Although diamond-based semiconductors will have their applications, they won't replace silicon in most mainstream computing applications for decades. Consider GaAs, a semiconductor that is faster and better than silicon. It was hailed as the natural successor to silicon back in the 80s. Yet, this delightful material has yet to replace silicon in a host of speed-sensitive applications because it is too hard to work with in large dies. The manufacturability of dense speed, not pure speed, is the real issue -- can you reliably pack 100 million multi-GHz transistors on to a diamond substrate for under a $1000?
A secondary issue is that diamond is actually inferior to silicon in power consumption because it has a much higher band gap voltage (5.4 V vs. 1.2 V). This means that circuits built from diamond must operate at higher voltages and thus consume more power. You think your laptop gets hot now, wait til the circuits are all based on diamond. Only if diamond can be fabricated into smaller circuits with lower junction and trace capacitance and lower resistance in the traces could a diamond-based circuit operate with less power dissipation than a similar silicon-based one. We should not confuse diamond's superiority for speed and power as being a superiority of power efficiency
The bottom line is that it will take many many years and many billions of dollars of investments for diamond-based semiconductors to be economically fabricated in with the densities and low rate of defects found in silicon-based semiconductors. And diamond's high power consumption may prevent its use in many applications. Until such hurdles are overcome, diamond semiconductors will be a crucial for niche applications but silicon will enjoy its continued reign as the main material used in digital electronics.
This analysis is wrong for CMOS semiconductors used in most modern digital electronics. With CMOS, power dissipation is nearly zero when the circuit is in a switched "ON" or "OFF" state. In CMOS circuits, power is only dissipated during each switch from ON to OFF or from OFF to ON as the switched state propagates and charges/discharges the capacitance of the traces and downstream junctions. The faster you switch CMOS, the more power it dissipates. This is why laptops so often lower the clock speed to reduce power consumption -- for most modern CPU designs, power is proportional to clock speed.
Even in bipolar circuits that do suffer from power dissipation whilst ON, the switching speed has no effect on thermal performance once the speed is above the thermal time constant. Instead, duty cycle or the % of time spent ON is crucial issue. As duty cycle is independent of clock speed, a faster clock won't change anything in these types of circuits.
Other technologies go obsolete too, So what?
on
Software Archaeology
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· Score: 5, Interesting
A number of years ago Scientific American had a article lamenting the loss of intellectual assets with the inevitable degradation of old software, documentation, media, computers, and the like. Yet the same issue had another article on changes in the canned-goods industry (the rise of new canning technologies). While the first article bitterly mourned the loss of software-related knowledge and assets, the second article made no such mention of the corresponding loss of canning-related knowledge and assets.
Why is obsolete software technology worth preserving where obsolete manufacturing technologies are not? In a 100 years, will we really need access to the billions of JPEGs that were spewed out by digital cameras everywhere? I am not arguing for ignoring history (even though those that learn from history are also doomed to repeat it), but I am wondering about the double-standard. What realms of human knowledge and invention are worth saving, and which are not?
BTW, for the record, I still have old documents and applications from my Mac 128k and I might even have a paper tape copy of a old APL program that I wrote 25 years ago. But then I am a certified packrat.
The comment was made directly to a question posed in the Article: The system is powered by supercapacitors -- layers of metal that store up to four hours of power...... ....
Badawy says the tests have so far been 100 percent reliable, but the iPill has some kinks that need to be ironed out before it would be fit for human consumption. One remaining issue is the power source.
"We are looking at ways to prolong the working time, and this is one of our biggest problems. We are looking for an alternative power source so it will last for 12 hours or one day," Badawy said.
Supercapacitors are terribly inferior in energy density to chemical batteries because they rely on the potential energy stored in separated electrical charges instead of the energy in atomic chemical bonds. A 1 Farad supercap only stores 0.28 mAh (assuming a 1V swing). A lithium battery of similar size can store 190 mAh.
Lithium cell(s) would be a better energy storage mechanism and would have the added advantage of being able to cure schizophrenia. I can only assume they chose supercaps so that the entire unit can be fabbed on a single die with no additional components, but that seems like an artificial constraint.
