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Yes, its another one of these top 10 lists that I usually don’t like….
This one, however, I do.
Here’s a list of 10 of the funniest tech-related videos on Youtube.
I’d recomend :
1. The Medieval Help Desk
2. Steve Jobs and the iPhone Skewered
6. Sick of Smilieys and LOLs (Although I may use a few of these in AIM, they don’t insert themselves into blog entries, emails, or general conversation.)
7. Rogue Remote User Runs Amok at Mac Trade Show
http://www.computerworld.com/action/article.do?command=
viewArticleBasic&articleId=9013800&pageNumber=1
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“New York, NY, February 21, 2007
– ACM, the Association for Computing Machinery, has named Frances E.
Allen the recipient of the 2006 A.M. Turing Award for contributions
that fundamentally improved the performance of computer programs in
solving problems, and accelerated the use of high performance
computing. This award marks the first time that a woman has received
this honor. The Turing Award, first presented in 1966, and named for
British mathematician Alan M. Turing, is widely considered the “Nobel
Prize in Computing.” It carries a $100,000 prize, with financial
support provided by Intel Corporation.”
(Basically, Allen worked on programs that take computer programs and translate them from one computer language to another, and she also worked on computer programs that used multiple processors.)
Read the full article here
http://campus.acm.org/public/pressroom/press_releases/2_2007/turing2006.cfm
I may have blogged about something similar a few weeks ago, but I like the comparison in the first paragraphs.
“
SAN JOSE, Calif. - Intel
Corp. has designed a computer chip that promises to do as many
calculations as quickly as an entire data center - while consuming as
much energy as a light bulb.
The world’s biggest chipmaker said Sunday it developed a
programmable processor that can perform about a trillion calculations
per second, or deliver a performance of 1.01 Teraflops. It accomplishes
this feat while consuming 62 watts of power when the chip is running at
a frequency of 3.16 gigahertz.
A similarly powerful supercomputer in 1996 at Sandia National
Laboratories took up more than 2,000 square feet, used nearly 10,000
Pentium Pro processors, and consumed more than 500 kilowatts of
electricity.
Intel’s latest chip is still in the research phase, but it marks an
important breakthrough for an industry obsessed with obtaining the
highest amount of performance for the lowest energy consumption in its
chips.”
When you look at things that way, it really goes to show what 11 years of technological research can do.
http://www.mercurynews.com/mld/mercurynews/news/local/
states/california/northern_california/16677437.htm
I seem to be on a roll here with quantum mechanics and news…weird.
This company has claimed that it will demonstrate a 16-qubit quantum computer! WHats different about this computer? Well, other quantum computers are shy…if they exist in “this” world they don’t work. Thermal noise, outside interactions, would essentially fry the machine. After reading that, i decided that we computer builders don’t have that much to complain about…sure, we have to be aware of static charge…but, these guys have to worry about stray PHOTONS!
However, D-Wave Systems has created one that is immune to such effects, also know as being adiabatic.
Now, lets get into the system.
Its 16 qubits, which means it has 16 quantum bits which is simultaneously 1 and 0. Even though its only 16, it is supposedly able to perform 64,000 calculations simultaneously via parallel “universes”
Hope this thing works 
The pictures sure look shiny enough to warrant credit 
Check it out at the D Wave blog
No comment on the current standing of Windows as a good, bad, or indifferent operating system. Regardless, its still neat to look back at previous versions, looking at design changes and other adjustments that brought the operating system to where it is today.
http://blog.wired.com/wiredphotos31/2007/01/windows_vista.html
I forget what I was searching for, but I found this old video of the US Government disposing of old metallic Sodium after WWII. Sodium explodes/burns when it comes in contact with water. According to the narration on the film, the government couldn’t sell the sodium because no one would ship it to a buyer because it could explode so easily. (Water really is everywhere). So the government just found an old, dead lake, and tossed the barrels in, and watched em explode. I’m not sure what the environmental impact of this really is, but it’s cool to watch anyway.
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=
3825610222960975525&q=sodium+lake&hl=en
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Continuing with the small sting of historic tech posts, here’s a list of some of the top 25 killer apps of all time. I’ve heard of most of these, and have actually used about 4 of them. A few of them are just a little too old for me to have used when released (rather, I wasn’t old enough to have them when they came out.)
http://www.eweek.com/slideshow_viewer/
0,1205,l=&s=26705&a=196169&po=1,00.asp
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Here’s a quick timeline of hard drives, starting in 1956, going all the way up to the present.
“1956: IBM ships the first hard drive in
the RAMAC 305 system. The drive holds 5MB of data at $10,000 a
megabyte. The system is as big as two refrigerators and uses 50 24-inch
platters.”
“1979: IBM’s 3370 uses seven 14-inch platters to store 571MB, the first drive to use thin-film heads.”
In the 26 years between the two above advances, data storage changed drastically. If you took the equivalent storage area from 1956, and used 1979 data density, you’d find that what would store 5mb in 1956 (by area) could store a whopping 11,985mb in 1979.
Even the number from 1056 are amazing. 5 mb, on 50 24-inch platters. I could hold that much now on two floppy discs. Who even uses those anymore? On my 2gig USB key, 5 mb would be .25% of the entire thing. That’s smaller than the head of a pin. It sure is amazing how far we’ve come, isn’t it?
Read (and view photos of more) here
http://www.pcworld.com/printable/article/id,127105/printable.html
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Cutting to the chase : Here’s a short list of about 7 features/capabilites that the new iPhone currently doesn’t have that might turn out to be annoying design flaws later on.
These range from the high cost (which will probably drop in a year or two), the reliability of Cingular as a carrier, no Wi-Fi syncing to iTunes (it could be done, this feature just isn’t in iTunes b/c there are currently no Wifi iPods), to a lack of removable memory (although with 8 gigs, who really needs it, although then it could double as a portable hard drive).
Most of these issues look like they could easily be fixed later on, especially considering that the important part of the design is the overall concept. I don’t want an iPhone with wireless sync to iTunes if it doesn’t make good calls or I can’t afford it.
Read more about it here
http://arstechnica.com/journals/apple.ars/2007/1/10/6559
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Also, read a bit about how Apple, Inc. (no longer Apple Computer, because they do more than just computers) managed to keep the iPhone a secret for almost 30 months, while collaborating with Cingular, Google, and Yahoo. Everything from fake patents to dummy designs released to the designers was used to keep its true design and identity a secret.
http://money.cnn.com/2007/01/10/commentary/
lewis_fortune_iphone.fortune/index.htm?postversion=2007011009
Hmm, interesting…
The Freeform fabricator is the size of a microwave…and costs only 2400 dollars. It makes 3d objects out of plastic, and other materials.
Its been used with silicone, plaster, playdoh, chocolate, icing…this is great
I mean..this is just awesome. think of the possiblities…
What would you make using this thing?
Read the article on newscientist (video is also there)