All optical systems have a certain "numerical aperture" or NA, which is equal to the index of refraction of the immersion medium times the sine of the half angle between the lens and the imaging plane, ie: NA = n * sin(theta/2). In traditional lithography systems, the immersion medium is air with an index of ~ 1.0, so the theoretically maximum NA is 1.0, since the half angle cannot be greater than 90 degrees.
NA is basically a measure of how many diffracted rays make it through the lens. When light passes through the mask, the light diffracts, i.e. spreads out. Light that spreads out the most contains the highest-resolution information. The lens's job is to collect as many rays as possible and focus them to form an image. Of course, not all of the rays are collected, so the image is degraded somewhat. Lens designers try as hard as possible to collect as many orders as they can (i.e. increase NA) to give the highest possible resolution.
The resolution of the system is actually proportional to the wavelength divided by NA, so there are two approaches to making smaller printed features. First, the wavelength can be made smaller. This has been done over the years, and has been moved from 436nm to 365nm to 248nm and now to 193nm. An attempt was made to move to 157nm, but the materials challenges proved to be too difficult. (These wavelengths, by the way, are either peaks of the mercury spectrum, or various excimer laser wavelengths). Second, the NA can be made larger. This has also been done, with each generation of imaging systems having higher NA. NA has gone from 0.3 or so to 0.75 or 0.80. Every time a move in wavelength or NA has occured, a tremendous amount of research and development has been needed. Also, the imaging systems have become increasingly complex. A state-of-the-art 193nm "scanner" now runs for around $15 million.
Immersion lithography works because you can increase the NA above 1. Water has an index of refraction greater than 1.0 (it's 1.333 for visible light, not sure for 193nm). Of course, this is all math. What's really going on is that rays that are diffracted at such a large angle that would normally be totally internally reflected inside the lens, can now be transmitted. As I said, the more diffracted rays that make it through, the higher the resolution you can achieve.
Although I doubt water immersion will be good enough for the 38nm node, other immersion liquids with a higher index of refraction will increase the NA further still, and push the resolution even higher. It is thus very likely that optical lithography, whose death has been predicted forever, will continue to be the dominant technology in making microchips.
Although I certainly don't approve of these malicious virii, I can't help but think that Microsoft is partially responsible for the attacks on itself. Maybe this will be a wake up call to them that security on Windows sucks ass. It's getting downright dangerous to be using Microsoft products these days, and even if Microsoft doesn't agree, their customers, and their shareholders, might.
A typical response by a fanboy. Instead of answering the question, you just go off and spout some zealotry that is completely unrelated.
Two points: 1) If Apple hadn't created Firewire you wouldn't give a shit about it.
2) USB does make my and a lot of other people's lives easier. Do you really think manufacturers would make Firewire mice, keyboards, memory keys, joysticks, etc? Of course not, because it costs too damn much.
And Firewire doesn't exactly provide infinite power over the bus. I have a 2.5" harddrive in a Firewire/USB enclosure, and it needs an AC adapter to run off the Firewire port while the USB port gives it enough power. Therefore, I use USB so I don't have to carry around a bulky adapter. I don't really care if I'm losing 50KB/s transfer speed.
They will probably be commemorating the wrong people in Kitty Hawk, North Carolina, tomorrow. Five months before the Wright brothers lifted a flying machine into the air for 12 seconds above the sand dunes of the Outer Banks, the New Zealander Richard Pearse had traveled for more than a kilometer in his contraption, without the help of ramps or slides, and had even managed to turn his plane in mid-flight.
But history belongs to those who record it, so tomorrow is the official centenary of the airplane. At Kitty Hawk, George Bush will deliver a eulogy to aviation, while a number of men with more money than sense will seek to recreate the Wrights' first flight. Well, they can keep their anniversary. Tomorrow should be a day of international mourning. December 17 2003 is the centenary of the world's most effective killing machine.
