Year 1 Core Modules:
Computing technologyis all around us in our everyday life now from the mobile phone that wakes us in the morning to the GPS system in the car to the networking webpage we post photos on, and it is in use for everything from booking concert tickets to securing your college place.

As intelligent, innovative and forward-thinking people continue to grow technology, it can help us solve problems in a great range of applications (i.e. traffic circulation, climate modelling, study of diseases, systems engineering, business modelling, ecology

Computer Systems Web Design
Computer Programming I
Computer Programming II
Networks & Internet
Introduction to Operating Systems
IT Mathematics
Management/Business Game
also what jobs can you get from it? what type of maths would be in it?

I’m not entirely sure what your question is . . .
but I’ll explain a few of these courses to you as much as I can:

Computer systems web design: This will be an introduction to programming and design for web systems. You will probably learn some interpreted languages like XML, Perl, Ruby, Javascript, and a few others.

Computer programming I: You will learn basic programming in one of the most common languages — C, C++, C#, or Java, most likely. They may also have you do things in UNIX or basic. You will probably also learn object oriented programming in the course.

Computer programming II: You will learn more advanced things about programming, probably object oriented design, data structures, discrete mathematics, algorithms for sorting, etc.

Introduction to Operating systems: They will show you pretty much all the basics for how operating systems work, and you will design your own (puny) operating system. You will use the C programming language, and probably a virtual machine to play with the operating system.

IT mathematics probably includes algebra and maybe some small amount of calculus or discrete mathematics. Management/Business doesn’t really cover programming as much, it is a course to teach you how to start/run a software business, since it is different than other businesses. Networks and Internet is essentially a crash course in how computers talk to each other.

There are loads of jobs in IT and CS (more in CS, but CS requires more math).

What webpages, experts, books, tips or groups can you tell me about that will help me (a caring, otherwise-intelligent mom with ADD) help my son set up good, motivating systems?

Thank you SO much!

I can’t help muc with the textbooks but pretty good with oraganization.
If the school alows it, get a binder. In the binder have tabs for all core classes. keep a hole punched folder inside for homework, and things to study. make sure he knows that he should put when a paper is due at the top of the paper, then highlight it. make sure the writing is in big letters. make flash cards for all tests. and if he doesn’t do this himself, help him out with it. Then once you have studided them put them in the folder. Inside the binder have a hole punched pencil pouch with 4 extra sharpened pencils. 2 highlighters, a grading pen, a blue pen (or any other color besides red) a black pen, an eraser. If he has to swith classes, get him a laminated thing. then inside slide in a shedule of each day. and always keep notebook paper with him, in the binder. ALWAYS

What webpages, experts, books, tips or groups can you tell me about that will help me (a caring, otherwise-intelligent mom with ADD) help my son set up good, motivating systems?

Thank you SO much!
Kristen, great ideas, thanks!

My son was in a very rigorous private K – 8 and now is in a similar private high school. Luckily, his K – 8 really emphasized being organized. In the earlier grades, the teachers would tell them what supplies they must have, what dividers for each subject, etc. They would have grades on their binders to make sure they kept their work, had it organized, etc. It was really good training. They also were given a planner which they were required to write their homework assignments in. To make it very simple, my son has a To Do list on his computer, by day/date, with his assignments listed (color coded) and the categories TO DO and DUE. The more organized, the less stressful.

Everything my son is going to take to school must be ready in the evening before bedtime. His books and binder, etc are in his backpack, anything else he needs, like a poster, is next to the backpack. Even his lunch is packed if he’s bringing it, except for the sandwich, which I make in the morning and pack. He has a tray for everything that is going to go into his pockets in the morning; cell phone, cash, wallet, schedule (he has a different schedule every day, but at least every Monday is the same, every Tuesday is the same, etc). Clothes are laid out the night before. He has a morning routine. He also double checks that all his homework assignments are in his binder.

If you ask your son to follow the new guidelines you set up, chances are when he sees that they work, he will want to follow him.

Good luck!

What webpages, experts, books, tips or groups can you tell me about that will help me (a caring, otherwise-intelligent mom with ADD) help my son set up good, motivating systems?

Thank you SO much!
Kristen, great ideas, thanks!

