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Technology

15 Important Tech Concepts In 2006 164

Posted by Zonk from the learn-them-now-save-time dept.
MBoy wrote to mention a Popular Mechanics story discussing 15 technology concepts that are likely to be important in the coming year. From the article: "Body Area Network (BAN) - Like everything else, implantable medical devices are going wireless. A new in-body antenna chip from Zarlink Semiconductor is in preproduction, and should appear in pacemakers and hearing implants this year. By transmitting data to and receiving instructions from nearby base stations, BAN chips can reprogram your heartbeat at your doctor's office or make a diagnosis from a bedside wireless monitor at home." I prefer Personal Area Network (PAN), myself.
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15 Important Tech Concepts In 2006 More

15 Important Tech Concepts In 2006

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  • FIOS, Baby! (Score:5, Interesting)

    by gbulmash ( 688770 ) * <semi_famous@yah o o . c om> on Sunday January 15, 2006 @05:29AM (#14474902) Homepage Journal
    I like their prediction of the expansion of FIOS (fiber optic broadband to the home at speeds of 30 megabits). I'm a Verizon customer and I've been salivating, waiting for them to bring it to my area.

    There are those who will put forward the argument that 30 megabits isn't going to improve the average Internet experience over the 5-8 megabit speeds being offered now by a lot of cable and some DSL providers. But didn't Bill Gates once say that 640k of memory should be more than enough for anyone? :-)

    Just like most broadband service offerings, speed will be asynchronous. Right now, my 8 megabit downstream line is only 768k upstream. But the 5 and 15 megabit service will be 2 megabits up, which gives you better than a T1 into the home. The 30 megabit service gives you 5 megabits up. The consumer packages, according to their FAQ, do not allow you to run a server, but give it a little time. 5 megabits up is enough to run a nice little web server so long as you don't get Slashdotted or DDOS'ed.

    Of course, it also means that compromised PCs will be able to do nasty things their botnet masters command 6-7 times faster. But when I go FIOS, I go 100% Linux.

    - Greg

    • Re:FIOS, Baby! (Score:5, Informative)

      by matt21811 ( 830841 ) * on Sunday January 15, 2006 @05:41AM (#14474926) Homepage
      "But didn't Bill Gates once say that 640k of memory should be more than enough for anyone? :-)"
      Yes, he didnt say that.

      • Re:FIOS, Baby! (Score:3, Interesting)

        by pcgabe ( 712924 )
        Indeed.

        I'd point out the clarification [nyud.net], but this is Slashdot, so just about everyone here should already know this.

        But hey, it's popular to poke fun at Mr. Gates. I imagine that in 15 years, when Google is the new Evil Empire, everyone will misquote Larry Page as saying "There's no reason anyone would need to get the Universal Interface brain implant."

      • Well, if Billy Boy denies at, that certainly constitutes proof that he never said it for me.

        Zero__Kelvin: Well Mr. Gates, it seems that there is a lot of confusion over who you are. Some say you are a visionary shaping the future with your "ideas", which many call 'Embrace and Extend', while others say you say things like "Nobody will ever need more than 640k of RAM."

        Gates: I Fear there is some Uncertainty as to what I might or might not have said in my endeavors to be an industry leader, and I Doub
        • If Billy Boy denies he said it, then the onus is on those claiming he did to provide a verifiable citation for the comment. In over a dozen iterations of this discussion on Slashdot, I have yet to see a single source for the remark. If you have one, please provide it. If not, then you are just talking Invisible Pink Unicorns [wikipedia.org].


          • " If Billy Boy denies he said it, then the onus is on those claiming he did to provide a verifiable citation for the comment... I have yet to see a single source for the remark.

            You are confusing a question about what someone writes with a question regarding something once said . Bill Gates counts on the ignorance of people like yourself. That being said, I never claimed he made the 640k statement, though it is easy for me to believe that he did, since I am certain he couldn't hack his way out of
    • yeah... um... I don't know how to tell you this, but we've had 100Mbit lines for oh, about two years now.

