I want a phone with no external buttons. If you have to put external buttons on it, at least recess the bloody things! Perhaps two: one to shut the alarm clock off, and one to snooze it. The same two could answer the speakerphone and reject it.
Other than that, forget […]
Historian George Dyson tells stories from the birth of the modern computer — from its 16th-century origins to the hilarious notebooks of some early computer engineers. Listen for the story of the very first artificial life — stored on a deck of IBM punchcards and ready to come alive again. Watch this talk on […]
AMD’s FireStream 9250: first processor to top 1 Teraflop - Engadget
AMD’s second generation FireStream 9250 just broke the single-precision teraflop barrier at the International Supercomputing Conference in Germany.
Public safety and transporting ethanol | Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists
According to the Renewable Fuels Association, 151 biorefineries in the United States produce nearly 8.7 billion gallons of ethanol annually. Another 51 refineries are under construction and 7 are being expanded, all of which is projected to increase ethanol production by another 5 billion gallons […]
Do Our Virtual Lives Make Our Real Lives Suck? - 236 - The Room
The problem with video games and the internet and Web-connected cell phones and giant TVs with surround sound is not that it makes us violent. It’s that it makes us bored with reality. If you’re under thirty-five like me, answer this question: […]
A message for those of you with no iPhone or BlackBerry: Your cellphone is smarter than you think.
In fact, your boring old cellphone has enormous potential. Here is a guide to checking your email, looking up information and updating your calendar, just by sending text messages. You can use any cellphone, but you’ll need a […]
She’s perfectly quiet, but once you sit or lie down, she responds to
your every move. Lie on your back, she snuggles up right next to you in
a log position. Curl up in the fetal position, she spoons. The only
hitch: She’s 2-D. “Yeah, you can’t feel the girl. That’s the thing,”
Burrows explained.
When asked how long he’d […]
What drives me up the latest tree is the incredibly egoistic idea that I might want to listen to your choice of badly-transmitted “music” while your bloody mobile phone rings. It’s bad enough I have to listen to the stupid robot if you don’t pick up. Why should I have to listen to some bullshit […]
Modern nomads carry almost no paper because they access their documents on their laptop computers, mobile phones or online. Increasingly, they don’t even bring laptops. Many engineers at Google, the leading internet company and a magnet for nomads, travel with only a BlackBerry, iPhone or other “smart phone”. If ever the need arises for a […]
“Rock star physicist” Brian Cox talks about his work on the Large Hadron Collider at CERN. Discussing the biggest of big science in an engaging, accessible way, Cox brings us along on a tour of the massive project.
TED | Talks | Brian Cox: What really goes on at the Large Hadron Collider (video)
Electronics obsolescence—also known as DMSMS, for
diminishing manufacturing sources and material
shortages—is a huge problem for designers who build
[…]
P.A. Semi was founded in 2003 by veterans of a number of successful chip design projects, including DEC’s Alpha and StrongARM processor families. Correctly guessing that power use would become an increasingly significant factor due to rising energy prices and an increasingly mobile world, the company designed an impressively efficient chip, the PA6T-1682M. The dual-core […]
I just downloaded a 1.5 MB .exe file from Microsoft to validate my many-times-validated copy of XP SP2, so that I could download a 524KB hotfix because the geniuses who programmed SP2 didn’t have enough imagination to consider that SD cards might someday hold more than 4GB.
And Microsoft thinks we ought to just roll over […]
As David Kushner gushed in Rolling Stone: “The long epoch of top-down culture… is fading faster than anyone predicted. The more vibrant world is bottom-up, powered by the people. Make a video, put it online; download a song, remix it, put it back up… With cheap computers, free software, broadband access and enough Mountain Dew, […]
It’s official: Toshiba announces HD DVD surrender | Tech news blog - CNET News.com
The two-year war between HD DVD and Blu-ray officially ended Tuesday morning as Toshiba waved the white flag and declared it would stop producing HD DVD products.
Taps for HD DVD as Wal-Mart Backs Blu-ray - New York Times
“SAN FRANCISCO — HD DVD, the beloved format of Toshiba and three Hollywood studios, died Friday after a brief illness.
“The cause of death was determined to be the decision by Wal-Mart to stock only high-definition DVDs and players using the Blu-ray format.There […]
One hundred and sixty-five eminent thinkers, researchers, and communicators, at the annual request of the edge.org website, answered the following question: “What Have You Changed Your Mind About? Why?”
When the world’s great scientific thinkers change their minds — Edge
Yahoo Deal Is Big, but Is It the Next Big Thing? - New York Times
…what will touch off the next battle? Maybe it will be a low-power microprocessor, code-named Silverthorne, that Intel plans to announce Monday. It is designed for a new wave of hand-held wireless devices that Silicon Valley hopes will touch […]
Neil McAllister, at InfoWorld, gives us his take on the biggest flops in CyberHistory:
For all the amazing advances that the computing industry has brought us over the years, some of its most pivotal moments are memorable for all the wrong reasons. Not every idea can be a winner, and not even Microsoft can avoid every […]
From WIRED Listening Post:
As I left the Imax theater after seeing U2 3D, a manasked me, “So, what did you think?” Using my best Larry Davidimpression, I responded, “Pretty good. Pretty… pretty good.”
I was lying. The film I had just seen — the world’s firstthree-dimensional live-action concert film — was astounding. I justdidn’t want to […]