The airplane. was not the first weapon of mass destruction. The European powers had already learned to rain terror upon their colonial subjects by means of naval bombardment, artillery and the Gatling and Maxim guns. But the destructive potential of aerial bombing was grasped even before the first plane left the ground. In 1886, Jules Verne imagined aircraft acting as a global police force, bombing barbaric races into peace and civilization. In 1898, the novelist Samuel Odell saw the English-speaking peoples subjugating eastern Europe and Asia by means of aerial bombardment. In the same year, the writer Stanley Waterloo celebrated the future annihilation of inferior races from the air.
None of this was lost on the Wright brothers. When Wilbur Wright was asked, in 1905, what the purpose of his machine might be, he answered simply: "War." As soon as they were confident that the technology worked, the brothers approached the war offices of several nations, hoping to sell their patent to the highest bidder. The US government bought it for $30,000, and started test bombing in 1910. The airplane. was conceived, designed, tested, developed and sold, in other words, not as a vehicle for tourism, but as an instrument of destruction.
In November 1911, eight years after the first flight, the Italian army carried out the first bombing raid, on a settlement outside Tripoli. Then as now, aerial bombardment was seen as a means of civilizing uncooperative peoples. As Sven Lindqvist records in A History of Bombing, the imperial powers experimented freely with civilization. from the skies. Just as the Holocaust was prefigured by colonial genocide, so the bombing raids which reduced Guernica, Hamburg, Dresden, Tokyo and parts of London to ash had been rehearsed in north Africa and the Middle East.
As the enemy was reduced to a distant target in an inferior sphere, greater cruelties could be engineered than any effected before. The British knew what they were doing in Germany. Directive 22 to Bomber Command in 1942 ordered that the "aiming points" for fire-bombing be "built-up areas, not, for instance, the dockyards or aircraft factories". The Americans knew what they were doing in Japan. Major General Curtis LeMay, who incinerated 100,000 civilians in Tokyo, admitted: "We knew we were going to kill a lot of women and kids when we burned that town. Had to be done." Japan sought to negotiate peace, but the Allies refused to talk until they had taken their firebombing to its logical conclusion, in Hiroshima and Nagasaki. LeMay later became chief of staff of the US air force. He was the man who, in 1964, promised to bomb Vietnam back into the stone age.
I doubt much mention will be made of all this at the centenary celebrations tomorrow. Instead we will be encouraged to concentrate upon the civil applications of this military technology. We will be told how the airplane. has made the world a smaller place, how it has brought people closer together, fostering understanding and friendship. There is something in this: the people of powerful nations might be reluctant to permit their leaders to destroy the countries they have visited. But commercial flights, like military flig
Without Apple we'd all have NO ability to copy digitial content to more than one disk.
Really? I've been copying my digital music content to different disks and MP3 players for years... long before Apple came up with iTunes. I guess Apple has been working behind the scenes all along to make sure we all can do this.
When I took EE, I actually took optics as an elective since I was interested in photolithography (the process by which microchips are patterned). Unfortunately, the class consisted mostly of theoretical aspects of Maxwell's equations and electromagnetic field theory. The prof just touched on the lens equations and matrix approaches. At the end, I could tell you the boundary conditions at a air/reflector interface, but I couldn't tell you where the damn mirror actually focused the light. Not a terribly useful class if you actually want to understand and design complex lens systems.
Whatever you get, don't spend a lot of money. Get a used system. I'm typing on a three-year old PC with a 700MHz Pentium III and 384MB. It's fast for pretty much everything I need to do in school, including email, report writing, MATLAB coding, Powerpoint presentations, etc. I'll bet you can find a similarly equipped system for dirt cheap--PC or notebook. Don't get a top of the line system for two reasons:
1) It has a high likelihood of getting stolen (especially laptops). My friend just had his 2.0GHz VPR Matrix stolen (the one with the widescreen and $2399 price tag!!) right off his desk. Cut the security cable in half.
2) You'll be more tempted to play games and such that need the faster processors. Some people might say that's okay, but I know a couple people who just about failed out due to playing Quake so much. Plus, college is a great time to get away from the computer to meet new people.