Where did they get the 10 cents price figure? This does not make sense either from the standpoint of the industry that will use the device or the industry that will make the device. Nothing related to healthcare is ever 10 cents -- FDA regs on manufacturing, the amortized cost of approvals, and sterile packaging all conspire to add cost. Moreover, the device must carry and medicine cabinet's worth of drugs, with each drug adding to the cost of the device. Even extremely simple ICs have a hard time getting to 10 cents and this little pill is far more complicated than a simple IC because it contains a CPU, powercell, biosensors, and medicine-dispensing MEMs.
I'm not against the invention because it does sound like a really good idea. I am against hyping the device with unrealistic projections of price and capability.
The 20-30 second/block figure sounds impressive until you consider the potential for parallelization of the construction process. For much of the construction process, the stones could be rolled up a ramp and then distributed to multiple locations on the surface of the developing pyramid. Although each stone would be placed slowly and carefully, multiple teams could set multiple stones.
Perhaps the Egyptians should be credited with Amdahl's Law?
Where do you get the 30 second figure? Reordering the username and password is potentially NP-hard (in reality humans are none too random, so many permutations of the string are highly unlikely). A 20 character combined username and password string has over 10^18 (=20!) possible entry permutations. Even if you can discriminate between chars entered into the two fields, you still have 10^13 (=10!^2) possibilities. Again, if I where exploiting the output of a keylogger, I would take the easy-to-use cleartext entries and disregard any harder-to-decode entries.
BTW, your suggestion to copy-paste chars from the page is ingenious. Thanks!
Logging the exact location of each click and reconstructing what was typed where is not hard, but it is more labor intensive. If I where looking at the output of a keylogger, I would go for the easy ones ("www.idiotsbank.com",CLICK, "idiotsusername", CLICK, "idiotspassword", CLICK). Although a determined hacker with understanding of the webpage's layout could deduce that mouseclick(105,146) is after the 3rd char of the password field, it is a lot of effort without some automated tool.
Yes, and you will notice I said "public terminal" as a generic computing device of any make or OS. Although Macs are largely "unsupported" by black hat hackers, they are not immune. And you are right that if the logging does a full log of all UI events or intercepts data at a layer where text fields are parsed, then my little trick would be for nought. But if the logger only notes key presses and mouseclicks (without a full scan of click location and UI object locations), then it should be pretty safe.
Not trusting public machines is a wise idea. But sometimes you really do need to check e-mail on the road and don't want to drag along a laptop.
LOL! I doubt it! Err... I don't think so. I hope not. Maybe? Yipes!
As this article shows, its a bad idea to assume that a public internet machine is safe.
I use out-of-order username and password entry on public terminals. I type a couple of letters of either username or password, click in the middle of the typing entry in the other field, type more letters, etc. It only takes a bit of concentration to remember which password letters I have typed. Unless the logger is doing a full scan of exactly where I click, they get a disordered, mixed version of my username and password broken up by numerous mouseclicks.
I don't want Windows running on the windows of my car. I can see it now; PC-based nav system; I miss my turn; and I get an "Abort, Retry, Fail" message. And if my car runs Windows, will I have to buy Microsoft gas?
Otherwise, a HUD would be cool.
Seems like this little invention, along with a bit'o wireless gear, should let people swap music files in the safety and convenience of their own car. Car-2-car swapping networks would let you snag files from fellow commuters as long as you were all going the same speed during the download time. So a long commute down a steadily moving highway would make an excellent venue for file sharing. Only problem would be if the person you are connected to takes an early exit and breaks the link.
For extra credit the creators of C2C software (open source, of course) could even patch together a mobile mesh network that lets you swap files from one end of a traffic jam to another. Another nice feature would resume an interrupted file transfer the following day when you and your peer are on that same stretch of road at the same time.
Until RIAA creates roving anti-swapping patrols, C2C networks should be pretty safe because there would be no ISP logs to subpeona.
How about an open source software project that creates a piece of software that attacks spammers using a SETI-style approach. Using spare bandwidth and CPU time, the software would repeatedly send requests to the links found in spam.