      And it's sweet.

      --------------------
      link your blog/website for free
      http://www.doyoulikemyface.com/ [doyoulikemyface.com]
    • But when I go FIOS, I go 100% Linux.

      You mean you're not already 100% Linux!? What, oh what, has happened to the slashdot demographic lately....

    • Re:FIOS, Baby! (Score:5, Insightful)

      by novakyu ( 636495 ) <novakyu@novakyu.net> on Sunday January 15, 2006 @06:25AM (#14475038) Homepage
      Of course, it also means that compromised PCs will be able to do nasty things their botnet masters command 6-7 times faster. But when I go FIOS, I go 100% Linux.

      Because you know... Linux is unsinkable, like Titanic? Read through Secunia advisories when you have the time... if you run a server, possibly a web server serving PHP scripts vulnerable to a variety of exploits, some of which can even lead to system compromise (rather than, say, something that can only be used to DDoS someone else), it's far less secure than just using an up-to-date Windows XP workstation with proper firewall setup and a user with good sense (i.e. don't visit untrusted sites with IE, don't run executables that you don't know what they are). Running a server more than offsets whatever security you gain by switching to a Unix.

      The group I volunteer at runs a dozen or so Solaris workstations. Just because Solaris is less used, we have gotten past a few Linux exploit attempts (because script kiddies can't tell a unix from windows, and a real unix from a unix clone), but our users still somehow manage to get themselves hacked into. Just remember: Linux != Security. ${ANY_OPERATING_SYSTEM} + good sense == security.

      • Re:FIOS, Baby! (Score:3, Insightful)

        by KiloByte ( 825081 )
        ${ANY_OPERATING_SYSTEM} + good sense == security

        Any?

        Show me a secure Win98 box (or XP for that matter), and then we'll talk.
        Sure, a dumb user can turn any OS into a script kiddie paradise, but this doesn't work the other way. Both the OS and the user need to have a clue.
      • Clueless management of a secure OS makes it less secure than an insecure OS fully patched up and properly administered.
        WELL DUH!

      • Re:FIOS, Baby! (Score:1, Flamebait)

        by cyber-vandal ( 148830 )
        don't visit untrusted sites with IE

        Shouldn't that be don't visit any sites with IE. Shame you can't uninstall the damn thing.
    • yep, was fortunate to be one of the townships in Northern New Jersey to get it, 5th in my own! Speed has always been consistant as advertised. My only complaint is the disconnection for long-periods of FTP/rsync-based file transfers on both directions, from what I have seen. It must be a mechanism to prevent users from running servers of some sort. But as long as I can pipe everything on port 22, it's all good. :) Prior to that, I was with OOL (optimum online service) for a few years. It's an "ok" service
    • I'm a Verizon customer and I've been salivating, waiting for them to bring it to my area.

      Even though Verizon is 18-25 times the price of a Comcast connection of the same speed, and take 12-18 weeks for installation or repair?

      Disclaimer: I'm a former Verizon customer

    • It doesn't make sense anymore for ISP's to offer asynchronous lines. Once upon a time most of the people on the web were just reading the content, not creating it, so asynchronous lines were fine. Now people want to blog, send large files (like family movies and pictures), post on forums, and do all kinds of things which require higher upload speeds.

      What's stupid is that my ISP won't even sell me a synchronous line even though they do offer them to businesses. I have the money for one, as well as all of
      • If you're asking for synchronous lines, they'd get confused. You sound like you're really talking about symmetric vs. asymmetric lines. It still does make sense for them to offer them, because the technology is cheaper, even though there are occasional people who want more upstream bandwidth - usually they'll get cheaper service by selling them a faster asymmetric service.

        But what do you mean by "My ISP"? Do you mean your cable modem company, or do you mean some DSL company that you're using, or some DS

    • Re:FIOS, Baby! (Score:5, Informative)

      by Varitek ( 210013 ) on Sunday January 15, 2006 @08:39AM (#14475247)
      Just like most broadband service offerings, speed will be asynchronous.
      Asymmetric.
      • Err, what do you think that asynchronous means; at different rates.
        • Asynchronous means at different times.