I've had a Sony Clie PEG-T665 for almost a year now, and it has a program that can turn it into a remote control. I don't know if it can control as many devices as the TG-50, but it has a pretty impressive list of devices. I've never tried it, but I always thought it would be fun to go to sports bar and change the TVs to Lifetime, HSN, etc.
I can envision this software running on a Linux-based Sharp Zaurus with 802.11b networking. A hardwired computer could intercept the signals and do whatever is needed. Controlling your house from the palm of your hand sounds really cool.
If there is any doubt in anyone's mind that the RIAA and other powerhouse copyright holders don't have lawmakers twisted around their little finger, this case should settle everything. Just look at the recent copyright laws in US:
Digital Millenium Copyright Act: It is illegal to circumvent copyright protection
Sonny Bono Copyright Term Extension Act: Life of author +70 years or 120 years for corporations
Then look at the punishment for breaking these laws. For example, a maximum fine of $150,000 for each song, or $250,000 + 5 years in prison for each video. Excuse me, but LET THE PUNISHMENT FIT THE CRIME folks. There are far worse crimes in this country that don't have nearly that stiff a penalty. For example, look at drunk driving, a crime which endangers people's live. Chances are, a THIRD offense will sock you with a mere $5000.00 fine and 1 year in jail. But, somehow, federal lawmakers have been convinced that a college student swapping a couple of songs deserves to have his life ruined.
I hope that the RIAA just continues doing what it's doing and shoots itself in the foot. The very college students that it's attacking also buy the most music. And they can also vote. All these pro-Hollywood, pro-RIAA Congressmen (e.g. Sen. Hollings) could actually be kicked out of office if more than 25% of college students actually voted. That's probably all wishful thinking... But still, high profile cases like these that show how ludicrous the copyright laws in this country are becoming might make some people think twice.
...I'd do it myself if I actually the time. It would great for someone to take the movies listed here and compile them into a nice list for people to download. I already have a list of movies to rent or buy on my Palm Pilot that I keep handy. These movies would make a nice addition.
Remember this cheesy one? I loved it when I was a kid dreaming of being an astronaut. Featured a robot with AI that makes Commander Data look like a chimp.
Remember this one with Fred Savage who played a video game addict. He goes to the Nintendo tournament to play a deathmatch with Super Mario 3. This movie was basically an infomercial for Nintendo products, but back in my NES addiction days I really liked it. Also, this movie gave a sneak preview to the long awaited SMB3.
starring Bill Murray and Andie McDowall. Not really unknown but I find my myself watching it over and over and over and over and over and over and over
Re:what accounts for the performance differences?
on
Centrino Laptops Reviewed
·
· Score: 2, Insightful
I've seen many Cnet reviews and wondered this myself. I'm convinced that Cnet caters to its advertisers when doing product reviews. Who knows what they could have done to get the numbers to work in their favor. Ever notice all the extra applications that vendors tend to install with new systems, that boot up with Windows and stay in memory? I wouldn't be surprised if Cnet left those running.
I've noticed similar practices on ZDnet. These guys will subtract 3 points because they don't like the media player (or CD writing software, or MP3 manager, etc.) that the notebook ships with. They seem to forget that they're judging hardware, not software.
I think what is really killing American tech companies right now is the installation of managers who know nothing about what they are managing.
I used to work for Motorola, whose Semiconductor Products Sector (SPS) is currently dying a slow death. I saw a large number of talented engineers getting fed up and leaving in my relatively short tenure. They felt that they couldn't do their jobs any more because management had instituted enormous amounts of beauracray and general B.S. that tied their hands behind their backs.
I'm sure most engineers and scientsts in industry can relate, but the problem seems to be getting worse lately. Remember all those frat boys getting business degrees? They're managing our tech companies now. Scary.
http://www.maxwell.com/ultracapacitors/
According to the above page, ultracapacitors "deliver up to 10 times the power, last up to 10 times as long, operate more reliably in high- and low-temperature conditions, require far less maintenance and reduce environmental issues associated with battery disposal" compared to batteries.
