X-ray_microtomography is not new.
What is new is :
"using partially coherent object illumination instead of previously used quasi-incoherent illumination"
which led to :
"We obtained three-dimensional reconstructions of mouse adenocarcinoma cells at ~36-nm (Rayleigh) and ~70-nm (Fourier ring correlation) resolution, which allowed us to visualize the double nuclear membrane, nuclear pores, nuclear membrane channels, mitochondrial cristae and lysosomal inclusions."
The rebuttal says nothing about the subsidies needed, and requested by the nuclear industry, to make nuclear energy "competitive".
The conclusion of the New York Times article is :
“The frantic effort of the nuclear industry to increase federal loan guarantees and secure ratepayer funding of construction work in progress from state legislatures is an admission that the technology is so totally uneconomic that the industry will forever be a ward of state, resulting in a uniquely American form of nuclear socialism.”
(Solar also needs subsidy at the moment, but less as time goes by)
USB and HDMI cables have to be really short anyway, isn't optical overkill?
It is a replacement that, because it is optical, does not need to be limited by "really short cables". If the technology is cheap enough, I would love to have webcams at 100m distance instead of expensive ethernet cameras (as an example).
Re:I Disagree with Some Parts of This Article
on
The End of Free
·
· Score: 3, Insightful
The article is largely based on the analogy :
"In a smart essay in the journal Fast Capitalism in 2005, Jack Shuler shows how similar the rhetoric of the 1990s digital frontier was to that of the 19th-century frontier era."
That may be true. But there is an important difference the article does not see.
The 19th-century frontier may have "seemed" infinite, but the information space
(or noosphere)
is for all practical purposes infinite.
What many corporations try to do is block the access to that infinite space, and make us forget that it exists.
And make us pay to access their walled-in spaces.
They might still succeed, but only through "legal" trickery, not because of any natural limitation, such as the large but finite area or the "west".
"The Alpha architecture was sold, along with most parts of DEC, to Compaq in 1998. Compaq, already an Intel customer, decided to phase out Alpha in favor of the forthcoming Intel IA-64 "Itanium" architecture, and sold all Alpha intellectual property to Intel in 2001, effectively "killing" the product."
"First, 'open source' software developers will be able to access and use the interoperability information."
...
"The agreements will be enforceable before the High Court in London, and will provide for effective remedies, including damages, for third party developers in the event that Microsoft breaches those agreements. Effective private enforcement will therefore complement the Commission's public enforcement powers."
For some reason, Big Blue seems to have decided to side with the public good rather than fear open-source as most corporations do. I don't fully understand how a monster company like IBM can act like this, while virtually every other huge corporation out there seems to be guided by Dilbert's boss.
After the divorce with Microsoft (post OS/2 debacle) IBM tried to regain control of PC OS and hardware. It consistently failed. The last real opportunity was : PPC + OS/2 as RISC based alternative to x86 + Windows (alliance with Apple and Motorola) : beaten by Intel P6 (hardware emulation of x86 on RISC).
When IBM took the Linux road, it was in part because it figured there was no chance of replacing the Microsoft monopoly with a renewed IBM monopoly. No allies to reach that goal, nobody interested. IBM wants to be the main 'integrated service provider', and now thinks it's interests are best served with one big 'level play field'. The Microsoft monopoly is the main obstacle to that 'level play field'. And Linux is the means to achieve it. IBM is very careful not to 'own' Linux : if it does, it would not be a 'level play field' anymore, and
all other actors would cease to support it, and so it would be unable to beat Microsoft.
So : no 'good', no 'bad'; just a (sound) long term business plan.
Which has the happy consequence, for us, of a heavyweight support for Linux.
Slashdot Mirror
yes
"It's almost like the summary is describing a different article" : because it is.
"using partially coherent object illumination instead of previously used quasi-incoherent illumination"
which led to :
"We obtained three-dimensional reconstructions of mouse adenocarcinoma cells at ~36-nm (Rayleigh) and ~70-nm (Fourier ring correlation) resolution, which allowed us to visualize the double nuclear membrane, nuclear pores, nuclear membrane channels, mitochondrial cristae and lysosomal inclusions."
The conclusion of the New York Times article is :
“The frantic effort of the nuclear industry to increase federal loan guarantees and secure ratepayer funding of construction work in progress from state legislatures is an admission that the technology is so totally uneconomic that the industry will forever be a ward of state, resulting in a uniquely American form of nuclear socialism.”
(Solar also needs subsidy at the moment, but less as time goes by)
It is a replacement that, because it is optical, does not need to be limited by "really short cables". If the technology is cheap enough, I would love to have webcams at 100m distance instead of expensive ethernet cameras (as an example).
"In a smart essay in the journal Fast Capitalism in 2005, Jack Shuler shows how similar the rhetoric of the 1990s digital frontier was to that of the 19th-century frontier era."
That may be true. But there is an important difference the article does not see. The 19th-century frontier may have "seemed" infinite, but the information space (or noosphere) is for all practical purposes infinite.
What many corporations try to do is block the access to that infinite space, and make us forget that it exists. And make us pay to access their walled-in spaces.
They might still succeed, but only through "legal" trickery, not because of any natural limitation, such as the large but finite area or the "west".
Is the information quantity the problem? Or is it the imbalance between those who have access to it and those who do not?
usable digital zoom perhaps ?
"The Alpha architecture was sold, along with most parts of DEC, to Compaq in 1998. Compaq, already an Intel customer, decided to phase out Alpha in favor of the forthcoming Intel IA-64 "Itanium" architecture, and sold all Alpha intellectual property to Intel in 2001, effectively "killing" the product."
from
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DEC_Alpha
Wherein :
"First, 'open source' software developers will be able to access and use the interoperability information."
"The agreements will be enforceable before the High Court in London, and will provide for effective remedies, including damages, for third party developers in the event that Microsoft breaches those agreements. Effective private enforcement will therefore complement the Commission's public enforcement powers."
After the divorce with Microsoft (post OS/2 debacle) IBM tried to regain control of PC OS and hardware. It consistently failed. The last real opportunity was : PPC + OS/2 as RISC based alternative to x86 + Windows (alliance with Apple and Motorola) : beaten by Intel P6 (hardware emulation of x86 on RISC).
When IBM took the Linux road, it was in part because it figured there was no chance of replacing the Microsoft monopoly with a renewed IBM monopoly. No allies to reach that goal, nobody interested. IBM wants to be the main 'integrated service provider', and now thinks it's interests are best served with one big 'level play field'. The Microsoft monopoly is the main obstacle to that 'level play field'. And Linux is the means to achieve it. IBM is very careful not to 'own' Linux : if it does, it would not be a 'level play field' anymore, and all other actors would cease to support it, and so it would be unable to beat Microsoft.
So : no 'good', no 'bad'; just a (sound) long term business plan. Which has the happy consequence, for us, of a heavyweight support for Linux.