          You could use it to describe that the phases/periods are not synchronous, ie that they are different. But this isn't the normal way you'd use it. An asynchronous connection would be more like one where the capacity varies with time.
          • but think about it.. with asynchronos data lines, you could be recieving the web page BEFORE you send the HTTP GET. Think of the improvements in latency!

    • Re:FIOS, Baby! (Score:3, Informative)

      by Mr. No Skills ( 591753 )
      I wouldn't hold my breath for Verizon to remove the "no server" clause from their contract. At least not until every single one of their T1 lines no longer produces revenue for them.

      To be clear, the Verizon FIOS agreement says no fixed IPs, no serving, residential use only (which seems to preclude home office professional use). Plus "Microsoft Windows required and MSN Premium", whatever that means. Plus you must switch your voice lines to FIOS and keep at least one voice line in the agreement.

      If you disc

  • GB isn't Gb (Score:5, Informative)

    by cloudofstrife ( 887438 ) on Sunday January 15, 2006 @05:34AM (#14474914)
    Someone messed up while writing this article. Samsung said that they were making 16Gb (gigabit) chips, not 16GB chips. TFA: http://hardware.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=06/01/ 13/0243231 [slashdot.org]
    • Also, isn't there a problem with flash memory to where you can't write and erase that many times before the memory stops working? This seems like the kind of thing that would not be a problem in, say, an IPod, but would be a killer in a computer. Imagine if your swap drive were on flash. That thing gets written tens of thousands of times each day. Am I wrong here?
      • The number of write samples has been steadily improving, and that fact, combined with an intelligent filesystem, means that it's not a problem any more. And with the lack of moving parts MTBF times should far out strip the inherent complexity of a hard drives platter and heads.
    • Actually Gb can mean the same as GB and reverse. The abreviation of bytes and bits is not welldefined. Before using either you should define it. If undefined it is assumed to be bytes.

      • Re:GB isn't Gb (Score:3, Informative)

        by booch ( 4157 )
        Bytes and bits might not have SI-defined abbreviations, but the IT/computer/tech industry is quite consistent in using 'b' for bits and 'B' for bytes. I actually see the SI prefixes used incorrectly (i.e. mbps for Mega-bits per second) much more than 'b' and 'B' mixed up.
      • I think you're the only one confused on this issue. It is indeed well known in the tech industry what b and B stand for - bits and bytes.

  • Now we'll just have to wait... (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward on Sunday January 15, 2006 @05:38AM (#14474920)
    until some jerk hacks that pacemaker and starts setting elderly people's heartbeats to 250 BPM....

  • Concept exists? (Score:5, Interesting)

    by cralewyth ( 934970 ) on Sunday January 15, 2006 @05:41AM (#14474928)
    From TFA:
    Ajax
    When you use Google Maps, the Web site doesn't pause to reload the page each time you zoom in or pan to the side, and the URL remains "maps.google.com" instead of the meaningless string of letters and numbers you see at older sites like MapQuest. Google Maps is using a new technique that Web-watcher Jesse James Garrett has dubbed Ajax, for Asynchronous JavaScript + XML. Weaving together existing technologies, Ajax will help make Web services feel more like programs that run on the user's own computer, Garrett says, releasing Internet content from the limitations of conventional Web design by reimagining the browser as an operating system.

    Surely, if the concept already exists, people know (of) it, and it's not one to know for 2006, but one already known from 2005?
    • I agree. The plethora of information and opinion pieces about Ajax over the past six months would seem to suggest that 2005 was the Ajax's year.
    • The list subject is "likely to be important in 2006". Which this is.
      • Fair enough, point taken. I can't help but think however that cralewyth's original point, that the list should be for things that haven't had a public impact yet, has some legitimacy. At the extreme one could argue that things like internal plumbing and transistors are likely to be important in 2006 but they're not in the list either.
    • A lot of people is making some expectatives about Ajax, all the newspapers and magazines is telling about Ajax. Why? Beause it's cool to talk about ajax today, the people wanna see what is this fantastic thing. Let's wait and see when Ajax will be applied to important things.