I recently read about a hybrid automobile that will be using ultracaps (don't remember who). It seems like these could be implemented in laptops and cell phones.
I remember that the first semiconducting blue laser diodes were invented in 1997. Six years later, we are seeing them in shipping products. I think six years from the lab to manufacturing is a decent timescale.... especially when you hear about all these inventions on/. in which you the hear the inventors claiming that their such and such could be on store shelves in 5 years.... Fifteen years from now we'll looking back at most of those inventions and wondering what ever happening to them.
Sort of off-topic, but why doesn't Linux have read-write NTFS support? (Well it does, but only the read-only mode is considered "safe"). I like to backup data between NT and Linux workstations, and sometimes share data between them. I have to use FAT so everyone can see each other.
How is PCI Express going to be deployed? Will it be like the PCI bus, where you initially had motherboards with both ISA and PCI slots? The number of ISA slots gradually declined as they were replaced by PCI slots until POOF, no more ISA slots.
However, PCI was a desparately needed technology then. The ISA bus too slow for almost everything except modems. Sound cards, video cards, network cards, SCSI and IDE cards--they all needed more than than 10MB/s total bandwidth (theoretical) of the ISA bus.
But now... is it really necessary to completely displace the PCI slots to make room for PCI Express? Especially for the average user. With the exception of video, what other cards really need PCI Express? The IDE will probably be interated with the motherboard. Modems, soundcards, and network cards (exception: 1000 base T) all work fine at PCI speeds. And SCSI isn't something average users have.
I am just curious, as I am kind of ignorant on the matter.
Slashdot Mirror
Here's how it works:
All optical systems have a certain "numerical aperture" or NA, which is equal to the index of refraction of the immersion medium times the sine of the half angle between the lens and the imaging plane, ie: NA = n * sin(theta/2). In traditional lithography systems, the immersion medium is air with an index of ~ 1.0, so the theoretically maximum NA is 1.0, since the half angle cannot be greater than 90 degrees.
NA is basically a measure of how many diffracted rays make it through the lens. When light passes through the mask, the light diffracts, i.e. spreads out. Light that spreads out the most contains the highest-resolution information. The lens's job is to collect as many rays as possible and focus them to form an image. Of course, not all of the rays are collected, so the image is degraded somewhat. Lens designers try as hard as possible to collect as many orders as they can (i.e. increase NA) to give the highest possible resolution.
The resolution of the system is actually proportional to the wavelength divided by NA, so there are two approaches to making smaller printed features. First, the wavelength can be made smaller. This has been done over the years, and has been moved from 436nm to 365nm to 248nm and now to 193nm. An attempt was made to move to 157nm, but the materials challenges proved to be too difficult. (These wavelengths, by the way, are either peaks of the mercury spectrum, or various excimer laser wavelengths). Second, the NA can be made larger. This has also been done, with each generation of imaging systems having higher NA. NA has gone from 0.3 or so to 0.75 or 0.80. Every time a move in wavelength or NA has occured, a tremendous amount of research and development has been needed. Also, the imaging systems have become increasingly complex. A state-of-the-art 193nm "scanner" now runs for around $15 million.
Immersion lithography works because you can increase the NA above 1. Water has an index of refraction greater than 1.0 (it's 1.333 for visible light, not sure for 193nm). Of course, this is all math. What's really going on is that rays that are diffracted at such a large angle that would normally be totally internally reflected inside the lens, can now be transmitted. As I said, the more diffracted rays that make it through, the higher the resolution you can achieve.
Although I doubt water immersion will be good enough for the 38nm node, other immersion liquids with a higher index of refraction will increase the NA further still, and push the resolution even higher. It is thus very likely that optical lithography, whose death has been predicted forever, will continue to be the dominant technology in making microchips.
