the first sub-1Watt x86 device surely was the Intel's original 8086 from 1981. I've just looked up the data sheet, it draws 350maA at 2V. That's only 700mW!
It is good to see everyone has a positive attitude for space exploration
Positive attitude my arse. Why should anyone in their right minds have a positive attitude to stuff like that? Space travel is a luxury that earth can't afford. If Steven Hawking sayus it's not that shows he's off his rocker as far as politics goes, even if he's clever with his physics. If we fsck up our planet beyond repair, who cares if some telephone sanitizers (or theoretical physicists, or burger flippers for that matter) can bugger off to another star? It sure isn't an option for the most of us. Why should anyone care about something 20 lightyears away? If this is interesting for something, then it's for establishing a radio link, even though a conversation with 40 years of latency may feel a bit tiresome.
I made a mothers-day card back in 1995, a heart-shape and the word "MAMA" focused-ion-beam implanted into some GaAs (for want of a SO at the time). It was about 30um across, but I have long lost the picture. Do I get a prize?
migrate your mail: I installed my own IMAP server (courier-imap, use Maildir-format to store mail in individual users' $HOME, configure system-wide fetchmail to deliver email to users). That way you can change tour mail client on a daily basis, since they all support IMAP, and your mail stays in the same place. As an added bonus you can use email on other computers in your house if you have a laptop with WiFi ot something like that. Once you've set your IMAP up, you can darag-and-drop historic email from your "old" evolution email into IMAP, close evolution for good, and run Kmail, thunderbird, mutt, ot whatever else you like.
It does not repeat indefinitely? I thought aperiodic patterns weren't meant to repeat. The mosque pattern in TFA does have five-fold symmetry, has a pair of reflection lines which is not forbidden for a penrose lattice, and it could be extended as far as the supply of tiles reaches. This is work done by an artist, who may or may not have understood the maths behind this but he certainly had the imagination to create something beautiful and original.
the thing about burning fossil fuel is that it releases carbon that "should be" stacked away underground, rather than taking it out of the biosphere now (grow tobacco) and releasing it shortly afterwards (smoke it). Same holds for burning renewable fuels like wood, and also shows the fallacy of "carbon ofsetting" by planting trees, which only hold carbom locked for the lifetime of the tree (unless they fall in a swamp to form coal in 350 million years).
as someone from a related industry, I know thatr what intel calls '65nm' by virtue of gate length, is not 'as small' as your next fabber's '65nm'. It serves to impress the shareholders, though. Take these numbers with a grain of salt.
i totally agree with parent, other than this clanger:
Then terrorism goes totally out of hand.
IMHO, terrorism will be *another few orders of magnitude more irrelevant* than it is today once global warming makes life unpleasant or impossible in what is now the "temperate" zone.
Heck, they could use Darwin as the base of their new legacy-free Windows OS if they wanted. I gues Steve Jobs whould choke on his cornflakes and die if he read that in his morning paper...
What they need is someone to realise that/(un)*manned/ space exploration is just too expensive to make useful research. NASA is a prestige object of the US government, which should have better things to do. For heaven's sake, employ some theoretical physicists to delve into the details of extraterrestrial physics, and yes, gaze into space all you can with telescopes, but don't fling bits of expensive kit to some distant lump of rock just so that a future US president can feel great during a state of the union address!
Electronic Whiteboards seem to be all the rage now in schools (i'm speaking for the UK). It looks like EduBuntu does not offer much support for these, but I may be wrong. I hope I am.
Electronic Whiteboards may jus be a fad and not add any real value to education (just like computers in general don't) but they are considered really important at the moment.
I really wish we (the linux crowd) could get a foot in the door here but it's very hard.
I had a similar experience, and it cost me days to install XP on a new computer wher Ubuntu installed cleanly. That was about 6 months ago, and the Ubuntu disks had been fresh from my letterbox (fee & all!) whereas my "spare" copy of XP was already a few moons old. So maybe that's why it stymed an old geek like me about SATA drives.
Still haven't got Internet going on this "XP" thing, since it can't find network card drivers (not sure I want to).
Maybe the M$ release cycle is just uselessly slow for today's hardware market?
Re. 3D circuits: all chips today have one layer of transistors, and no more. You only get one shot at making those in chip fabrication. Then you pile on other stuff, such as 5 or 6 layers of "wires" criss-crossing each other, but after the first layer of trannies it's basically curtains. it's because the transiors all live in the wafer material which is crystalline silicon, and all silicon that you put on afterwards is of relatively poor crystal quality and you can't make good quality transistors out of it.
Disclaimer: We only make the masks not the chips themselves so I don't know the really detailed stuff about the chip making business.
Finding a way to assemble elements in proper "3D" fashion would make a big difference: shorter wires, greater complexity, but a complete change in fabrication processes because at the moment it's all done with photolithography, i.e. with a glorified slide projector shining on light-sensitive plastic coating. Changing that would be bad news for me because no-one would want our glorified slides any more!
Ok, let them invent the "self-assembling CPU" after they breed the nano-molecule that creeps over the chip in a boiler suit riveting DNA pyramids together! Long live our nano-overlords.
I remember watching many _good_ films as a kid on out old b&w telly (my parents upgraded to colour only in the mid-80's iirc). The lack of colour didn't really harm the experience. (only as a kid i thouight big bird was white).
