Printers and Scanners of Tomorrow (and Beyond)

Four ultra-futuristic printers and scanners hint of the possibilities of future tech

Affordable 3D Printers
3D printers are nothing new; in fact they've been around for some time. We've had a look at some of the cool things you can do with these types of printers, including creating models, tools and all sorts of wizardry. Unfortunately, the 3D printers of today cost in excess of $100,000 and are largely reserved for large architecture and development firms.

Thankfully, it won't stay that way forever. HP recently announced its interest in 3D printing, with products potentially available for just $15,000. 3D printers might not make it to your desk this year, but at this rate, the possibility of owning a 3D printer for personal or business use is becoming more likely.

3D Critters of the Future
The products of 3D printers, naturally, aren't limited to flat images. Here are some of the cool things 3D printers let you make.

Biological Printers
We are still a little way off re-growing entire limbs, but we are certainly making strides towards it. Invetech and Organovo have created the first 3D bioprinter, which is capable of printing entire cells. According to Organovo CEO Keith Murphy, the potential uses are wide-ranging - from supporting existing kidney cells to forming the foundations of a tooth.
With a printer capable of producing "tissue on demand," researchers and surgeons will apparently be able to easily repair organs without waiting for a lab to catch up; just press the button and go. It's all a bit freaky, but if these end up in every hospital they could literally be a life saver.

Food Printers
To us, this seems even more unlikely than biological printers. Then again, science fiction movies have told us for years that one day we'll have replicators that can reproduce anything on command. This concept from MIT doesn't quite reach those heights, but it sure does get close. By mixing liquid ingredients to suit the user's preferences and then either heating or cooling it, the "Cornucopia" can recreate a meal with any number of textures and tastes.

We're not sure of the final taste, but somehow we don't think these food printers will be making it into five-star restaurants anytime soon.

Food Printer Products
This opens all kinds of possibilities . . . liquid lasagna, anyone?

3D Scanning
We've seen plenty of devices that help you get designs out of a computer, but how about something to get 3D objects back in? Step in Ortery's Photosimile 5000, allegedly the world's first 3D scanner for the office. The Photosimile 5000 is essentially a big box that allows you to attach compatible Canon SLR cameras, and automatically takes a succession of photos. The product lies on a rotating turntable, giving you a full 360 degree view of the product.

The scanner is undoubtedly useful for product manufacturers everywhere (and it could even threaten the jobs of in-house product photographers). It even automatically creates a 3D animation of the product, though this has to be viewed using Ortery's proprietary software.

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USB 3.0 vs. eSATA: Is faster better?

While USB 3.0 is good, it's not as simple as "Whoever's the fastest wins." Let's take a closer look at these new and improved ports on our PCs

Up-to-date computers now include external ports that, in theory, can handle data at rates of up to 5 Gigabits per second. But which is better?

If you've been in the computer business for any length of time you can probably painfully remember when serial RS-232 ports could barely handle 28 Kilobytes per second. And, adding insult to injury, the standard was loose enough that you could have 'compatible' devices that you could never physically connect. How things have changed! Now, eSATA can handle 300 MBps (MegaBytes per second) and USB 3.0 can wheel and deal up to 625 MBps.

So that makes USB 3.0 better right? Well, while USB 3.0 is good, it's not as simple as "Whoever's the fastest wins." Let's take a closer look at these new and improved ports on our PCs.

ESATA (External Serial Advanced Technology Attachment) is the external version of the technology, SATA, that your computer is likely already using for its hard drive. While SATA and eSATA are both older than USB 3.0, its proponents would still claim that it's better than USB 3.0.

They can make this argument because the most common use for eSATA is for external hard drives. Internally, these drives are still using SATA even if you're connecting to these devices with USB or FireWire on the outside. Thus, the argument goes, these devices must use a bridge chip to translate from the ATA protocol to USB or the FireWire IEEE 1394 protocol.

There are two ways to do this. The first is to encapsulate the SATA protocol-borne data into USB or FireWire. The other is to actually convert the data into one of the external data transmission protocols. In either case, this requires extra steps and processing, which slows down the effective throughput.

Various benchmarking tests support this claim. In particular, eSATA has clearly been shown to be faster than USB 2.0.

Today, USB 3.0's SuperSpeed 5 Gbps (Gigabits per second) is more than ten times faster than USB 2.0's top theoretical speed of 480 Mbps (Megabits per second). In addition, USB 3.0 supports asynchronous data transfers, which means that, unlike USB 2.0, it doesn't need to wait to poll a USB device every time it wants to start shipping data one way or the other.