Although I certainly don't approve of these malicious virii, I can't help but think that Microsoft is partially responsible for the attacks on itself. Maybe this will be a wake up call to them that security on Windows sucks ass. It's getting downright dangerous to be using Microsoft products these days, and even if Microsoft doesn't agree, their customers, and their shareholders, might.
A typical response by a fanboy. Instead of answering the question, you just go off and spout some zealotry that is completely unrelated.
Two points:
1) If Apple hadn't created Firewire you wouldn't give a shit about it.
2) USB does make my and a lot of other people's lives easier. Do you really think manufacturers would make Firewire mice, keyboards, memory keys, joysticks, etc? Of course not, because it costs too damn much.
And Firewire doesn't exactly provide infinite power over the bus. I have a 2.5" harddrive in a Firewire/USB enclosure, and it needs an AC adapter to run off the Firewire port while the USB port gives it enough power. Therefore, I use USB so I don't have to carry around a bulky adapter. I don't really care if I'm losing 50KB/s transfer speed.
They will probably be commemorating the wrong people in Kitty Hawk, North Carolina, tomorrow. Five months before the Wright brothers lifted a flying machine into the air for 12 seconds above the sand dunes of the Outer Banks, the New Zealander Richard Pearse had traveled for more than a kilometer in his contraption, without the help of ramps or slides, and had even managed to turn his plane in mid-flight.
But history belongs to those who record it, so tomorrow is the official centenary of the airplane. At Kitty Hawk, George Bush will deliver a eulogy to aviation, while a number of men with more money than sense will seek to recreate the Wrights' first flight. Well, they can keep their anniversary. Tomorrow should be a day of international mourning. December 17 2003 is the centenary of the world's most effective killing machine.
The airplane. was not the first weapon of mass destruction. The European powers had already learned to rain terror upon their colonial subjects by means of naval bombardment, artillery and the Gatling and Maxim guns. But the destructive potential of aerial bombing was grasped even before the first plane left the ground. In 1886, Jules Verne imagined aircraft acting as a global police force, bombing barbaric races into peace and civilization. In 1898, the novelist Samuel Odell saw the English-speaking peoples subjugating eastern Europe and Asia by means of aerial bombardment. In the same year, the writer Stanley Waterloo celebrated the future annihilation of inferior races from the air.
None of this was lost on the Wright brothers. When Wilbur Wright was asked, in 1905, what the purpose of his machine might be, he answered simply: "War." As soon as they were confident that the technology worked, the brothers approached the war offices of several nations, hoping to sell their patent to the highest bidder. The US government bought it for $30,000, and started test bombing in 1910. The airplane. was conceived, designed, tested, developed and sold, in other words, not as a vehicle for tourism, but as an instrument of destruction.
In November 1911, eight years after the first flight, the Italian army carried out the first bombing raid, on a settlement outside Tripoli. Then as now, aerial bombardment was seen as a means of civilizing uncooperative peoples. As Sven Lindqvist records in A History of Bombing, the imperial powers experimented freely with civilization. from the skies. Just as the Holocaust was prefigured by colonial genocide, so the bombing raids which reduced Guernica, Hamburg, Dresden, Tokyo and parts of London to ash had been rehearsed in north Africa and the Middle East.
As the enemy was reduced to a distant target in an inferior sphere, greater cruelties could be engineered than any effected before. The British knew what they were doing in Germany. Directive 22 to Bomber Command in 1942 ordered that the "aiming points" for fire-bombing be "built-up areas, not, for instance, the dockyards or aircraft factories". The Americans knew what they were doing in Japan. Major General Curtis LeMay, who incinerated 100,000 civilians in Tokyo, admitted: "We knew we were going to kill a lot of women and kids when we burned that town. Had to be done." Japan sought to negotiate peace, but the Allies refused to talk until they had taken their firebombing to its logical conclusion, in Hiroshima and Nagasaki. LeMay later became chief of staff of the US air force. He was the man who, in 1964, promised to bomb Vietnam back into the stone age.
