...more recent posts
NEC, and now Sony, are both recalling some of their Transmeta powered notebooks because of a bug in the 600 Mhz version of the Crusoe processor. Intel, of course, is having problems with its P4, and Apple/Moto/IBM have already been taking heaps of scorn for over a year due to flagrant violations of Moore's Law. Damn. On the other hand, The Register (insert small grain of salt) is reporting that
"AMD has been quietly producing test chips using a new, pure version of silicon with greatly enhanced thermal properties....California-based Isonics produces an isotopically pure silicon which has much better thermal conductivity than natural silicon, meaning that heat can be removed more effectively. Isonics won't confirm it's working with AMD, stating only that 'a major microprocessor manufacturer has modeled isotopically pure silicon wafers and has told us that the peak temperature of their advanced 1GHz microprocessor was reduced by 35 degrees celsius.'"Beware of the vapors here, but 35 degrees! I'd love to see AMD pull this off.
Slashdot has two interesting space stories. First up is Mars, and the on again off again debate about signs of previous surface water on the red planet. In analysing data from Mars Global Surveyor, NASA has found an ancient sea bed. They are going to make an official statement in this weeks Science magazine. NASA and the European Space Agency are both planning to reroute future missions to this area (the Europeans plan to land on Boxing Day, 2003.)
And the International Space Station should be visible with the naked eye now that it is getting those big solar panels. This site tells you when to look up depending on your terrestrial location (it also tracks Mir and other satellites.) Here's the New York City start page, and here's when you can see the ISS from NYC. Nice site.
I've been experimenting this morning with a very basic caching scheme for this site. I have a very crude version working for my page. You can see the difference between this dynamic page, and the cached static page by following either of these links. In most cases, as would be expected, the cached page is tremendously faster. The downside is that it is not being configured for known users (i.e., no indication of new posts, and while you still see how many comments, you don't see which ones are new to you, plus, seeing posts on the static page won't effect the number of new posts shown on the main page - in other words, the system will keep telling you there is a new post until you see it on the dynamic page.) Also, for most browsers, you won't see any updates to the page unless you consciously reload the page. Overall I think the speed gain is probably worth it. I'll be doing more tests on this, and we could deploy this change rather quickly if we wanted.
Oh yeah, slightly new (anti-)design. Wooohooo.
Macintouch has some great pages of reader reports on wireless connectivity. One on short range (airport, wireless lan stuff,) and one on long range connections (ricochet, ect.)
3ivx is a development effort toward producing a cross platform (windows, mac, unix, be, and amiga) MPEG-4 codec. I hope they can do it.
I guess it's mobile computing day. Here's a more technical piece about a complete wireless portable computing package. More technical than the last link. He calls it Ambu-lan. It's based on the ricochet wireless modem I have been salivating over recently, and also uses Apple's airport (802.11) Good reference point to what is possible (if you're a real geek) right now.
Here's a first hand report from a self styled "digital guerilla" about his travels in Brazil shooting digital video and editing on the fly with a powerbook G3. Not too technical (and I guess, really, not too interesting,) but this whole stlye is about to start happening. I'm hoping we'll be on the band wagon some time this year (i.e., by this time next year.) I still need a new server arrangement (I'm presently canceling my sDSL order and opting for colocation) and Apple (or Sony I guess) still has to make the right laptop (more speed, more disk space, longer batteries.) The cameras have been ready for over a year. And, of course, people need faster internet connections (dsl, or cable.) In the article, he was compressing 5 minute videos with sound down to 16 megs (from 1 gig.) It's not quite there yet (for instance, he ended up just fed ex-ing tapes back to the states because he couldn't find a fast enough connection,) but it's very close. And if there is any way to make traveling around the world into a job, we will find the path.
The Red Herring (strangely) has an article about female tetrchromats, that is, women who have 4 different cone photopigments in their retinas, instead of the usual 3 (red, green, blue.) Some quirk of genetics precludes males from having this mutation, but it seems like some women do. When I read the intro I immediately wondered if they see CMYK color space, but I guess it is more like a fourth color somewhere between red and green in addition to the usual RGB trio. Looking around at the color scheme in this apartment I'm beginning to think that MB must be so blessed. I knew there had to be an explanation.
Is this completely off the deep end? I keep hearing in my head that sample Public Enemy uses: "The government you have elected is inoperative." Anybody know where that comes from?
That Transmeta chip is finally starting to show up in some very small portable computers. Lots of pictures in this tech-report article. That Sony VAIO (last one) sure looks sweet.