In the Rose Garden / [Nerd Alert] Hardware, and where it is going

_ J _ · Back to Top

Normally I would toss this up into the videos thread in IFD, but I wanted to actually generate some discussion on this one.

Microsoft made a bit of a splash today after the release of thier Microsoft Surface thinger...it is basically a monitor and graphics adapter that does the same thing as the hardware featured in the video I posted.

The thing is is that this technology has been available for about two to three years, depending on who you ask. There is mention in the youtube description that Apple has a patent on this and I would imagine that Microsoft has a similar one as well. (I don't want to start a business practice discussion, so don't try it)

The newest version of Windows could basically be described as Windows Pretty instead if Windows Vista. Almost ALL af the changes are superficial, as is/was the case with Office 2007. I think that its goofy, and I am not the only one. There are some kernel level changes, and also a few new security features but essentially it is just shinier.

One thing that is important though, is that the 64-bit builds of the OS can support up to 128GB of RAM. Windows XP was a primarily 32-bit OS, although there is a 64-but build version. This meant that you could use a maximum of 4GB of RAM and still see actual performance from it. Any RAM added after the 4GB level would mean essentially nothing, and could in fact cause that infamous "Blue Screen of Death".

The reason that I mention the RAM issues is that there were serious limitations on what a system could actually do, and I thnk that one of the primary reasons that we are seeing this "going public" is that there is now applications and hardware platforms that exist to actually do something with it.

There is (maybe was) an audio hardware company called MeTarix in Holland that was developing a sound card and software package that can learn to mimic human speech. The audio card was fairly advanced, but the application that was being co-developed along with the card was what attracted my interest. The program was called InfiniEar. What is was supposed to have done is learn how to speak English(or Dutch), from you. What you had to do was speak approximately 1000 words to it. Ideally it would be able to learn all the clicks and buzzes that your voice-box makes when you talk. The system would then be able to repeat back whole phrases and sentences in your voice, based not only on the words you spoke, but also from phonetic extrapolation applied to a pronunciation guide/dictionary. After learning the language from you, it was supposed to be able to learn new voices from individuals with only about 250 words.

At the time that I read the article, there was no way to interface that program with any text based files, such as word documents, but the intention was that the machine would be able to read your documents back you, read new ones from all kinds of places, and also record any speech that you should feel to throw at it into a word precessing document, all at once. Sadly, the company's website has dissappeared, and the article along with it.

The whole point of this ramble is to generate a discussion. Where do you think computer hardware is going?

I already have a bunch of ideas, but I would like to hear what you have to say before I start getting ever more wordy...

Imaginary Bad Bug · Back to Top

Thread over. emot-biggrin

Giovanna · Back to Top

Japan's been making those for years, dude. school-eng101

For one, I definitely don't think technology is moving toward 100% voice-driven anything. We have cell phones. With voicemail. But people text message each other. There's privacy in the keyboard that a lot of us aren't going to part with. How many people cybering have SOs/family members in earshot?

As for Vista, the RAM expansion is great, but I kinda don't blame them for the lack of development. Where were they supposed to go from XP? The potential technology has improved but what the common user does with Windows hasn't changed much or gotten a whole lot more dynamic. That there's 3095729548263 versions of the software though is seriously fucking disgusting to me. At the same time, I realize we can't give people the benefit of the doubt to take a full version with installation options and know to balance performance drain with what they'll use. A business version and a home version should suffice. At any rate you can only streamline checking e-mail so much. Frankly, a lot of us more 'hardcore' users don't utilize half of what Windows offers anyway. I don't use Microsoft's internet browser, video player, mp3 player, etc, etc.

What I want to see is when we figure out how to have a scanner watch the movement of your eyes and lead the mouse where you're looking. I see no reason this can't be done.

Stormcrow · Back to Top

The eye scanner thingy could be built with existing technology I would think, and is probably in development right now, but sensitivity is difficult to control. Your eyes shift around a great deal just in the act of focusing on stuff, so it'd be a little tricky for the thingy to decide when you were trying to scan and when it should stay put. Then there's the fact the fast, high-res scanning required by mice requires a pretty intense light signal that would probably damage your retina after prolonged exposure. That's why your mouse becomes noticeably dimmer as soon as you raise it off of the surface of your desk. For that matter, the technology exists to draw images directly on your eyes with lasers instead of using a cumbersome monitor screen, but I'm thinking safety is a factor in that development too.

There are a lot of other weird gadgets on the horizon, but it's hard to tell which ones will become consumer products and which ones will just fade away. I'm particularly excited about the input device that read the electric impulses in your brain directly, skipping the pathway from your brain to you fingers. As far as software goes, Microsoft has been saying for some time that we're on the edge of the web app era. So instead of installing Office on your machine, you'll log onto the Office website and produce your content that way. I'm not quite sure how I feel about that, but it's probably inevitable. On the hardware front, AMD is looking into the possibility of putting the graphics processor on the same die with the central processor in some sort of mix-and-match configuration, like perhaps two graphics cores, a math core, and three or four logic cores.

About the only up-and-coming computing thing I'm confident will happen soon is the end of PATA ribbon cables. And good riddance. SATA > PATA.

_ J _ · Back to Top

Giovanna wrote:
Japan's been making those for years, dude.

Never said they were new. Said Microsoft is pushing them.

Giovanna wrote:
For one, I definitely don't think technology is moving toward 100% voice-driven anything. We have cell phones. With voicemail. But people text message each other. There's privacy in the keyboard that a lot of us aren't going to part with. How many people cybering have SOs/family members in earshot?