I doubt much mention will be made of all this at the centenary celebrations tomorrow. Instead we will be encouraged to concentrate upon the civil applications of this military technology. We will be told how the airplane. has made the world a smaller place, how it has brought people closer together, fostering understanding and friendship. There is something in this: the people of powerful nations might be reluctant to permit their leaders to destroy the countries they have visited. But commercial flights, like military flig
You're off by 3 orders of magnitude. The largest is 30TB.
Without Apple we'd all have NO ability to copy digitial content to more than one disk.
Really? I've been copying my digital music content to different disks and MP3 players for years... long before Apple came up with iTunes. I guess Apple has been working behind the scenes all along to make sure we all can do this.
My name is poop but I like to pee
I like to shoot piss from my D
Suck my dick and lick it too
Then I'll squirt all over you
Poop poop, pee pee
I want you to suck my D
My D is long, my D is strong
My D will fuck you all night long
When I took EE, I actually took optics as an elective since I was interested in photolithography (the process by which microchips are patterned). Unfortunately, the class consisted mostly of theoretical aspects of Maxwell's equations and electromagnetic field theory. The prof just touched on the lens equations and matrix approaches. At the end, I could tell you the boundary conditions at a air/reflector interface, but I couldn't tell you where the damn mirror actually focused the light. Not a terribly useful class if you actually want to understand and design complex lens systems.
Whatever you get, don't spend a lot of money. Get a used system. I'm typing on a three-year old PC with a 700MHz Pentium III and 384MB. It's fast for pretty much everything I need to do in school, including email, report writing, MATLAB coding, Powerpoint presentations, etc. I'll bet you can find a similarly equipped system for dirt cheap--PC or notebook. Don't get a top of the line system for two reasons:
1) It has a high likelihood of getting stolen (especially laptops). My friend just had his 2.0GHz VPR Matrix stolen (the one with the widescreen and $2399 price tag!!) right off his desk. Cut the security cable in half.
2) You'll be more tempted to play games and such that need the faster processors. Some people might say that's okay, but I know a couple people who just about failed out due to playing Quake so much. Plus, college is a great time to get away from the computer to meet new people.
Just my 2 cents
I've had a Sony Clie PEG-T665 for almost a year now, and it has a program that can turn it into a remote control. I don't know if it can control as many devices as the TG-50, but it has a pretty impressive list of devices. I've never tried it, but I always thought it would be fun to go to sports bar and change the TVs to Lifetime, HSN, etc.
I can envision this software running on a Linux-based Sharp Zaurus with 802.11b networking. A hardwired computer could intercept the signals and do whatever is needed. Controlling your house from the palm of your hand sounds really cool.
Come on now!
Given this story on Chicken-Feather chips, is wood really that much of a stretch?
If there is any doubt in anyone's mind that the RIAA and other powerhouse copyright holders don't have lawmakers twisted around their little finger, this case should settle everything. Just look at the recent copyright laws in US:
Digital Millenium Copyright Act: It is illegal to circumvent copyright protection
Sonny Bono Copyright Term Extension Act: Life of author +70 years or 120 years for corporations
Then look at the punishment for breaking these laws. For example, a maximum fine of $150,000 for each song, or $250,000 + 5 years in prison for each video. Excuse me, but LET THE PUNISHMENT FIT THE CRIME folks. There are far worse crimes in this country that don't have nearly that stiff a penalty. For example, look at drunk driving, a crime which endangers people's live. Chances are, a THIRD offense will sock you with a mere $5000.00 fine and 1 year in jail. But, somehow, federal lawmakers have been convinced that a college student swapping a couple of songs deserves to have his life ruined.
I hope that the RIAA just continues doing what it's doing and shoots itself in the foot. The very college students that it's attacking also buy the most music. And they can also vote. All these pro-Hollywood, pro-RIAA Congressmen (e.g. Sen. Hollings) could actually be kicked out of office if more than 25% of college students actually voted. That's probably all wishful thinking... But still, high profile cases like these that show how ludicrous the copyright laws in this country are becoming might make some people think twice.
