I read this book about six months ago. I too noticed that the author had nothing but praise for nano and K Eric Drexler. This caused me to cast a critical eye on the concept of nanotech (I have since done more research).
He tries to play down the cultishness of the nano crowd, but falls prey to it himself from time to time. He intoduces the idea of a utility fog without flinching. The utility fog would be a 3D grid of nano-machines that hung in the air like a fog. They would them coagulate into anything a nearby 'user' might want. Nano-scale machines and computers are believable. Utility fog, however, is a concept to far on the fringe of practicality to include in a book meant to be an introduction to nanotechnology (or more accurately, a gospel of nanotech).
All in all, I'd say read the book. But be prepared for a one sided argument on the viability and applicability of the technology.
That is a truly neat idea. I really do like it. But I have doubts about whether it could work in the mainstream. Here's why.
How many books do you buy in a year? A dozen? We'll say a dozen for the sake of argument. Say they each cost $30. That's a fair average. That comes out to $360 tied up in escrows during the year, while the publisher waits for donations to accumulate. It may take a year or more to accumulate the kind of donations required to make a book worth the time to write it.
But that's assuming that there's a minimum donation of $30. If there's no minimum donation, then maybe I could get all these books for only $12. This is where I think the problem is. No one is going to pony up enough dough, in hopes that someone else will.
Here's the thing. If there was one fantastic book that was published under this protocol, maybe I would put forward a decent donation. But I really can't say that I would send $40 to a publisher in hopes that maybe in 8 months I will get a book that I haven't even gotten to flip through yet. And certainly I wouldn't do this for more than two or so books at a time. It's so much more convenient and comforting to stand in Barnes & Noble, with a Caffe Mocha in one hand and the latest O'Reilly in the other, flipping the pages, and gauging whether I like the book enough to pay the price tag.
I don't mean to be a FUDmonger, by any means. Perhaps I'm overlooking something important about the protocol. Anyone have any idea how to get around these problems?
So what's being done? Is Linus working on speeding up the kernel's IP support (allowing multiple threads)? Is anyone working on speeding up Apache?
The good folks at our favorite Linux dists would be wise to start up some performance improvement projects to speed up time-critical apps like Apache, protocol implementations, file servers, graphics drivers and the like.
And speaking of Office, do any Linux apps support a respectable subset of Office file formats? If documents could be readily shared (especially.xls,.doc,.ppt, and.msg) across Linux and Win, then technical people in office situations (and there are a lot of us) would be much more readily able to use Linux in the office, and thereby spread the gospel of Linux.
Slashdot Mirror
The site just went down. And by that I mean www.hotmail.com. Lucy, you got a lot of 'splaining to do!
I read this book about six months ago. I too noticed that the author had nothing but praise for nano and K Eric Drexler. This caused me to cast a critical eye on the concept of nanotech (I have since done more research).
He tries to play down the cultishness of the nano crowd, but falls prey to it himself from time to time. He intoduces the idea of a utility fog without flinching. The utility fog would be a 3D grid of nano-machines that hung in the air like a fog. They would them coagulate into anything a nearby 'user' might want. Nano-scale machines and computers are believable. Utility fog, however, is a concept to far on the fringe of practicality to include in a book meant to be an introduction to nanotechnology (or more accurately, a gospel of nanotech).
All in all, I'd say read the book. But be prepared for a one sided argument on the viability and applicability of the technology.
That is a truly neat idea. I really do like it. But I have doubts about whether it could work in the mainstream. Here's why.
How many books do you buy in a year? A dozen? We'll say a dozen for the sake of argument. Say they each cost $30. That's a fair average. That comes out to $360 tied up in escrows during the year, while the publisher waits for donations to accumulate. It may take a year or more to accumulate the kind of donations required to make a book worth the time to write it.
But that's assuming that there's a minimum donation of $30. If there's no minimum donation, then maybe I could get all these books for only $12. This is where I think the problem is. No one is going to pony up enough dough, in hopes that someone else will.
Here's the thing. If there was one fantastic book that was published under this protocol, maybe I would put forward a decent donation. But I really can't say that I would send $40 to a publisher in hopes that maybe in 8 months I will get a book that I haven't even gotten to flip through yet. And certainly I wouldn't do this for more than two or so books at a time. It's so much more convenient and comforting to stand in Barnes & Noble, with a Caffe Mocha in one hand and the latest O'Reilly in the other, flipping the pages, and gauging whether I like the book enough to pay the price tag.
I don't mean to be a FUDmonger, by any means. Perhaps I'm overlooking something important about the protocol. Anyone have any idea how to get around these problems?
So what's being done? Is Linus working on speeding up the kernel's IP support (allowing multiple threads)? Is anyone working on speeding up Apache?
.xls, .doc, .ppt, and .msg) across Linux and Win, then technical people in office situations (and there are a lot of us) would be much more readily able to use Linux in the office, and thereby spread the gospel of Linux.
The good folks at our favorite Linux dists would be wise to start up some performance improvement projects to speed up time-critical apps like Apache, protocol implementations, file servers, graphics drivers and the like.
And speaking of Office, do any Linux apps support a respectable subset of Office file formats? If documents could be readily shared (especially
Just some thoughts,
Marlboro