In addition, USB 3.0 includes a new transfer method called Bulk Streams. With Bulk Streams, USB now supports multiple data stream transfers. The net effect of this is that the protocol will do much better with huge data transfers such as those required by viewing an HD movie that's residing on an external hard drive.

Still, on those same external drives, USB 3.0 must deal with the SATA to USB protocol conversion slowdown. So, who wins when it comes to raw read and write speeds? We still don't know.

I did, however, run some rough benchmarks to get an idea of what we're dealing with. For my devices I used a Western Digital My Book Studio Edition II 1TB 7,200 RPM external hard drive with its eSATA port and ran it against a Western Digital My Book 3.0 with a similar drive inside. I attached these to a Gateway SX2802 PC with a 2.5GHz Intel Core 2 Quad Q8300 CPU and 6GBs of DDR2 memory. On this system I was running Windows 7 Ultimate. To enable it to handle USB 3.0, I installed a StarTech 2 Port PCI Express SuperSpeed USB 3.0 Card Adapter.

With this setup, USB tends to be about 20% faster than eSATA at reads, while eSATA was about 20% faster at writing data to the disk. While I make no claims for these to be definitive benchmarks (I used the freeware Crystal DiskMark 3.0 program for my tests), I do think the results indicate what you can expect to see from today's eSATA and USB 3.0 drives.

In both cases the real world results were quite a bit slower than their theoretical bests. With reads, my USB drive averaged 90 MBps, while the eSATA drive came in at 75 MBps. When it came to writing to the disk eSATA still processed data at 75 MBps while the USB drive dropped to 62 MBps.

This kind of difference between real world and theoretical results is quite common. Nothing in your office or home, or even the test bench, will ever run as fast as its design specifications call for.

That said, I was surprised to see USB 3.0 do as poorly as it did. Mind you, it's still much faster than USB 2.0 and somewhat faster than eSATA in data reads. I had expected better from it. I strongly suspect that as USB 3.0 devices and drivers mature, it's speed will significantly improve.

USB 3.0 does have some other advantages over eSATA. For example, like USB 2.0, you can power devices through a USB 3.0 connection, while you'll need another power connection for external eSATA devices.

In addition, USB 3.0, which can handle up to 50% more power than USB 2.0, should be thriftier with energy than 2.0. Alas, it's not. As Brian Nadel reported in ITworld's sister publication Computerworld, current USB 3.0 implementations will drain your laptop's battery faster than their equivalent USB 2.0 devices. Again, the next generation of devices and drivers should handle this better.

Another noteworthy point is that while USB 3.0 is backwards compatible with USB 2.0 cables and devices, you can't use a USB 3.0 cable with a USB 2.0 or earlier device. In addition, you can't use any USB 3.0 device with a USB 2.0 cable. That's because while the flat USB Type A plug, the one that goes into your PC, is compatible with USB 2.0 ports even though it has an extra pair of connectors, the other end is a different story entirely. The Type B plug, which is the one that you use to connect devices to the computer, comes in two different varieties. Neither of these will fit into a USB 2.0 B port.

So, what should you do? If I were you, I'd stand pat for now. USB 3.0 is the wave of the future. Later this year, as the technology matures, USB 3.0 devices should be consistently faster than today's eSATA devices, but we're not there yet.

In addition, for now, you'll still pay a premium for USB 3.0 devices, boards with USB 3.0 ports, and even PCs with USB 3.0 built-in. Towards the year's end though USB 3.0 will become the default on almost all PCS and peripherals. Much as I like USB 3.0, I don't see any reason to hurry up and adopt it today. I'd advise you to wait too

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N. Korea develops operating system with Windows-like GUI, Linux guts

Bundle includes thinly disguised versions of Firefox, OpenOffice.org

The North Korean government appears to have developed its own graphical Linux-based "Red Star" operating system, though its people still prefer that symbol of Yankee high-tech imperialism, Microsoft Windows.

That's according to the blog of a Russian college student, 'Mikhail,' studying at a university in North Korea's capital city, Pyongyang.


According to translations of the blog by Russian satellite news channel, Russia Today, as well as Google's Translate tool, installation DVDs of Red Star can be freely purchased in Pyongyang for $5 and come in both client and server versions.