My son was in a very rigorous private K – 8 and now is in a similar private high school. Luckily, his K – 8 really emphasized being organized. In the earlier grades, the teachers would tell them what supplies they must have, what dividers for each subject, etc. They would have grades on their binders to make sure they kept their work, had it organized, etc. It was really good training. They also were given a planner which they were required to write their homework assignments in. To make it very simple, my son has a To Do list on his computer, by day/date, with his assignments listed (color coded) and the categories TO DO and DUE. The more organized, the less stressful.

Everything my son is going to take to school must be ready in the evening before bedtime. His books and binder, etc are in his backpack, anything else he needs, like a poster, is next to the backpack. Even his lunch is packed if he’s bringing it, except for the sandwich, which I make in the morning and pack. He has a tray for everything that is going to go into his pockets in the morning; cell phone, cash, wallet, schedule (he has a different schedule every day, but at least every Monday is the same, every Tuesday is the same, etc). Clothes are laid out the night before. He has a morning routine. He also double checks that all his homework assignments are in his binder.

If you ask your son to follow the new guidelines you set up, chances are when he sees that they work, he will want to follow him.

Good luck!

1.) None of us knew any them personally. Even US historians disagree on many issues pertaining to these figures in terms of their intents, characters, and even their very actions. Yet many Americans today interpret the constitution so strictly that you would think they themselves new these men intimately.

2.) We do know that many of them engaged in what is now considered "human trafficking" (slavery). Furthermore, they also drafted laws that were designed to benefit the elite classes defined by net worth, race, sex and social standing. I don’t think we should demonize these figures, I just don’t know why so many believe that these original framers should inspire the reasoning behind American policy today. I mean, doesn’t there at least come a point where it’s smart to reexamine the way the system was set up, given that guys like Jefferson had sex with his slaves (which today constitutes rape). Do Russians say that Stalin was a great guy, overlooking the harsh policies he instituted toward certain groups?

To put it another way, Mao Zedong did a great deal to make China into the country it is today (a very powerful country). But he was, by no means, a saint. In the future, should the Chinese look to what they think Mao Zedong would have wanted 200 years after his death in order to make policy decisions? Is that practical, logical or even really possible?

Why do people justify their ideology based on what the founding fathers envisioned for this country?

Culture, ethics and ideas are ever changing and what may have seemed okay back then is now frowned upon. Back then, everyone owned slaves, it wasn’t uncommon, and very few people (save the slaves) thought that it was immoral simply because they were seen as a lesser class of human. It was their way of life.

But the very idea of freedom is what inspired many to seek independence. Democracy isn’t great, and will soon exhaust itself, but it is the best form of government we have.

In my personal opinion they type of government they gave us wasn’t perfect but it was definitely a step in the right direction.

–Sam

Dealing with Illegals

Get border control, armed border control guards, this will also help in protecting our borders from drug smuggling, people trafficking etc.
Fine all those who employ illegal immigrants upwards of $100,000 yeah make it a lot, so they don’t do it again
No Amnesty, they broke the law why should they be rewarded, with no work as no one will employ them they will have to return home, and it will stop anymore coming.

Dealing with legals

Cap the number of immigrants admitted to the US at a number that the US can sustainably support.
Only allow in immigrants with a SKILL(Doctors, Nurses, Teachers etc) that the US needs.
Only allow in immigrants with a good knowledge of the English language, American history and the American political system.

other stuff could be added, but I think that in large would solve the immigration issue, I mean Im 18 years old and I think I did pretty good so why cant the most Intelligent people in the land, get it right?
Seldon – It isn’t the illegals I said I wanted to fine and Im sure the richest nation in the world could spare some money, it wouldn’t take alot, but maybe we could use some of our troops in the Gulf and this country needs Job creation so its a win win sitution for Americans

I think it’s because they hire illegals to do their housework and garden work, so they can’t turn their backs on them. When it becomes personal, it is harder to do.

It’s also hard to enact laws on illegals because if the gov’t come out with raids, they’ll be hit with charges on racial profiling.

You’re right though that they should cap spending on illegals and fine employers who knowingly hire illegals.

The gov’t needs to spend money to build a "Great Wall of China" to keep illegals from crossing over. Hey, if the Chinese can do it thousands of years ago to keep the Huns from invading, so can the Americans.

How many people get Quality food in Hotels, Restaurants.?
How many obey Traffic Rules?
How many people know the traffic rules?
How many have a PAN #?
Some one who dont know what is a PAN#?
Please donot hesitate to contact and will explain….
How many Politicians deserve the rights lead the country or the state?