Repeatedly loading the homepage of some spam-spawning viagra sales site would hurt the viagra sales company. Companies that advertize with spam would find their bandwidth charges skyrocketing and their conversion rates plummetting. The key is to create disincentives for the e-commerce sites that try to flog their products and services using spam. While spammers can be anonymous, the e-commerce sites that use spam to get eyeballs need more permanence. Eventually, these companies would even penalize the 3rd-party spam sending companies for using email lists that generate too many spurious requests or that have low conversion rates (the spammer's pay drops if they send emails that lead to long streams of spurious requests).
Re:Why not design a CD-Adapter?
on
Pods Unite
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· Score: 1
Now where is the fun in replacing all the old equipment? It just seemed to me that if there is a market for cassette tape player adapters, then there should be a market for CD player adapters. I've even got the name for the beastie -- the CDapter(TM). (It is a separate and non-trivial issue as to how to make a CDapter that is only $29.95 at the local Radio Shack).
Of course, a simpler solution is to go wireless and use a low power FM transmitter for your in-car listening pleasure. For extra credit one could even illegally hack a personal, limited-range version of a satellite radio transmitter out of the electronics in a 802.11b unit.
Why not design a CD-Adapter?
on
Pods Unite
·
· Score: 1
A disk-like CD adapter does not seem impossible. The needed design features would include:
1. A rotating and indexing optical armature that finds and tracks the CD player's laser.
2. An optical system that emits a beam of IR back into the CD player's optics
3. An DAC that converts analog sound into CD pulse-codes
4. a spindle-mounted electrical generator to power the thing
5. a spring-loaded grapple that prevents the disk adapter from spinning inside the drive (while the generator taps power from the rotating spindle)
6. a trailing lead that goes to the audio source.
It would take a clever bit of engineering to make it thin enough. And it would only work in simple single-disk players. But is it so impossible?
For extra credit, it could even be all-digital. A streaming converter would take various digital audio formats as input and output standard Red Book CD codes for injection into the player's optics.
I am sure these faked system messages only bring a knowing chuckle from those that "Think Different" or run with the Penguin set. Faked DOS, Windows 95, 98, and XP alerts don't catch the eye of this long-time Mac user. I will admit, however, that the ones that have the animated mouse pointer moving to the "Click Here" button are a bit disconcerting. My favorite one has the faked system analysis that claims to have detected Windows on my G4.
Although I abhor lawyers and would usually tell victims of Windows-centric pop-ups to "get a Mac," I do think such faked messages should be illegal. A system message is implicitly "from your computer" while an pop-up message is "from the advertiser." If advertisers can fake a message from your computer, why couldn't a telemarketer fake a voicemail from your wife? Impersonating a trusted part of a customer's life should not be permitted.
Of course, the stickiest cases occur in the new printer ink replenishment systems that take your browser to the manufacturer's online ink ordering site when the printer detects that it is getting low on ink. Is this a message from your hardware or a message from a for-profit commercial party?
2 million volt "antigravity" lifter
on
United Nuclear
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· Score: 2
I like the idea of the 2 million volt Telsa coil. Imagine the ionic wind that one could create using such high voltages. It could make for a very high thrust lifter (see http://jnaudin.free.fr/lifters/main.htm )
Its not just planes that are susceptible to interference. Medical devices are potential prone to interference. Medical measuring devices are sensitive to interference. And if those devices are used to control therapies or medical devices, that interference can lead to unanticipated results. See http://www.ce-mag.com/archive/2000/novdec/kimmel.h tml for a long detailed article about this issue.
The problem with EMI/RFI, for both aircraft and hospitals is that it is so capricious in nature. The exact properties and positioning of the transmitter combines with the exact configuration of the surrounding environment to create potential high near-field RF intensities that just might induce currents or coronal voltages in the wrong place (in the case of aircraft , it doesn't that airplanes are nice metal tubes that help RF energy bounce around inside). This is why the FAA takes a "better safe, than sorry" approach to rule making.
What if someone hacks into your system and installs the world's most dangerous joke on the login screen? You see it, read it, start laughing, get logged in, and then continue laughing until you die.
This leaves you dead on the floor with your machine logged in and unguarded.
