Isaac Schrödinger

For Only 777 Yen!

Eat the Windows 7 burger and crash hard.

Geek Girls

Jessica Chobot is in my opinion the best one but one can't deny the, er, talents of Olivia Munn.

Those Crazy Finns!

Tom's Hardware:

starting next July, every person in Finland will have the right to a one-megabit broadband connection.

Ha! That's not much.

the Finnish Ministry of Transport and Communications are guaranteeing that by 2015, this will be upped to a 100-megabit connection.

Holy #*@! With a top marginal tax rate of 50%, they've got to console themselves with something. Might as well be scorching hot bandwidth. Mmm, scorching hot bandwidth.

100Gb/s In The Next Decade

A short presentation on Light Peak by George W. Bush.

Those Crazy Japanese!

They come up with a lot of cool stuff.

The Less Good Windows

That's putting it mildly.

The Final Countdown to More Happy!

I've replayed it three times and I crack up whenever 'responsive' is said.

I've used Windows 7 Release Candidate for over a month and it'll stay as my main OS. Microsoft has done it right this time.

The Core 2 Killer

The Core 2 line is dead. It runs on an outdated platform. Those who're interested in bargains should be able to find excellent prices on Core 2 processors in the next few months.

The new king is the Core i5. A few reviews:

• Hardocp.
• AnandTech.
• Tom's Hardware.

Intel i-Infinity

Intel's new, mainstream processor will be released soon. It's called the Core i5. After the silly Core, Core 2 Duo, Core 2 Quad naming scheme, Intel settled for the Core in strategy -- where n is a number.

Of course, this hasn't really made things simple. The chaos is just a bit more elegant. We already have the Core i7, Core i5 will be out shortly and then in a few months, we'll get the Core i3 and the Core i9. Intel has added further convolution by:

1. Using two different sockets across these four lines. So, if you buy a Core i5 this year, and later you'd like to upgrade only your processor to a Core i9 (a six-core beast due in 2010), then you're out of luck. You have to upgrade your motherboard to get a different socket which will accept a Core i9.
2. Using the 45-nm process today and then later switching to the 32-nm process. Now, this would be great if we could actually tell the difference between the two by just the name of the processor but, as far as I can tell, we can't.

I once upgraded my processor. So, I certainly do not like having this option being made more difficult and expensive. And I clearly remember in early 2008 when new 45-nm Core 2 Duos sat next to the older 65-nm Core 2 Duos. The pricing of such processors made sense from the cost-side but not from the performance-side. You see, Intel was selling older ~$300 processors that were slower than their ~$250 newer processors.

Now, a logical customer would see that those two processors have the same name and conclude that the more expensive one ought to be faster. But, no. It looks like we'll see a similar scenario next year.

Lots of Power

Hardocp:

The crew at Coolaler have posted pictures and screenshots of what they claim to be a quad core 2.67GHz i5-570 running at 4GHz on air.

Sweet.

I Want!

Who knew it would become so easy to play Patton?

Though, I'd prefer to be in charge of Operation Overlord.

Say No to DRM

I have bought numerous books from Amazon -- all in the good old physical format. Here's what can happen when one buys books electronically:

Those who have adopted the Amazon e-book way of reading today discovered something that they surely weren't counting on – having their books remotely deleted from their Kindles.

In what is glaring irony, George Orwell's 1984 and Animal Farm were the two books that the publisher decided it no longer wanted Kindle owners to have access to. Instead of just pulling the book from the store and stopping any further sales, it had Amazon send out a kill notice to delete all those books from any device that they were purchased on.

[Emphasis mine.]

Apparently, some books are more equal than others.

Update
Glenn Reynolds writes:

I would like to see electronic copies treated more like physical books — you buy it, you own it — rather than like “licenses to read” that can be revoked based on fine print in things nobody ever reads. The current situation is creepy, and subject to abuse. I like my Kindle, especially for travel, but if I’d known this was coming I don’t think I’d have bought it, and at this point I’m reluctant to recommend a Kindle to others.

No CSD

I've fortunately avoided this disease. As far as I know, there is no Counter-Strike Disorder ...

Where is the Font!?!

Microsoft has too much money on its hands.

Cheap Space

Instapundit:

YEP, IT’S THE 21ST CENTURY NOW: A 1-Terabyte hard drive for under 100 bucks. I remember when a 10 megabyte HardCard was expensive . . .

We should hit 100-terabyte drives by 2020.

My first personal computer was a laptop. I got it in 1998. It came with a whopping 2.1GB hard drive. The maximum configurable was ... 4GB.

Today, I carry around a 16GB flash drive which can easily store all my documents. If I get a 32GB flash drive, I could store all my documents and my entire music collection.

At 64GB, I can store all my valuable data.

Something About Developers

This ought to be the introduction video in Windows 7.

The Funny View

Rick Lee has a fisheye lens from Nikon.

Trust Me

Glenn Reynolds:

I just finished P.W. Singer’s Wired for War, which discusses this topic at considerable length. But everybody invokes the Terminator robots — why isn’t there more discussion of the far-more-ethical Bolos?

