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The Harrow Technology Report
Insight,
analysis, and commentary on the
Copyright © 2001-2005, Jeffrey R. Harrow. All rights
reserved.
The
Distinction Blurs. Give those eyes a rest...
Quote of the Week.
"TIPS"
Performance."
"Lifters,"
Continued.
Under The CD
Covers.
From Out of the
Ether...
Ah, Derivations... Schedule Note.
Happy Holidays! And Happy New Year, almost (at which time I'll again be writing '2003' on my checks for far too long.) On the positive side though, we're poised for another year of extraordinary NBIC[1]-driven changes which are only going to get more and more fascinating as they open a vast number of new doors. I look forward to our exploring them together! As we travel down 2003's home stretch, I hope that each of you will have a very pleasant holiday season! The next issue of "The Harrow Technology Report" will publish on Jan. 26, 2004.
Listen to this Issue.Do you prefer to let your ears do the work of keeping you in-touch with, and thinking about where technology is taking us? If so, "The Harrow Technology Report" is also available in an audio-on-demand, M-P-3 version. If you have an M-P-3 player on your system (and most do, such as Window's Media Player, RealPlayer, etc.), the link below will either stream the file to you, or, depending on how your system is configured, it might download the file before playing it. Alternatively, if you specifically want to download the file, simply use the right-hand mouse button on the link, and choose "Save Target As..." Also, find out how you can listen at whatever speed is most comfortable for you through the FAQ at http://www.theharrowgroup.com/help.htm . Here's where to listen to this week's issue! http://www.theharrowgroup.com/articles/20031222/20031222.mp3
Quote of the Week.
"Organizations that don't make a significant commitment to Research & Development do not survive over the long haul -- no matter how dominant they are at a given moment. The waves of other peoples' progress are simply too powerful, too relentless, to be met with halfhearted efforts."
Robert Buderi Forget this incredibly important thought only at your peril. Look back and consider how few of the wildly successful companies of 50 years ago still retain their preeminent positions today -- or even exist at all!
"TIPS" Performance."
In last issue's Quote of the
Week by Shekhar Borkar, Intel Fellow and Director of
Circuit Research for Intel Labs
(http://www.theharrowgroup.com/articles/ Now, a contemporary of Shekhar's, Randy Steck, who until recently was the VP and General Manager of Intel's Processor Group and is now President and CEO of Siprian, suggests that along with such increased processing power, there will also be fundamental changes in the architecture of how we DEPLOY our new computing power. And that might well "change the rules" again: "I retired two years ago from Intel as VP/GM of the processor group and know Shekhar well. He's right that TIPS could exist, and probably will. However, it will not be applied in the same way it has been for years. It has to find other applications, and the only theory that fits the changes in store for this industry are Clayton Christensen's in his book the Innovator's Dilemma. This sort of power in computing will transform the businesses that use it and provide it, all while commoditizing the rest of the computing infrastructure. It is already clear that performance of existing systems is higher than required by most people. Evidence of this is the tremendous and unprecedented price drops and system prices for even the most advanced microprocessors today. What's lacking is the capability to take advantage of the processing power available in any reasonable way. The bottleneck is probably not even software as most people believe, but rather the algorithms to take advantage of the processing power available. The graphics controller in your PC is already many times more powerful for vector processing than the first supercomputers, and for these sorts of algorithms much superior to the general purpose computer. The DVD decoder chip in your DVD player encodes and decodes faster and more efficiently than the processor in the fastest PC. All this means that the historical concentration on general purpose computing will be broken, that algorithms will be the key, and that applications will rely upon them to produce the inevitable shifts. Computing capability will need to become more specialized and targeted to these algorithms and standardization between computing elements will be required. The web is currently a very large data transfer engine, but think of the next "web" as also including computing power and algorithm services in local and remote locations with seamless handoffs between these capabilities. The TIPS level of processing is already out there [by using] just 1,000 BIPS-level processors, which are increasingly cheaper to come by. Specialization of these processors is inevitable as requirements change and economic pressures mold technology delivery. This area has not been explored nearly enough, and is in fact a real threat to existing business models. This is where the Christensen Effect will likely kick in and change the computing and software industries..." Call this the grandchild of our current desktop-oriented computing as it mates with today's "grid computing" and "Web Services." Plus, eventually, with pervasive, inexpensive, wireless broadband. In a follow-up conversation I had with Randy, he further clarified: "The ability to USE existing computing power is what is lacking, limited mostly by the ability to take advantage of specialized processing in remote locations. This has only been touched on, but will be enabled when bandwidth increase, software evolves, and semantic structures in program interactions allow seamless interfacing to processing power wherever it resides. The current multiprocessor configurations are too limited and structured around existing paradigms to do much of this. Grids are a step in the right direction, but we need the semantic interfaces on top of them."