For Example: In Singapore, a Funny think is happening … You know what????? The President of Singapore is an Indian named S.R. Nathan…..

Singapore one of the worlds famous country. Clean country, Non Corruption country certified by CIA if Im wrong..

30% of employees in NASA are Indians.
Worlds Intelligent students are Indians. Greeted by a University in UK
CIA recruits Indians..

The world gets a better improvement from Indians, and not India…Its not the mistake of an Indian. Its a mistake of politicians, Chief Minister, Prime Minister, Finance Minister….

All the above no proper tax deduction systems in India, Consumer pays Tax for the good purchased, bills paid…. I would say India will be a funny country in the future…..

Please Shoot your comments…

i am very happy that at last i found someone who thinks like me. i have been wondering for so many years that when will India be like America. but all this depends in our hands. we are the future of India and we should work on it. and i wish everyone thinks like us.

I have "Convictions" in my past young, and dumb years. I take full responsibility for these. They were Bad choices in my life without a single doubt, and not a day goes by I wish I could re-play the moment, I can’t.

the first of these is Misdemeanor third class, Harassment. I threw a backpack at my Step-father, this is me when I was an idiot.

The Second, bear with me because this is a long… set of things that got dropped down through the system, I’ve been talking with a recruiter but am not sure if they will all be counted as a Single charge.

Original Charges filed by the DA-
Minor Traffic, Driving without proof of insurance. Misdemeanor Drug parafinilia *I had smoked weed that night*. Felony Aggravated automobile theft..

Now the court disposition, The Felony car theft was my Mom’s vehicle that she’d said I could Drive, albeit without a license. This is my fault and was my immaturity. I took the vehicle went and smoked with some friends got pulled over, and got busted without a driver’s license I have no idea why they didn’t charge me for driving without a license, that likely should have been thrown on too, I won’t argue the point. Now, my Mother appeared with me in court and upon explanation to the DA most of the charges were dropped and what I ended up being slapped with was Misdemeanor Theft, First class 500-1000 Dollars.

this was the low in my life, I did this, I am responsible for it. I’m beginning to discuss with a local recruiter my possibilities for the waiver and explaining myself and what I’ve done. I have motivation to do the things I love and that are important to me, I received my Private Airman certificate earlier this year, I’m starting college this semester, and a College degree is an item I hold to High value. Just as it is to have the Privilige to hold a Diploma, I understand that it’s a Privilige to be called a Marine, and once you earn that privilege I believe nothing can Take it away from you. All my life i’ve deep down wanted three things, but never had the fore-sight and maturity to be able to pursue them with my full intent and belief in them; an education, the privilege to have fought for our country and our way of life, and to make those who’ve had faith in me over the years proud that I didn’t let them down in becoming the person I myself wanted to be all along.

I’m also not sure how much it would be worth, but for moral reference I do have the support of a Retired Lieutenant Colonel who flew for the Marines on a 22 year career, He’s been a large part of my life the past couple years. He’s Trustworthy, Respectable, well Mannered, and Intelligent, and has seen my struggles with myself and my step-father, as well as the level of growth I’ve received from my difficulties in Cleaning up and becoming who I am today, a Much better person than I admittedly was 2 years ago.

in Humility, and regret.
Ryan

yes waiver is good for you.

BY

GEORGE GILDER

"Today, I await the death of television, telephony, VCRs,
and analog cameras with utter confidence as Moore’s law
unfolds." Rupert Murdoch, Ted Turner, John Malone, are
you listening?"

Get ready. Bandwidth will triple each year for
the next 25, creating trillions in new wealth.

Editor’s note: Four years ago, Forbes ASAP published its first issue with
a stunning prophecy by contributing editor George Gilder. Fiber optics,
said George, had the potential to carry 25 trillion bits per second down
a single strand. This represented a ten-thousandfold leap in carrying
capacity over the 2.5 billion bits "barrier" long assumed by most experts
in the field. What did George see that others had missed? One, a
little-recognized (at the time) breakthrough called an erbium-doped
amplifier, which keeps optical signals pure and strong over long distances.
The other was a deep technical shift, with roots in the 1940s-era work of
information theory pioneer Claude Shannon. If you believed Shannon, his
logic dictated a new messaging scheme called wave division multiplexing.
Though scorned by the experts four years ago, WDM now is emerging as the
winner George had prophesied.

