Home › Posts tagged industry

industry

mature industries

Posted on by — No Comments ↓

This may be just me. In fact I’m probably sure it is. But I seem to note a correlation between lawsuits of the sort that make me wonder a bit why they bother and the maturity of the industry in which they take place. And by maturity I mean in terms of industrial growth cycle, and not (necessarily) in terms of developmental psychology. To wit, a claim that had a writeup by Manatt Phelps & Phillips LLP:

Hormel Foods has sued rival Campbell’s over the latter’s description of its Chunky Fully Loaded soup as a “stew.”In its lawsuit, Hormel charges Campbell’s with “misrepresenting the nature, characteristics, ingredients, benefits and qualities of its Chunky Fully Loaded soup products in commercial advertising and promotion.”

Which leads me to believe that the soup/stew market is relatively mature. What do you think? Dumb rule?

Mesh Conference

Posted on by — No Comments ↓

Will be taking place the same week as Toronto Technology Week. What is it you ask?

mesh is Canada’s Web conference, being held in Toronto on May 30th & 31st, 2007. You will hear from thought leaders, connect with peers, and get a better understanding of the impact of new developments online. mesh brings together people who are passionate about the potential of the Web to change how we live, work and play. Meet the next generation of Web ideas, leaders and companies at mesh.

See the mesh site for more details. Taking place at MaRS.

Toronto Technology Week

Posted on by — No Comments ↓

Just catching up on a few things. Very quick entry on upcoming Toronto Technology Week:

Toronto’s Information and Communication Technology (ICT) industry cluster will come together to celebrate being the largest high-tech hub in Canada and the third largest in North America. During this event, named “Toronto Technology Week” (TTW) a series of activities will be undertaken to showcase the depth and breath of Toronto’s high technology sector. These will include trade shows, seminars and business networking functions, job fairs, an ICT business open door program, school projects, special exhibits and other ICT sector-related activities. An organizing committee formed by ICT industry stakeholders representing a cross-section of this industry, in both the private and public sectors, has been formed to implement this initiative. This event is hosted by ICT TORONTO.

D-Wave’s Quantum Computing Demo

Posted on by — No Comments ↓

As I mentioned earlier, there was a Canadian company that announced it would demonstrate a working quantum computer this week. And demonstrate they did. Yesterday. In California. Then they released this press release, which is frustratingly short on details.

There was some other minor press coverage, including a short article in Scientific American. The nub:

For the demonstration, he says D-Wave operators remotely controlled the quantum computer, housed in Burnaby, British Columbia, from a laptop in California. The quantum computer was given three problems to solve: searching for molecular structures that match a target molecule, creating a complicated seating plan, and filling in Sudoku puzzles.

But experts say the announcement may be a bit – er – premature. Even if the computer were to work as advertised, it still would be nearly 1,000 times too small to solve problems that stump ordinary computers. Moreover, researchers do not know whether it will work at bigger sizes.

A similar tone was in most other articles that didn’t parrot the press release – namely, that the demo was not very impressive. That part is rather unfortunate, although not wholly unexpected – the company did indicate (somewhere) that this was intended to be a proof of concept to gain interest.

So I guess at least for the foreseeable future, the cryptography industry will still be around.

A Real Quantum Computer – This Week!

Posted on by — No Comments ↓

Sorry, been off sick. One very quick entry from Techworld, about a BC company, D-Wave, that will be debuting a real Quantum computer this week!!

Twenty years before most scientists expected it, a commercial company has announceda quantum computer that promises to massively speed up searches and optimisation calculations.

D-Wave of British Columbia has promised to demonstrate a quantum computer next Tuesday, that can carry out 64,000 calculations simultaneously (in parallel “universes”), thanks to a new technique which rethinks the already-uncanny world of quantum computing. But the academic world is taking a wait-and-see approach.

If it turns out to be true, this will be revolutionary news. I mean, truly revolutionary. If it works, well, say goodbye to most of the cryptography industry, as a quantum computer should easily be able to defeat the most sophisticated encryption methods currently known by simple brute strength. Amongst other things. This is nearly unlimited computing power in a box. Stunning. Assuming, of course, it actually works.