Got a question for Watson? Ask away on Reddit

by Matt Hickey

(Credit: Reddit)

You've probably heard about Watson, IBM's latest smarter-than-you supercomputer. This week it competed against champions on Jeopardy--and won. 

Thankfully, Watson is not self-aware (yet), because we all know that once computers become self-aware one of the first things they do is try to wipe out humans, or even humanity itself. If my name was Sarah Connor I'd be nervous right about now.

But that lack of self-awareness doesn't mean Watson can't think for itself, or even speak for itself. In fact, right now you can ask Watson questions online on this Reddit thread. It's part of Reddit's popular "Ask Me Anything" (AMA) feature, and while users are encouraged to ask anything, there's no guarantee you'll get a response.

It's not actually Watson, but the research team that created it, answering, and that's because they don't yet know how to have him do it. That man-machine divide, by the way, is what we'll be addressing on tomorrow's Reporters' Roundtable podcast at noon PT. The topic will be "robobrain vs. humanity."
Still, it's still great that the scienticians who put together such an impressive machine are opening their minds to the public. Redditors have already asked some rather technical questions, including, "How do you go about 'teaching' Watson to derive the non-literal/idiomatic meaning from phrases like 'around the corner? Does it rely on a huge (human dictated) list of such 'rules'?" and "Could you give an example of a question (or question style) that Watson would always struggle with?"

Valid questions all, but we'd like to get answers to the juicier ones, such as "Is Watson seeing anybody?" "Does Watson ever feel? If so, does he feel overshadowed by Sherlock Holmes?" and "Watson, should I get the Verizon iPhone now or wait for the next generation?" Even better, you, the readers, should ask something. After all, it's not every day you get to query the mind of a supercomputer.

Go on, ask them anything.

(Credit: Screenshot by Matt Hickey/CNET)

Source: Cnet News

NSA chief wants to protect 'critical' private networks

by Declan McCullagh

 

NSA chief Keith Alexander, who also runs the U.S. Cyber Command, says it's time to "refine the roles of government and the private sector in securing this nation's critical networks."

(Credit: Declan McCullagh/CNET)

SAN FRANCISCO--The head of the National Security Agency said today that the U.S. military should have the authority to defend "critical networks" from malware and other disruptions. 

Gen. Keith Alexander, who is also the head of the Pentagon's U.S. Cyber Command, said at the RSA Conference here that the NSA's "active defenses" designed to defend military networks should be extended to civilian government agencies, and then key private-sector networks as well.
"I believe we have the talent to build a cyber-secure capability that protects our civil liberties and our privacy," Alexander said.

Alexander's comments come only two days after William Lynn, the deputy secretary of defense, offered the same suggestion. In an essay last year, Lynn likened active defenses to a cross between a "sentry" and a "sharpshooter" that can also "hunt within" a network for malicious code or an intruder who managed to penetrate the network's perimeter.

But the power to monitor civilian networks for bad behavior includes the ability to monitor in general, and it was the NSA that ran the controversial warrantless wiretapping program under the Bush administration. Concerns about privacy are likely to turn on the details, including the extent of the military's direct involvement, and whether Web sites like Google.com and Hotmail.com could be considered "critical" or the term would only be applied to facilities like the Hoover Dam.

Alexander offered little in the way of specifics today. "We need to continue to refine the roles of government and the private sector in securing this nation's critical networks," he said. "How do we extend this secure zone, if you will? How do we help protect the critical infrastructure, key resources?"
At the moment, the Department of Homeland Security has primary responsibility for protecting critical infrastructure. A presidential directive (HSPD 7) says the department will "serve as a focal point for the security of cyberspace." During an appearance at RSA two years ago, Alexander stressed that "we do not want to run cybersecurity for the U.S. government."

That was then. After Cyber Command was created--following reports of a power struggle between DHS and the NSA--it moved quickly to consolidate its authority. An October 2010 memorandum of agreement (PDF) between the two agencies says they agree to "provide mutually beneficial logistical and operational support" to one another.
Senators Joseph Lieberman (I-Conn.) and Susan Collins (R-Maine) recently pledged to reintroduce a controversial bill handing President Obama power over privately owned computer systems during a "national cyberemergency," with limited judicial review. It's been called an Internet "kill switch" bill, especially after Egypt did just that.

Alexander didn't address that point. "The intent would be: let's build how we can do this with DOD, show we can extend that to the government, and then to key critical infrastructure," he said.

