The Dream OS

[rms]

Or what Kubuntu will become some day soon.:cool:

http://c2.com/cgi/wiki?HollywoodOs

[GreyGeek]

Now for the DREAM Computer!
http://worldsciencefestival.com/vide...imate_computer

But, HOW powerful can the ultimate computer be, and how small?
It will be limited by the Quantum Limit: and Moore's Law will max out in about 75 years at the Quantum level.

Seth Loyd, MIT Computer Scientist, wrote a definitive treatment of the ultimate physical limits of a computer:
http://arxiv.org/pdf/quant-ph/9908043v3

Part of the summary:

....
Physical systems that can be programmed to perform arbitrary digital computations are called computationally universal. Although computational universality might at first seem to be a stringent demand on a physical system, a wide variety of physical systems — ranging from nearest neighbor Ising models52 to quantum electrodynamics84 and conformal field theories86 — are known to be computationally universal51−53,55−65 . Indeed, computational universality seems to be the rule rather than the exception. Essentially any quantum system that admits controllable nonlinear interactions can be shown to be computationally universal60−61 . For example, the ordinary electrostatic interaction between two charged particles can be used to perform universal quantum logic operations between two quantum bits. A bit is registered by the presence or absence of a particle in a mode. The strength of the interaction between the particles, e2/r, determines the amount of time tf lip = π ̄ h r/2e2 it takes to perform a quantum logic operation such as a Controlled-N OT on the two particles. Interestingly, the time it takes to perform such an operation divided by the amount of time it takes to send a signal at the speed of light between the bits tcom = r/c is a universal constant, tf lip /tcom = π ̄ h c/2e2 = π/2α, where α = e2 / ̄c h 1/137 is the fine structure constant. This example shows the degree to which the laws of physics and the limits to computation are entwined.



In addition to the theoretical evidence that most systems are computationally universal, the computer on which I am writing this article provides strong experimental evidencethat whatever the correct underlying theory of physics is, it supports universal computation. Whether or not it is possible to make computation take place in the extreme regimes envisaged in this paper is an open question. The answer to this question lies in future technological development, which is difficult to predict. If, as seems highly unlikely, it is possible to extrapolate the exponential progress of Moore’s law into the future, then it will only take two hundred and fifty years to make up the forty orders of magnitude in performance between current computers that perform 1010 operations per second on 10^10 bits and our one kilogram ultimate laptop that performs 10^51 operations per second on 10^31 bits.

[woodsmoke]

The really important requirement for such an OS, and hardware, is whether there is a voice command that will open the coffee cup holding tray and whether the computer is physically large enough to hold the mechanism for the aforementioned coffee cup holding tray.

Until then....we will have to rely on the ships computer to make Tea, Hot, Earl Gray!

Here, btw is my computer deck.



woodsmoke