Word: scanners
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...Kurt Godel famous--had enormous consequences in the world at large. For what this eccentric young Cambridge don did was to dream up an imaginary machine--a fairly simple typewriter-like contraption capable somehow of scanning, or reading, instructions encoded on a tape of theoretically infinite length. As the scanner moved from one square of the tape to the next--responding to the sequential commands and modifying its mechanical response if so ordered--the output of such a process, Turing demonstrated, could replicate logical human thought...
...anyway. Stroll on over to the back of the lab, and try to find a computer that isn't either occupied or "logging out." If you're lucky, you might get to actually enter your username and password before someone kicks you off because they have to use the scanner...
...anyway. Stroll on over to the back of the lab, and try to find a computer that isn't either occupied or "logging out." If you're lucky, you might get to actually enter your username and password before someone kicks you off because they have to use the scanner...
Even more genetic gee-wizardry lies just down the road. Using biochips--thumbnail-size pieces of material imprinted with hundreds of different DNA probes--scientists should be able to identify genetic errors almost as quickly as a supermarket scanner prices a load of groceries. In some systems, the probes use different fluorescent dyes that glow under laser light when they hook up with target genes, allowing sensors to tabulate the results automatically. Genetic researchers are already talking about using "FISH [for fluorescent in-situ hybridization] and chips," as they whimsically call these new tools, to look for any number...
...long been used in high-security places like FBI headquarters, but only now is it finding a place in the mainstream. In August, Compaq will offer a fingerprint-recognition system to its corporate customers. Its $99 Fingerprint Identification Technology requires users to place a fingertip on a miniature scanner attached to their monitor. Once the image has been verified with a master print on file, users can access the company network without having to remember an ever-changing password...