...I'd do it myself if I actually the time. It would great for someone to take the movies listed here and compile them into a nice list for people to download. I already have a list of movies to rent or buy on my Palm Pilot that I keep handy. These movies would make a nice addition.
Remember this cheesy one? I loved it when I was a kid dreaming of being an astronaut. Featured a robot with AI that makes Commander Data look like a chimp.
Thats right... how could I forget that? I must be getting old.
I just watched this movie. I guess you could call it a romantic comedy, but with lots violence and things blowing up. Pretty surreal plot.
Remember this one with Fred Savage who played a video game addict. He goes to the Nintendo tournament to play a deathmatch with Super Mario 3. This movie was basically an infomercial for Nintendo products, but back in my NES addiction days I really liked it. Also, this movie gave a sneak preview to the long awaited SMB3.
starring Bill Murray and Andie McDowall. Not really unknown but I find my myself watching it over and over and over and over and over and over and over
I've seen many Cnet reviews and wondered this myself. I'm convinced that Cnet caters to its advertisers when doing product reviews. Who knows what they could have done to get the numbers to work in their favor. Ever notice all the extra applications that vendors tend to install with new systems, that boot up with Windows and stay in memory? I wouldn't be surprised if Cnet left those running.
I've noticed similar practices on ZDnet. These guys will subtract 3 points because they don't like the media player (or CD writing software, or MP3 manager, etc.) that the notebook ships with. They seem to forget that they're judging hardware, not software.
I think what is really killing American tech companies right now is the installation of managers who know nothing about what they are managing.
I used to work for Motorola, whose Semiconductor Products Sector (SPS) is currently dying a slow death. I saw a large number of talented engineers getting fed up and leaving in my relatively short tenure. They felt that they couldn't do their jobs any more because management had instituted enormous amounts of beauracray and general B.S. that tied their hands behind their backs.
I'm sure most engineers and scientsts in industry can relate, but the problem seems to be getting worse lately. Remember all those frat boys getting business degrees? They're managing our tech companies now. Scary.
http://www.maxwell.com/ultracapacitors/ According to the above page, ultracapacitors "deliver up to 10 times the power, last up to 10 times as long, operate more reliably in high- and low-temperature conditions, require far less maintenance and reduce environmental issues associated with battery disposal" compared to batteries. I recently read about a hybrid automobile that will be using ultracaps (don't remember who). It seems like these could be implemented in laptops and cell phones.
I remember that the first semiconducting blue laser diodes were invented in 1997. Six years later, we are seeing them in shipping products. I think six years from the lab to manufacturing is a decent timescale.... especially when you hear about all these inventions on /. in which you the hear the inventors claiming that their such and such could be on store shelves in 5 years.... Fifteen years from now we'll looking back at most of those inventions and wondering what ever happening to them.
Sort of off-topic, but why doesn't Linux have read-write NTFS support? (Well it does, but only the read-only mode is considered "safe"). I like to backup data between NT and Linux workstations, and sometimes share data between them. I have to use FAT so everyone can see each other.
How is PCI Express going to be deployed? Will it be like the PCI bus, where you initially had motherboards with both ISA and PCI slots? The number of ISA slots gradually declined as they were replaced by PCI slots until POOF, no more ISA slots.
However, PCI was a desparately needed technology then. The ISA bus too slow for almost everything except modems. Sound cards, video cards, network cards, SCSI and IDE cards--they all needed more than than 10MB/s total bandwidth (theoretical) of the ISA bus.
But now... is it really necessary to completely displace the PCI slots to make room for PCI Express? Especially for the average user. With the exception of video, what other cards really need PCI Express? The IDE will probably be interated with the motherboard. Modems, soundcards, and network cards (exception: 1000 base T) all work fine at PCI speeds. And SCSI isn't something average users have.
I am just curious, as I am kind of ignorant on the matter.