the days of having to support a gazillion different devices on a PC are over. Today so long as a vendor supports, PCI, AGP, USB, Firewire, TCP/IP, etc, it is simply a task of writing a device driver for the OS. In other words, we're living in a world of standards.
If I were Apple, I wouldn't miss this opportunity to port Mac OS/X to Intel hardware for anything. This is Apple's true last chance at becoming a major player and not just a niche player.
I have NEVER owned a Mac, but if they port it to Intel you BET I'm installing it and using it if I can (i.e.: if I get applications for it). Although I've used Windows all my life I certainly openly admit that Macs are just much more advanced than Wintel machines in all respects but two: cost and application availability; port the OS to Intel and the cost barrier dissappears and anyone can now buy a $500 PC and run Mac OS/X, and once software vendors (specially Mac vendors with ties to the PC business) see a new revenue stream (potentially MUCH bigger than their traditional Mac business) in the Intel platform, the apps will come.
I'm very glad people have started to notice that this is the right thing for apple to do, I myself have been proposing apple port its OS to Intel for over a decade now. Let's cross our fingers and see what happens, I for one would be glad to finally not have to deal with an OS (i.e.: Windows) that I hate so much for being so awkward, slow, and buggy.
Oh yeah, one more thing for apple: Please DO ADOPT the two or even three button mouse with scroll wheel, one button just doesn't work as good as a one-button mouse regardless of what apple says.
Something many people not familiar with J2EE (Java 2 Enterprise Edition) know is that when you have an application running in a Java container, it, and the state of all its processes get automatically saved and restored whenever the container, the OS, or the machine crashes. True, in practice some diligence is required from the programmer (for example, when you need to set obejcts to specific state upon re-instantiation), but the functionality is there, is OS-independent, and it's been proven and used daily in heavy-duty environments for a few years now.
I'm not very familiar with the deep technical details of Gnutella, but isn't there a limit on how far the "horizon" is (i.e.:how many users near by you can see)? If this is correct, all the mathematics here presented apply only in theory and not in practice, as what will happen is that (1) most queries will not be relayed past a "reasonable horizon", and (2) there exists a good (or high?) probability that as long as you're searching for "popular" files, that you will eventually find them.
Because of this basic and simple observation, I do not foresee gnutella to die anytime soon because of scalability reasons alone (however copy-protection issues are another story).
Again let me stress that my observation here is based on the strong assumption that the "search horizon" is "reasonable sized" so as not to have to search the whole gnutella network.
Please be more thoughful in your replies. I just suggested the way things should be done, I never implied when it could be done or by how much. And yes, I still stand by my idea, which in the long run I'm is how things will be designed. Note that this idea of an optical bus is nothing more than an extension of SUN's "The Network is the Computer", and I can definitelly see a future for something like Jini to manage all these interconnects.
What the PC industry needs is an optical motherboard standard. By this I mean a way to have tiny SIMM-like cards, each for the CPU/BIOS, RAM, Networking components, HD/CD interfaces, USB interfaces, etc, and then have them all communicate via one unique serial optical interface. This way the cards can be made VERY small, and each one could be placed in any position (sideways, upside down, flat, vertically) inside almost any motherboard available. As a matter of fact, with this simple innovation anyone could easily copy the iMac (old and new) looks and still have a 100% Wintel machine. So the bottom line: We need a super high-speed "optical motherboard interconnect" technology to solve this problem, and trully revolutionize the PC architecture. I can actually imagine an "inside out" PC where all internal components are actually external components, with only one single special cable carrying optical data and electrical power among them.
I'd like to know how SUN views efforts like Mono to create an open source .Net for anyone to use. Will this have an effect in SUN possibly changing its mind on making Java open source? (note that I did not ask whether SUN will make Java open source or when).
My concern is that Microsoft's Common Language Runtime (CLR) could one day undermine the efforts that have made the Java Virtual Machine (JVM) so popular.
This is incredible. I can already foresee the following uses for this technology: (1) Quantum switches and routers (no need for converting laser light to electrical impulses; i.e.: no D/A or A/D needed), (2) Quantum Holographic Security Images (show a hologram ONLY with a matching laser light), (3) awe-inspiring super-bowl displays (have the ceiling filled with these crystals before the show, and during the show excite them to release imagery), (4) Ultra large and fast storage (I can already imagine a PetaByte hard drive within this decade for a common PC), (5) a way for the military to store light on a flare which is sent over the enemy and then have all its laser light come out to view the enemy, (6) a new type of hologram which actually stores data in 3 dimensions inside a huge solid cube (as opposed to storing an image in a 2-D plate) and which would allow you to view its contents from a 360x360-degree angle (i.e.: from any view).
I think this is as revolutionary as the transistor or the laser itself.
Eyefish.
Too bad /.'ers here (at least the first 18 posts) don't see the benefits of this.