Source: Cnet News

Hurt Locker lawyers launch nationwide copyright fight

by Greg Sandoval

 

A publicity still for the movie 'The Hurt Locker.'

(Credit: Voltage Pictures)

 

After several setbacks, Dunlap, Grubb & Weaver, the law firm that last year filed copyright suits against thousands of accused illegal file sharers on behalf of independent filmmakers, has made good on promises to push on with the cases.
Dunlap has begun to re-file lawsuits across the country against people accused last year of pirating movies via peer-to-peer networks. To do that, Dunlap established a network of lawyers who are licensed to operate in different federal districts.
Dunlap, which also works under the name U.S. Copyright Group, made headlines last year by suing thousands in a federal court in Washington D.C. on behalf of the makers of such films as "Far Cry" and "The Hurt Locker," last year's Oscar winner for Best Picture. The Washington court, however, appeared hostile to Dunlap's strategy of filing against thousands of people from outside that jurisdiction. That's when Dunlap changed strategy.

'Hurt Locker' sharers: Expect docs like this (photos)

In the case of "Far Cry," a film based on the popular video game, Dunlap told CNET that lawyers working with the firm have filed complaints on behalf of the filmmakers in Massachusetts, Colorado, Minnesota and West Virginia.
"Filing in Florida in about ten minutes," Thomas Dunlap, one of the firm's founders, e-mailed today. "I am driving to courthouse now, should have cases already in Illinois. "We will file in California, Texas, Washington and Oregon in the next two weeks."
Dunlap has also begun filing lawsuits against named individuals. Records show that he filed suits in U.S. District Court for the Southern District of West Virginia against Linaka Stein and Gina Morrison, residents of West Virginia and Richard Ball of Virginia.

Dunlap typically offers an accused person a chance to settle out of court for a sum between $1,500 and $3,000. Dunlap has always said he would file lawsuits against those who refused to settle. But there were those who had their doubts. Dunlap appeared to drag his feet about starting the potentially expensive and years-long process of winning a copyright judgment against someone.
Jammie Thomas-Rasset, the Minnesota mother accused by the music industry of illegal file sharing, is an example of how hard a process it can be to pursue a copyright judgment. The Thomas-Rasset case has cost the major labels millions of dollars in legal fees and the case continues to drag on.
Dunlap doesn't appear to be bluffing anymore. The firm shows no signs of letting up.

A half-dozen people have contacted CNET since Tuesday about receiving notices from their Internet service providers informing them that Dunlap had subpoenaed their names and other information about them. Before filing a suit against someone, copyright owners must first acquire a person's identity from their ISP.
Dunlap's lawsuits gave rise to a wave of antipiracy litigation last year. Attorneys in West Virginia, Texas, and California began using Dunlap's legal strategy as a template. The porn sector was the most passionate in pursuing these cases. But the adult-filmmakers have run into trouble. A federal judge in Texas recently "severed" thousands of defendants from copyright suits filed by attorney Evan Stone on behalf of 11 copyright owners, most of them porn studios, according to a report in Ars Technica.
In 13 of Stone's 16 suits, only a single defendant remains.
The judge in the case ruled that there wasn't enough binding the defendants together to name them in one suit. Stone argues that the defendants "were improperly severed." He said that to use BitTorrent, people must work together to share files.

"This isn't over," Stone told CNET. "There are numerous other tools for obtaining the names and addresses of pirates and we're not going to stop until justice is served."
In West Virginia, a federal court came to a similar conclusion as the Texas judge. Attorney Ken Ford had filed against thousands of people on behalf of adult-film studios but most of the defendants were also severed from those suits. The Electronic Frontier Foundation, which has led the opposition against these suits say that they rob defendants of the ability to defend themselves? How can a individual tell their story when they're lumped together with so many people?

Source: Cnet News

IBM's Watson supercomputer crowned Jeopardy king

Jeopardy! champions Ken Jennings and Brad Rutter revealed what it felt like to "represent the human race" against IBM's supercomputer Watson.

IBM's supercomputer Watson has trounced its two competitors in a televised show pitting human brains against computer bytes.