Red Star requires, at minimum, a Pentium III 800 MHz CPU (state-of-the-art in developed countries about ten years ago), 256MB of RAM and 3GB of hard disk space.

Installation takes 15 minutes, and users may only choose to run it in the Korean language. A more serious quirk: The clock on the bottom right shows the year in both the standard international Gregorian calendar, and the North Korean "Juche Idea," in which 2010 is the year 99.

Local North Koreans told Mikhail that Red Star is not stable, and that they still prefer Windows XP, Vista or 7.

Mikhail did not comment on what version of Linux that Red Star may be built upon. Cuba released its own version of Linux last year called Nova that is based on Gentoo, a Linux variant that is run by a foundation based in New Mexico.

Red Star includes applications such as a thinly disguised version of the Mozilla Firefox browser, an OpenOffice.org-like productivity suite, an e-mail client called 'Pigeon,' and a number of other utilities.

Two programs that were apparently developed by North Korea include a firewall program called "Pyongyang Fortress," and an antivirus application called "Woodpecker."

The browser's search engine defaults to the North Korean government's official Web site, Naenara.

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Internet freedom and security

It's already been a busy year in the area of Internet freedom and security.

10 of the Worst Moments in Network Security History

First, Google reported that it, along with a bunch of other major companies, had been hacked, and pointed the finger at China.

Then Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton gave a few "Remarks on Internet Freedom" in which she pushed for one Internet, without barriers.

Separately, the Federal Trade Commission notified about 100 companies that some of their secrets had been exposed by employees who were running peer-to-peer software.

Finally the Internet security firm NetWitness said that it had figured out that 75,000 computers at 2,500 companies had been compromised with the ZeuS Trojan starting in 2008.

Nope - not a good start to 2010. I would like to think that things will quiet down some for the rest of the year but it does not look like that will happen.

In early January, Google announced that it had been hacked from China, that the hackers seemed to be after the gmail accounts of Chinese human rights activists and that Google was going to review "feasibility of our business operations in China."

Well, that caused quite a splash. Google's accusation fit so well with the general public perception of China's approach to the Internet that it was easy to assume that the hacking was directed by the Chinese government.

Clinton did not go quite so far as to accuse the Chinese government of complicity during her speech on Internet freedom,but she did call upon it to "conduct a thorough review" of the Google hacks and that the results of the review be transparent. Clinton's speech was quite a good one from the point of view of those of us who value the positive impact of the communication enabled by the Internet.

Properly, she did not hide the fact that communication over the Internet can be used for good (human rights activists) and evil (terrorists).

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India adds IT jobs despite recession

The largest addition of jobs in the country came in the IT services and BPO industries

India added 487,000 jobs in its IT and BPO (business process outsourcing) export industries in the quarter ended Dec. 31, despite the global recession, according to a Quarterly Quick Employment Survey by the country's labor bureau.

The survey was conducted to assess the impact of the economic slowdown on employment in India.

The results, released Thursday, found that of a total of 638,000 jobs added across the economy, 580,000 were in the exports sector. IT services and BPO exporters led the pack.

Besides Indian service providers, a large number of multinational companies like IBM and Accenture have set up IT services and BPO operations in the country, that service both the Indian market and markets abroad. Most of India's IT and BPO exports go to the U.S. and the U.K.

In January this year, a large number of Indian outsourcers, including the largest, Tata Consultancy Services (TCS), and the second largest, Infosys Technologies, reported plans to increase hiring in anticipation of improved business conditions.

TCS, for example, added 7,692 positions in last quarter of 2009, taking the total staff at the end of the quarter to 149,654. The company plans to hire about 8,000 trainees and about 3,000 experienced staff in the current quarter, it said.

India's software and services exports are expected to grow at 5.5 percent to US$49.7 billion in the Indian fiscal year to March 31, 2010, Minister for Communications and IT Sachin Pilot told Parliament on Thursday.

That growth rate for software and services exports is well behind the 16.5 percent rate in the year to March 31, 2009, and 29.5 percent in the previous year.

However an expected uptick in business later this year is driving new hiring by the IT and BPO sector. The National Association of Software and Service Companies (Nasscom) said in February that India's exports of software services and BPO are likely to increase by 13 to 15 percent in the fiscal year to March 31, 2011.

Some companies have also indicated that they will increase staff salaries soon. Raises were cut down or held back last year after the recession hit the industry.

