FlashLadyBug.com

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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)

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Here’s a link to an old Mac ad, in the age of Windows 95.  It’s not quite disco, but it’s old.

http://www.gamerevolution.com/goodie/commercials/hes_the_computer_man

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“Apple faces US lawsuit over iTunes-Ipod Link”

Well, it’s finally here in the US : the iTunes Lawsuit.

“The suit was filed by a user,
Melanie Tucker, and seeks class-action status. It alleges that Apple
violates antitrust laws by refusing to allow music bought in its iTunes
store to be played on any digital music player
besides the iPod. It also charges Apple with not making it clear to
customers that music from the iTunes store and the iPod are
incompatible with music and devices offered by other companies.”

As many blog comments state after the article, and I agree, you could just burn your iPod purchases onto cd, and then re-import them into another music device.  I’m all for free market and competition, but just because Apple has a product that has huge success doesn’t meant that they should have to share.  Also, I do believe that some publishers have allowed their music to be on iTunes because of its exclusivity.  Remove that, and watch some of the iTunes content go away.

http://playlistmag.com/news/2007/01/02/lawsuit/index.php

Many of these links that i’ve found have shown maybe 10 or 12 different games.  This list features 71, going all the way back to the original Pong.  The page may take a minute or two to load, but there’s a very long list of games represented here.

http://knuttz.net/hosted_pages/Console-Evolution-20070103 

“Geneva, 20 November 2006. The largest superconducting magnet ever built has successfully been powered up to its nominal operating conditions at the first attempt. Called the Barrel Toroid because of its shape, this magnet provides a powerful magnetic field for ATLAS, one of the major particle detectors being prepared to take data at CERN¹’s Large Hadron Collider (LHC), the new particle accelerator scheduled to turn on in November 2007.”

The english translation : they’ve gotten a really, really, really big magnet turned on, at a really really low temperature, because superconductors work better the cooler they are (in this case, -398.2 degrees F)

. . .

“he ATLAS Barrel Toroid was first cooled down over a six-week period in July-August to reach –269°C . It was then powered up step-by-step to higher and higher currents, reaching 21 thousand amps for the first time during the night of 9 November. This is 500 amps above the current needed to produce the nominal magnetic field. Afterwards, the current was switched off and the stored magnetic energy of 1.1 GigaJoules, the equivalent of about 10 000 cars travelling at 70km/h, has now been safely dissipated, raising the cold mass of the magnet to –218°C.”

More plain english : Superconducting magnets use a lot of energy (read the bold.) These superconducting magnets are a part of a device called a particle accelerator that is used to take two very, very small particles (atoms and smaller) , get them going very very fast, and then crash into each other. collide with each other. The resulting destruction can yield other very, very very very small particles, along with the release of some energy. The results of these collision, and the produced particles, are used to learn more about the nature of science on the atomic scale. CERN, mentioned in the quotes, will be the worlds largest particle accelerator.
Instead of me rambling on, trying to explain science i’m not an expert about, here’s a link to “How Stuff Works – Particle Accelerators” that explains what they do in simple terms. (It’s really a lot like crash testing a car – what holds it together, what comes apart in the crash, etc., but instead of cars, it atoms and resulting sub-atomic particles created.)

How Stuff Works :

http://science.howstuffworks.com/atom-smasher.htm

And, for the article in its entirety

http://press.web.cern.ch/press/PressReleases/Releases2006/PR17.06E.html

Well, each years has special events that make it, well, special. Each year, we also learn new things. These are some of the scientific/technological things we’ve learned in the past year.

1. U.S. life expectancy in 2005 inched up to a record high of 77.9 years.

3. Blue light fends off drowsiness in the middle of the night, which could be useful to people who work at night.

7. At 68.1 percent, the United States ranks eighth among countries that have access to and use the Internet. The largest percentage of online use was in Malta, where 78.1 percent access the Web.

15. Americans spent almost $32 billion on toys during 2005. About a third of that was spent on video games.

24. At least once a week, 28 percent of high school students fall asleep in school, 22 percent fall sleep while doing homework and 14 percent get to school late or miss school because they overslept.

39. The common pigeon can memorize 1,200 pictures.

50. Researchers from the University of Manchester managed to induce teeth growth in normal chickens – activating genes that have lain dormant for 80 million years.

Yes, they’re random. Yes, it’s worth reading (although not all are worth reading in depth, all are worth a glance.) Read the rest of the list here

http://www.tbo.com/life/MGBUFCRF5WE.html

The Compact Muon Solenoid CMS particle detector is being constructed at CERN in Geneva. The thing is HUGE! What its going to do, is have the Large Hadron Collider accelerator hit a particle inside the CMS. It will (should) (better…) show us what the universe may have looked like instants after the big bang and allow us to track and find fun particles. Mainly, the Higgs-Boson.
We shall see….it will be turned on around Christmas 2007. A nice present for those crazy physicists. Yay! Science Daily

Three of the last British Airways concordes have been left out on an obscure tarmac to rot, uncovered and exposed to the elements.  The concordes are owned by British Airways, preventing any museums from acquiring the aircraft, or applying for grants to permanantly house the aircraft under cover.

“”Our national heritage is being left to rot on a forgotten runway. These
iconic aircraft represent the single most stunning achievement in
Britain’s post-war history, yet they are being allowed to slowly turn
to rust,” said Ben Lord of the Save Concorde Group.”"

. . . . . .

“Since the aeroplane was retired in 2003, however, BA’s stewardship of
the mothballed fleet has been dogged by controversy. Campaigners were
outraged by BA’s refusal to consider keeping at least one Concorde
serviceable for ceremonial and display purposes, and when BA ordered
its ground crew to disable the planes’ critical systems the fleet’s
former chief pilot described the decision as “an act of vandalism”.

. . . . . . .

“BA has absolutely no interest in Concorde and seems determined to let
the last planes crumble into rust,” said Lord. “It is as if they were
trying to un-invent one of Britain’s greatest engineering achievements.””

. . . . . .

“The Save Concorde Group does not accept this position. Pointing to an
effort at the Air and Space Museum in Paris to return one of Air
France’s Concordes to flying condition, they claim BA is pursuing a
strategy of “deliberate negligence”.”

Read the complete article
http://www.sundayherald.com/58617

A few of these are really interesting, looking at how much browsers have evolved since the 1990’s.  I remember using a few of these back in elementary school.  Its interesting looking not only at the change in browser design, but the change in web content too.  I mean, look at Amamzon.com.
I bought a memory card from them two days ago.  Their site is considerably more than just a mere list of books….

http://iwantmyt3chtv.blogspot.com/2006/10/web-browsers-from-past-15-years.html