Up until now, harddisk sizes used to double aout once per year.
But can the industry keep up with this trend. Researchers investigated the storage industry and came to the conclusion that they won't keep up this speed.
New technologies are being developed, but more often they will improve the quality of the disk rather than increase it's capacity.
Technologies like Serial ATA will make connection multiple harddisks cheaper and faster, but won't increase the sizes.
Harddisks aren't the only field of speculations. Optical disks like DVD also get new technological advancements, but here the different standards hold back evolution.
And the good old tape drives. They are supposed to be out of use, but every once in a while, some company comes up with another improvement making them bigger or faster.
In 2004 storage tools like portable USB sticks will florish the market, or so is speculated. New products with encryption will look cool and useful to some, but rather complicated to others.
Corporate users with big network-attached storage (NAS) tools will also have a hard time in 2004. The systems will get faster, bigger and with many more options.
Will administrators be able to find the best tool for the job in thousands of new products? Will they be compatible with previous installations? Probably not, which will increase the cost of investment, at which point corporate users might decide to keep there existing configuration and not profit from the new technologies.
What do Elrond (Lord of the Rings) and Agent Smith (The Matrix) have in comon
Well, they are both played by the same actor, the Australian actor Hugo Weaving.
A point was raised by a group of professors about philosophical issues around some of the latest movies, The Matrix and The Lord of the Rings.
Metaphysics asks: What makes something real or not real? If all that exists is matter and motion, what is a mind? Can a computer like Agent Smith, Neo's nemesis, have a mind?
Epistemology asks: What is the nature of knowledge? "Skeptics say we can't acquire knowledge by means of the senses, because we can't be certain that what our senses tell us is true.". So how can we be certain that we're not living in the matrix?
Dralion, the new show, was touring the USA and Canada before, but comes to Belgium in 2004.
I saw there previous show, Saltimbanco, and was rather impressed by it. It's not just a circus, there are no animals, but it's a complete show which has circus acts included. The sales for Dralion opened today, almost 1 year before the actual show, and surprisingly, people are already buying tickets.
World number one Garry Kasparov tied his final game with the chess program X3D Fritz, meaning the exciting and sometimes emotional tournament ended in a draw. Experts say that although computers keep getting faster and smarter, humans seem to be keeping up.
This being good news for the human race, I guess.
Previous chess match with Kasparov at one end of the table and the IBM computer Deep Bleu were settled in favor of the computer.
Another chess match between Vladimir Kramnik, current world champion, and an earlier version of the Fritz computer program also ended in a draw.
Another match, between 2 machines (Fritz vs Deep Blue) was settled in favor of Fritz.
I wnet to see the matrix revolutions this weekend. The third and final movie from The MAtrix trilogy.
I was a little disappointedbut somehow already expected the third one to not be as good as the first or even the second.
My opinion is the first one is the best because of the very original story andthe questions it rises. Also the camera effects are rather innovative.
The second one isn't too bad because of the action in it. Here the camera effects are taken up an extra level, combined with amazing action scenes the movie turns out to be quite a thrill.
The third one has nothing of all that. Ok, granted, the camera effects are still there, but they aren't new anymore. The action is alot less and the story is not all that.
But still, one should go and see it. If not for the story and the action, just for the hype maybe.
The next movie on the menu ... Lord of the Rings, the Return of the King. And that promises to be one hell of a movie, even if it's the third one in the saga.
On some fields in software, MS isn't doing as good as it would want to do.
For example animated webpages. Macromedia has a huge lead with its flash player. And that's what MS tries to counter now.
A new toolset, code named Sparkle, would be integrated with Microsoft's .NET to allow developer easy acces to flash-like animations.
The new roudn of Planetia, a browser based game, is about to start. We did quite well in the last round, finishing in the sub-top and we are going to try to do even better this time.
If you wish to play with us, consider joining the #pillager channel on the irc.fryingdutch.net network.
Rainy ...
Huge domain ...
Big lakes ...
Rather small subtropical pool ...
Guess what. We went to centerparcs this weekend.
It was really fun, the wether could be better, but there was enough indoor entertainment. I even got to know a new game ("Colonisten van Catan") and new rules to an existing game ("Risk").
During the weekend, 12 persons were gathered into 2 cottages, we had our private cooks and there was a dishwasher in the bungalow. What more can you wish ?
Maybe a better pool at centerparcs ? Ok, granted, but the centerparcs at Vossemeren has a great domain to compensate.