After a three night marathon on the quiz show Jeopardy, Watson emerged victorious to win a $1million (£622,000) prize.
The computer's competitors were two of the most successful players ever to have taken part in Jeopardy.
But in the end their skill at the game was no match for Watson.
Ken Jennings had previously notched up 74 consecutive wins on the show - the most ever - while Brad Rutter had won the most amount of money, $3million (£1.9m).
"I for one welcome our new computer overlords," Mr Jennings wrote along with his correct final Jeopardy question.
Search for meaning But the victory for Watson and IBM was about more than money. It was about ushering in a new era in computing where machines will increasingly be able to learn and understand what humans are really asking them for.
Jeopardy is seen as a significant challenge for Watson because of the show's rapid fire format and clues that rely on subtle meanings, puns, and riddles; something humans excel at and computers do not.

IBM machines have previously taken on chess players

 

On the night of the grand finale, IBM announced a research agreement with speech recognition firm Nuance Communications, to "explore, develop and commercialise" the Watson computing system's advanced analytics capabilities in the health care industry.
The technology behind Watson has the ability to scan and analyse information from many more resources than a human can in a short period of time, potentially aiding doctors in diagnosing patients quickly.
"We can transform the way that health care professionals accomplish everyday tasks by enabling them to work smarter and more efficiently," said Dr John E Kelly III, senior vice president and director of IBM research.
Other possible applications for Watson's technology include dealing with big sets of data commonly found in the legal and financial worlds.
Fair fight There is little doubt that Watson's win stirred up a host of emotions.
Paul Miller of the technology blog Engadget.com was moderately impressed.

“I was rooting for the humans”

Daniel Terdiman CNet.com

"It's obvious that IBM's DeepQA research programme has developed some of the most sophisticated natural language AI known to man. At the same time, Jeopardy questions aren't really that hard... all three contestants knew the answer most of the time, but Watson was just quicker on the draw.

"Of course, it's no surprise that computers have quicker reflexes, so why shouldn't Watson get to use his inbuilt advantage to the utmost? It seems like a fair fight to us."
Daniel Terdiman of news website CNet watched the final with IBM staff at an event at the company's Silicon Valley research centre.
"I was rooting for the humans," he said.
Who is Bram Stoker? Twitter was alight with praise and condemnation for the machine's victory.
The comments ranged from "Robot Apocalypse, here we come" to "IBM's Watson dominates Ken Jennings, turns attention to plotting our demise".
One user wrote: "next challenge for #Watson: The Price is Right".
The final Jeopardy category was 19th century novelists.
And the answer: William Wilkinson's "An Account of the Principalities of Wallachia and Moldavia" inspired this author's most famous novel.
The question - which all three contestants got right was "Who is Bram Stoker?"
Watson wagered $17,973 (£11,154) to cement his victory.
In the end Watson accumulated $77,147 (£47,923) versus Mr Jennings' total of $24,000 (£14,907) and Mr Rutter's $21,600 (£12,416).


Source: BBC News

New Norton CyberCrime Index rates your risk

by Seth Rosenblatt 

 

A new free tool from the makers of Norton attempts to quantify the real-time state of cybersecurity. It makes its debut today alongside the latest version of Symantec's all-in-one consumer security suite, Norton 360.
The Norton CyberCrime Index lies somewhere between a weather report and the United States' threat level advisory system, and Norton 360 version 5 launches with a direct link to it.

Norton CyberCrime Index (images)

The CyberCrime Index uses a statistical model based on information from Symantec's Global Intelligence Network, ID Analytics, and DataLossDB. At the top level, the CyberCrime Index takes this data and creates a number evaluating the relative risk of the threats of the day. However, it also provides a more in-depth look at active threats, threat trends, and provides advice on what kinds of behaviors are being most heavily targeted that day.
Symantec has had the statistical model and algorithm it uses in the CyberCrime Index vouched for by the University of Texas at San Antonio.
The service is set to go live this morning, so check back here later today for a hands-on update.
Symantec isn't forcing the index on any of its users, though the new version of Norton 360 does include a direct link to the service. Version 5 of Norton 360 includes the real-time threat map that debuted in Norton's 2011 consumer suites, along with all the features that were introduced in Norton's 2011 consumer suites last fall. These include updates to Norton's Insight engine, which instantly checks a file's origins and how long it's existed to determine how safe it is. The new version of System Insight also profiles your programs to determine if any of them are slowing down system performance, and automatically alerts users when a program is eating up too many resources.

