http://www.wired.com/gadgets/miscellaneous/news/2008/12/YE8_techbreaks
I’ve never seen all of minority report, but the idea of a paper like that sounds cool :-). The Memristor is interesting, more interesting then trying to dump data out of SDRAM that just lost power lol, my mind is going bonkers with the possibilities of what memristors could do to PCs. The Dynamic Random Access Memory we’ve been using for so many years, basically stores data in capacitors, and has to refresh the charge in them to keep the data in memory, and relatively sane; the point of parity bits or ECC memory being to help deal with insanity lol (sorry, couldn’t resist that!). Now enter the Memristor…. ;-). USB 3.0, I am intently interested in, but I haven’t followed it since I heard about the stink with Intel awhile back; really glad to know this is moving again! With luck, in a few years we’ll be seeing USB 3.0 devices being the norm in the market place, and USB 2.0 ports relegated to the same place USB 1.1 held around 2002’ish — and we can finally burn off our firewire ports xD. Honestly, although at least 50% of the computers I have running daily have FireWire support built in, I have never *actually* used or owned a FireWire based device to plug in lol
*Drools*
Technology seems to be approaching Clarke’s third law, that “Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.”, and I guess you sort of have to follow his second law to get there… Hmm, I wonder if I might live to see an era, where technology has become indistinguishable from magic, as my generation and the ones before me understood it; then again, if I do, I wonder if any of the young wipper snappers around will still do what I do…. Stop, and ask myself, how does this work? And then go in search of the truth.
Ahh, somehow I feel old right now lol. I can still remember when anything like an “iPod” was something us kids called a Walkman and used to walk around with, or equivalent devices ;-). When for all except lifeless nerds and “professionals”, computers at home were still virtually unheard of for most people, no body had heard of things like the ARPAnet or the current Internet that is so ubiquitous today. Headphones came in one of three styles, classy stereo ones that had padded “cups”, ones that sat on your ears like dinner plates (common variety), or little ear buds that you stuck in your ears (good for mini am/fm radios), and always had a cord that was either too short or to long; the idea of a wireless headset was still very much a dream, and none of us regular kids even thought about it.
Disks still were floppy, and could only hold about 360KB – and I wish I knew how to make’em flippies back when I had 5 1/4″ floppies lol. The memory capacity of most personal computers were still measured in Kilobytes, not Gigabytes – now I know people with upwards of 8GB of SDRAM lol. The most *graphical* thing about user interfaces, was trying to get the most out of your 16 colours! A “Mac” or Macintosh and a[n IBM] PC were really different; still was until fairly recently. And Compact Disk (CD)s were still expensive and usually required an equally expensive stereo system to play; I also have also seen cheaper clones of my CD/MP3 player that probably cost less then early music CDs did haha! Hmm, I wonder if you can even still buy a stereo system that can handle Vinyl, heh might have to check a garage sale. Not to long ago, I got my family to chuck an old stereo system that no one used anymore, which one day was “top notch” because it handled records, cassettes, compact disk (CD), and had a second cassette module that could do recording. These days, ask some one about a turn table and they will probably think you’re talking about a Microwave lol (DJs and [real] music people aside).
Man, I still have a gramophone in my closet that belonged to my great grand parents, and a radio that uses vacuum tubes inside!!! I remember as a child, always dreaming and wishing that someday I might be a man of means enough to repair that old radio back to working condition; these days, I am just glad that I am taller then the radio lol. Both are inherited from my Father, and like the candy dish I keep many of my personal stuffs in; probably hails from his grandparents farm. Does anyone under the age of 20 today, even know what a farm was like? My dad learned to drive from fooling around with a tractor on my great grand parents farm; when my brother learned to drive, he had my face practically against the opposite window as he cruised through the Sports Authority’s parking lot. I learned about driving from playing to many Video games and eventually getting to roost in the front passenger seat, where I could observe how things worked lol. My father could rip apart a car engine and put it back together again, he started to learn about fixing cars as a teenager, working at a gas station, and learning from mechanics when no one was around. I don’t think I’ve even seen a gas station where there was a paid attendant around to pump the gas for ya :|. Every station now’re days are self service, or go fsck yourself!
I still remember a time when the words “Computer Generated Image” did not have common meaning with movie special effects, except perhaps if you worked for a place like ILM. Back when even cordless phones were high technology; cell phones were big, heavy, and EXPENSIVE back then. Now corded techs are “out of style”, and many people can only be reached by their cellular number. The days when the existence of stealth aircraft were ultra secret, but rapidly becoming public knoledge, as we dreamt of Romulan cloaking devices, The days when cartoon shows tried to teach kids morals while entertaining them, not patronizing them for stupidity while trying to useless cram crap down their memory banks – I agree with one fathers comment about what the little tikes watch these days, “It’s junk”. Still can remember when an “Instant Message” was to shout at someone from across the hallway, the lawn, or the street lol.
and I still remember a time, when there was nothing more important in life then family, friends, freedom, and keeping the flag flying high.
Hmm, I wonder, what later generations of people in my age group will be remembering, when the Gregorian date is like 2108-12-27 instead of 2008-12-27. Odds are, to people of my generation, the technology would be like magic, and to regular people of that period: like TV is to us. I just hope if that is what the future holds, someone still remembers how it all works…. and comes back in a time machine to tell me how to build it xD.