2012 is the year of Finux on the the portable!

Medical health professionals are already reporting that many patients are able to do self diagnosis with the help of 'net research. "They come to us for confirmation of what they've already figured out."

Given the lack of access to quality health care in even 1st world societies, imagine the empowerment to diagnose biomedical ailments at the molecular level from commonly available handheld devices at home. http://www.nano.org.uk/news/1705

The ability to do real-time PCR(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polymerase_chain_reaction), immunoassays to detect bacteria, viruses and cancers based on antigen-antibody reactions, dielectrophoresis, and other techniques would have an immense impact on general human health and treatment in the hands of qualified health professionals and citizens.

Doctors working in third world and inaccessible regions would have an incalculable leg up, not having to wait for non-existent sample testing.

I don't see this as a project for basement tinkerers, but the technology is coming along. Health care costs are threating to overwhelm world economies as populations burgeon and life expectancies increase.

I'll leave it to the other cynics to burst this bubble. I'd like to think there are still some optimistic dreamers out there. Let's hear some feedback from some of those, please.

Neal Stephenson always bears referring:

Mother Earth Motherboard: http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/4.12/ffglass_pr.html



Most of the fishing-related damage is caused by trawlers, which tow big sacklike nets behind them. Trawlers seem designed for the purpose of damaging submarine cables. Various types of hardware are attached to the nets. In some cases, these are otter boards, which act something like rudders to push the net's mouth open. When bottom fish such as halibut are the target, a massive bar is placed across the front of the net with heavy tickler chains dangling from it; these flail against the bottom, stirring up the fish so they will rise up into the maw of the net.

Mere impact can be enough to wreck a cable, if it puts a leak in the insulation. Frequently, though, a net or anchor will snag a cable. If the ship is small and the cable is big, the cable may survive the encounter. There is a type of cable, used up until the advent of optical fiber, called 21-quad, which consists of 21 four-bundle pairs of cable and a coaxial line. It is 15 centimeters in diameter, and a single meter of it weighs 46 kilograms. If a passing ship should happen to catch such a cable with its anchor, it will follow a very simple procedure: abandon it and go buy a new anchor.

But modern cables are much smaller and lighter - a mere 0.85 kg per meter for the unarmored, deep-sea portions of the FLAG cable - and the ships most apt to snag them, trawlers, are getting bigger and more powerful. Now that fishermen have massacred most of the fish in shallower water, they are moving out deeper. Formerly, cable was plowed into the bottom in water shallower than 1,000 meters, which kept it away from the trawlers. Because of recent changes in fishing practices, the figure has been boosted to 2,000 meters. But this means that the old cables are still vulnerable.

When a trawler snags a cable, it will pull it up off the seafloor. How far it gets pulled depends on the weight of the cable, the amount of slack, and the size and horsepower of the ship. Even if the cable is not pulled all the way to the surface, it may get kinked - its minimum bending radius may be violated. If the trawler does succeed in hauling the cable all the way up out of the water, the only way out of the situation, or at least the simplest, is to cut the cable. Dave Handley once did a study of a cable that had been suddenly and mysteriously severed. Hauling up the cut end, he discovered that someone had sliced through it with a cutting torch.

There is also the obvious threat of sabotage by a hostile government, but, surprisingly, this almost never happens. When cypherpunk Doug Barnes was researching his Caribbean project, he spent some time looking into this, because it was exactly the kind of threat he was worried about in the case of a data haven. Somewhat to his own surprise and relief, he concluded that it simply wasn't going to happen. "Cutting a submarine cable," Barnes says, "is like starting a nuclear war. It's easy to do, the results are devastating, and as soon as one country does it, all of the others will retaliate.



Copyright © 1993-2004 The Condé Nast Publications Inc. All rights reserved.

Copyright © 1994-2003 Wired Digital, Inc. All rights reserved.

This is the DIY, open source version. Kinda clunky, but open and accessible. He's obviously a proponent of accessible education, a welcome sentiment.

The Apple/Nokia/Samsung version will be flip-phone configuration, no user serviceable or accessible parts, locked down and impossible to open up without destroying. It will feature multiple wireless protocols, wireless probes and accessories. It will not be upgradeable, and will be created as a designed obsolescence, throw away device. While you use it to explore the world around you, it will be gathering all your data to explore and categorize you.

It will also be backed by a war chest of patents used to deny the populace or small businesses from creating their own cheap, open, accessible versions.

Scoff all you like, but enjoy this handiwork while you still can. Or at least applaud.

Or somehow different than your microphone and webcam featured laptop? iPad anyone? Oh that's right, whenever an App has access to your cam a little light blinks to let you know.

Whew. Glad that's settled.

No country, big or small, is going to issue or back anonymous, untraceable digital currency. You might think they have. But it will be backdoored. Bet your boots.

The only untraceable cash the US is going to issue and distribute will be pallet loads of $100 bills. "Oops, it seems we've misplaced several billion dollars in 'small' bills. Oh well, chalk it up to a rounding error. At least it was only billions."

Have you researched the estate tax at all?