Now included in Norton 360 is the Norton Bootable Recovery Tool, which will clean heavily infected systems enough to get Norton 360 installed, and can create a rescue tool on disc or USB so that your computer can be resuscitated. The backup features in Norton 360 have been improved, too, adding in automatic file encryption to the backup process. Lastly, Norton Safe Web's social-media scanner has been imported from Norton Internet Security 2011. Currently, it still only supports Facebook, though that's a good start: it will check your Facebook wall and news feeds from within Norton.

Norton 360 version 5 (review) comes with a 30-day trial and can be used on up to three computers. A one-year license with 2GB of online storage retails for $79.99. Bumping that up to 25GB of storage costs $99.99.

Cnet.com

Google unveils One Pass system for online content

Google says the 10% charge will allow publishers to customise how and when they charge for content

Google has launched a new payment system that allows users to subscribe to online content for a 10% commission fee.

The move comes after rival Apple was criticised over its payment system which takes 30% of the sale price.
One Pass will work on tablets and smartphones, as well as Google-related websites.
One Pass will launch initially in the UK, Canada, France, Germany, Italy and Spain.
The announcement came just one day after Apple announced new rules for publishers selling subscriptions on its iOS platform.
Apple says companies must now offer users the option to buy directly through an iTunes account, handing 30% of the price to Apple.
Previously, vendors were allowed to simply direct customers to an external website, keeping all of the profits.
On a Google blog posting, Lee Shirani, the company's director of business product management wrote: "Publishers can customise how and when they charge for content while experimenting with different models to see what works best for them."

BBC NEWS

Sony banning PlayStation 3 hackers for life

by Leslie Katz

Sony came down hard on PlayStation 3 hackers today, saying they will be permanently banned from the company's online services.
"Violation of the system software license agreement for the PlayStation 3 System invalidates the consumer guarantee for that system," reads a notice posted to Sony's official PlayStation blog. "In addition, copying or playing pirated software is a violation of international copyright laws. Consumers using circumvention devices or running unauthorized or pirated software will have access to the PlayStation Network and access to Qriocity services through PlayStation 3 system terminated permanently."

(Credit: Sony)

To avoid the lifetime shutout, Sony said, consumers must "immediately cease use and remove all circumvention devices and delete all unauthorized or pirated software from their PlayStation 3 systems."
In the post, Social Media Manager Jeff Rubenstein said the policy represents an initial response to questions from PlayStation.Blog readers about how Sony plans to deal with breaches of its policy.
The company did not say when the ban will begin, but the blog PS3 News is reporting that many users of its PS3 forums have already confirmed receiving e-mail notices from Sony followed by their PlayStation 3 consoles being banned.
According to one account, "If you get error 0x8002A227, Sony banned your PS3 from the PSN."
This is just the latest step by Sony to thwart PlayStation 3 jailbreaks.
In the most well-publicized battle, the company last month requested a restraining order against famed iPhone jailbreaker George Hotz, also known as Geohot, for coming up with a jailbreak that lets people run unauthorized software on the PS3.
Sony alleged that the jailbreak, created with the assistance of the hacking group fail0verflow, violates the Digital Millennium Copyright Act and asked a court to stop Hotz from making any material related to his hack available on the Web. Hotz countered Sony's claim, saying his solution was a jailbreak for a closed system, just like any jailbreak for mobile phones, which are explicitly allowed by the DMCA.
A U.S. District Court granted a temporary restraining order, and Hotz has since removed all mentions of the jailbreak from his site, but Sony mistakenly retweeted the jailbreak code.
That case is ongoing.
Sony also took legal action last year to halt the sales in some places of PS Jailbreak, a USB dongle that allows PlayStation 3 owners to dump borrowed games onto the system's hard drive.
In addition, Sony has tightened security with each successive firmware update.
In its statement today, the company said that "by identifying PlayStation 3 systems that breach our guidelines and terminating their ability to connect to PlayStation Network, we are protecting our business and preserving the honest gameplay experiences that you expect and deserve."
A majority of commenters to the blog seem pleased by Sony's latest move.
"Thanks for acknowledging this officially. Good to know Sony is not just hoping that this goes away," wrote one poster. Wrote another: "Thank You Sony! Ban these punks!"
But a few voices of dissent popped up on the forums as well.
"If Sony actually took the time to know what us (the consumers) wanted, maybe they would see less piracy," one person wrote. "I mean the whole reason hackers want to hack the PSP Go is to play games that are still only available in UMD only."
Wrote another: "While I understand the security and legal issues relevant to piracy and hacking, if I felt companies' motivation was pure, I [might] be OK with this stern stance. But, I think it is motivated more by greed and control than anything else. They want to keep all the $$$ for themselves."

