10 emerging technologies of 2008

Technology Review article

Interesting read.

IBM Brings Single-Atom Data Storage, Molecular Computers Closer to Reality

Physorg.com article
This is an Interesting discovery, I hope they can make use of it in the near future.

Copyright

Copyright
I’m sure most of the people are aware about copyright infringement over the internet. The MPAA and RIAA fight back ineffectively employing DRM measures and try to stop P2P by suing users as well as providers of such services.

In my opinion, the movie and recording industries are wrong about copyright and filesharing in multiple ways:
First of all, their business model is obsolete. Record companies are no longer needed. The internet provides a convenient and cheap way for artists to get music to their fans and to collect the money without a man in the middle that has to be paid a substantial part of the income. More and more artists should start selling their music themselves instead of relying on companies.
Moreover, even if _nobody_ would buy their music although they are popular because of P2P, they still could make a living by playing their music live. P2P does not make people stop going to concerts, after all.
Supporting this point is the fact that nobody should be entitled to make money long after the work is already done. At the moment, artists make a record in a few days, maybe weeks and they get money for the sales long after they finished the record. Naturally, their income increases with time. They make a CD, sell it, make a new CD, sell it and they still get money for their first CD then they make a third CD and get money for their third, second and first CD (although the money they get for the first two will be less). It’s basically “fire and forget”. You get money but you do not have to work for it. Furthermore, famous artists get a substantial amount of money from advertising deals. Spreading their music freely over the internet should only increase their popularity and therefore their income from such deals.
Artists won’t stop making music when they don’t get money for it. Humans will always make music as they always have, long before recording music was even thought of. I suppose the quality of the music would increase when nobody would have to pay for it. Only passionate musicians would write and perform songs and therefore there would be less junk that only serves to collect a quick buck.
The RIAA and the MPAA probably recognize that they are not needed and now they abuse the government as life support. I think we should unplug the machines that artificially lengthen their lives although their death is long overdue.

The strongest argument against copyright I can provide, however, is probably this:
We are living in a democracy. The idea is that the people can decide. Obviously, taking into account the popularity of file sharing, we could state that a whole lot more than 50% of the population do not support copyright or at least do not consider copyright infringement a crime. The majority of people are pro file sharing. The majority does not condemn copyright infringement. In my opinion, in a democracy it should therefore not be illegal.
The people have spoken!

Project Epoc Lets You Control Video Games With Your Mind

A company called Emotiv  showed off a new device that let’s you control a computer with your mind:

Picture

Being a tech freak, I’m very excited about the possibilities in this area. Being able to control computers simply with the power of mind would be great.

edit: Doing a little research at Wikipedia, I stumbled across the article about brain-computer interfaces. I never imagined research to be that advanced already. I never read about people being able to see after they were implanted BCIs.

edit2: An English article

Transrapid!?

There is an ongoing discussion about a Transrapid (German Maglev train) connection in Munich, connecting the Bavarian capital to Munich International Airport. Residents and politicians fight the project for whatever reasons they can find.

Maglev train technology was patented in Germany in 1941 and a test facility was constructed in 1987, however, as of 2007, no German commercial implementation exists. The Transrapid is a great concept that could one day replace conventional train systems but politicians and residents refuse to accept any plans to build a track. China was able to build a commercial track in 2 years (2000 – 2002) and it went into operation in 2004. Germany has had the technology for decades yet we are unable to build a regular track. I think it is a shame that a real technology of the future is hampered by petty considerations.

AACS consortium wants to prosecute Websites publishing title keys

http://www.golem.de/0701/50218.html

Why do they even try? It’s like fighting windmills. The title keys will be put or are already put on P2P networks and there is nothing they can do about this. Maybe you can also store the keys in a different format… Sometimes, programs are published as numbers which then are converted to machine code so that nobody can prosecute the publishers since numbers can be used freely. (illegal primes used, for example, to distribute deCSS) Perhaps you can do it the other way round and use an image or something else to encode the title key?

In my opinion, DRM is a horrible invention and deserves its doom.

Ultra-Dense Optical Storage — on One Photon

Ultra-Dense Optical Storage — on One Photon from PhysOrg.com

Researchers at the University of Rochester have made an optics breakthrough that allows them to encode an entire image’s worth of data into a photon, slow the image down for storage, and then retrieve the image intact.

[...]

Sounds interesting, I hope this will be commercially feasible in the near future.

Germany gets fucked

The Wii in Germany costs 250 Euro, which is about $330 compared to the North American price of $250 that is 32% more!!! This is usury! Prices for games were announced to be $50 in North America, whereas in Germany, I saw prices around 60 Euro, which is about $80!

I think the situation is similar in other European countries (even in GB not having the Euro)

The Euro is worth one third more than the dollar, so it should be cheaper!

HDTV outrage!

While reading a brochure from a popular electronics store in Germany, I noticed something about HD television sets: They are way too expensive and not powerful enough and customers get fucked by deceptive advertising!
In this example brochure (others were similar), there were 10 HDTV sets, 9 LCDs, 1 plasma. The sizes varied from 26” to 42” and prices ranged from 600 Euro (~$750) for the smaller ones to 1800 Euro (~$2250).
The curious thing is that none of these TVs had a correct resolution! The plasma TV had a resolution of 1024×768, which isn’t even 720p (1280×720), but even more disturbingly, all the LCDs had a resolution of 1366×768! What the fuck is this? There is either 1280×720 (720p) or 1920×1080 (1080i/p)! 1366×768 does not even exist in the HDTV system! (On Amazon.com, there are LCDs with this resolution, too, so this is not specific to Germany)
To use this resolution, the TV would have to scale the signal (in some really strange ratio), degrading image quality in the process! A 1080p signal would have to be downscaled by 1.41 (1920 / 1366) horizontally and by 1.5 (1080/768) vertically!? I’m not an expert on the subject, but I suspect it would cause a significant difference in image quality. Upscaling from a 720p signal would work somewhat better as both factors are almost(!) equal (~1.67).
Moreover, some of the LCDs are advertised as being capable of progressive scan mode… Is it even possible to output a progressive scan picture with such a resolution? Isn’t scaling disallowed when outputting with progressive scan? Maybe they don’t use the superfluous pixels when outputting progressive scan and they are only put in to deceive customers? (“Wow, this one has a resolution of 1366×768! It must be better than this one with 1280×720!!!”)

Furthermore, the prices in Germany are ridiculous. The biggest LCD panel (42”) costs roughly $2,250 having a non-standard 1366×768 resolution which is not even enough for 1080p! I did a quick search on Amazon.com and found a “Samsung LN-S4095D 40″ 1080p LCD HDTV“ for $1,799!!! A “Sony KDL-46V2500 46″ Bravia V-Series 1080p LCD HDTV” is available for $2,600!!! Note that the first one is only 2 inches smaller but capable of 1080p, which is significantly better and it costs over $400 less than the German one! On Amazon.de there is a single 1080p TV available: 37” for EUR 1.899,00 (~$2350)! Other than that, I don’t even remember SEEING a single 1080p TV available in Germany! Does this mean Germans are forced to buy crappy, underpowered TV sets that are ridiculously overpriced?

Customers in Germany get bent over and fucked! A person buying a 1366×768 LCD screen has to pay way too much money and does not get the full HD sensation that is so heavily advertised! The companies think, HD would dominate the market in a few years? I don’t see this coming true when customers don’t see a significantly better picture!