My worries would be upgrades etc. if someone hasn't the ability to set up a regular server, they probably don't have the full nous to keep everything up-to-date and secure. Scalability may never be a problem to most of their market - there would be tens of thousands of small businesses with say, less than ten staff.
The security as it comes with standard may equal anything already in place, but that's always a temporary situation...
I posed this question to a friend who does work with testing body fluids in a lab, and her response was that since there -are- minimum sample sizes, one small test on a tiny scale could certainly have errors on a different scale to current tests.
My guess is by looking at the relative complexity (in number of components) of the pumps/mixers/detectors compared with a several hundred million transistor CPU, that an array of perhaps millions of separate testers could be easily built, one which would run millions of simultaneous tests.
Only comparing those results with known working ones would show if the results were comparable - certainly one more type of testing can't hurt, and if it only proves extra accuracy in a few cases, they may be ones with a great impact.
I wonder if this could be a useful thing in cooling circuitry such as CPU's. Build a cooling system into the CPU itself. perhaps an ultra-efficient heatsink which pumps liquids through tiny channels in thin fins - anything to help heat dissipation.
...or combine the medical side of it and pump your own body fluids through your cpu - ooah. scary.
I don't worry too much about missing the one 'christmas day', since the holidays themselves, and all the hype run over nearly a week. As it is I've only worked one christmas, and that was in 1992. If I missed december the 25th entirely - if it disappeared from my consciousness - I'd still have the family christmas eve get together, I'd still see my sister and niece when they were able to come on the 27th, and I'd still see other relatives the weekend before or after. It's a long term holiday really:)
Easter is much the same, spread over many days - and any other holidays just don't seem to have the 'buzz' to them to be too worried about missing!
Of course, working on the helpdesk for school admin systems means we have virtual holidays several weeks of the year anyway, but thats beside the point:D
As much as SF has some stunning and original ideas of possible futures, often it's interesting (especially in older SF) to see the basis in 'present' thought from the time it was written. Take a peek at 50's designed 'futuristic' cars for a parallel - ones which now aren't futuristic, but are just excessively 1950's. It would be fascinating to compare two relatively isolated SF styles, western and russian, to get the same feel.
The truly original ideas should stand out as something very special
I wouldn't call anything odd entirely useless. Products like this, Apples dead G4 Cube, Qubes, Saintsongs, Yellow Briq Nodes, the 20th Anniversary Mac from a few years back - even miniscule Amiga 600's all have a part in shaping what's going to come. There's no reason to believe a machine this size won't come up someday, perhaps 5 years from now, that's as expandable as any desktop system and -can- be as useful as a laptop or PDA is now. Many will naturally fall away to the side as they're not viable today, and all we've lost is half a kilobyte of slashdot frontpage. Nothing's as valuable as shifting thought sideways - it's where all of the unique Fun Stuff that truly IS useful comes from in the end. Get the memes out there into the minds of designers and engineers!.
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My worries would be upgrades etc. if someone hasn't the ability to set up a regular server, they probably don't have the full nous to keep everything up-to-date and secure. Scalability may never be a problem to most of their market - there would be tens of thousands of small businesses with say, less than ten staff. The security as it comes with standard may equal anything already in place, but that's always a temporary situation...
My guess is by looking at the relative complexity (in number of components) of the pumps/mixers/detectors compared with a several hundred million transistor CPU, that an array of perhaps millions of separate testers could be easily built, one which would run millions of simultaneous tests.
Only comparing those results with known working ones would show if the results were comparable - certainly one more type of testing can't hurt, and if it only proves extra accuracy in a few cases, they may be ones with a great impact.
...or combine the medical side of it and pump your own body fluids through your cpu - ooah. scary.
Easter is much the same, spread over many days - and any other holidays just don't seem to have the 'buzz' to them to be too worried about missing!
Of course, working on the helpdesk for school admin systems means we have virtual holidays several weeks of the year anyway, but thats beside the point :D
The truly original ideas should stand out as something very special
danamania