Cnet.com

'Leaked' Dell plans date Windows 7, 8 tablets

by Josh Lowensohn

Dell's recently unveiled Windows 7 tablet could be in the hands of consumers as soon as mid-May, with a follow-up device in January that would run the next version of Windows.
That's according to Android Central, which, along with sister site WP Central, says it has acquired from a tipster rough release plans for Dell's portable devices.
The plans--which include information on a handful of Android devices, including four tablets--also tease a version of Dell's Venue Pro Windows Phone 7 device, which will bring "additional features and enhancements" and arrive in mid-April. That's followed in July by "Wrigley," a Windows Phone 7 slider that will sport a "Next Gen" version of the OS, which could simply be referring to Microsoft's planned update that will bring multitasking and a beefed up version of the IE9 browser.

Plans shown on the Android Central blog, with a mysterious "Windows 8" tablet slated for January.

(Credit: Android Central)

 

As for the Windows tablets, there's "Rosemount" which is the 10-inch, Windows 7 tablet Dell unveiled in wooden mock-up form just last week. That's slated for arrival in mid-May, with "Peju," a "Windows 8" version, arriving in January 2012.
Microsoft, of course, has made no announcements on the date, planned features, or even the name of the next version of Windows. The most recent nugget of information given out by the company was at CES back in January, when it took the cover off plans to support ARM architecture so the OS could run on a wider range of devices.
When asked about the Android Central and WP Central reports, a Dell representative said the company does not comment on speculation or unannounced product plans.

Plans shown on the WP Central blog.

Cnet.com

IBM researchers show love for 'Jeopardy' champion Watson

A large group of researchers watched their hero, Watson, take on the best 'Jeopardy' players in history Wednesday night at the Almaden Research Center in San Jose, California.

(Credit: Daniel Terdiman/CNET)

SAN JOSE, Calif.--I'm going to just come out and admit it--I was rooting for the humans.
By "humans," of course, I mean Ken Jennings and Brad Rutter, two men who on the one hand are the greatest champions in the history of "Jeopardy" and who on the other just ended up getting their butts handed to them at the game by a computer that didn't even seem to know that Toronto isn't in the United States.
In case you were somehow in a cabin in the mountains with no Internet access and no TV over the last few weeks and don't know what I'm talking about, I'm referring of course to the latest IBM Grand Challenge--Big Blue's development of a supercomputer known as Watson that was intended to be able to beat the world's best "Jeopardy" players at a game centered around one of the biggest problems in computing: understanding and parsing natural language.
Over the last three days, Watson's battle against Jennings and Rutter played out on national TV in a two-game match. May the best, er, man win.
Though I wasn't able to be in the room at IBM Research in Yorktown Heights, N.Y., when the matches were played last month, I did get invited to the final night party this evening at IBM's Almaden Research Center here, and let me tell you, though I was in a roomful of actual human beings, not many of them shared my preference for a contestant with DNA. These folks were definitely in Watson's corner, tinny text-to-speech voice and all.
In the end, they all got the last laugh. As you've no doubt heard by now, Watson out and out dominated Jennings and Rutter, finishing the two games with a total of $77,147, more than the two humans' $24,000 (Jennings) and $21,600 (Rutter) combined.
So I guess Jennings' tongue-in-cheek comment "I, for one, welcome our new computer overlords," which he wrote along with his Final Jeopardy question, was somewhat appropriate.

Roomful of researchers
When I got the invitation to tonight's festivities, I accepted readily. I knew it would be a lot of fun to watch the prime-time conclusion of IBM's four-year effort in the same room as a large group of people who might actually be able to understand the complex science, technology, and math behind the Watson project.
Of course, many of those researchers brought their families with them to watch the final match, and some of the kids may have been more enthusiastic than any of the employees.
"My daughter feels 50 percent more geeky" than she used to, said James Kaufman, a research manager at the Almaden facility. To which the daughter, Sarah Kaufman, added, "I was pretty geeky to start with."

Watson research manager Eric Brown spent part of the evening answering questions about the project and signing autographs. He also posed for a few pictures.