Terminator robots!?

No, no, no. They're cyborgs: Living tissue over metal endoskeleton.

i to infinity

Intel still nuts:

we are focusing our strategy around a primary 'hero' client brand which is Intel® Core™. Today the Intel Core brand has a mind boggling array of derivatives (such as Core™2 Duo and Core 2 Quad, etc). Over time those will go away and in its place will be a simplified family of Core processors spanning multiple levels: Intel® Core™ i3 processor, Intel® Core™ i5 processor, and Intel® Core™ i7 processors. Core i3 and Core i5 are new modifiers and join the previously announced Intel Core i7 to round out the family structure. It is important to note that these are not brands but modifiers to the Intel Core brand that signal different features and benefits. For example, upcoming processors such as Lynnfield (desktop) will carry the Intel Core brand, but will be available as either Intel Core i5 or Intel Core i7 depending upon the feature set and capability. Clarksfield (mobile) will have the Intel Core i7 name.

What will happen when Intel moves to 32nm? The next generation of Core chips will have similar clock speeds but they'll be far more efficient. Will Intel stick with the Core i3, i5 and i7 names and make it difficult for consumers to know or will they tack on further "modifiers" to make it, er, easy.

It was so simple when Intel had Pentiums and Celerons for consumers.

Link via Hardocp where a commenter says:

New intel naming scheme!

"Core i"(2k+1) where k is a natural number.

Superpower Flexes

Popular Mechanics via Instapundit:

The first pieces of the U.S. Navy’s newest class of aircraft carrier—meant to be the cornerstone of American military sea power over the next hundred years—lie in the open air of a shipyard in Virginia. A misting rain is falling on the jumbled field of steel bulkheads, stacks of pipe and 200-ton sections of hull. It’s as if some gargantuan child broke apart his model ship and scattered the pieces on the ground.

But Northrop Grumman’s staff at the Newport News shipyard know where every part is located—and the exact order in which each piece must be connected. Building an aircraft carrier is like putting together a 3D jigsaw puzzle, for years on end. Engineers have been designing some of the pieces since 2000; the job won’t be finished until 2015.

Holy #^*!

Ignition and Beyond

Fusion tests set at new Livermore facility. If successful, it will:

-- Enable the keepers of America's nuclear warheads to make sure that, after decades in storage, those elderly weapons are still "safe, secure and reliable," as their keepers hope.

-- Enable astrophysicists and other scientists to study for the first time what kind of matter lies inside exploding stars, as well as in the deep high-pressure interior of Earth and its sister planets.

-- Finally, if the coming years of experiments, which start next year, are successful, a truly limitless supply of clean electrical energy with no carbon waste would be created using the limitless hydrogen fuel in the world's oceans.

And also the world will finally be able to deal with the oil-rich Islamists in a most proper manner.

Link via Charles.

No Salvation

Wired via Hardocp:

One of the American military’s leading humanoid robots is Petman. Its job will be to testing chemical protection clothing for the U.S. Army. Petman is being built by Boston Dynamics, famous for its alarmingly lifelike BigDog robotic pack mule. Unlike earlier suit-testing robots, which needed external support, Petman will stand — and walk — on his own two feet.

“Petman will balance itself and move freely; walking, crawling and doing a variety of suit-stressing calisthenics during exposure to chemical warfare agents,” the company promises. “Petman will also simulate human physiology within the protective suit by controlling temperature, humidity and sweating when necessary, all to provide realistic test conditions.”

[Emphasis mine.]

We're doomed.

So Pretty

Windows 7 install on a beast of a desktop system -- the price of their hard drive alone can buy one an entire setup.

The task manager bit at 08:20 in the vid is sweet.

Sponsors of Tomorrow!

This made me chuckle.

Infinite Math Recognition

The Math Input Panel in Windows 7 and much more:

Have you ever written a math paper in Word or performed calculations in Mathematica, and spent hours creating equations using a multitude of buttons or a complex linear format, thinking: “Oh, what I wouldn’t give for an easy-to-use input method?” Well, your wishes have just come true, in addition to improving handwriting in Windows 7, we have also invested in recognizing ink drawn math equations.

Some years ago, I had to provide solutions to a few calculus problems in a Microsoft Word document. It was a hideously slow process. I wish this superb technology existed then.

Holy Schnikes!

Tom's Hardware:

Cablevision announced today that starting May 11 it will be offering a new “ultra” tier that will grant users a blistering (by North American standards, at least) 101 Mbps downstream and 15 Mbps upstream all for $99.95 a month.

Christmas will come early for some.

Yeah!

The largest model rocket so far.

The End for Some

Fox:

The Walkman, Discman and MiniDisc player: The multitasker's dream, the Sony Walkman portable cassette player changed the way the world listened to music in 1979, quickly becoming the hottest accessory of the early 1980s.

In 1984, Sony trumped itself with the introduction of the Discman, the CD version, which allowed for individual tracks instead of one never-ending, albeit varied, song.