If the programme is good, it's worth watching whatever the image quality is, otherwise, HDTV soesn't make it any better. Get a grip. I know this is/. and all, and I'm biased because we live in a house that's so much more enjoyable to live in because it has no TV, but let's face it: HDTV is for wankers.
Slashdot Mirror
the first sub-1Watt x86 device surely was the Intel's original 8086 from 1981. I've just looked up the data sheet, it draws 350maA at 2V. That's only 700mW!
mobile phone £15 (that's ~30US$). I's prefer it without the colour screen though, for £10/20$
I made a mothers-day card back in 1995, a heart-shape and the word "MAMA" focused-ion-beam implanted into some GaAs (for want of a SO at the time). It was about 30um across, but I have long lost the picture. Do I get a prize?
migrate your mail: I installed my own IMAP server (courier-imap, use Maildir-format to store mail in individual users' $HOME, configure system-wide fetchmail to deliver email to users). That way you can change tour mail client on a daily basis, since they all support IMAP, and your mail stays in the same place. As an added bonus you can use email on other computers in your house if you have a laptop with WiFi ot something like that. Once you've set your IMAP up, you can darag-and-drop historic email from your "old" evolution email into IMAP, close evolution for good, and run Kmail, thunderbird, mutt, ot whatever else you like.
It does not repeat indefinitely? I thought aperiodic patterns weren't meant to repeat. The mosque pattern in TFA does have five-fold symmetry, has a pair of reflection lines which is not forbidden for a penrose lattice, and it could be extended as far as the supply of tiles reaches. This is work done by an artist, who may or may not have understood the maths behind this but he certainly had the imagination to create something beautiful and original.
GNU/Linux infringes on our IP
ARE THEY SAFE???
the thing about burning fossil fuel is that it releases carbon that "should be" stacked away underground, rather than taking it out of the biosphere now (grow tobacco) and releasing it shortly afterwards (smoke it). Same holds for burning renewable fuels like wood, and also shows the fallacy of "carbon ofsetting" by planting trees, which only hold carbom locked for the lifetime of the tree (unless they fall in a swamp to form coal in 350 million years).
print 'hello world'
as someone from a related industry, I know thatr what intel calls '65nm' by virtue of gate length, is not 'as small' as your next fabber's '65nm'. It serves to impress the shareholders, though. Take these numbers with a grain of salt.
that shows (again) how daft it is to carry a gun to defend yourself... All it really does is give those NRA-types the feeling of having a bigger dick.
The Google Alpha Beta
Oh wait... I haven't got any.
Am I missing some joke or is this post _and_ grandparent full of this particular weired letter-twister?
And later.
And don't invade at all.
Imagine a world without zinc oxide...
Heck, they could use Darwin as the base of their new legacy-free Windows OS if they wanted. I gues Steve Jobs whould choke on his cornflakes and die if he read that in his morning paper...
What they need is someone to realise that /(un)*manned/ space exploration is just too expensive to make useful research. NASA is a prestige object of the US government, which should have better things to do. For heaven's sake, employ some theoretical physicists to delve into the details of extraterrestrial physics, and yes, gaze into space all you can with telescopes, but don't fling bits of expensive kit to some distant lump of rock just so that a future US president can feel great during a state of the union address!
Electronic Whiteboards may jus be a fad and not add any real value to education (just like computers in general don't) but they are considered really important at the moment.
I really wish we (the linux crowd) could get a foot in the door here but it's very hard.
I had a similar experience, and it cost me days to install XP on a new computer wher Ubuntu installed cleanly. That was about 6 months ago, and the Ubuntu disks had been fresh from my letterbox (fee & all!) whereas my "spare" copy of XP was already a few moons old. So maybe that's why it stymed an old geek like me about SATA drives. Still haven't got Internet going on this "XP" thing, since it can't find network card drivers (not sure I want to). Maybe the M$ release cycle is just uselessly slow for today's hardware market?
Re. 3D circuits: all chips today have one layer of transistors, and no more. You only get one shot at making those in chip fabrication. Then you pile on other stuff, such as 5 or 6 layers of "wires" criss-crossing each other, but after the first layer of trannies it's basically curtains. it's because the transiors all live in the wafer material which is crystalline silicon, and all silicon that you put on afterwards is of relatively poor crystal quality and you can't make good quality transistors out of it. Disclaimer: We only make the masks not the chips themselves so I don't know the really detailed stuff about the chip making business. Finding a way to assemble elements in proper "3D" fashion would make a big difference: shorter wires, greater complexity, but a complete change in fabrication processes because at the moment it's all done with photolithography, i.e. with a glorified slide projector shining on light-sensitive plastic coating. Changing that would be bad news for me because no-one would want our glorified slides any more! Ok, let them invent the "self-assembling CPU" after they breed the nano-molecule that creeps over the chip in a boiler suit riveting DNA pyramids together! Long live our nano-overlords.
I remember watching many _good_ films as a kid on out old b&w telly (my parents upgraded to colour only in the mid-80's iirc). The lack of colour didn't really harm the experience. (only as a kid i thouight big bird was white). If the programme is good, it's worth watching whatever the image quality is, otherwise, HDTV soesn't make it any better. Get a grip. I know this is /. and all, and I'm biased because we live in a house that's so much more enjoyable to live in because it has no TV, but let's face it: HDTV is for wankers.