    • [...] and the URL remains "maps.google.com" instead of the meaningless string of letters and numbers you see at older sites like MapQuest

      Don't get me wrong, I like Google Maps and AJAX is quite neat too (when used appropriately) but this lack of an updated query string is nothing to be proud of since it just means that users can't directly bookmark or link to the page they see once they've scrolled and zoomed around a bit. Yes, Google does provide a kind of permalink URL but it's labelled "link to this p

      • [...] and the URL remains "maps.google.com" instead of the meaningless string of letters and numbers you see at older sites like MapQuest.

        Not to mention the fact that you can just use POST and the URL doesn't change either... That ain't exactly bleeding edge, tho...

      • Reminds me of when a friend of my Mother-in-Law gave her a CD-R containing nothing but a single shortcut to C:\MAHJONG.

        You can dumb down the inteface but you'll never dumb it down enough for everybody.

  • Ok great, electronic medical records... Lets break this down shall we?
    In case of a natural disaster, they are on a server... unless the server was the point of impact of that disaster. Then you may think distributed copies, which leads to a problem of who has the proper copy and what data gets lost during automatic updates. I seriously doubt they can even call this a method to save storage space, seeing as how even if they were served in a single local, the weekly/monthly backups would take nearly as much
    • In case of a natural disaster, they are on a server... unless the server was the point of impact of that disaster. Then you may think distributed copies, which leads to a problem of who has the proper copy and what data gets lost during automatic updates.

      Two words for you... rsync [anu.edu.au] and squid [squid-cache.org]. Not error proof, but with checksums and redundancy, pretty close so long as errors are not introduced at the root server.

      But wouldn't it be fun to hack the root server and make sure all your old enemies are listed

      • As noted, they still rely on a root server to keep track of proper data updates. I just dont think this is the solution they are looking for at this time.
    • For this to work properly would require all hospitals to agree on a standardisation of medical data, currently its really up to the operating environment of the hospital to decide what their records are.

      Ideally all data would be moved out of hospitals into Datacentres and hospitals linking in, its really the only way it can work, having each hospital keeping their data & then transmitting it to a national database would only allow for errors.

      The buisness im in is working supporting GP's & Specialis

    • Re:EMR (Score:5, Informative)

      by tim_uk ( 123339 ) on Sunday January 15, 2006 @06:23AM (#14475035)
      I do EMR for a living.

      In case of a natural disaster, they are on a server

      No, mine aren't. They are on multiple site, geographically dispersed, diverse routed synchronous data arrays in secure and hardened data centres.

      who has the proper copy and what data gets lost during automatic updates

      There are 16 "proper copies" of each instance. Each instance represents a doctors surgery, a hospital trust*, an ambulance trust etc. There are no losses during updates, it's designed to be fully available and resilient in the event of the total loss of a datacentre.

      (*trust is UK medical system speak for a local area and may contain one or all of the above)

      I seriously doubt they can even call this a method to save storage space

      Agreed. Last time I looked it was projected to be +9Pb. I have around 1Pb to look after here.

      the weekly/monthly backups would take nearly as much space

      The datacentres are synchronised. No old-fashioned "backups" take place. See my first point. However, non-patient related data is taken to tape daily and offsited.

      It's a serious undertaking. ;-)

      I laughed out loud when I saw that Bush had allocated $125m for EMR in the USA. This will cost BILLIONS.

      • "No, mine aren't. They are on multiple site, geographically dispersed, diverse routed synchronous data arrays in secure and hardened data centres."

        If I was a hacker, seeing such a large attack surface for obtaining your data would put a huge smile on my face.

        As you probably know from your job, the better you protect that data from being LOST, the easier it is to be STOLEN actually if someone finds the weakest link.

