Dana Blankenhorn

This Week's Clue: Final Five: Moore's Law

A-Clue.Com will cease in its present form at the end of the year. It will be moving here, becoming a regular weekly feature of the DanaBlankenhorn.Com blog.

To celebrate this change I  have five essays on the main topics this blog has covered in its decade of e-mail existence, looking mainly at their present and future. First, last week, was e-commerce, the original beat here. Today I have an essay on Moore's Law. Next week features The World of Always-On, then we go on Political Cycles, before finishing up with a big Internet Future essay.

Enjoy.

 

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Gordon Moore doesn't agree with me about Moore's Law.

His statement from last year, that Moore's Law is dead,  was narrowly drawn and true as far as it went. Fact is the closer you bring circuit lines together, the bigger the magnetic interference when you run electricity through them. Beyond that there is a theoretical limit – when lines get within 1 nanometer of one another, they cease to be separate lines.

But the Moore's Law Process is very much alive. We see it in hard drive capacity, where disk sizes double at the same price every 18 months or so like clockwork. We see it in optical drives, where every few years features a dispute between manufacturers over technology that's 10 times better than what came before. We see it in optical cable, where the use of different colors lets makers pack ever-more bits down the same pipe. We see it in wireless, where improved digital signal processors enable a 802.11n modem to run 10 times faster than an 802.11b, on the same frequency spectrum.

We even see it at Intel, in the chip sector. The company bit the bullet on its designs two years ago, and now pushes ahead with lower-power chip technologies and multiple processors on a chip. The quad chips of today are indeed four times faster than the single processor chips of three years ago, just as Moore's Law would have predicted.

The 1966 Game: Who's Sinatra Now?

Let's refresh our memories from last week.

Frank Sinatra was important because he switched sides in the 1960s, moving from left to right across your political spectrum. He symbolized the journey millions of those in what Tom Brokaw later called "The Greatest Generation" made during that time.

That's why the singer was a champ.

This journey has not been credited by enough historians. Most historians were too busy looking at the hippies and the yippies and the Black Panthers. It was the reaction to this extremism that mattered to the future, not the extremism itself.

This is a very important lesson for our time. When you see people like Tim LeHaye getting prime air time to predict the end of the world, or hear mass murder referred to constantly as cleaning out by so-called "experts" (most of whom would shit their pants if they had to do the cleaning) that's extremism.

What we should be looking for, all of us, is the reaction. In fact, the reaction is what we should be participating in. We should be looking for new ways to describe our political world, new ways to engage in it, new myths to describe it, new values to follow. (Check.)

So who's Frank Sinatra now?

Who Needs Trade Shows?

Among the great memories of my life are computer trade shows, especially Comdex. Just the other day I was telling my son about one year where I got so excited, the day before the show, that I walked from the Tropicana (where I was staying) all the way downtown and back -- about 20 miles. Then I covered 10 venues, switching to sneakers only on the third day.

But I was younger then. And stupider.

Now I wonder why trade shows exist at all. And so does the industry. Does anyone miss Comdex? I don't. Will anyone miss E3? I won't.

We Wuz Robbed!

At least this time we're not alone.

I was prepared this weekend to write a long screed about how the U.S. was robbed in both the Italy and Ghana games (abusive red cards in the first, a bogus penalty kick in the second) until I watched the "octovo finals" over the weekend and saw how commonplace it is.

Refereeing a football match well is as hard as playing in one. So FIFA has created an elaborate mesasurement system for refs, and a hard retirement age of 46. (You will never see a beer gut on a World Cup pitch.) Only the best refs come to the World Cup Finals. They are being measured each game, and the best of the best will be on the field in the last matches.

Yet still we have games like this, and more:

•    A card-happy ref makes a mockery of the Czech-Netherlands game.
•    A dive in the last minute by 10-man Italy wins its game against Australia.
•    Insert your own example here.

There will be more of these.

There is no complete solution. Instant replay might help in some cases, but people disagree on interpretations. A system of challenges, as used in American football, might limit all this, but it would not be perfect by any means. 

Now, what about the U.S.?

The Time Flies Game

From the people (well, person) who brought you The 1966 Game, we present...

The Time Flies Game!

It's the game where you get to see just how long it's been, and what that means in terms of other eras.

We live in a sort of eternal now, thinking that the past is the present, and never realizing just how fast time is flying past us. With The Time Flies game, we'll let you in on some secrets of how far you are in time from things you think you know, and how that compares with other events and their pasts.

Ready to play? (The game is you create your own entries. These are just starters.)

It's June 2006.  Do you know how long it's been?

The 1966 Game: Who Is Reagan Now

This is the big one.

First, let's remember a few facts about 1966. Ronald Reagan was nobody, well nearly nobody. He was an out-of-work actor who had hosted a TV show, "Death Valley Days," and made one speech of importance. In that speech, he nominated a man for President who would get just 39% of the vote, still a record low for a two-person election.

No, in 1966 Reagan was just a promise, nothing more.

So the answer of "Who's Reagan Now" is not a working politician. Can't be. But it still has to be someone with a high public profile, and a known reputation for endorsing liberal causes. It's someone who would best represent a New Thesis, a hope rather than a reality.

So who's Reagan now?

Another Way to Fight Piracy

Is the only way to fight piracy through Digital Rights Management, copy protection and industry pressure?

A small games company called Stardock decided it made no financial sense, and decided to offer their newest game, Galactic Civilization II, without any of it.

According to Techdirt, which quotes company officials, the game is now the top-seller at WalMart, BestBuy and at other outlets, with sales exceeding the sell-in orders.

But this apparently did not please one of the DRM companies. Stardock's own forum has a fascinating post up right now, charging that Starforce, which makes DRM for games, linked to the locations of pirated GalCiv code. A story based on the posting, written by a gaming journalist with a blog,  is rising on DIGG's ratings right now, charging Stardock wants the game pirated.