Slashdot Mirror
Although diamond-based semiconductors will have their applications, they won't replace silicon in most mainstream computing applications for decades. Consider GaAs, a semiconductor that is faster and better than silicon. It was hailed as the natural successor to silicon back in the 80s. Yet, this delightful material has yet to replace silicon in a host of speed-sensitive applications because it is too hard to work with in large dies. The manufacturability of dense speed, not pure speed, is the real issue -- can you reliably pack 100 million multi-GHz transistors on to a diamond substrate for under a $1000?
A secondary issue is that diamond is actually inferior to silicon in power consumption because it has a much higher band gap voltage (5.4 V vs. 1.2 V). This means that circuits built from diamond must operate at higher voltages and thus consume more power. You think your laptop gets hot now, wait til the circuits are all based on diamond. Only if diamond can be fabricated into smaller circuits with lower junction and trace capacitance and lower resistance in the traces could a diamond-based circuit operate with less power dissipation than a similar silicon-based one. We should not confuse diamond's superiority for speed and power as being a superiority of power efficiency
The bottom line is that it will take many many years and many billions of dollars of investments for diamond-based semiconductors to be economically fabricated in with the densities and low rate of defects found in silicon-based semiconductors. And diamond's high power consumption may prevent its use in many applications. Until such hurdles are overcome, diamond semiconductors will be a crucial for niche applications but silicon will enjoy its continued reign as the main material used in digital electronics.
This analysis is wrong for CMOS semiconductors used in most modern digital electronics. With CMOS, power dissipation is nearly zero when the circuit is in a switched "ON" or "OFF" state. In CMOS circuits, power is only dissipated during each switch from ON to OFF or from OFF to ON as the switched state propagates and charges/discharges the capacitance of the traces and downstream junctions. The faster you switch CMOS, the more power it dissipates. This is why laptops so often lower the clock speed to reduce power consumption -- for most modern CPU designs, power is proportional to clock speed.
Even in bipolar circuits that do suffer from power dissipation whilst ON, the switching speed has no effect on thermal performance once the speed is above the thermal time constant. Instead, duty cycle or the % of time spent ON is crucial issue. As duty cycle is independent of clock speed, a faster clock won't change anything in these types of circuits.
A number of years ago Scientific American had a article lamenting the loss of intellectual assets with the inevitable degradation of old software, documentation, media, computers, and the like. Yet the same issue had another article on changes in the canned-goods industry (the rise of new canning technologies). While the first article bitterly mourned the loss of software-related knowledge and assets, the second article made no such mention of the corresponding loss of canning-related knowledge and assets.
Why is obsolete software technology worth preserving where obsolete manufacturing technologies are not? In a 100 years, will we really need access to the billions of JPEGs that were spewed out by digital cameras everywhere? I am not arguing for ignoring history (even though those that learn from history are also doomed to repeat it), but I am wondering about the double-standard. What realms of human knowledge and invention are worth saving, and which are not?
BTW, for the record, I still have old documents and applications from my Mac 128k and I might even have a paper tape copy of a old APL program that I wrote 25 years ago. But then I am a certified packrat.
The comment was made directly to a question posed in the Article: The system is powered by supercapacitors -- layers of metal that store up to four hours of power. .....
....
Badawy says the tests have so far been 100 percent reliable, but the iPill has some kinks that need to be ironed out before it would be fit for human consumption. One remaining issue is the power source.
"We are looking at ways to prolong the working time, and this is one of our biggest problems. We are looking for an alternative power source so it will last for 12 hours or one day," Badawy said.
Supercapacitors are terribly inferior in energy density to chemical batteries because they rely on the potential energy stored in separated electrical charges instead of the energy in atomic chemical bonds. A 1 Farad supercap only stores 0.28 mAh (assuming a 1V swing). A lithium battery of similar size can store 190 mAh.
Lithium cell(s) would be a better energy storage mechanism and would have the added advantage of being able to cure schizophrenia. I can only assume they chose supercaps so that the entire unit can be fabbed on a single die with no additional components, but that seems like an artificial constraint.