        I'd start with stone age techniques like visiting each of the server clusters claiming I'm the
        • The risk of stolen EMR's is not at the data level, it's at the end user level. That's much harder to prevent.

  • 4 they forgot: (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward on Sunday January 15, 2006 @06:00AM (#14474973)
    High-bandwidth Digital Content Protection (HDCP): Think of it as DRM for your display. Microsoft will be supporting this technology into the upcoming Vista operating system and others may follow as well.

    Extensible Firmware Interface (EFI): As seen on the new Intel Macs, EFI is an upgraded BIOS specification as created by Intel. EFI allows for hardware drivers to remain in the firmware and operate independently of operating system. The EFI can also detect and select operating systems, eliminating the need for a separate boot loader.

    Simple Sharing Extensions (SSE): While this was created in 2005, Microsoft hopes for SSE to gain momentum and compete with the RSS standard in 2006. SSE extends the RSS 2.0 specification from unidirectional to bidirectional information flows. Microsoft even released it under the Creative Commons license, the same license covering RSS 2.0.

    • Simple Sharing Extensions (SSE): While this was created in 2005, Microsoft hopes for SSE to gain momentum and compete with the RSS standard in 2006. SSE extends the RSS 2.0 specification from unidirectional to bidirectional information flows. Microsoft even released it under the Creative Commons license, the same license covering RSS 2.0.

      My first thought: "This sounds like a future MS Server attack vector to me". Please Microsoft (I know there are a few of you here), think of security first when you imple

    • Comment removed based on user account deletion

  • BAN? (Score:5, Interesting)

    by smoon ( 16873 ) on Sunday January 15, 2006 @06:00AM (#14474974) Homepage
    Radio controlled pacemaker? This will have to show up on 'CSI' pretty soon then. Would _you_ want a pacemaker that someone could re-program wirelessly? Say someone sitting behind you on the train/bus/subway/airplane?

    Or maybe they use some strong security... WEP anyone? Now that would be freaking hilarious. Security Alert: "We regret to inform you that your heart implant is vulnerable to a wireless attack. The risk is mitigated by the fact the attacker must be within 5 feet of you, and own a laptop with special radio components that can be built using plans freely available on the internet for about $26 in parts.Please do not worry, sue us, or be surprised if you die when your enemies figure this out."
    • Yeah - you have been heartattaXX0red.
    • Radio controlled pacemaker?
      They exist.
      Would _you_ want a pacemaker that someone could re-program wirelessly?
      Better than digging it out.
      Or maybe they use some strong security... WEP anyone?
      Obviously it would be and has been taken more seriously than that.

      • Re:BAN? (Score:5, Funny)

        by lifebouy ( 115193 ) on Sunday January 15, 2006 @01:02PM (#14476020) Journal
        Until, "It's a sad day for America. The President of the United States died last night. Sources are still sketchy, but the cause of death appears to be related to a Denial of Service attack aimed at the President's artificial heart. More news as it comes in..."
  • Driving is a privilege not a right - people should not have technology fill in for their lack if skill and/or concern. I used to drive professionaly, transports {tractor trailer}, school buses, furniture trucks, courier vans, taxi, etc and over the years I have taken 9 PDI { professional driver improvement} courses. More people should have greater concern for their driving habits and more people should have their liscences revoked for their thoughtless/reckless behaviour. It's not that I'm against tec
    • Another interesting problem, is that people rely on the technology that is there, instead of being more careful. Ever hear about those tests where drivers ended up worse WITH ABS brakes, rather than without?
    • "people should have greater concern for their driving habits and more people should have their liscences revoked for their thoughtless/reckless behaviour" Ditto here! I've been hit 4 times this past year- 3 of those times by "soccer moms" in their SUV's talking on the phone while driving, the fourth time by someone too impatient with the road construction in town (30 mph spd. lmt.!) to merge with predominate lane (had to get to Wal-Mart quick) and was hit-and-run incident. People nowdays on the road have n
      • I've been hit 4 times this past year- 3 of those times by "soccer moms" in their SUV's talking on the phone while driving, the fourth time by someone too impatient with the road construction in town

        Funny, I've never been hit by anybody in over 10 years, and I drive a lot.