The real winners will be all of us, as the coming world of cheap,
unlimited bandwidth unfolds and at last fulfills the true potential
of the information age. Here is George with an update.

IMAGINE THAT IN 1975 YOU KNEW that Moore’s law–the Intel chairman’s
projection of the doubling of the number of transistors on a microchip
every 18 months–would hold for the rest of your lifetime. What if you
knew that these transistors would run cooler, faster, better, and cheaper
as they got smaller and were crammed more closely together? Suppose you
knew the law of the microcosm: that the cost-effectiveness of any
number of "n" transistors on a single silicon sliver would rise by the
square of the increase in "n."

As an investor knowing this Moore’s law trajectory, you would have
been able to predict and exploit a long series of developments: the
emergence of the PC; its dominance over all other computer form factors;
the success of companies making chips, disk drives, peripherals, and
software for this machine. With a slight effort of intellect, you
could have extended the insight and prophesied the digitization of
watches, records (CDs), cellular phones, cameras, TVs, broadcast
satellites, and other devices that can use miniaturized computer power.
If you did not know precisely when each of these benisons would flourish,
you would have known that each one was essentially inevitable. To
calculate approximate dates, you had only to guess the product’s optimal
price of popularization and then match its need for mips (millions of
instructions per second) of computer power with the cost of those mips
as defined by Moore’s law.

Merely by using this technique of Moore’s law matching–and holding
to it with unshakable conviction for nearly 20 years–I became known as
a "futurist." Today I await the death of television, telephony, VCRs,
and analog cameras with utter confidence as Moore’s law unfolds. You
can tell me about the 98% penetration of TVs in American homes, the
continuing popularity of couch-potato entertainments, the effectiveness
of broadcast advertising, and the profound and unbridgeable chasm
between the office appliance and the living-room tube. But I will pay
no attention. Just you wait–Jack Welch, Ted Turner, Rupert Murdoch,
John Malone, and David Jennings–the TV will die and you may be too late
for the Net.

It is now 1997, and a stream of dramatic events certifies that
another law, as powerful and fateful and inexorable as Moore’s, is
gaining a similar sway over the future of technology. It is what I have
termed the law of the telecosm.

Its physical base lies in the same quantum realm of eigenstates
and band gaps that governs the performance of transistors and also makes
photons leap and lase. But the telecosm reaches beyond components to
systems, combining the science of the electromagnetic spectrum with Claude
Shannon’s information theory. In essence, as frequencies rise and
wavelengths drop, digital performance improves exponentially. Bandwidth
rises, power usage sinks, antenna size shrinks, interference collapses,
error rates plummet.

The law of the telecosm ordains that the total bandwidth of
communications systems will triple every year for the next 25 years. As
communicators move up-spectrum, they can use bandwidth as a substitute
for power, memory, and switching. This results in far cheaper and more
efficient systems. In 1996, the new fiber paradigm emerged in full force.
Parallel communications in all-optical networks became the dominant source
of new bandwidth in telecom. Like Moore’s law, the law of the telecosm
will reshape the entire world of information technology. It defines the
direction of technological advance, the vectors of growth, the sweet spots
for finance.

AMERICA’S DARK SECRET

FOR MORE THAN A DECADE, American companies have been laying optical
fiber strands at a pace of some 4,000 miles a day, for a total of more
than 25 million strand miles. Five years ago, the top 10% of U.S. homes
and businesses were, on average, a thousand households away from a fiber
node; now they are a hundred households away.

However, the imperial advance of this technology conceals a dark
secret, which has led to a pervasive underestimation of the long-term
impact of photonics. Sixty percent of the fiber remains "dark" (unused
for communications) and even the leading-edge "lit" fiber is being used
at less than one ten-thousandth of its intrinsic capacity. This problem
has prompted leaders in the industry, from Bill Gates and Andy Grove to
Bob Metcalfe and Mitch Kapor, to underrate drastically the impact of fiber
optics.

Restricting the speed and cost-effectiveness of fiber has been an
electronic bottleneck and a regulatory noose. In order for the signal
to be amplified, regenerated, or switched, the light pulses had to be
transformed into electronic pulses by optoelectronic converters. For
all the talk of the speed of light, fiber-optic systems therefore could
pass bits no faster than the switching speed of transistors, which tops
out at a cycle time of between 2.5 and 10 gigahertz. Meanwhile, telecom
companies could not deploy new low-cost fiber products any faster than
the switching speed of politicians and regulators, which tops out roughly
at a cycle time of between 2.5 years and a rate of evolution measurable
only by means of carbon 14.

