The Land Rover I have has a smart key. The Toyota Camry my girlfriend drives has a smart key. Little digital devices that just have to be in close proximity to the vehicle to unlock the door or start the engine.

When will the triple-A (equivalent to the RAC or AA in the UK), if they have not already, begin carrying a a few dozen spare watch batteries in their tool kits for stranded motorists who ignored the “low battery” warning on their dash board?

There is a certain class of people who cannot even remember to fill up their petrol tank, car manufacturers expect these same people to replace batteries too?

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When you wanted to squeeze that little bit of extra speed out of the hard drive data transfers from your workstation the easiest option was to install a RAID array, some motherboards have them built-in by default, like the one on my main workstation at the office, or they come as add-in cards such as the ones in our office file severs that can have dozens of hard drives hooked up to them. The reason to use a RAID card is to squeeze as much performance as you can out of a physical machine, i.e. a spinning hard drive.

But with SSD drives not far off from becoming mainstream is there any reason for parallel RAID systems for most users?

It appears that most SSD manufacturers are still thinking linearly when it comes to creating their devices, trying to make ever faster memory chips to handle an increased data throughput.

My proposal is to create an SSD that is already a parallel array of memory chips that would increase the transfer rate of an SSD drive up to the theoretical maximum of the SATA bus. To go beyond that speed would require a RAID array and separate controller that would then be able to transfer data as fast as the PCI-E bus could handle. An internally parallelised SSD could just pop right in to any machine that can take a replacement hard drive.

And of course if the SSD is running in parallel internally and then is used in a RAID array, double bonus, less drives are required and there is no need for a very high-end RAID controller to get the full transfer speed of the computer’s bus.

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At the recent BayCon Science Fiction & Fantasy convention held in San Mateo California I had the pleasure of being moderator on several panels, one of these, which took place on Sunday afternoon, was "The Top Ten Gadgets That Changed The World."

I captured notes on my laptop and recorded audio with my Olympus DS-40 voice recorder. I apologise but the batteries ran down on my DS-40 ran down about 10 minutes before the end of the panel so we are missing the final debate

The debate was lively and at times, loud with full audience participation.

The notes below are direct from the ones I took at the panel with no editing, so it includes spelling mistakes and poor grammar.

If you want to sweat about your typing and spelling, try writing live on to a video display projected in front of 200 people whilst holding down a conversation too.

Download the audio of the panel. (22.6MB)

Philip Gust – CEO of software co. Inventor/Gadgeteer
Lee Felsenstein – Designer of lost computers.
Jay Freeman – Scientist and player
Justin Lloyd (moderator) – video game developer.

The "aye, "no" and "on the fence" at the end of each entry were added in the last few minutes using a democratic process of getting the audience to shout out whether they thought the gadget was worthy of being in the top ten list. Unfortunately we ran out of time to actually sort the list into a top ten.

1. Transistor – aye (Jay Freeman)
2. Wright Flyer – aye (Jay Freeman)
3. Apple II – on the fence (Jay Freeman)
4. Portable Phone – yes (Jay Freeman)
5. AK47 – on the fence (Jay Freeman)
6. Credit Card – no (Jay Freeman)
7. Television – yes
8. Movies -on the fence
9. Model T – yes
10. Meteorological Satellites – yes
11. Liquid Fueled Rocket Motor – on the fence (Jay Freeman)
12. Flip-flop – on the fence (Lee Felsenstein)
13. Cell phone/Mobile Phone – yes (Justin Lloyd/Lee Felsenstein)
14. Bloody PC – on the fence (Lee Felsenstein)
15. Raster Scan CRT – huh? (Lee Felsenstein)
16. Electronic Hand Calculator yes (Philip Gust)
17. VCR/Tivo – yes (Philip Gust)
18. Answering Machine – on the fence (Philip Gust)
19. Car Radio – no (Philip Gust)
20. Univac 1 – no (Philip Gust)
21. GPS – yes (Philip Gust)
22. GPS – yes (Justin Lloyd)
23. iPod – no (Justin Lloyd)
24. Air Conditioner – yes (Justin Lloyd)
25. Candidate- "Aluminium based anti-perspirant", aerosal can – on the fence
26. Candidate – photocopier – yes
27. Candidate – Post-It notes on the fence
28. Candidate – RADAR – yes
29. Candidate – Search engine "Altavista" – no
30. Candidate – White out/Tippex/Liquid paper – no
31. Candidate – Super glue – no

Lee Felsenstein – What is a classic design?
Where is the gee whiz factor?

Definition of PC/Univac/Apple II

Candidate – Scanning Tunneling Microscope, precursor to molecular microscope – on the fence
Candidate – Apollo programme – no
Candidate – Atomic bomb – yes

Is a transistor a gadget? But the transistor radio?
Pentode tube – huh
Candidate – Heterodyne Receiver – on the fence

Model T – First breakout automobile product, like the iPod.
Car Radio – made family road trips practical and tolerable, radio was their entertainment, larger captive advertising audience.
Liquid Fueled Rocket Motor – It lead to the Apollo programme.
GPS – changing the future, guided bombs, UAV, cell phone location spam

Candidate – Microwave oven, LCD, LED – yes
Candidate – Nylons, synthetic fabrics, "ropes" – on the fence
Candidate – LASER – yes
Explanation – AK47 – enabling tech for revolution

Is 100 years enough?
Candidate – Portable PC – yes
Candidate – CNC – yes
Candidate – Carbonless copy paper – no
Candidate – Autonomous and industrial robots – yes

What will be the future gadgets?
Digital paper
Batteries that never discharge

Audio recording & notes will be available at http://www.otakunozoku.com/

Suggestions
What ten gadgets changed the fannish world?
What are the best ten gadgets of all time?

Download the audio of the panel. (22.6MB)

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