More nanotechnology news

Nanotechnology continues to move out of the academic laboratory and into the commercial arena. I know I've mentioned before that a company called Nantero is developing nanotube-based storage (to replace both RAM and hard drives, as it would be both faster than RAM and nonvolatile, while being no more expensive than DRAM as well once it was in mass-production). There's another article about it here... apparently their process allows the carbon nanotube-based memory to be made predominantly using existing equipment in DRAM foundries.

In addition, there's an article here on ZDNet about carbon nanotube-based display technology. The idea is to make a large display that looks better than an LCD screen yet is cheaper than a plasma screen. Most importantly, though, is this: The lab also created a method to precisely place the nanotubes individually on a surface material. The ability to place the material directly on a substrate while controlling spacing, size and length [...] Precise placement of individual molecules (as a carbon nanotube is just a really big, special molecule) -- one of the prerequisites for more major breakthroughs in molecular nanotechnology.

Video games made me do it!

The latest set of teenage crackpots who tried to go on a killing spree were, wonderfully, caught before they could do it. However, when investigating their houses, authorities found, horror of horrors, violent video games. In fact, they learned "the name the trio reportedly had dubbed themselves -- 'Warriors of Freedom' -- also is the name of an Internet-based combat game," according to The Mercury News.

Hmm... I've never heard of 'Warriors of Freedom'. In fact, the vast majority of gamers haven't. This is because the game is not some violent, 3D gore-fest... it's a web-browser-based role-playing game. It's all-text -- no graphics at all. Not even graphic descriptions. It's a medieval-fantasy war game, in which you select and lead an army against other players. It's turn-based. Its lovely all-text web page can be found here.

This is what's causing people to go on killing sprees? Well, I guess the game's violent. I mean, it's got soldiers in it. Maybe we need to ban everything with soldiers, like history. Or, as pyran said:

Taking this to its logical conclusion involves removing laws themselves -- they can be used as an inspiration of what *could* be done. I mean, people wouldn't know about violence and murder if there weren't laws banning them, would they?

However, I doubt we'll hear any of this in the news... it'll just be lumped in with those dreaded "violent video games."