Free Republic

... The DoD may need a decade to build a reliable domestic supply chain, according to Mike Burns, managing partner of tech investment firm Murray Hill Group. The issue is how fast U.S.-based Intel can catch up with Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. (TSMC), which makes Altera and Xilinx field programmable gate arrays (FPGAs) and other chips that the DoD uses in weapons systems like the F-35 fighter jet, missiles and command-and-control gear, he said. “Maybe that’s a three-year effort,” he told EE Times. “I’m just saying that it’s many years.” To be sure, TSMC more than tripled its overall investment...

In the 18th century, Jeremy Bentham, an English philosopher, jurist, and social reformer, introduced the idea of the Panopticon, a disciplinary concept brought to life in the form of a central observation tower placed within a circle of prison cells. Each cell is flooded with light, which creates an environment in which prisoners are under constant watch. Even if no guard is on duty, a prisoner will always feel as if they are being watched. Bentham described it as “[a] new mode of obtaining power of mind over mind.” The Panopticon is the optimal prison; it enables an unprecedented...

XILINX AND PIXEL VELOCITY TEAM TO DELIVER WORLD'S MOST ADVANCED 3-D FACIAL RECOGNITION TECHNOLOGY 3-D biometric "fingerprint" of human face to revolutionize airport security SAN JOSE, Calif., November 29, 2004 - Xilinx, Inc., (NASDAQ: XLNX), the world's leading programmable logic supplier, and Pixel Velocity, a leading image processing solutions company, today announced a collaboration that resulted in the world's most advanced 3-D facial recognition technology. Using the advanced features of Xilinx Virtex-II Pro FPGAs, Pixel developed the revolutionary biometrics technology to replace today's limited two-dimensional (2-D) technology in applications such as airport surveillance cameras and automated travel kiosks in airports...