What if you could know everything about your network? Instead of getting snapshots — albeit very rapid snapshops — you could see the path of every packet and run basic analytics on that stream of data in real time? It’s the difference between watching a Pixar cartoon as opposed to viewing a flip book. And that changes things.
Posts tagged "computers"
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How big data will change networking →
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Breaking the Genome Bottleneck →
The genomic data generated from next-generation sequencing machines doesn’t amount to much more than alphabet soup if it’s not subjected to significant computational processing and statistical analysis. For the data to be useful, the trick is to turn those As, Ts, Gs, and Cs into a manageable description of disease risks and other genetic predispositions. That requires a lot of computational power and time—already a significant bottleneck for some genomic analysis companies.
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Intel Futurist Discusses Data's Secret Life, the Ghost of Computing and How We Should Attack Fear →
In 2010 Brian David Johnson became Intel Corp.’s first futurist, a time-honored title bestowed on prognosticating technology mavens dating back to the likes of Jules Verne and H. G. Wells. Equal parts seer and evangelist, Johnson helps map out the future of technology and then guides his company toward that destination, whether it is five years or even a decade away.
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'Bullet time' to stop cyber attacks on power grids →
IN THE MATRIX, the famous “bullet time” effect showed how Keanu Reeves’s character Neo was able to sway out of the path of incoming bullets, as time appeared to slow. Now the film has inspired engineers to develop a way to cope with cyber attacks on crucial infrastructure, such as electricity grids, water utilities and banking networks.
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Swiss scientists create mind-controlled robot for disabled patients →
A team of scientists at Switzerland’s École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne have developed a robot that can be controlled using only your mind. The new technology was demonstrated earlier this week, and involved a quadriplegic man wearing a cap to record his brain signals, which were then transferred to a small wheeled robot that he could move left and right simply by thinking it.
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An analog quantum computer made of cold atoms used to simulate electrons' spins →
Many of the most exciting properties of materials arise due to interactions between electrons. Correlations between electrons’ spins are involved in magnetism and may be responsible for high-temperature superconductivity—yet it’s tough to get theory to match our experimental results. The major reason for the difficulty lies in how quickly they scale: the more interactions between spins, the more difficult it is to calculate their effects. As few as 30 interacting spins reaches the limits of modern computers.
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Bangalore India slum kids use open-source software to learn computer skills →
When kids from the slum neighborhood of Bengaluru in Bangalore, South India learn to use free computer ‘open-source’ software, they also learn important lessons in freedom and gender equality.
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Wearable Computers Are the Next Big Devices, Report Says →
The wearable computing wars are about to begin, says a report released Tuesday by Forrester Research.
The report predicts that consumers will begin experimenting more with wearables over the coming year, specifically around health and fitness, navigation, social networking and gaming. This new theme among consumers will hasten big tech companies to begin creating wearable computing products.
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How Computers Are Creating a Second Economy Without Workers →
When the disappointing jobs numbers were reported last week (employers added 120,000 jobs in March, about half the number reported in the two previous months), analysts tripped over themselves looking for an explanation. Of course, jobs numbers are bound to vary, but in my view the long-term trend calls for more jobs to disappear, and the reason is clear as day: the exploding Second Economy.
The Second Economy — a term the economist Brian Arthur uses to describe the computer-intensive portion of the economy — is, quite simply, the virtual economy. One of its main byproducts is the replacement of low-productivity workers with computers. It’s growing by leaps and bounds, brimming with optimistic entrepreneurs, and spawning a new generation of billionaires. In fact, the booming Second Economy will probably drive much of the economic growth in the coming decades.
Unfortunately, the Second Economy will not create many jobs.
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Opening the gate to robust quantum computing: New technique for solid-state quantum info processing →
A group led by U.S. Department of Energy’s Ames Laboratory physicist Viatsheslav Dobrovitski and including scientists at Delft University of Technology; the University of California, Santa Barbara; and University of Southern California, made this big step forward on the path to using the motions of single electrons and nuclei for quantum information processing. The discovery opens the door to robust quantum computation with solid-state devices and using quantum technologies for magnetic measurements with single-atom precision at nanoscale.
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A quantum network built with two atoms and fiber optic cable →
In an ordinary computer network, data in the form of binary numbers are transferred from one machine (node) to another via some sort of electronic signal, either electrical or optical. The success of this transfer comes when the recipient has precisely the same set of binary figures that were sent. In a quantum network, the “data” is a quantum state—the particular configuration of an atom’s energy, spin, etc.—and the transfer of information is successful if the state is reproduced in a separate quantum system some distance away.
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Opinion: In the digital age, everyone is becoming a spook →
In a poll published last week by the American magazine Consumer Reports, 71% of adults polled confessed to being very concerned about Internet companies abusing their personal information. But what this poll failed to ask was whether we fear governmental abuse of our online data as much as abuse from private companies.
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Rise of "forever day" bugs in industrial systems threatens critical infrastructure →
The number of security holes that remain unpatched in software used to control refineries, factories, and other critical infrastructure is growing. It’s becoming so common that security researchers have coined the term “forever days” to refer to the unfixed vulnerabilities.
The latest forever day vulnerability was disclosed in robotics software marketed by ABB, a maker of ICS (industrial control systems) for utilities and factories. According to an advisory (PDF) issued last week by the US Cyber Emergency Response Team, the flaw in ABB WebWare Server won’t be fixed even though it provides the means to remotely execute malicious code on computers that run the application.
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World's first flexible e-paper display heads into mass production →
LG on Thursday unveiled the world’s first plastic e-paper display, which the company claims will “revolutionize the E-Book market.” The 6-inch E Ink display features 1,024 x 768-pixel resolution and can bend at an angle of up to 40 degrees. “With the world’s first plastic EPD, LG Display has once again proven its reputation for leadership and innovation with a product we believe will help greatly popularize the E-Book market,” said Mr. Sang Duck Yeo, Head of Operations for LG Display’s Mobile/OLED division. “Based on our success in mass-producing plastic EPD, we are excited as we look toward applying concepts from this experience to future developments like plastic OLED and flexible displays.” The display will be supplied to manufacturing companies in China first, and end-user products could launch in Europe as soon as the beginning of next month.
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Researchers find a way to keep quantum memory and logic in synch →
A quantum computer, like any other computer, requires a way to store and retrieve information. In other words, some sort of memory. But because of the rich quantum entanglement gooey center of quantum computing, the memory and the logic need to be linked in a manner that’s very different from that in classical computing: the magic of entanglement.
