"Orchid XP v8" <voi### [at] devnull> wrote in message 
news:48066457$1@news.povray.org...

> I saw it on Tomorrow's World. (Remember that program? WHERE'S MY FLYING 
> CAR, BITCH!?!) Apparently nothing ever came of it.

    Heh, well I don't remember the flying car, but have you seen the guy 
putting the electric drill in a fish tank full of water and he didn't 
electrocute himself due to some kind of 'anti-electric' spray from a can? I 
think I was about 12 years old then, and it s*it the life out of me!!

   I really thought he was going to die!!  :oO

  (He lived. He did this experiment 'live' (no pun intended ;) - brave guy).

    ~Steve~



> -- 
> http://blog.orphi.me.uk/
> http://www.zazzle.com/MathematicalOrchid*

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Orchid XP v8 wrote:
> Obviously, a single living cell is pretty damn small

Not compared to modern RAM circuits. I think transistors are getting 
down to the dozens-of-atoms size at this point.

-- 
   Darren New / San Diego, CA, USA (PST)
     "That's pretty. Where's that?"
          "It's the Age of Channelwood."
     "We should go there on vacation some time."

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Warp wrote:
> Doctor John <doc### [at] gmailcom> wrote:
>>
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/main.jhtml?view=DETAILS&grid=&xml=/earth/2008/04/15/sciipod115.xml
> 
>   This is certainly not the first time I read news about some new
> revolutionary technology which "will increase memory capacity/hard disk
> sizes/CPU speeds/whatever a million-fold", yet nothing happened even after
> several years. I have seen at least a dozen of those types of news during
> the past decade, yet none of them has realized as promised.
> 

The problem is that research guys at University aren't really interested 
in talking about what's commercially viable, but rather what might be 
physically possible assuming we can ignore several current (and 
significant) limitations.

Even one of the guys on this team said that it would be at least 10 
years before they even start to think of prototypes, whereas the IBM 
team has something in the labs to play with *right now*.

-- 
...Ben Chambers
www.pacificwebguy.com

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Doctor John wrote:
>
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/main.jhtml?view=DETAILS&grid=&xml=/earth/2008/04/15/sciipod115.xml
> 
> Now all we need is a 256-bit 3THz processor and we can start producing
> real time tracings at the same time as hunting for dark matter :-)
> 
> John
> 

No, it means we'll finally be able to store our audio files with decent 
quality settings.  No more "Vinyl sounds better," guys!

-- 
...Ben Chambers
www.pacificwebguy.com

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Chambers wrote:
> No, it means we'll finally be able to store our audio files with decent 
> quality settings.  No more "Vinyl sounds better," guys!

Been able to store audio files with decent quality settings for a while. 
  Ape, FLAC, et cetera.  The reason the "vinyl sounds better" guys make 
that claim is, apparently, due to the digitizing process itself that 
makes the *original* recording unacceptable to the audiophile's 
oh-so-sensitive ear.

-- 
Tim Cook
http://empyrean.digitalartsuk.com

-----BEGIN GEEK CODE BLOCK-----
Version: 3.12
GFA dpu- s: a?-- C++(++++) U P? L E--- W++(+++)>$
N++ o? K- w(+) O? M-(--) V? PS+(+++) PE(--) Y(--)
PGP-(--) t* 5++>+++++ X+ R* tv+ b++(+++) DI
D++(---) G(++) e*>++ h+ !r--- !y--
------END GEEK CODE BLOCK------