Nonetheless, the intrinsic capacity of every fiber line is not 2.5
gigahertz. Nor is it even 25 gigahertz, which is roughly the capacity
of all the frequencies commonly used in the air, from AM radio to kA
band satellite. The intrinsic capacity of every fiber thread, as thin
as a human hair, is at the least one thousand times the capacity of what
we call the "air." One thread could carry all the calls in America on
the peak moment of Mother’s Day. One fiber thread could carry 25 times
more bits than last year’s average traffic load of all the world’s
communications networks put together: an estimated terabit (trillion
bits) a second.

Over the last five years, technological breakthroughs and
legislative loopholes have begun to open up this immense capacity to
possible use. Following concepts pioneered and patented by David Payne
at the University of Southampton in England, a Bell Laboratories group
led by Emmanuel Desurvire and Randy Giles developed a workable
all-optical device. They showed that a short stretch of fiber doped
with erbium, a rare earth mineral, and excited by a cheap laser diode
can function as a powerful amplifier over fully 4,500 gigahertz of the
25,000 gigahertz span. Introduced by Pirelli of Italy and popularized
by Ciena Corporation of Savage, Maryland, and by Lucent and Alcatel,
today such photonic amplifiers are a practical reality. Put in packages
between two and three cubic inches in size, the erbium-doped fiber
amplifiers (EDFAs) fit anywhere in an optical network for enhancing
signals without electronics.

This invention overcame the most fundamental disadvantage of
optical networks compared to electronic networks. You can tap into an
electronic network as often as desired without eroding the voltage
signal. Although resistance and capacitance will leach away the
current, there are no splitting losses in a voltage divider. Photonic
signals, by contrast, suffer splitting losses every time they are
tapped; they lose photons until eventually there are none left. The
cheap and compact all-optical amplifier solves this problem. It is an
invention comparable in importance to the integrated circuit.

Just as the integrated circuit made it possible to put an entire
computer system on a single sliver of silicon, the all-optical amplifier
makes it possible to put an entire system on a seamless seine of
silica–glass. Unleashing the law of the telecosm, it makes possible a
new global economy of bandwidth abundance.

Five years ago when I first celebrated the radical implications of
erbium-doped amplifiers, skepticism reigned. I was summoned to Bellcore,
where the first optical networks had been built and then abandoned, to
learn the acute limits of the technology from Charles Brackett and his
team. I had offered the vision of a broadband fibersphere–a worldwide
web of glass and light–where computer users could tune into favored
frequencies as readily as radios tune into frequencies in the atmosphere
today. But Brackett and other Bellcore experts told me that my basic
assumption was false. It was no simpler, they said, to tune into one of
scores of frequencies on a fiber than to select time slots in a
time-division-multiplexed (TDM) bitstream.

Indeed, electronic switching technology was moving faster than
optical technology. In the face of the momentum and installed base of
electronic switching and multiplexing, the fibersphere with hundreds of
tunable frequencies would remain a fantasy, like Ted Nelson’s Xanadu.

In 1997 the fantasy is coming true around the world. Xanadu has
become the World Wide Web. The erbium-doped fiber amplifier is an
explosively growing $250 million business. Electronic TDM seems to
have topped out at 2.5 gigabits a second. TDM gear has suffered a
series of delays and nagging defects and so far has failed in the market.

Electronic TDM failed not only because it pushed the envelope of
electronics but also because it violated the new paradigm. In
single-mode fiber, the two key impediments are nonlinearities in the
glass and chromatic dispersion (the blurring of bit pulses because even
in a single band different frequencies move at different speeds).
Chromatic dispersion increases by the square of the bit rate, and the
impact of nonlinearities rises with the power of the signal.
High-powered, high-bit-rate TDM flunked both telecosm tests. By
contrast, wavelength-division multiplexing (WDM) follows the laws of
the telecosm; it succeeds by wasting bandwidth and stinting on power.
WDM takes some 33% more bandwidth per bit than TDM, but it reduces power
to combat nonlinearity and divides the bitstream into multiple
frequencies in order to combat dispersion. Thus it can extend the
distance or increase capacity by a factor of four or more today and can
lay the foundations for the fibersphere tomorrow.