Why Not? If you KNEW that you'd have access to your data, wherever it might actually reside out on that new grid-like Internet; If you KNEW it was secure so only you could access it; If you KNEW that it was redundantly maintained across multiple servers in widely-spaced geographic areas so it's safe; and If you KNEW that regardless of where you were on (or near-off?) the planet you'd have 24x7 access to your data AND TO THE INVISIBLE BUT ALWAYS-THERE SPECIALIZED COMPUTING ELEMENTS THAT WOULD DO YOUR COMPUTING QUICKLY AND INVISIBLY, NO MATTER WHAT YOU ASKED FOR (for a fee, of course); Then WHY would you carry most of your data with you, or packrat it at home or at the office? (Remember that this assumes that the hard questions I just posed have been effectively addressed.) Not all that long ago, most people had their own water well and septic tank. When they crowded together in cities this was no longer feasible, so they outsourced the outhouse (sorry) and the well, and never thought more about it. Who's to say that "computing+communications" won't follow a similar path...?
Begin Self-Serving Advertisement There's MUCH More I Can Do For You!
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issues. Please continue at http://www.theharrowgroup.com/consulting2.htm for additional information. Then, contact me at Jeff@TheHarrowGroup.com with any additional questions, to discuss fees, and to schedule a consulting event. I look forward to working with you! End Self-Serving Advertisement "Lifters," Continued.
In a recent issue we touched on
a hobbyist "antigravity" device called the "Lifter"
as one example of the technologies that *may* be
undergoing research by NASA, national laboratories,
and universities. (See
(http://www.theharrowgroup.com/articles/
·
Bill Hees -- In fact many of you, such as David below (and thanks! to all who responded), advised us that "lifters" apparently will not work in a vacuum, and so clearly are not "antigravity" devices:
·
David Schachter -- Closing out our discussion on lifters, Luke and a partner spent a semester of their USC days explicitly studying lifters with some scientific rigor. The result is an interesting and easy to read report at http://www.princeton.edu/~uribarri/Lifters.pdf which would seem to clearly support their final conclusion: · Luke Uribarri -- "This paper's firm denial of antigravity's existence (in the lifter) and of the usefulness of the lifter for practical applications refutes the more misguided of the claims given by the researchers on the Internet. While the lifter can continue to be a fun (albeit dangerous) novelty item, it can now be approached as such and not as [a] revolutionary technology..."
Taking The Air Out Of Lifters' Sails. So, overall, it seems that the lifter is a lot of hot air (ions, actually) when it comes to antigravity. Take away the air, and it lifts-no-more.
But Don't Stop Trying!! Nevertheless, from my viewpoint, such "garage science" has every bit as much potential for stumbling across radically new effects, or radically new ways of exploiting known effects, as do the huge laboratories. PhD sheepskins do not have a lock on creativity and ingenuity, at least for those areas where discoveries can still be made on a shoestring budget. I applaud those who try. And I'm only surprised that it has apparently taken the formal scientific community so long to sufficiently look into the Lifter effect. (For
additional interesting and detailed discussions on
lifters, reader Brian Schmid points us to a
recent four-page Wired article at
http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/
But On The Other Side... OK, under the glare of investigation, lifters don't seem to be antigravity. But that doesn't mean that antigravity can't exist. Specifically, Lifters don't
relate to the other potential antigravity area we
discussed that is based on
Dr. Evgeny Podkletnov's work
(http://www.theharrowgroup.com/articles/ But on the other (negative) hand of Podkletnov's work, reader Kelly offers us a different, rather scathing view of Podkletnov's work's potential, suggesting:
"It appears most likely that the good (??!) doctor
Podkletnov has
Granted, there have been major innovations that were
derided as Kelly supports this view with, in part, an article by Robert Park published in the Oct. 12, 2001 issue of the American Physical Society (Item #2 at http://www.aps.org/WN/WN01/wn101201.html). From my perspective, I suspect that the aerospace companies involved aren't quite as negative as Kelly. But we'll have to wait and see -- I certainly won't hazard a guess as to the eventual success or demise of Dr. Podkletnov's work (much as I may hope for success...)