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IT management: Zero in on business impact

Push users to think past the idea that technology will be a cure-all
CIO Executive Council - Within five years of moving into IT management, Jay Kerley found his purpose: working with the business to affect business outcomes and results. And he set his sights on the CIO role when it became clear that the best way to create change and effect a business impact on as wide a scale as possible is to have that executive-level, strategic role. "With a CIO's cross-division view of processes, you are in the position to shift and turn the company," says Kerley, who was promoted to the position of deputy CIO at Applied Materials in 2009.

Kerley, a winner of CIO magazine's and the CIO Executive Council's 2009 CIO Ones to Watch Award, identifies three milestones in his path to the c-suite: building business outcome-focused IT leadership teams, taking on risky challenges with big payoffs for the company, and cultivating a portfolio perspective.

Kerley's first taste of driving business results came in his first leadership position, where he discovered that he had a knack for rallying and motivating teams to tackle complex, business-oriented challenges. What motivated him -- and his team, in turn -- was the chance to create and enable business improvements. He built a close-knit team of people during his time in that position -- many of whom have stayed with him as he moved to new companies and new locations -- that led projects with far-reaching impact on the company, including globalization of processes for more efficient and consistent operations, and merging acquired business units without disrupting service to the customers.

Kerley realized that a willingness to face new challenges would bring greater benefits to the business, and he had this in mind when he joined Applied Materials, the world's largest supplier of manufacturing equipment to the semiconductor, display and solar photovoltaic industries. There he took a risk by evaluating applications that hadn't been meeting the engineering users' needs for years, pushing people to think past the idea that technology would be a cure-all, and examining the underlying processes as the source point for potential improvements. He then partnered with business leads to develop new processes and a technology solution to enable them. In the end, the engineering team not only had a better user experience, but was able to use the system in ways it hadn't before, including collaborating across the globe.

Much of this came together because Kerley found a strong CIO mentor early on, who complemented weaknesses -- while Kerley came up in IT via infrastructure and applications development, this mentor came from a leadership development and project and portfolio management background. Being exposed to that side of the IT world was a revelation, Kerley says. Having a portfolio perspective enables IT leaders to serve as a bridge into the business and to see the potential for cross-functional improvements, a skill-set necessary to being a results-oriented CIO.

Jay Kerley is deputy CIO at Applied Materials and a member of the CIO Executive Council. The Council's Pathways Program was created by CIOs to build business and IT leadership skills in senior IT leaders through group mentoring with CIOs, 360-degree competencies assessment, targeted seminars and community forums. To learn more, visit council.cio.com/pathways.html.

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Microsoft's Charney suggests 'Net tax to clean computers

The company recently used the U.S. court system to shut down the Waledac botnet

How will we ever get a leg up on hackers who are infecting computers worldwide? Microsoft's security chief laid out several suggestions Tuesday, including a possible Internet usage tax to pay for the inspection and quarantine of machines.

Today most hacked PCs run Microsoft's Windows operating system, and the company has invested millions in trying to fight the problem.


Microsoft recently used the U.S. court system to shut down the Waledac botnet, introducing a new tactic in the battle against hackers. Speaking at the RSA security conference in San Francisco, Microsoft Corporate Vice President for Trustworthy Computing Scott Charney said that the technology industry needs to think about more "social solutions."

That means fighting the bad guys at several levels, he said. "Just like we do defense in depth in IT, we have to do defense in depth in [hacking] response."

"I actually think the health care model ... might be an interesting way to think about the problem," Charney said. With medical diseases, there are education programs, but there are also social programs to inspect people and quarantine the sick.

This model could work to fight computer viruses too, he said. When a computer user allows malware to run on his computer, "you're not just accepting it for yourself, you're contaminating everyone around you," he said.

The idea that Internet service providers might somehow step up in the fight against malware is not new. The problem, however, is cost.

Customer calls already eat into service provider profits. Adding quarantine and malware-fixing costs to that would be prohibitive, said Danny McPherson, chief research officer with Arbor Networks, via instant message. "They have no incentive to do anything today."

So who would foot the bill? "Maybe markets will make it work," Charney said. But an Internet usage tax might be the way to go. "You could say it's a public safety issue and do it with general taxation," he said.

According to Microsoft, there are 3.8 million infected botnet computers worldwide, 1 million of which are in the U.S. They are used to steal sensitive information and send spam, and were a launching point for 190,000 distributed denial-of-service attacks in 2008.

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