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"Tim Cook" <z99### [at] gmailcom> wrote in message 
news:4806e9ea$1@news.povray.org...
> Chambers wrote:
>> No, it means we'll finally be able to store our audio files with decent 
>> quality settings.  No more "Vinyl sounds better," guys!
>
> Been able to store audio files with decent quality settings for a while. 
> Ape, FLAC, et cetera.  The reason the "vinyl sounds better" guys make that 
> claim is, apparently, due to the digitizing process itself that makes the 
> *original* recording unacceptable to the audiophile's oh-so-sensitive ear.
>
> -- 
> Tim Cook
> http://empyrean.digitalartsuk.com
>
> -----BEGIN GEEK CODE BLOCK-----
> Version: 3.12
> GFA dpu- s: a?-- C++(++++) U P? L E--- W++(+++)>$
> N++ o? K- w(+) O? M-(--) V? PS+(+++) PE(--) Y(--)
> PGP-(--) t* 5++>+++++ X+ R* tv+ b++(+++) DI
> D++(---) G(++) e*>++ h+ !r--- !y--
> ------END GEEK CODE BLOCK------

You dont have to have an "oh-so-sensitive" ear to here all the artifacts 
that digitalising (is that a word? :) creates.  Its pretty easy to pick them 
out of the treble, its the one main reason I hate and wont use any sort of 
compressed audio, yuk!

Cheers Dre

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>> Obviously, a single living cell is pretty damn small
> 
> Not compared to modern RAM circuits. I think transistors are getting 
> down to the dozens-of-atoms size at this point.

I doubt it. At that scale, quantum effects would become significant, 
which would require a fundamentally different way of designing 
"transistors".

Also, significantly, transistors don't just grow themselves if you feed 
them a little nitrogen and AMP. ;-)

-- 
http://blog.orphi.me.uk/
http://www.zazzle.com/MathematicalOrchid*

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And lo on Wed, 16 Apr 2008 20:53:31 +0100, Orchid XP v8 <voi### [at] devnull>  
did spake, saying:

> Stephen wrote:
>
>> Bubble memory for one.
>
> Or that guy who developed genetically engineered algae that responded to  
> electricity. The idea was that you could just "grow" your memory as  
> large as you wanted. Near-zero manufacture cost.
>
> He never did quite get the prototype to work - but he came closer than  
> you might think...

Of course the trouble with any biological component is mutation and  
contamination, as we all know a monoculture can be wiped out by a single  
virus (hah) if not clamped down tight; so maintenence costs might have  
been prohibitive despite 'near-zero' manufacturing costs.

-- 
Phil Cook

--
I once tried to be apathetic, but I just couldn't be bothered
http://flipc.blogspot.com

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>> Not compared to modern RAM circuits. I think transistors are getting down 
>> to the dozens-of-atoms size at this point.
>
> I doubt it.

What do you doubt, that silicon atoms are as big as 0.25 nm across, or 
transistors are as small as 25 nm?

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scott wrote:
>>> Not compared to modern RAM circuits. I think transistors are getting 
>>> down to the dozens-of-atoms size at this point.
>>
>> I doubt it.
> 
> What do you doubt, that silicon atoms are as big as 0.25 nm across, or 
> transistors are as small as 25 nm?

If you made a transistor that consisted of only a few atoms, it wouldn't 
work properly.

The concept of "electricity" is a simplification of the aggregate 
behaviour of individual charged particles. Like other concepts such as 
"temparature" and "pressure", it only makes sense at "large" scales.

If you were to make a device so small that it consists of only a few 
dozen atoms, you couldn't be able to reason about it using the usual 
laws of electricity. You'd have to use quantum dynamics or something.

(Let's face it, semiconductors work by having lots of silicon atoms with 
impurities of other atoms scattered around. Well if your transistor is 
only, say, 20 atoms in size, then they'd *all* be ordinary silicon 
atoms, and it wouldn't be a semiconductor. But that terms such as 
"conductor" make sense at these scales...)

Now there may or may not be a way of making some kind of switching 
device out of a few dozen atoms, but you can't make a "transistor" (as 
in, a sandwich of N-type and P-type semiconductive matter) with that few 
atoms. It wouldn't work properly.

-- 
http://blog.orphi.me.uk/
http://www.zazzle.com/MathematicalOrchid*

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