This Game's Far From Over! Whichever way it works out, Dr.
Podkletnov has apparently, successfully, convinced
some of the top companies and their scientists, in
several countries, that his ideas are worth
pursuing; they wouldn't take on the considerable
expense of such a project lightly. So one day, if
not this day, they may find the correct answer. And
won't that change a lot of rules... Under The CD Covers.
The latest releases of CD/DVD burning software, such as Roxio's 'Easy CD Creator 6' and my current favorite, Ahead's 'Nero 6,' make it relatively easy to burn even complex CD/DVD configurations. If you use their "make it simple" interfaces, such as Nero's SmartStart program, these front-ends to the far more complex underlying software (such as Nero's "Burning ROM" program) bypass (by presetting) the plethora of options that really have to be chosen for each type of CD (Audio, Data, Mixed-mode, CD Extra, Video, Super Video, miniDVD, Bootable, Hybrid, ISO, etc.) Not to mention additional options for the many variations within each type. If you're not a CD expert (at least to some extent), these simplifying front-ends make things MUCH easier. (I generally shy away from such "simplifying front ends," often finding them insultingly simplistic and restrictive, but in the case of CD burning software, I find them really helpful. And the underlying complex program is but a click away if needed (rarely, in my experience.)
Knowledge Matters. So -- we no longer have to be CD Experts, in most cases, to produce excellent results. Nevertheless, as with almost any area of technology, the more we know about what's going on under the covers, the better we'll be able to tweak our writable CDs to do exactly what we want. If only there was an easier-to-understand explanation of CD details than the "Orange Book," which is the technical data-CD bible - http://www.licensing.philips.com/information/cd/rec/), or the "Red Book," which started it all by defining the CD Digital Audio spec for standard music CDs. Of course with that lead-in, you just know that there has to be such a booklet, and there is -- it's called "Understanding CD-R and CD-RW" by Hugh Bennett, from the Optical Storage Technology Association, at http://www.osta.org/technology/cdqa2.htm . In both HTML and PDF formats, this 53 page easy-to-read text will seriously raise your "CD consciousness" by providing explanations, and the all-important contextual background needed to understand how and why contemporary CDs, in their various formats, work. Which lead to your being better-able to make the best choices when you burn your next CDs. Not to mention that this knowledge will make you the conversational star of your next (geek) party...
How Are CDs And Elephants Similar? That's seemingly an absurd question, yet (at least according to children's literature in the case of the elephant), they are similar: they both forget. On this topic of CD longevity,
which we've covered before (in
http://www.theharrowgroup.com/articles/ (Note that in this article we're talking about "writeable" CD-R and CD-RW media, not about "factory pressed" CDs which likely have a far greater (but still not infinite!) lifetime.) Some (not all) people are finding that CDs based on cyanine dyes, which confer the characteristic cyan, or blue-green color that you find on many less-expensive CDs, are becoming unreadable after as little as two years. (The dark-blue colored "metalized AZO" dyes, and the golden-colored phthalocyanine dyes, should be increasingly longer-lived.) But
interestingly, a Nov. 2 InformationWeek article by
Fred Langa
(http://www.informationweek.com/shared/ I'll leave it to Fred's article to explain what's behind this (and other CD related problems), and it is worthwhile reading -- not only if you burn CDs, but if you receive them from others. And it's ESPECIALLY important reading if you trust your CDs with your business or home data! (I can just imagine the IRS' reaction to: "...the CD ate my Quicken files!")