(Credit: Daniel Terdiman/CNET)

The evening began with coffee and popcorn outside the research center's auditorium, and on hand was a surprise guest--Eric Brown, Watson research manager at Yorktown Heights, who happened to be in town for another meeting and decided to stick around and regale the crowd with some tales of the project.
Standing outside the auditorium, Brown was answering questions and signing autographs. If you think about it, it's probably a pretty rare thing for an otherwise unknown IBM employee to be signing autographs, but here he was a rock star.
One kid came up to him for an autograph, and Brown said to him, "Are you going to be a computer scientist when you grow up? Because, you know, when you're a computer scientist, you get to go on TV. It's really quite glamorous."
To Brown, being able to watch the finale with a group of fellow researchers was a very different experience than being with members of the general public. Yet, he said that everywhere he's gone as an ambassador for the Watson project, he's been struck by the high level of public excitement. Still, here at Almaden, he knew that the audience would bring "a different eye" to the show.

Confidence
To me, one of the most interesting things about watching the two matches among Watson, Jennings, and Rutter was seeing the little display at the bottom of the screen in which viewers could see not only Watson's top three potential answers but also the percentage of confidence the computer had in each.
To Brown, that last element is one of the most important parts of the entire project. "What [Watson] really is," Brown said, "is a demonstration of the technology. And what we really want people to think about is [that Watson has to] come up with an answer buried in a [natural language] concept, not only the right answer, but confidence in the answer."
Strangely, there were times during the two matches when Watson's confidence in what turned out to be the right answer was extremely low. At least once, Watson pegged what turned out to be the right answer at just 12 percent confidence and didn't even bother to buzz in. That struck me as odd.
But to James Kaufman, that wasn't surprising, given that in order to come up with an answer, Watson had to balance several different algorithms. Most of the time it worked and quite well as evidenced by the computer's resounding victory. But sometimes the computer seemed very off-kilter.
Another thing that didn't surprise Kaufman was how well the computer did, even matched up against trivia powerhouses like Jennings and Rutter. "I know the guys [on the] Watson" team, Kaufman said, alluding to those researchers' across-the-board genius-level intelligence.
What did surprise Kaufman was how, depending on the topic at hand, the amount of time that Watson sometimes took to answer a question. "That struck me as almost human," he said. "It was almost hesitation."
Kaufman said that he really enjoyed being able to watch Watson take on the champions and do so well, even as the computer sometimes made silly mistakes, such as its answer of Toronto to the first-match Final Jeopardy question about U.S. cities. But mainly, Watson showed off what was an extremely impressive display of computing prowess, one that now has to be measured right up against IBM's Deep Blue's victory over chess world champion Garry Kasparov in 1997.
"I spoke to a colleague," Kaufman said, "who said that the goal [of the Watson project] was to create the computer on 'Star Trek.' They're moving the needle in that direction, and I think they did it."

Cnet.com

Nvidia CEO: Future laptops will mirror MacBook Air

by Brooke Crothers

Nvidia's CEO added his two cents to an increasingly popular theory on laptop design: that is, the MacBook Air as a template for all future designs.

The Toshiba AC110, based on an Nvidia Tegra 2 processor, hints at what's to come.

(Credit: Toshiba)

In case you're wondering where the laptop is headed--circa 2014--Nvidia CEO Jen-Hsun Huang offered what could be considered a highly educated guess in response to a question I posed to him in a phone interview today.
"You'll have trouble finding one that doesn't look like the MacBook Air," he said. "I think the Macbook Air is a good mental image of what a clamshell laptop will look like."
"They'll be thin because you won't need any heat pipes, the fan, and extra batteries to lug around," according to Huang.
Nvidia chips have played an important role in the MacBook Air. Apple chose Nvidia graphics silicon beginning with the second-generation Air. And its role eclipsed that of Intel in the 2010 MBA (third generation): Nvidia's GeForce 320M graphics processor is the only major logic chip to see a significant upgrade in the Air (Intel's silicon changed very little from second- to third-generation).
But Huang's vision for the future laptop goes beyond today's Air. It is rooted in devices running on power-sipping ARM chips, of which Nvidia is now a major supplier to tablet makers like Motorola, Samsung, and LG. And by 2014, ARM laptops will likely be running a full-blown version of Windows--if that's even necessary in light of the burgeoning popularity Google's Android, which runs almost predominantly on ARM.
Speaking of Android, if the present is prelude to what's to come, the Toshiba AC110 represents the future of extremely thin and light laptops thanks to its use of an ARM-based Nvidia Tegra 2 processor. And don't think will they will be slow. Nvidia is already hawking a third-generation quad-core Tegra processor that should make it into tablets this year.

Cnet.com