The most efficient possible display technology would be something that
bypasses the eyes altogether and sends information straight to the
brain. Sadly, cranial USB ports are still pretty hard to install. The
second most efficient possible display technology anyone's devised
projects images directly into the eye. The dream of a wearable virtual
retinal display, or VRD, has been around for nearly two decades; it's
on the horizon, but it's still going to be a while until it gets here.
The idea of VRD was first tossed around at the University of
Washington's Human Interface Technology Lab back around 1991. Thomas
Furness, who'd been working on helmet-based displays for the Air Force
in the '80s, and research engineer Joel Kollin were part of the team
that put together the initial (and enormous) prototype. The concept was
that tiny, ultra-low-power lasers could paint an image onto the human
retina by scanning across it at high speed,
"American history has been punctuated by periods in which the National
government had to respond to sweeping social, economic and
technological developments." Speaking of cyberspace as a "new tool",
the government claims that technology raises new issues to which it
must respond in new ways.
Advanced Micro Devices has launched a low-power version of its six-core Opteron processor.
The six-core AMD Opteron EE consumes 40 watts, and is designed for 2P servers, among the most popular in the virtualized server space. The chip will cost $989, and will begin shipping on today.
To maintain the same thermal envelope as the previous generation chip,
the Opteron 2419 EE runs at 1.8 GHz, versus the 2.0+ GHz clock speeds
of the "Shanghai" Opteron generation. AMD claims that the 2419 EE
offers up to a third more performance than the 2377 EE, a four-core
chip whose cores were clocked at 2.3 GHz, which also ran at a 40-watt
thermal envelope.
The world's first truly dual-screen laptop, which will allow computer users to multi-task while on the move, is due to go on sale by the end of the year.
The pioneering PC, known as the Spacebook, is the brainchild of Alaska-based technology firm gScreen.
While growing numbers of office workers – especially in the financial industries – use several desktop monitors to track many programmes and information sources at the same time, no manufacturer has yet released a portable equivalent.
The commission approved 3 separate notice of inquiries,
which provide anyone interested in the subject with 30 days to share
their thoughts with the FCC. Based on these responses, the commission
will decide whether it needs to impose any new rules on the wireless
industry.
The Federal Communications Commission kicked off a far-reaching examination of the wireless
industry Thursday, asking stakeholders to submit comments on innovation
and investment, the state of competition, and whether or not consumers
get enough information from providers to make informed decisions about
service.
Government And Computer Manufacturers
Are Caught Installing Hard-Wired Keystroke Loggers Into All New Laptop
Computers. Device captures everything you type and sends it via your
ethernet card to the Dept. of Homeland Security
With the development of killer drones, it seems like everyone is worrying about killer robots. Now, as if that wasn't bad enough, we need to start worrying about lying, cheating robots as well.
In an experiment run at the Laboratory of Intelligent Systems in the Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale of Lausanne, France, robots that were designed to cooperate in searching out a beneficial resource and avoiding a poisonous one learned to lie to each other in an attempt to hoard the resource. Picture a robo-Treasure of the Sierra Madre.
A new 3bpc technology developed by IM Flash
Technologies, owned by Intel and Micron Technology, can expand the
amount of data stored on flash cards and USB drives. The 3bpc
technology comes as smartphones like Apple, Inc.'s iPhone boost demand
for NAND chips. And 3bpc is expected to help as chipmakers approach
performance limits.
The annual
meeting of the ACM's Special Interest Group on Graphics and Interactive
Techniques, SIGGRAPH
2009, takes place in New Orleans this week. The event brings together some
of the world's best digital artists and computer researchers and is a showcase
for some interesting new interfaces.
Here are five
particularly cool ideas that will be on display at this year's event.
TiVo, the creator of the digital video recorder that panicked the TV business by making it simple to skip ads, now flashes banners on TV screens when users pause, fast-forward or delete shows.
Viewers who paused "The Biggest Loser" TV show saw an ad saying "Jenny Craig says you've got more to lose!" If you used TiVo to pause "Iron Chef America" on the Food Network, this popped up: "Sub-Zero: Every cook deserves the best!"
"We were once a foe of the networks, now we've become a friend," said Tara Maitra, TiVo's general manager of content services and ad sales. "We're working with the industry ... to get users to engage in a world increasingly equipped to fast-forward through commercials."
Dave Zatz, a 37-year-old network engineer in Herndon, Va., isn't happy about it because he bought a TiVo digital video recorder and pays a subscription to skip ads.