Where did they get the 10 cents price figure? This does not make sense either from the standpoint of the industry that will use the device or the industry that will make the device. Nothing related to healthcare is ever 10 cents -- FDA regs on manufacturing, the amortized cost of approvals, and sterile packaging all conspire to add cost. Moreover, the device must carry and medicine cabinet's worth of drugs, with each drug adding to the cost of the device. Even extremely simple ICs have a hard time getting to 10 cents and this little pill is far more complicated than a simple IC because it contains a CPU, powercell, biosensors, and medicine-dispensing MEMs. I'm not against the invention because it does sound like a really good idea. I am against hyping the device with unrealistic projections of price and capability.
The 20-30 second/block figure sounds impressive until you consider the potential for parallelization of the construction process. For much of the construction process, the stones could be rolled up a ramp and then distributed to multiple locations on the surface of the developing pyramid. Although each stone would be placed slowly and carefully, multiple teams could set multiple stones.
Perhaps the Egyptians should be credited with Amdahl's Law?
I pity the birds that attempt to fly too near to the focus of that thing. Instant rotisserie birdie. YUM!
Where do you get the 30 second figure? Reordering the username and password is potentially NP-hard (in reality humans are none too random, so many permutations of the string are highly unlikely). A 20 character combined username and password string has over 10^18 (=20!) possible entry permutations. Even if you can discriminate between chars entered into the two fields, you still have 10^13 (=10!^2) possibilities. Again, if I where exploiting the output of a keylogger, I would take the easy-to-use cleartext entries and disregard any harder-to-decode entries.
BTW, your suggestion to copy-paste chars from the page is ingenious. Thanks!
Logging the exact location of each click and reconstructing what was typed where is not hard, but it is more labor intensive. If I where looking at the output of a keylogger, I would go for the easy ones ("www.idiotsbank.com",CLICK, "idiotsusername", CLICK, "idiotspassword", CLICK). Although a determined hacker with understanding of the webpage's layout could deduce that mouseclick(105,146) is after the 3rd char of the password field, it is a lot of effort without some automated tool.
Yes, and you will notice I said "public terminal" as a generic computing device of any make or OS. Although Macs are largely "unsupported" by black hat hackers, they are not immune. And you are right that if the logging does a full log of all UI events or intercepts data at a layer where text fields are parsed, then my little trick would be for nought. But if the logger only notes key presses and mouseclicks (without a full scan of click location and UI object locations), then it should be pretty safe. Not trusting public machines is a wise idea. But sometimes you really do need to check e-mail on the road and don't want to drag along a laptop.
LOL! I doubt it! Err... I don't think so. I hope not. Maybe? Yipes! As this article shows, its a bad idea to assume that a public internet machine is safe.
I use out-of-order username and password entry on public terminals. I type a couple of letters of either username or password, click in the middle of the typing entry in the other field, type more letters, etc. It only takes a bit of concentration to remember which password letters I have typed. Unless the logger is doing a full scan of exactly where I click, they get a disordered, mixed version of my username and password broken up by numerous mouseclicks.
I don't want Windows running on the windows of my car. I can see it now; PC-based nav system; I miss my turn; and I get an "Abort, Retry, Fail" message. And if my car runs Windows, will I have to buy Microsoft gas? Otherwise, a HUD would be cool.
Seems like this little invention, along with a bit'o wireless gear, should let people swap music files in the safety and convenience of their own car. Car-2-car swapping networks would let you snag files from fellow commuters as long as you were all going the same speed during the download time. So a long commute down a steadily moving highway would make an excellent venue for file sharing. Only problem would be if the person you are connected to takes an early exit and breaks the link.
For extra credit the creators of C2C software (open source, of course) could even patch together a mobile mesh network that lets you swap files from one end of a traffic jam to another. Another nice feature would resume an interrupted file transfer the following day when you and your peer are on that same stretch of road at the same time.
Until RIAA creates roving anti-swapping patrols, C2C networks should be pretty safe because there would be no ISP logs to subpeona.
I'm surprised you did not say the post was reVolting.
News from the future -- 'ResistorCorp has Employees Chanting "Ohm" '
How about an open source software project that creates a piece of software that attacks spammers using a SETI-style approach. Using spare bandwidth and CPU time, the software would repeatedly send requests to the links found in spam.
