Advancing In Computing Quantum computer chips are getting a lot faster. What a lot of people may not know is the fact quantum qbits can only hold information for an incredibly short time. Recently scientists were able to get this time period up to two milliseconds. This is 100 times longer than before. There are 1000 milliseconds in a second. This has given the quantum computers far more time to complete calculations. Advances in quantum computers seem to be coming faster lately, speeding the time when every science lab and company will have one. Next it may be us, just as what happened with digital computers. One of the things we have learned is we can connect almost any gadget to our home computers. They have proved themselves very versatile in that area. There are many different gadget categories which can be attached. Gamers appreciate the fact almost any type of game controller can be hooked up. An example of this we all have seen and many have used is the steering wheel and pedals which can be used in controlling our cars in a racing game. No one would have realized we could have such realistic game playing when home computers first came out, the best we could do at that time was Pong. One of the reasons we are able to hook all these devices to our computers is due to an invention. That invention is the USB port. USB stands for Universal Serial Bus and the attachments have the means to take advantage of this. Connections to computers have changed over the years and it is amazing how the connections seem to have shrunk in size. I remember when the connection to the printer was far larger and of a different technology. Printers used to use parallel printer cables which had far more connections to the printer. To me, one of the most incredible gadgets which can be used on a computer is the one which can read your mind, allowing someone to control their computer with only their thoughts. There is a company today working on an implantable wireless device which will allow this. I don’t think a lot of people would want a computer chip put into their head, but it might be a God sent to those who are paralyzed. For years many devices have come out to replace the mouse for our computers. I tried one or two of them myself, but always went back to the good old optical mouse, having found it the easiest to use. The first replacement I tried was the trackball. That just didn’t do it for me. Next, I tried the touch pad for desk top computers. I got tired of that. I also tried to substitute game controllers for non-game use, but to no avail. None of this has stopped all companies from still trying to replace the mouse. One company has come out with the Zalman FPSGun. It is hard to describe, it looks like a ray gun upside down. The handle stands up and has buttons on the side and the body has a button or two on it. It looks very awkward to me, but I have never tried it. The 3D printer is being improved every day. You attach it to your computer like you would a printer. Many advances in the 3D printers have been made since they first appeared. In the beginning they were much more limited in the materials they could use and the extremely slow buildup of the object. Many more materials can now be used and if you want to go whole hog, there are 3D printers coming out that use a much faster method of creating objects, but you will pay for that privilege. It has been discovered that there are some things which were thought only to be able to be performed on a quantum computer because they would take too long on a legacy computer, but they were found to be able to solve these problems using new algorithms. So, we are finding they still might be around for a long time, and who knows, we could find other ways of making them much faster we haven’t discovered yet. Wouldn’t it be funny if we found a way to make them competitive with quantum computers? The use of computers has changed many things and not always for the better. Think about this, prior to computers companies could not be hacked. There secrets were much better protected and the only way they could be revealed were by spies and whistleblowers. Today many companies have lost all sorts of data and many times this data is ours, which makes us way more vulnerable. I have had my data lost by the Veterans’ Administration, a couple of banks, and by companies which keep billing information. These attacks sometimes were caused by poor protection of our data, and in one case it was not even password protected which would have been the minimum standard. On the other hand, computers have increased the chance for some of us to have a longer life. Robot surgery has made surgery much more precise. Obscure diseases are easier to find and diagnose using a computer. Medical models to find interactions between medicines and better and newer medical results have helped incredibly. Why do we have so much anime now? It is due to the computer revolution. Computers are dependent on software. Cartoons and anime had to be drawn one frame at a time before computers, but not anymore. It is much easier to create a cartoon or anime using the computer, thus allowing for more of these types of movies. Walt Disney is probably rolling over in his grave thinking about what he could have done with today’s abilities. One of the things which has happened in computer advancement was the advancement in computers in simplified form. For example, one is the Raspberry computer. It is a small computer on a small board which can be used in experiments in a manner in different ways. It is cheap and simple, but very versatile and can be used in many different ways and has the capability to go on the internet. It is only a couple of inches long and about 2 inches wide, and doesn’t come with anything else. It is a lot of fun to fool around with. There is all type of computing out or coming out. There is Optical computing, Quantum computing, DNA computing, Neural computing, Magnetic computing, Glooper computing, Mold computing, and Water Wave computing and even more. You might not recognize all these different methods I have listed, but you can look them up in Google. We don’t know what other methods may come down the pike, but they could render the methods we use today obsolete, yes even quantum computing.
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