        You've been hit once every 3 months last year? something tells me you don't know how to drive...
        • He never said he was driving when he was hit.

        • I was hit 3 times on the 2 last years. Parked! All the times, I was even out of the car.

          Annedotal evidence. It is kind of stupid to get conclusions from that.

        • Funny, I've never been hit by anybody in over 10 years, and I drive a lot.

          I'll bet that you live in a more rural area, and the GP lives in a more urban one. I dont know if there is research to support this, but I would bet that as you increase the number of drivers in a limited area, you increase the chance of a mishap.

          I have certianly noticed this after growing up in a small town, and moving to a medium sized city. In the small town even as a teenager I never even had a close call. Wheras I am a
    • Until the American government decides to provide decent mass transit for more than the pittance of areas that now have it, people who aren't godo drivers are going to still need to drive. Get on the horn to your local elected officials and make some noise.
  • By transmitting data to and receiving instructions from nearby base stations, BAN chips can reprogram your heartbeat at your doctor's office or make a diagnosis from a bedside wireless monitor at home.

    i find this scary there was a horrifying bugs in old computers that could be used remotely to purposes increase the CPU clock rate to rediculous levels resulting in serious damage.


    Since a dead CPU is the heart of a dead Computer
    i wouldnt want dead heart in my body
  • How about the so called HAN that was hyped by RedTacton?

    www.redtacton.com/en
  • From the article:
     
      Likewise, Microsoft says metadata searches will be integrated into its Vista OS, which ships later this year.
     
    Funny people, that.

  • Click here! (Score:5, Funny)

    by ceeam ( 39911 ) on Sunday January 15, 2006 @06:47AM (#14475073)
    I
    predict
    that
    fitting
    one-page-articles

    ...[Next>] ...
    on
    one
    web
    page

    ... [Buy now!]...
    will
    be
    hot
    in
    2006.

    ... [Argh!!! Your computer is infected!!! 8-[~~ ]...

    Ah,
    wishful
    thinking

    ...
  • Exactly how does that fit with HAN SOLO? Networks usually consist of more than one....

  • I prefer Personal Area Network (PAN), myself

    I remember reading about PAN's a good 10 years ago I would guess. It was to do with a technology that IBM were playing around with, passing a current and exchanging data through the subcutaneous layer under the skin. The idea was that you could have gadgets like a smart business card attached to your skin somewhere that would transmit your data and receive others. You would walk around a meeting shaking hands with people, linking your PAN with their PAN and y

    • But IBM owns patent rights to the use of the term Personal Area Network, of that I'm sure.

      No you're not. Usage of specific terms is governed by trademark, not patent. If they have a patent on that particular method, no one else can use it (without a license) no matter what they decide to call it. If they have a trademark for "Personal Area Network," then no one else can use that phrase for anything in the same market space. With a 4-digit UID you ought to know the difference between patent, trademark,

      • With a 4-digit UID you ought to know the difference between patent, trademark, & copyright by now
        Thats what I get for rushing a post 3 mins before I have to leave the house. You're quite right of cause.

  • Cheap comments (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Stan Vassilev ( 939229 ) on Sunday January 15, 2006 @07:44AM (#14475153)
    Total worth of 2 cents:

    ------------
    - Driver-Monitoring System

    As demonstrated earlier by Mercedes, here is one more next-gen driving system in your car that can fail in unexpected situations.

    No wonder that for mission critical systems in space ships, NASA still uses previous generation computers.

    - Body Area Network (BAN)

    Perfect marketing strategy: call little electornic devices you implant in your body "ban". Cue in music from the Matrix.

    There will be of course, major privacy concerns about this (imagine someone waving a small device around you and obtaining full personal info and medical records).