Sidebar: Beyond CDs and DVDs As-We-Know-Them. By the way, if you think that today's 4.7 gigabyte DVDs are the cat's meow for high density removable storage -- they're already too small! Just as in the halcyon CD days of yore when Apple began to place the contents of every (historic) Developer's Update on each new monthly CD (after all, 650 megabytes was SO much storage that they'd never run out), our hard disks are now so large that backups, even to DVDs, can easily require multiple DVDs. But
not to worry -- there are yet many tricks up the
storage industry's sleeve, such as molecular
storage. As described in the Nov. 12 Technology
Research News (http://www.trnmag.com/Stories/2003/110503/ "Molecular memory could become practical in five to seven years, according to the researchers." How does it work? Poke such a special molecule with 530 nanometer light and it "opens," retaining that state. Poke it with 200 nanometer light and it "closes," also retaining that state. Then poke it with 650 nanometer light and the special molecule non-destructively fluoresces in a manner that yields its "1" or "0" state. THAT would certainly solve my backup problem (today, at least), and it wouldn't be shabby for storing huge HDTV movies at their highest quality. This research is also a good reminder that there are going to be an unlimited number of "impossible" breakthroughs, in many fields, as many formally disparate fields share their knowledge and merge.
No Moving Parts? Then
again, the entire concept of storage that relies on
power hungry and failure prone moving parts, such as
a CD's motor and sliding laser assembly, might go
the way of the mechanically-ringing telephone bell
of old -- also in about five years if recent work by
Princeton and HP scientists proceeds as they
expect. According to a Nov. 12 Ananova story
(http://www.ananova.com/news/story/
Be Forearmed. As we wait (always) for "the next best things," today's rewritable CDs and DVDs remain excellent storage solutions for a variety of tasks. But as with almost everything technological, they aren't perfect. Yet if we understand their strengths and weaknesses such as those discussed here, and if we follow techniques such as those that Fred points out for mitigating the weaknesses, then CDs and DVDs can serve us very, very well. On the other hand, if we make unrealistic expectations, their tunes can certainly ruin our parade. "The more we know..."
From Out of the Ether...
· Another Side Of Nanotech -- Much of the excitement of
nanotechnology flows from the idea of "building
things" at the scale of atoms and molecules, which
holds the promise of exquisitely detailed "machines"
that will rival (or extinguish) the historical
differences between things "living" and "dead." Biological? Electronic? The Distinction Blurs! Readers Gerard Wenham, Doug Alder, and others recently brought our attention to how scientists at the Technion-Israel Institute of Technology have successfully used DNA as a self-assembly tool to make nano-transistors! According to team leader Erez Braun in the Nov. 3 New Scientist (http://www.newscientist.com/news/news.jsp?id=ns99994406), "DNA is very good at building things in molecular biology, but unfortunately, it does not conduct electricity. We had to get a metal conductor on the DNA." What they did, essentially, was to coat a specific large section of a DNA molecule with proteins gathered from E. coli bacteria. Next, they added graphite nanotubes which had been coated with antibodies to the E. coli protein; the antibodies on the nanotubes caused the nanotubes to automatically bind to the sites containing the E. coli protein - exactly where the scientists wanted them! They then added silver ions to the soup, which automatically attached themselves to ONLY those areas of the DNA molecule where the E. coli protein (and now the nanotubes) had NOT attached. A further chemical bath caused the silver ions to convert to silver metal -- a silver wire covering just the parts of the DNA strand that the scientists wished. Finally, gold was added to the bath which coated the silver, producing a nicely conductive wire just where they wanted it. "The end result is a carbon nanotube device [a transistor!] connected at both ends by a gold and silver wire. The device operates as a transistor when a voltage applied across the substrate is varied. This causes the nanotubes to either bridge the gap between the wires - completing the circuit - or not [a molecular switch!] Out of 45 nanoscale devices created in three batches, almost a third emerged as self-assembled transistors. They work at room temperature, and the only restriction for future devices is that the components must be compatible with the biological reactions and the metal-plating process." Voilą - a self-assembled nanotube transistor created by harnessing the stuff of life (DNA) to do our bidding at a scale vastly smaller than today's chip-making processes can even imagine! And this is just the beginning... Consider that we're now working with "PARTS OF MOLECULES" -- this is very heady (not to mention useful, and also potentially dangerous) stuff!
