The military did look into this at one time. I believe it was something like droppping a high density object (ball of steel) from a B-52 or the like flying at 50,000 feet. The destructive power was less then Hiroshima, but still much greater then conventional weapons. I think the tests were done in the '50's. I have no idea where I heard this/read this, but I do remember it. So unless it came from a crack dream, there you go. Of course, the downside is you can still acheive a pseudo-nuclear winter from all the dust ejected into the atmosphere.
Well, the only real limit would be whatever the size of three silicon atoms is. I believe that is all you need to create a transistor (someone correct me if I'm wrong). Lithography was supposed to run out at under 1micron(or so they thought in the 80's). I have a text book that says.25 will be the barrier(about 3 years old now). I'm pretty sure that.07 is as small as they've gotten right now, and thats using 135nm light. I don't really know how it will get much smaller, but I know that most of the lithography guys think they can get it down to within a few molecules.
As for AMD leading the tech curve because they are already in copper, well, Motorolla beat them to it, they've had copper chips out for several months. In fact, the only reason AMD has copper is because they are sharing fab space with Motorolla. Intel still has an injunction against copper, afaik.
You won't see.13 or.07 for awhile. The next step should be.15, sometime this year..07 was just achieved experimentally last year, using a very expensive and time consuming process, so don't expect.07 for quite some time (2001-2002).
Okay, don't get me wrong, I definetely think this is cool technology, but it has the same downfalls as VR. You can simulate me falling out a plane (or getting railed in Quake) all you want, but so long as my butt is still warming a chair, its not going to be real enough (in the case of getting railed in Quake, that might not be a bad thing). When will we get the real cool tech? One of these, a VR suit, and a zero-g room... then you could simulate whatever sensation you wanted.
Waters has been pretty fatalistic in the past, but this new album doesn't appear to be that way. Over the summer he played a new song from the album, "Each Small Candle." Its kind of (at least to me) like looking at Final Cut from the view of a 50 year old (err... however old Rog is these days). Interviews (probably posted on his website) have him saying that he was unsure of how to react to the war in Kosovo. In Final Cut, he is obviously very decided on what he feels. "Each Small Candle" looks at how in wartime there is really no bad guy and no good guy. The song tells the tale of a soldier stopping to help a refugee. Its worth a listen to, and you should be able to find it online. I really don't think this Album will be about the terrors of the internet... instead I see it being more about the shades of grey that exsist in life.
The first thing I thought when I heard this was how it might change the way linux is viewed by the masses. As it stands, Linux is still considered that weird, non-windows thing that only the real geeks use. If someone walks into a store and sees two versions of Quake3, one with an Operating System, and one without, I think they would be more inclinced to look at the one with. Besides, it makes Linux out to be a good gaming platform, which, of course, can't hurt things.
If you read/remember reading, there was an article about this on/. a few weeks ago. Carmack would like it to have been this way, but the distributors are the ones that make the final decision. As for a hybrid win32/Linux/Mac cd, it looks doubtfull, but id has said that they will release some sort of patch that will allow you to install the win32 binaries on a Linux platform (or Mac, or any combination of the 3). However, they are not going to release this until a few weeks after the Linux and Mac distributions have hit the shelves, so from the looks of it it will be early in 2000 before we have that ability.
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The military did look into this at one time. I believe it was something like droppping a high density object (ball of steel) from a B-52 or the like flying at 50,000 feet. The destructive power was less then Hiroshima, but still much greater then conventional weapons. I think the tests were done in the '50's. I have no idea where I heard this/read this, but I do remember it. So unless it came from a crack dream, there you go. Of course, the downside is you can still acheive a pseudo-nuclear winter from all the dust ejected into the atmosphere.
Well, the only real limit would be whatever the size of three silicon atoms is. I believe that is all you need to create a transistor (someone correct me if I'm wrong). Lithography was supposed to run out at under 1micron(or so they thought in the 80's). I have a text book that says .25 will be the barrier(about 3 years old now). I'm pretty sure that .07 is as small as they've gotten right now, and thats using 135nm light. I don't really know how it will get much smaller, but I know that most of the lithography guys think they can get it down to within a few molecules.
As for AMD leading the tech curve because they are already in copper, well, Motorolla beat them to it, they've had copper chips out for several months. In fact, the only reason AMD has copper is because they are sharing fab space with Motorolla. Intel still has an injunction against copper, afaik.
You won't see .13 or .07 for awhile. The next step should be .15, sometime this year. .07 was just achieved experimentally last year, using a very expensive and time consuming process, so don't expect .07 for quite some time (2001-2002).
Okay, don't get me wrong, I definetely think this is cool technology, but it has the same downfalls as VR. You can simulate me falling out a plane (or getting railed in Quake) all you want, but so long as my butt is still warming a chair, its not going to be real enough (in the case of getting railed in Quake, that might not be a bad thing). When will we get the real cool tech? One of these, a VR suit, and a zero-g room... then you could simulate whatever sensation you wanted.
Waters has been pretty fatalistic in the past, but this new album doesn't appear to be that way. Over the summer he played a new song from the album, "Each Small Candle." Its kind of (at least to me) like looking at Final Cut from the view of a 50 year old (err... however old Rog is these days). Interviews (probably posted on his website) have him saying that he was unsure of how to react to the war in Kosovo. In Final Cut, he is obviously very decided on what he feels. "Each Small Candle" looks at how in wartime there is really no bad guy and no good guy. The song tells the tale of a soldier stopping to help a refugee. Its worth a listen to, and you should be able to find it online. I really don't think this Album will be about the terrors of the internet... instead I see it being more about the shades of grey that exsist in life.
Just my couple of thoughts.
The first thing I thought when I heard this was how it might change the way linux is viewed by the masses. As it stands, Linux is still considered that weird, non-windows thing that only the real geeks use. If someone walks into a store and sees two versions of Quake3, one with an Operating System, and one without, I think they would be more inclinced to look at the one with. Besides, it makes Linux out to be a good gaming platform, which, of course, can't hurt things.
If you read/remember reading, there was an article about this on /. a few weeks ago. Carmack would like it to have been this way, but the distributors are the ones that make the final decision. As for a hybrid win32/Linux/Mac cd, it looks doubtfull, but id has said that they will release some sort of patch that will allow you to install the win32 binaries on a Linux platform (or Mac, or any combination of the 3). However, they are not going to release this until a few weeks after the Linux and Mac distributions have hit the shelves, so from the looks of it it will be early in 2000 before we have that ability.
Here is a question, could you use this thing as a teaching aid? I would love to have Hendrix teach me guitar.