There are several credits against the tentative tax, the most important of which is a "unified credit" which can be thought of as providing for an "exemption equivalent" or exempted value with respect to the sum of the taxable estate and the taxable gifts during lifetime. For a person dying during 2006, 2007, or 2008, the "applicable exclusion amount" is $2,000,000, so if the sum of the taxable estate plus the "adjusted taxable gifts" made during lifetime equals $2,000,000 or less, there is no federal estate tax to pay. According to the Economic Growth and Tax Relief Reconciliation Act of 2001, the applicable exclusion increased to $3,500,000 in 2009, the estate tax was repealed for estates of decedents dying in 2010, but then the Act "sunsets" in 2011 and the estate tax was to reappear with an applicable exclusion amount of only $1,000,000. However, On December 16, 2010, Congress passed the Tax Relief, Unemployment Insurance Reauthorization, and Job Creation Act of 2010, which was signed into law by President Barack Obama on December 17, 2010. The 2010 Act changed, among other things, the rate structure for estates of decedents dying after December 31, 2009, subject to certain exceptions. It also served to reunify the estate tax credit (aka exemption equivalent) with the federal gift tax credit (aka exemption equivalent). The gift tax exemption is now equal to $5,000,000.

Let's look at that again. The gift tax exemption is now equal to $5,000,000.

I remember seeing an aircraft of some sort in the daytime with a trail of fire coming out of the back of it. It was too far up to see if or what kind of wings it had. Didn't seem to be a rocket. Moved slow like a passenger jet. Never did figure out what it might have been. Was on the Northwest coast of USA.

Point taken about looting. Also, a distinction needs to be made between a duplication technique that actually reproduces a functioning item through molecular deposition of different elements, and what on the other hand is basically simply a plastic model.

The first possibility seems pretty far off in the future. Probably not for giant laboratories with force tunneling microscopes and inert atmosphere or vacuum facilities. But for the home? The economies of having the space for the equipment, buying the equipment, and getting feedstocks of pure elements is going to probably be accessible only to the super-rich for a long time to come. Not to mention the need for tech support, probably in the way of a dedicated position for an employee. A private size model with attendant equipment and storage is still going to be size of an entire large room, at least.

And why would most people bother when they can take advantage of the economy of scale and low prices of traditional industries, and the often low-waged labor used to produce it?

You'd only bother, likely, if you were trying to produce something that was illegal or banned from possession by the general populace. Which, given the ever intrusive nature of government will probably become more of an issue as time goes on. Again, however, why would you build up something like, say, a personal sidearm atom by atom, when it can be so easily created with a lathe and traditional metal working tools?

Lastly, the items most likely to be produced in the home would be commonplace modern banalities like toasters, smartphones, and toothbrushes. Not exactly a treasure trove for future garbage miners.

The "Diamond Age" vision of a replicator in every home with subscription to a "Feed" of raw materials is just not going to happen anytime soon. I could see a hacker collective maintaining one, but as soon as they run afoul of law enforcement, boom, single point of failure.

If/when civilization collapses, we're going to need examples of past technology. Everything from the butter churn on up. What if you were trying to recreate a movie projector and found that only the casing was preserved, with no internal workings? I understand the health issue for the public, but they should mothball one of those intact.

One function of museums is to be a repository of knowledge, art, and technology, for future generations. It's not the only function, but I would argue that it's the most important function. It's not just a display that you look at for entertainment.

Cory Doctorow has a book, Makers, from 2009 (available for DRM free download http://craphound.com/makers/download/ ) that talks about distributed open source museum spaces. Three years later the Smithsonian announces they're going to offer a part of the collection for worldwide printing.>

That's great. It will serve the surface educational mission of museums. Multimedia exhibition. But if you're at a post sea-rise far inland Argentinian coast trying to figure out how to make a steam engine, how are you going to make use of a rotting polymer copy?

They did this for a while. Maybe still? About 10-12 years ago. I forget what the market-speak trade name for it was. But they sampled at 1 Ghz. The trade magazines were divided in their opinions, and it must have died a fine death in the marketplace since no one here has referenced it This was definitely a recording format. .

I think we have to differentiate between mobile and home/studio listening. Considering the average playback hardware, for listening, 16/44 is fine for the 99.999 percent of listeners. For mobile listening 192kbps MP3 will exceed the needs of most. I prefer 320 kbps because it makes percussion sound better.

Most people listen in a car, bus, at work, on the job, etc. Low noise floor and dynamic range are moot. the reproduction amplifiers in cheap phone/pods aren't up to the task anyway, much less the average headphone/earbud.

I hesitate to use the term "audiophile" because of its pejorative connotation, but for people with above average sensitivity in hearing and training in sound artifacts, I think high resolution files are a good thing. Not only for private listening, but for a possible future when we regain a public domain and the remixing/sampling world takes off again.

For an analogy, think of DVD compilations of old TV shows that were encoded from tapes of television broadcasts. They look...ok...but when they go back to the original masters and re-release them there is an appreciable difference. Strangely though, consumer television/video playback formats are increasing in resolution, while common audio formats have been regressing.

Methinks you don't spend a lot of time on a bus. I have. I have rarely - no, make that never - heard an important cell phone call on the bus.

They usually go along the lines of:
"Aw damn, no you didn't."
"...and then she.... And then she did, again!"
"I'm so sick of your shit. Listen to me. (louder) Listen to me!"

It's always just inane crap. They're just trying to amuse themselves. Obnoxiously. It's amusing only to themselves.