What would you like to read about?

I've been invited to submit a book proposal to an industry publisher. I've got a few ideas of my own, but I thought I'd open up the floor to readers as well. Topics should relate to the integrated circuit industry in some way, but don't necessarily need to be highly technical. Leave your thoughts in the comments, or use the contact link at the top of the page. If the publisher and I both like your idea, you can expect at least a nice note in the Acknowledgments and probably a signed copy.

What's the third alternative?

Though people argue about just how large global oil reserves are, it's pretty much agreed that those reserves are finite, and smaller now than they were twenty or thirty years ago. It's also pretty much agreed that essentially none of those reserves lie under the sovereign territory of North Korea. Nor is North Korea exactly rolling in foreign exchange. So it's completely rational for North Korea to want energy sources other than oil.

On the other hand, it's also completely rational for the rest of the world to be less than enthusiastic about North Korea becoming a nuclear power.

So what's the third alternative that resolves the dilemma? How can North Korea keep the lights on without using either oil that it doesn't have or nuclear technology that the rest of the world doesn't want it to have?

More generally, it seems to me like this is a key issue for nuclear non-proliferation. Developing economies need reliable sources of energy in order to industrialize. Where is that energy going to come from if not oil? If nuclear energy is not geopolitically acceptable, what's the third alternative?

That thing you were about to do that has nothing to do with your current project? Don't do it. Don't even think about it.

(Link by way of 43Folders.)

Showing once again that integrating new IC materials is hard, several reports suggest that high-k gate materials will be pushed out past the 45 nm technology node. Though details are sketchy on Intel's new low power process, it appears to depend on conventional dielectrics as well.

"As all of us saw on television, there is also some deep, persistent poverty in this region as well," Bush said. "And that poverty has roots in a history of racial discrimination, which cut off generations from the opportunity of America.

"We have a duty to confront this poverty with bold action. So let us restore all that we have cherished from yesterday, and let us rise above the legacy of inequality."

Fine words. What I want to know is why it took a Category 4 hurricane and a national embarrassment for George Bush to figure out that there's poverty in America. His own Census Bureau could have told him that, for instance, about 30% of children in Louisiana and Mississippi live below the poverty line.