The Other Side of Nanotech Construction. Reader George Daszkowski reminds us that building things up in this manner is only HALF of the nanotechnology promise -- the Other Side of this nanoscale engineering equation offers equally powerful possibilities: "I have been meaning to write about a conversation that I had the other day. We were discussing the changes in incineration of waste, a recent municipal election issue. I was rambling on about how someday we may be able to recycle materials from incinerators by a fraction distillation process similar to petroleum production. Then I blinked, and realized that the other side of nanotechnology will be the ability to DISASSEMBLE what we have made! After all, understanding understands, and having the tools to manipulate atoms will allow us to produce less polluting products, while it will also allow us to re-use what we have previously made after it is no longer needed! Perhaps this will stimulate a reader to see their work differently. Thanks for your stimulation." Good point George - after all, if we're building things out of atoms, why not recycle the atoms in our "junk" as raw atomic feedstock for the next product? Don't Blink!
Ah, Derivations...Finally, we've all heard of Murphy's Law, and many of us are all-too familiar with Finagle's Law. Yet very few of us know the derivation of these related and often interchanged "laws." Fear not though, because thanks to the (apparent) writings of Wayne Radinsky and the keen eye of reader Derek, all is now revealed:
Murphy's Law The correct, original Murphy's Law reads: "If there are two or more ways to do something, and one of those ways can result in a catastrophe, then someone will do it." This is a principle of defensive design, cited here because it is usually given in mutant forms less descriptive of the challenges of design for users. For example, you don't make a two-pin plug symmetrical and then label it `THIS WAY UP'; if it matters which way it is plugged in, then you make the design asymmetrical... Edward A. Murphy, Jr. was one of the engineers on the rocket-sled experiments that were done by the U.S. Air Force in 1949 to test human acceleration tolerances (USAF project MX981). One experiment involved a set of 16 accelerometers mounted to different parts of the subject's body. There were two ways each sensor could be glued to its mount, and somebody methodically installed all 16 the wrong way around. Murphy then made the original form of his pronouncement, which the test subject (Major John Paul Stapp) quoted at a news conference a few days later. Within months `Murphy's Law' had spread to various technical cultures connected to aerospace engineering. Before too many years had gone by variants had passed into the popular imagination, changing as they went. Most of these are variants on "Anything that can go wrong, will," but as we'll see in a moment, this is correctly referred to as Finagle's Law. The mimetic drift apparent in these mutants clearly demonstrates Murphy's Law acting on itself!
Finagle's Law Finagle's Law is actually fully named "Finagle's Law of Dynamic Negatives" and, as mentioned, is usually rendered as "Anything that can go wrong, will." It may have been first published by Francis P. Chisholm in his 1963 essay "The Chisholm Effect", later reprinted in the classic anthology "A Stress Analysis Of A Strapless Evening Gown: And Other Essays For A Scientific Eye." (Robert Baker ed, ISBN 0-13-852608-7)
Oh, and don't forget the alleged "Gates' Law": "The speed of software halves every 18 months." This "law" is an ironic [and likely unfounded] comment on the tendency of software bloat to counter the every-18-month doubling in hardware capacity per dollar, as predicted by Moore's Law...
Now, isn't it a good feeling to know just why things always seem to go w@r*ng? Happy Holidays, Happy New Year, and see you again on Jan. 26, 2004! (Hey! I got the year right J).
[1] NBIC - the coming together of the previously disparate fields of Nanotechnology, Biology & medicine; Information sciences; and Cognitive sciences, and the exponential synergy that results.
About "The Harrow Technology Report."
"The Harrow Technology Report" explores the innovations and trends of many contemporary and emerging technologies, and then draws some less than obvious connections between them, to help us each survive and prosper in the Knowledge Age. "The Harrow Technology Report" is brought to you by Jeffrey R. Harrow, Principal of The Harrow Group. http://www.TheHarrowGroup.com . Where To Find "The Harrow Technology Report:"
Copyright (c) 2001-2005, Jeffrey R. Harrow. All
rights reserved.
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