Physics is so unbearably sexy. It's a cave and an office and a research facility and they're shooting signal beams of particles through the earth with giant tunnels bored through the planet and filled with pipes and lights and equipment. Nobody else does these things! Well, except maybe high reliability data centers.
To me it sounds incredibly petulant and defensive, especially considering that it basically contradicts the "always connected" header which it's footnoting.
~Always connected!
~PS OBVIOUSLY this computer will not ACTUALLY be always connected in the REAL WORLD, what were you expecting
"Raw resources are no longer the main basis for our economy"
It's fashionable to talk about information- and service-based economies, but that's not evolving beyond raw resources; it's merely taking them for granted. We consume ridiculous amounts of raw resources. Just look at what happens every time the price of oil rises.
We still need raw materials, but the value of raw materials only makes up a small fraction of the total value of a modern economy.
In the past, raw materials were the majority of the economy, and this meant they were worth fighting over. Nowadays raw materials worth very little compared to things like having good infrastructure, an educated workforce, etc.
I don't know how you reconcile your opinion with our obvious and painful dependency on oil and all the conflict that results. Do you really think that matters "very little"? Where do you think the good infrastructure comes from?
Yes, education and infrastructure determine the heights an economy can reach, but without raw materials you have no economy. That's why it's worth fighting over.
I didn't say raw material don't matter; just that they're a small part of any developed economy. Usually raw materials only make up around 5% GDP for developed nations.
Modern warfare is hugely expensive, and it will result in huge damage to that country's infrastructure and workforce. So you'll wind up crippling 95% of their economy in order to steal a small proportion of the remaining 5%. It's unlikely you'll even break even.
It's far more profitable to trade. No infrastructure is destroyed, and you get a feedback loop of wealth creation.
I suspect that much of the trouble with this is twofold; a) 'very rare cases' has this habit of becoming commonplace in practice, and b) who other than the accused could reasonably determine whether he is being defended to his satisfaction? You could posit "defense" attorneys whose interests lie in subverting the process.
In short, you say you don't see any huge problems, but that sounds a little like Fermat saying he can't fit a proof in the margin. I suspect that if you look further you'll start seeing problems :p
You have to keep in mind that "nanotechnology" as a concept is not that useful in outlining applications and how they're engineered. You could equally well define refrigerators, wheels, motor vehicles and chairs as "macrotechnology," right? But that's not giving you any insight into the problems that are being solved.
There will be some areas of research where Intel's photolithography improvements are relevant and others where they're completely orthogonal, like repairing human tissue. That's just how these things go. :)
This is huge. Maybe their implementation will take off and maybe it won't, but either way this is a tacit admission by the WSJ that the WikiLeaks model will be a serious part of what it means to commit journalism going forward.
All of the lawyerly caveats have to be taken in context of that you have a major US media organization now following in the footsteps of a widely disparaged and isolated vigilante organization. This is just standard CYA protocol.