Leading researchers warned that mankind might lose control over
computer-based systems that carry out a growing share of society’s
workload, from waging war to chatting on the phone, and have already
reached a level of indestructibility comparable with a cockroach.
It sounds like something from a science fiction movie: Sensors
are surgically inserted in the brain to understand what you’re
thinking. Machines that can speak, move or process information — based
on the fleeting thoughts in a person’s imagination.
A widespread and
unusually resilient computer attack that began July 4 knocked out the
Web sites of several government agencies, including some that are
responsible for fighting cyber crime, The Associated Press has learned.
The project, known as the “Chip-Scale High Energy Atomic Beams”
program, is an effort aimed at working on the core technologies behind
a tiny particle accelerator, capable of firing subatomic particles at
incredible speeds. It’s part of a larger Darpa plan to reduce all sorts of devices to microchip-scale
That Universal Serial Bus port in your computer
is about to get an upgrade. You know, the one where you plug in all
your external hard drives, digital cameras, MP3 players, thumb drives,
and USB heated-slippers? If you bought your computer any time after the
year 2000, it probably came equipped with a USB 2.0 port. However,
later this year computers will start shipping that include USB 3.0 ports, which can transmit data up to ten times as fast. Here's what to expect.
Flexible, full-color video displays could be closer to market
because of a new advance by researchers at Arizona State University's Flexible Display Center (FDC) and at Universal Display,
in Ewing, NJ. The researchers have made bendy organic light-emitting
diode (OLED) displays employing processes and tools that are used to
make today's flat-panel LCD screens. They demonstrated a new 4.1-inch
video-quality display at the 2009 Society for Information Display
conference last week.
OLED displays, which are lighter and less power hungry than LCDs,
are used in cell phones and MP3 players. OLEDs can also be printed on
plastic and offer the promise of bright color screens that can be
rolled up and stowed in gadgets, worn on wrists, or plastered on
clothes. Electronics makers Sony, LG, and Samsung M
Electronic memory chips may soon gain the ability to bend and twist as
a result of work by engineers at the National Institute of Standards
and Technology. The engineers have found a way to build a flexible memory component out of inexpensive, readily available materials.
At a packed stall during the Computex show in Taiwan this week, young
buyers excitedly put on 3D-enabling glasses that turned flat images on
PC screens into solid objects. 3D, long reserved for movie theaters, is emerging as a profitable niche
for the PC world even though it is not quite ready for the masses yet.
Some big names in the chip and display
The screen is now flush with the case and we’ve decreased the overall thickness to about 18 mm. The case will be aluminum, which is more expensive than plastic but is sturdier and lets us shave a little more off the overall thickness of the device.
The material is infused with ultra-thin circuitry and an electronically-controlled ink available in a wide range of Pantone colors, which are conveyed in “print quality.” As in all e-ink displays, a current passes through the substrate to activate the ink; otherwise, the eSkin is transparent to reveal the surface underneath. The eSkin material are flexible and can be manufactured in large-scale rolls rather than individually, making them cheaper and ensuring that our eyes will not have to suffer through looking at any static, information-less screen in the future.
A new material could eventually be used to store vast amounts of data on a disc. InPhase presented a prototype that stores 713 gigabytes per square inch.
20 years ago, Tim Berners-Lee invented the World Wide Web. For his next project, he's building a web for open, linked data that could do for numbers what the Web did for words, pictures, video: unlock our data and reframe the way we use it togeth
This demo -- from Pattie Maes' lab at MIT, spearheaded by Pranav Mistry -- was the buzz of TED. It's a wearable device with a projector that paves the way for profound interaction with our environment. Imagine "Minority Report" and
Scientists at MIT have invented a battery that can charge in seconds, promising a revolution in power storage that could also help green cars and renewable energy.
A virtual reality helmet that recreates the sights, smells, sounds and even tastes of far-flung holiday destinations has been devised by British scientists.
Two U.S. teams have developed new materials that may pave the way for ever smaller, faster and more powerful electronics. A film material capable of storing data from 250 DVDs onto a surface the size of a coin.
Also it suggests that we have finally found the limits of Moore’s Law, at least as far as devices working with electrons. It has been an amazing fifty years or so. And now for our next trick?
Just a year after the world's fastest supercomputers broke the petaflop barrier by performing one thousand trillion calculations per second, nuclear physicists are planning a 20-petaflop machine in conjunction with IBM.
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