How about a way to have a PC recognize the position of your fingers and hands. You could use this to manipulate shapes in 3D in a 3D rendering and animation program WITHOUT SPECIAL GLOVES. You'd simply gesture into something like 3DStudioMax, Lightwave, or Caligari TrueSpace and create shapes by molding them with your fingers.
Or wouldn't it be cool to develop a "hand gesture API" which you could use to say play a karate game??? Think about a 3D Bruce Lee in front of you kicking, and you moving your OWN hands in front of the monitor to block it (and if you wear those cool 3D shutter glasses now common on graphics cards you will essentially have a low-budget VR system).
Or how about a driving game where you use no driving wheel but rather simply move your hands IN THE AIR. The game could be smart enough to recognize when you shift your hands away from an invissible steering wheel to grab an invissible gear stick on your side.
Or how about a tool to allow people like Stephen Hawkins gesture expressions and small movements in the air and have the computer react to these actions (like moving a wheelchair around, turning lights on and off, calling on the phone, changing TV channels, etc).
Think about the possibilities!!!
These are, IMHO, the key points in the whole article:
"Like Aristotle, they [(the emergent propossers)]lean toward the notion that it is the equations that flow from nature instead of the other way around. Mathematics is just a tool for making sense of it all."
"[...]he ventured that the universe may have begun not in a state of pristine symmetry but in one of lawlessness. The laws of relativity and perhaps quantum mechanics itself would have emerged only later on."
"Ultimately, though, the two sides know that they are talking across a divide. Taken to its extreme, emergence suggests that all the fundamental laws, even quantum mechanics, may be secondary -- that at the base of reality is random noise."
Your needs sounds a lot like those of a Casino. Like someone suggested, check out EMC, this is how they really make their living.
BTW, EMC has a LOT of experience in this field, providing some gobernment agencies with massive storage (some satelites send to Earth several TeraBytes a day of information which needs to be stored for several months). I can assure you that if you're serious about what you want to do that they'll send some smart guy to your location for an in-depth interview with you and to come back later with a specific solution to your needs and a price quote.
I wonder, has anyone tested Java on a Japanese PS2 kit yet??? How about the Java 3D API along with the default Java 2D and Java Sound APIs??? (BTW, these are all part of the Java Media APIs).
Any PS2 extensions to support game controllers in Java???
Parasitic Computing is a great example of what will happen once machines (or the Internet itself) become intelligent and self-aware. They could use the Internet in ways we could barely guess or understand in order to do data computations, data transportation, or data storage (the only 3 things any living creature needs).
Ok guys (and girls), I'm sure we all have a favorite programming language, and use our favorite tools for our everyday programming tasks, but at least professionally, I have to admit that Java is today a time and mission-critical-proven platform.
Some say that Java is slow, or doesn't have all the bells and whistles of other languages, but as a professional programmer I have yet to find Java slow (specially on distributed apps), or restrictive on what I can do.
I think what has made Java what it is today is that it is easy to use and learn, it is strongly object-oriented, applications DO run on multiple platforms without modifications (cannot say the same of the old AWT technology, but that's from the old Java days), productivity goes way up, and maintenance way down (just garbage collection and no pointers have saved us millions of dollars), and it is easily expandable (notice the evolution from applets to applications, from JSP to J2EE, support for XML, etc).
I only wish the Linux and open-source community embraced it as it should, since linux-java could be the foundation for a great trully standardized Web Services platform (and please, do not mention Apache, php, etc, those do not represent an integrated, well-understood platform).
This is what I did (and which apparently stroke a cord on my friends, they all did it too, 8 of them): Just take your Visor leather case to one of those places where they fix leather stuff, and ask them to add a piece of leather on the back of it so that you can insert your belt through it and wear it as a cell phone hanging on your side. It's the best investment I've made recently. I'm surprised such a similar thing hasn't come out from the commercial world yet.
What we need now is Seinfeld on DVD...
If I was in court trying to explain to normal folks what smart tags were, I'd explain it like this:
Imagine you have your own "mon and pop" store. You buy things from others and place them on the stand to sell to your customers. Obviously you have to sell a little more expensive since you're a small business.
Well, how will you feel if Microsoft came into your store, without your permission, and on top of EVERY item you sell, puts their own tags offering a better offer (which includes Microsoft's price, phone number, URL, etc)???
Well, that's EXACTLY what Smart Tags do in real life on other people's sites.
With this, Microsoft alone could drive out of business 95% of all competing small businesses (and maybe many of the medium-size and large ones too).
I don't know about you, but I see this as an invasion to the original web designer's work. It's like showing "stuff" the original website designer did not intend to show. It's almost just as going to the Louvre and spray-painting the Mona Lisa with the words Microsost.
This is a true story: Not long ago I was joking about how one day we all might wearing underwear with the Microsoft brand name on it. Well, I honestly do not think that is so far-fetched after all!!!