In 1996 the new fiber paradigm emerged in full force. Parallel
communications in all-optical networks, long depicted as a broadband
pipe dream, crushed all competitors and became the dominant source of
new bandwidth in the world telecom network. The year began with a
trifold explosion at the Conference on Optical Fiber Communication in
San Jose when three companies–Lucent Technologies’ Bell Labs, NTT Labs,
and Fujitsu–all announced terabit-per-second WDM transmissions down a
single fiber. Sprint confirmed the significance of the laboratory
breakthroughs by announcing deployment of Ciena’s MultiWave 1600 WDM
system, so called because it can increase the capacity of a single fiber
thread by 1,600%.

The revolution continues in 1997. At the beginning of January,
NEC declared that by increasing the number of bits per hertz from one to
three, it had raised the laboratory WDM record to three terabits per
second. During 1996, MCI had increased the speed of its Internet
backbone by a factor of 25, from 45 megabits a second to 1.2 gigabits.
On January 6, Fred Briggs, chief engineering officer at MCI, announced
that his company is in the process of installing new WDM equipment from
Hitachi and Pirelli that increases the speed of its phone network
backbone to 40 gigabits per second. Accelerating MCI’s previous plans
by some two years, the new system will use a more limited form of
wavelength-division multiplexing to put four 10-gigabit in-cause
formation streams on a single fiber thread.

The first deployment will use existing facilities on a 275-mile
route between Chicago and St. Louis, but the technology will be extended
to the entire network. This move will consummate a nearly thousandfold
upgrade of the MCI backbone, from 45 megabits per second to 40 gigabits,
within some 36 months. Ciena, meanwhile, has announced technology that
allows transmission of 100 gigabits per second.

Its February IPO was the most important since Netscape (market
cap at the end of the first trading day: $3.4 billion). Why? Ciena is
the industry leader in open standard WDM gear. During the first six
months the MultiWave 1600 was available, through October 1996, the firm
achieved $54.8 million in sales and $15 million in net income. (Lucent
is believed to be the overall leader with more than $100 million of
mostly proprietary AT&T systems.) At the same time, the trans-Pacific
consortium announced that it would deploy 100-gigabit-per-second fiber
in its new link between the United States and Asia.

A powerful new player in these markets will be Tellabs, currently
the fastest-growing supplier of electronic digital cross-connect switches
and other optical switching gear. In a further coup, following its
purchase of broadband digital radio pioneer Steinbrecher, Tellabs has
signed up all 12 principals in IBM’s all-optical team. Headed by Paul
Green, recent chairman of the IEEE Communications Society and author of
the leading text on fiber networks, and by Rajiv Ramaswami, coauthor of
a new 1997 text on the subject, the IBM group built the world’s first
fully functioning all-optical networks (AONs), the Rainbow series.
Tellabs now owns the 11 AON patents and 100 listed technology disclosures
of the group.

The implications of the WDM paradigm go beyond simple data pipes.
The greatest impact of all-optical technology will likely come in
consumer markets. A portent is Artel Video Systems of Marlborough,
Massachusetts, which recently introduced a fiber-based WDM system that
can transmit 48 digital video channels, 288 CD-quality audio bitstreams,
and 64 data channels on one fiber line. Aggregating contributions from
a variety of content sources–each on different fiber wavelengths–and
delivering them to consumers who tune into favored frequencies on
conventional cable, the Artel system represents a key step into the
fibersphere. It can be used for new services by either cable TV
companies or telcos.

The deeper significance of the Artel product, however, is its use
of bandwidth as a replacement for transistors and switches. The Artel
system works on dark fiber without compression. The video uses
200-megabit-per-second bitstreams (compare MPEG2 at 4 to 6 megabytes
per second) that permit lossless transmissions suitable for medical
imaging, and obviate dedicated processing of compression codes at the
two ends.

A move to massively parallel communications analogous to the move
to parallel computers, all-optical networks promise nearly boundless
bandwidth in fiber. According to Ewart Lowe of British Telecom, whose
labs at Martlesham Heath in Ipswich have been a fount of all-optical
technology, the new paradigm will reduce the cost of transport by a
factor of 10. For example, the optoelectronic amplifiers previously
used in fiber networks entailed nine power-hungry bipolar microchips
for each wavelength, rather than a simple loop of doped silica that
covers scores of wavelengths.