I don't think its a matter of total replacement. more the possibility of having a completely voice-based system.

Giovanna wrote:
stuff about Vista/Microsoft in general

quoted for truth, and most of a win

Stormcrow wrote:
There are a lot of other weird gadgets on the horizon, but it's hard to tell which ones will become consumer products and which ones will just fade away. I'm particularly excited about the input device that read the electric impulses in your brain directly, skipping the pathway from your brain to you fingers. As far as software goes, Microsoft has been saying for some time that we're on the edge of the web app era. So instead of installing Office on your machine, you'll log onto the Office website and produce your content that way. I'm not quite sure how I feel about that, but it's probably inevitable. On the hardware front, AMD is looking into the possibility of putting the graphics processor on the same die with the central processor in some sort of mix-and-match configuration, like perhaps two graphics cores, a math core, and three or four logic cores.

The WebApp ideal is too fundamentally flawed from a security standpoint to really have any kind of real business application, although I could see college students humping bandwidth to death come finals. Genuine mutli-core process is "here" now, but the chips tend towards expensive. Even the hyper-threading stuff that intel uses on the chips that Dell is selling is pretty nifty. Combine a hyperthread capability with a genuine Duo-core processor, and you are looking at (4) processors on one chip. The raw performance is seriously affected, but if combined with some of the code used to make Beowulf clusters out of old machines in parallel process and you can get ridiculous performance.

Stormcrow wrote:
About the only up-and-coming computing thing I'm confident will happen soon is the end of PATA ribbon cables. And good riddance. SATA > PATA.

As long as IDE floppy drives keep getting sold, there will always be PATA cables, but I share your sentiment.

Stormcrow · Back to Top

People still buy floppy drives? But, but, why?

OK, I know why, it's just annoying. Maybe we need a SATA interface for floppy dirves? emot-tongue

Tamago · Back to Top

Imaginary Bad Bug wrote:
http://mural.uv.es/jotocor/alex_vicen/s … _thumb.jpg

Thread over.

You're half right but could you imagine if Windows still had a stranglehold on OS for persocoms?
THIS!

Giovanna · Back to Top

About SATA and PATA, I must admit I'm guilty of still using PATA. The last time I tried to move to SATA (looong time ago), I just couldn't get the drives to work, Windows was very disagreeable about installing to the blank drives. I'd do my homework better now, but PATA is getting phased out bit by bit anyway, isn't it?

This is me saying one of you smartyasses is gonna help me install a clean OS on an SATA drive. Boy I made myself an embarrassing mess last time. emot-redface

Yasha · Back to Top

No problem. Between J and I, I'm sure we can get it hacked out.

Imaginary Bad Bug · Back to Top

Tamago wrote:
Imaginary Bad Bug wrote:
http://mural.uv.es/jotocor/alex_vicen/s … _thumb.jpg

Thread over.
You're half right but could you imagine if Windows still had a stranglehold on OS for persocoms?
THIS!
http://i117.photobucket.com/albums/o50/ … omo013.jpg

How true, how true.

Now, what if we somehow developed KAGE OS? Kashira, kashira, gozonji kashira?

Giovanna · Back to Top

Yasha wrote:
No problem. Between J and I, I'm sure we can get it hacked out.

Hot. I was thinking about maybe upgrading later in the fall, I understand Intel's going to be dropping prices hardcore this summer. Hard drives and RAM and such are so much cheaper than they used to be, even for the good stuff. etc-wankgirl It's going to be interesting seeing the RAM expansion, though. Right now no one ever assumes you're going to pack more than 4gb into a system.

Imaginary Bad Bug wrote:
Now, what if we somehow developed KAGE OS? Kashira, kashira, gozonji kashira?

I had a joke set up about how that's probably the OS Akio uses to program the projector....but I happen to know uberprojectors run on NT. emot-redface

#1 | Back to Top05-30-2007 07:10:19 PM

[Nerd Alert] Hardware, and where it is going

#2 | Back to Top05-30-2007 08:31:11 PM

Re: [Nerd Alert] Hardware, and where it is going

#3 | Back to Top05-30-2007 09:18:37 PM

Re: [Nerd Alert] Hardware, and where it is going

#4 | Back to Top05-30-2007 11:12:32 PM

Re: [Nerd Alert] Hardware, and where it is going

#5 | Back to Top05-31-2007 09:41:55 PM

Re: [Nerd Alert] Hardware, and where it is going

Giovanna wrote:

Giovanna wrote:

Giovanna wrote:

Stormcrow wrote:

Stormcrow wrote:

#6 | Back to Top05-31-2007 10:31:38 PM

Re: [Nerd Alert] Hardware, and where it is going

#7 | Back to Top06-01-2007 02:35:33 AM

Re: [Nerd Alert] Hardware, and where it is going

Imaginary Bad Bug wrote:

#8 | Back to Top06-01-2007 01:53:17 PM

Re: [Nerd Alert] Hardware, and where it is going

#9 | Back to Top06-01-2007 02:20:20 PM

Re: [Nerd Alert] Hardware, and where it is going

#10 | Back to Top06-01-2007 03:32:03 PM

Re: [Nerd Alert] Hardware, and where it is going

Tamago wrote:

Imaginary Bad Bug wrote:

#11 | Back to Top06-01-2007 04:17:30 PM

Re: [Nerd Alert] Hardware, and where it is going

Yasha wrote:

Imaginary Bad Bug wrote:

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