Since the provided Fox News link is useless, here is the link to the original Science paper published today by the researchers. Requires paid access, if you don't have that, try PhysicsWorld.
Basically, it is a time-reversed laser, so it absorbs coherent light.
FDTD doesn't have to be expensive - in fact the guys at MIT are nice enough to have published their own implementation under GNU GPL (see http://ab-initio.mit.edu/wiki/index.php/Meep). Installs on Linux and has a feature list rivaling commercial packages. We have used it successfully for simulating various nanophotonic structures.
I can see the need for the RH Network if you're updating a lot of machines but for personal use there are a lot of alternatives (see Freshmeat) that do the job perfectly. I for example run a little utility called "frmps" as a cron job - it simply checks every night if there are any new rpms available, installs them and mails me a report. That's all I need to keep my system current automatically.
And come on folks, their business model is to sell support. Of course they will charge for it, and they should. This is no news.
Blancco Ltd. is a company that sells piece of software that erases your hard drive permanetly. It is based on Septem OverWrite method that they have developed which seems to consist of overwriting the data seven times with random data. They claim that it is impossible to recover the data but the hard disk is still usable. See the Brochure and decide for yourself if it makes any sense.
No, I don't work for them, they are just located a few blocks away from where I live.
Since nobody's mentioned Win4Lin by TreLOS, I guess I'd better do it. It's yet another virtual OS system, but it only runs Win9x (the real Redmond beast) on Linux. The advantage compared to WMware is that it does it really fast - the performance is really comparable to native Windows. A truly amazing experience when you boot Windows in an X window with five large apps and it still only takes 30MB of memory and doesn't slow down either itself or Linux. Don't try that with your Windows 98!:) Win4Lin lives in the Linux filesystem which makes transferring files between the OSes a breeze. The major drawback is the poorly documented install, which requires a kernel patch.
I was considering buying it (for $35) until I heard that WINE can finally run Lotus Notes. Win4Lin also freezes my whole system when I try to run my other main Windows app - Deluxe Ski Jump...
They are using a combination of a neural network and "diffractive optical components" (er..?).
Diffractive optics is about controlling light with microstructures. Instead of macroscopic features like lenses, surfaces are modulated in micrometer or even nanometer scale to achieve optical functions that can be impossible to obtain with traditional optics.
In the case of the router, they probably used diffractive beamsplitters which split one laser beam into say 16x16 equal-intensity beams. They might also use microlenses, which are, like the beamsplitters, basically flat (a few microns high) and thus easy to integrate into an optical system. Mass-producing diffractive optical elements is also cheap and easy, as they usually consist of only one piece of glass or plastic.
Diffractive optics works best with monochromatic (ie. laser) light, but different kinds of wavelength filters can also be produced (bandpass, add-drop etc.) and are widely used in optical networks (very useful in WDM networks).
Slashdot Mirror
Since the provided Fox News link is useless, here is the link to the original Science paper published today by the researchers. Requires paid access, if you don't have that, try PhysicsWorld.
Basically, it is a time-reversed laser, so it absorbs coherent light.
FDTD doesn't have to be expensive - in fact the guys at MIT are nice enough to have published their own implementation under GNU GPL (see http://ab-initio.mit.edu/wiki/index.php/Meep). Installs on Linux and has a feature list rivaling commercial packages. We have used it successfully for simulating various nanophotonic structures.
I can see the need for the RH Network if you're updating a lot of machines but for personal use there are a lot of alternatives (see Freshmeat) that do the job perfectly. I for example run a little utility called "frmps" as a cron job - it simply checks every night if there are any new rpms available, installs them and mails me a report. That's all I need to keep my system current automatically.
And come on folks, their business model is to sell support. Of course they will charge for it, and they should. This is no news.
Blancco Ltd. is a company that sells piece of software that erases your hard drive permanetly. It is based on Septem OverWrite method that they have developed which seems to consist of overwriting the data seven times with random data. They claim that it is impossible to recover the data but the hard disk is still usable. See the Brochure and decide for yourself if it makes any sense.
No, I don't work for them, they are just located a few blocks away from where I live.
Since nobody's mentioned Win4Lin by TreLOS, I guess I'd better do it. It's yet another virtual OS system, but it only runs Win9x (the real Redmond beast) on Linux. The advantage compared to WMware is that it does it really fast - the performance is really comparable to native Windows. A truly amazing experience when you boot Windows in an X window with five large apps and it still only takes 30MB of memory and doesn't slow down either itself or Linux. Don't try that with your Windows 98! :) Win4Lin lives in the Linux filesystem which makes transferring files between the OSes a breeze. The major drawback is the poorly documented install, which requires a kernel patch.
I was considering buying it (for $35) until I heard that WINE can finally run Lotus Notes. Win4Lin also freezes my whole system when I try to run my other main Windows app - Deluxe Ski Jump...
They are using a combination of a neural network and "diffractive optical components" (er..?).
Diffractive optics is about controlling light with microstructures. Instead of macroscopic features like lenses, surfaces are modulated in micrometer or even nanometer scale to achieve optical functions that can be impossible to obtain with traditional optics.
In the case of the router, they probably used diffractive beamsplitters which split one laser beam into say 16x16 equal-intensity beams. They might also use microlenses, which are, like the beamsplitters, basically flat (a few microns high) and thus easy to integrate into an optical system. Mass-producing diffractive optical elements is also cheap and easy, as they usually consist of only one piece of glass or plastic.
Diffractive optics works best with monochromatic (ie. laser) light, but different kinds of wavelength filters can also be produced (bandpass, add-drop etc.) and are widely used in optical networks (very useful in WDM networks).
-Janne