Eight years later, a new format, the MiniDisc, essentially a tiny CD in a cartridge, caught on in Europe and Asia. But it fizzled in the U.S., where oblivious Yanks kept on listening to their Discmen until they were killed off by iPods in the early years of this decade.

I bought a Sony Walkman in the late 90s. At the time, I went back during the summers to Saudi Arabia where my family lived -- the numerous audio cassettes and the radio provided some relief in that hell.

Where's Eeeva?

The cutest case mod ever.

Bumped

Cool software if your desktop is cluttered.

Roads?

Where we're going we don't need roads.

It was Inevitable

Tom's Hardware:

In one of today’s more surprising announcements, Apple and McDonald’s are today partnering in a cross-brand product effort.

More:

“We realized the overlap when we started selling the new 13- and 15-inch Unibody MacBooks last October. During our busy holiday season, customers would come in looking for the 17-inch version asking if we had the Big Mac,” explained Pullman Legwand, an Apple Genius at Apple’s flagship Apple Store.

More:

Apple and McDonald’s marketing teams saw the problem and came together to create a brand new product that would effectively bridge the two company’s clientele: the iMc.

50% less vowels!

Piercing the Spindles

Americans have too much fun.

Awesomeness is Equal to ...

... 24 SSDs in RAID.

Ghost in the Shell, Soon

This is incredible.

People always ask how it's changed my life, but there's no specific thing. It's the hundreds of everyday things you take for granted, which I can do again, like peeling a potato, catching a ball, holding a bottle of water. I'm incredibly grateful.

Tetris for a Grunt

I'd ditch the iPod completely and get a different color.

Do You Have Enough Cores?

Yikes! I'm at only two.

"The Power of Obama Compels You!"

It's a miracle.

The title is from this hilarious comment.

The Next Big Thing!

Tom's Hardware: Intel's Core i7: Blazing Fast, But Crippled O/C : Eight Virtual Cores Through Hyper-Threading

That's a lot of colons.

Supersonic Will Return

The Daily Mail:

In a move which for some people signalled a step backwards for technology, the Anglo-French aviation-engineering masterpiece touched down and with it the chance for people to experience supersonic air travel.

But now, an American firm is on the cusp of re-imagining the supersonic dream and confidently plans to have supersonic commercial aircraft back in the skies as a reality by 2015.

Excellent. The Concorde was never a profitable venture. Hopefully the Americans will make theirs a lucrative enterprise.

Windows 7

Time will tell if it can get rid of the bad taste of Vista.

iConfusion

August 2007:

I still think Intel should have publicly called the new line they released in July 2006 as the 'Core' processors. They could have kept the 'Core 2' name for the epic Nehalem line which will come out in late 2008.

Instead, Intel has done the opposite! The present generation is called the Intel Core 2. The next will be called the Intel Core.

The Intel Core will have generic identifiers. For now, it's i7.

I've built a couple of systems for friends. It's a major headache to explain the differences between the Celerons, the Pentiums and the five dozen flavors of Core 2s. Intel just managed to make it even tougher.

The Core What!?

Intel unveiled its best consumer processor two years ago. It was oddly called the Core 2 Duo. The next generation, code-named Nehalem, will soon be released. Intel has decided to call it the Core i7.

Why the i7? Maybe because it's the 7th iteration of the Pentium? Intel's naming schemes are becoming goofier by the year.

The Devil is Shiny

Charles Johnson gives in to The Dark Side.

I got a cellphone last year for $150. It's mostly so that my employer can call me. I got it setup with a killer plan: $10-a-month.

The iPhone definitely has ishtyle but it's too pricey.

Poor iPhone

Hahaha.

Nehalem Coming Sooner

DigiTimes via Hardocp:

Originally scheduled to launch in November or December this year, Intel's Nehalem-based Bloomfield processors will now launch in September along with X58 chipsets, sources at motherboard makers have revealed.

Intel should have released it in July to fully capture the back-to-school sales bump. Pity. Anyway, what will it be called?

Hopefully not Core 3 Duo.

Paypal, Tesla and The Beyond

An interview of Elon Musk via Samizdata:

I wasn't born in America - but I got here as fast as I could.

Smart guy.

A New Monster

Seagate:

The debut of the Barracuda® 7200.11 1.5TB hard drive, the eleventh generation of Seagate’s flagship drive for desktop PCs, marks the single largest capacity hard drive jump in the more than half-century history of hard drives – a half-terabyte increase from the previous highest capacity of 1TB, thanks to the capacity-boosting power of perpendicular magnetic recording (PMR) technology.

Also, Seagate offers a healthy five year warranty.

Nehalem News

Digitimes via Hardocp:

Intel plans to launch three Nehalem-based quad-core processors (Bloomfield) at the end of the fourth quarter this year targeting the company's new LGA1366 socket, according to sources at motherboard makers.

These will likely be the expensive models. The mainstream and budget versions won't make it to market till early 2009.

Nehalem Preview

Anandtech somehow got their hands on Intel's Nehalem processors. The successor to the Core 2 Duo will give the competition heartburn.