Repeatedly loading the homepage of some spam-spawning viagra sales site would hurt the viagra sales company. Companies that advertize with spam would find their bandwidth charges skyrocketing and their conversion rates plummetting. The key is to create disincentives for the e-commerce sites that try to flog their products and services using spam. While spammers can be anonymous, the e-commerce sites that use spam to get eyeballs need more permanence. Eventually, these companies would even penalize the 3rd-party spam sending companies for using email lists that generate too many spurious requests or that have low conversion rates (the spammer's pay drops if they send emails that lead to long streams of spurious requests).
Now where is the fun in replacing all the old equipment? It just seemed to me that if there is a market for cassette tape player adapters, then there should be a market for CD player adapters. I've even got the name for the beastie -- the CDapter(TM). (It is a separate and non-trivial issue as to how to make a CDapter that is only $29.95 at the local Radio Shack).
Of course, a simpler solution is to go wireless and use a low power FM transmitter for your in-car listening pleasure. For extra credit one could even illegally hack a personal, limited-range version of a satellite radio transmitter out of the electronics in a 802.11b unit.
A disk-like CD adapter does not seem impossible. The needed design features would include:
1. A rotating and indexing optical armature that finds and tracks the CD player's laser.
2. An optical system that emits a beam of IR back into the CD player's optics
3. An DAC that converts analog sound into CD pulse-codes
4. a spindle-mounted electrical generator to power the thing
5. a spring-loaded grapple that prevents the disk adapter from spinning inside the drive (while the generator taps power from the rotating spindle) 6. a trailing lead that goes to the audio source.
It would take a clever bit of engineering to make it thin enough. And it would only work in simple single-disk players. But is it so impossible?
For extra credit, it could even be all-digital. A streaming converter would take various digital audio formats as input and output standard Red Book CD codes for injection into the player's optics.
I am sure these faked system messages only bring a knowing chuckle from those that "Think Different" or run with the Penguin set. Faked DOS, Windows 95, 98, and XP alerts don't catch the eye of this long-time Mac user. I will admit, however, that the ones that have the animated mouse pointer moving to the "Click Here" button are a bit disconcerting. My favorite one has the faked system analysis that claims to have detected Windows on my G4.
Although I abhor lawyers and would usually tell victims of Windows-centric pop-ups to "get a Mac," I do think such faked messages should be illegal. A system message is implicitly "from your computer" while an pop-up message is "from the advertiser." If advertisers can fake a message from your computer, why couldn't a telemarketer fake a voicemail from your wife? Impersonating a trusted part of a customer's life should not be permitted.
Of course, the stickiest cases occur in the new printer ink replenishment systems that take your browser to the manufacturer's online ink ordering site when the printer detects that it is getting low on ink. Is this a message from your hardware or a message from a for-profit commercial party?
I like the idea of the 2 million volt Telsa coil. Imagine the ionic wind that one could create using such high voltages. It could make for a very high thrust lifter (see http://jnaudin.free.fr/lifters/main.htm )
Why do I fear that all of the M$ inkblots will look like MSN butterflies, peeled-corner XBoxes, etc.?
Its not just planes that are susceptible to interference. Medical devices are potential prone to interference. Medical measuring devices are sensitive to interference. And if those devices are used to control therapies or medical devices, that interference can lead to unanticipated results. See http://www.ce-mag.com/archive/2000/novdec/kimmel.h tml for a long detailed article about this issue.
The problem with EMI/RFI, for both aircraft and hospitals is that it is so capricious in nature. The exact properties and positioning of the transmitter combines with the exact configuration of the surrounding environment to create potential high near-field RF intensities that just might induce currents or coronal voltages in the wrong place (in the case of aircraft , it doesn't that airplanes are nice metal tubes that help RF energy bounce around inside). This is why the FAA takes a "better safe, than sorry" approach to rule making.
What if someone hacks into your system and installs the world's most dangerous joke on the login screen? You see it, read it, start laughing, get logged in, and then continue laughing until you die.
This leaves you dead on the floor with your machine logged in and unguarded.