As these systems move down through the network hierarchy, the
growth of network bandwidth and cost-effectiveness will not only
outpace Moore’s law, it will also excel the rise in bandwidth within
computers–their internal "buses" connecting their microprocessors
to memory and input-output.

While MCI and Sprint move to deploy technology that functions at
40 gigabits a second, current computers and workstations command buses
that run at a rate of close to 1 gigabit a second. This change in the
relationship between the bandwidth of networks and the bandwidth of
computers will transform the architecture of information technology.
As Robert Lucky of Bellcore puts it, "Perhaps we should transmit signals
thousands of miles to avoid even the simplest processing function."

Lucky implies that the law of the telecosm eclipses the law of the
microcosm. Actually, the law of the microcosm makes distributed
computers (smart terminals) more efficient regardless of the cost of
linking them together. The law of the telecosm makes broadband networks
more efficient regardless of how numerous and smart are the terminals.
Working together, however, these two laws of wires and switches impel
ever more widely distributed information systems, with processing and
memory in the optimal locations.

WHAT SHOULD THE MAJOR PLAYERS DO NOW?

FOR THE TELEPHONE COMPANIES, the age of ever smarter terminals
mandates the emergence of ever dumber networks. Telephone companies
may complain of the large costs of the transformation of their system,
but they command capital budgets as large as the total revenues of the
cable industry. Telcos may recoil in horror at the idea of dark fiber,
but they command webs of the stuff 10 times larger than any other
industry. Dumb and dark networks may not fit the phone company
self-image or advertising posture. But they promise larger markets
than the current phone company plan to choke off their own future in the
labyrinthine nets of an "intelligent switching fabric" always behind
schedule and full of software bugs.

Telephone switches (now 80% software) are already too complex to
keep pace with the efflorescence of the Internet. While computers become
ever more lean and mean, turning to reduced instruction-set processors
and Java stations, networks need to adopt reduced instruction-set
architectures. The ultimate in dumb and dark is the fibersphere now
incubating in their magnificent laboratories.

The entrepreneurial folk in the computer industry may view this
wrenching phone company adjustment with some satisfaction. But computer
firms must also adjust. Now addicted to the use of transistors to solve
the problems of limited bandwidth, the computer industry must use
transistors to exploit the nearly unlimited bandwidth. When home-based
machines are optimized for manipulating high-resolution digital video at
high speeds, they will necessarily command what are now called
supercomputer powers. This will mean that the dominant computer
technology will first emerge not in the office market but in the
consumer market. The major challenge for the computer industry is to
change its focus from a few hundred million offices already full of
computer technology to a billion living rooms now nearly devoid of it.

Cable companies possess the advantage of already owning dumb
networks based on the essentials of the all-optical model of broadcast
and select–of customers seeking wavelengths or frequencies rather than
switching circuits. Cable companies already provide all the programs
to all the terminals and allow them to tune in to the desired messages.
But the cable industry cannot become a full-service supplier of
telecommunications unless the regulators give up their ridiculous
two-wire dream in which everyone competes with cable and no one makes
any money. Cash-poor and bandwidth-rich, cable companies need to
collaborate with telcos–which are cash-rich and bandwidth-poor–in a
joint effort to create broadband systems in their own regions.

In all eras, companies tend to prevail by maximizing the use of
the cheapest resources. In the age of the fibersphere, they will use
the huge intrinsic bandwidth of fiber, all 25,000 gigahertz or more, to
simplify everything else. This means replacing nearly all the hundreds
of billions of dollars’ worth of switches, bridges, routers, converters,
codecs, compressors, error correctors, and other devices, together with
the trillions of lines of software code, that pervade the intelligent
switching fabric of both telephone and computer networks.

The makers of all this equipment will resist mightily. But there
is no chance that the old regime can prevail by fighting cheap and
simple optics with costly and complex electronics and software.

The all-optical network will triumph for the same reason that the
integrated circuit triumphed: It is incomparably cheaper than the
competition. Today, measured by the admittedly rough metric of mips per
dollar, a personal computer is more than 2,000 times more cost-effective
than a mainframe. Within 10 years, the all-optical network will be
thousands of times more cost-effective than electronic networks. Just
as the electron rules in computers, the photon will rule the waves of
communication.
I know people would not write it..But worth a try:)

um… i really doubt that people will write you a summary… just do it yourself