    - IPTV

    2006 is a bit earlier to call it a win for IPTV and a bit late to call it a "new concept" as well.

    - Metadata

    Again, why the heck is this called a "new" concept? OSX had it before 2006, office (and other apps) had it for years, but most importantly, Internet had it for ages and is already sick of it and deprecated it.

    Metadata in that context is just poor man's data indexing. Search engines in the past used metadata because they didn't have the brains and power to read the pages themselves, now Desktop search engines need that hack until smarter algorithms are developed.

    While I'm all for it, it's just too old to be new again.

    - NAND Flash Memory

    Uh 16 GB? Nope, 16Gb, err 2GB in other words. That said with those prices and sizes, you can still have a 2.5 inch hard disk sized Flash block at around 200GB capacity.

    Which will cost roughly $9000.

    - Nanoparticle Batteries / Micro Fuel Cells

    We've had revolutionary laptop and mobile batteries coming every next year and still nothing. I'd rather wait and see this time, instead of trusting the hype again.

    - SPIT

    Right, we have new tech concept for spamming. Thanks for mentioning it folks, just rub it in, won't ya.

    - EMR (electronic medical records)

    Hehe, wait until we have the "600 000 medical records lost (or stolen) from hospital X" news, following similar trends for other important electronic data we see nowadays.

    - Coal Gasification

    I prefer mine hard, but ok I have no clue about this anyway :) I just use electricity...

    - Perpendicular Storage

    They missed the more important news. It's not perpendicular storage, which is great but which most of us shouldn't care about, but what it enables and how it changes the HDD designs.

    2.5 inch designs are set to replace the current 3.5 inch drives on desktops (Seagate pioneers this move). the avdantages are:

    - much lower noise
    - higher rotation speed
    - much faster access time and reading speed
    - much less electricity spent (I think around 5-6 times less than current generation 3.5 inch disks)
    - they are a lot smaller and look pretty cute (yep I know I know..)

    With that you can have reasonably priced desktop 2.5 disks with capacity 160GB.

    I for one, welcome our new... ah forget it.
    ------------
    • Hehe, wait until we have the "600 000 medical records lost (or stolen) from hospital X" news, following similar trends for other important electronic data we see nowadays.

      Reminds me of this [tgdaily.com] article. It's backup data, but data is data.

      Our lives are being integrated into and eventually controlled by electrons, the very things we sought to control.

    • Re:Cheap comments (Score:3, Interesting)

      by scdeimos ( 632778 )
      I'll see your 2 cents and raise you half a cent...

      No wonder that for mission critical systems in space ships, NASA still uses previous generation computers.

      There's other reasons for that, including: proven technology, easier to shield against radiation, and money-poor budgets requiring re-use of hardware.

      There will be of course, major privacy concerns about this (imagine someone waving a small device around you and obtaining full personal info and medical records).

      These devices won't contain medica

  • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

    by account_deleted ( 4530225 )
    Comment removed based on user account deletion

  • Heart attack waiting to happen (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Hecatonchires ( 231908 ) on Sunday January 15, 2006 @09:54AM (#14475392) Homepage
    Havent read the article.

    Is there security on that? You know someone will walk through a crowd with a portable transmitter, setting everyone's pacemaker to 'off'. Some people are just antisocial. (Me, I'm cynical)
  • "I prefer Personal Area Network (PAN), myself."

    Agreed. Much better than wearing a old school deoderant brand, IMO. Of course, it does have a certain appeal in the slang. Maybe you could call these people "k-lined" or something. You know... Ed was K-Lined with a pacemaker. Come on... Klined. BANned... IRC... Wireless...

    Ok, I'll shut up now.

  • Well, I have a question ... (Score:3, Funny)

    by ScrewMaster ( 602015 ) on Sunday January 15, 2006 @03:02PM (#14476569)
    I prefer Personal Area Network (PAN), myself.

    Does this mean that a man with erectile dysfunction might be implanted with a peter PAN?

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