Sunny.Molini » Technology

HP to bring Memristors to market

Sunny — Fri, 03 Sep 2010 20:58:08 +0000

HP announced earlier this week that they will be working with Hynix to bring memristors to market availability.

Imagine a resistor that can change how much electricity it resists simply by the application of voltage to it. You could build circuits that change their optimal efficiency on the fly, memory chips that store 10x as much data using 1/10 as much power, and replace static processors with dynamic ones that change their circuitry based on most frequently executed commands (jk).

Sounds dull and techy, but this really is a big deal that will significantly improve computer tech over the next 5 years.

Dave ‘Whiner’ Complains About Google Reader

Sunny — Mon, 21 Dec 2009 15:42:01 +0000

Dave Winer, one of the creators of RSS, has always been vocal about his vision of the way RSS ‘should be used.’ He has always been fairly critical of the way that Google Reader shows RSS data. I’d like to equate this to the inventor of the hammer complaining that people use it to actually remove nails in addition to pounding them in.
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Mr. Winer, I fully appreciate the great contributions that you’ve made to the Internet. Your input on the variety of new technologies that have and are emerging are invaluable and I subscribe to many of your feeds. I do, in fact, agree with your perspective of RSS as a river of news, the vast majority of which can and should go unexamined. I must say though, that your ire against Google is significantly misdirected.
In the first place, you assume that the model of email is that it is general practice for users to examine every email that enters their inbox. I can assure you that this is certainly not true for many people. I have no desire to read my 5-6 daily emails from twitter telling me about each individual new follower I have, but they are good to have because I can then go back through those emails and examine for possible followbacks. Email is as much for record keeping and formality as for actual communication. Good email programs help the user prioritize and sort emails into ‘read now,’ ‘read later,’ and ‘just store for reference later.’
Different users have different needs for RSS too. The biggest difference is that RSS is generally public, and widely accessible. As opposed to email which is single target. Users want to be able to sort their feeds into ‘catch every one,’ ‘check frequently,’ and ‘mostly ignore, but scan for headlines.’ Google Reader gives users exactly that kind of flexibility. In fact, I use Google Reader precisely because it gives me the level of granularity of control that I need and provides a great river of news look. Only thing that could make it better would be auto-refresh and the ability to suppress the ‘unread’ on selected folders if I wish to.

Advance in Quantum Processing

Sunny — Mon, 23 Nov 2009 17:40:12 +0000

Researchers at NIST have created a programmable, 2-qubit quantum processor.

Mr. Hanneke suggests that while this is just the first 2-qubit processor, one could combine many such processors by linking them together.

Qubits, are roughly similar to the ‘bits’ used in traditional computing, except that qubits can be both 1 & 0 at the same time. The NIST processor uses ultraviolet lasers to manipulate individual atoms to track such qubit information.

This is a big step towards ‘Quantum Computing,’ which is a new kind of computing that would (it doesn’t exist yet) use stuff much smaller than electrons to process data. This is science fiction slowly becoming reality here. The final product will probably depend on this other research being done on quantum teleportation.

USB 3.0 Rolling Out to No Fanfare

Sunny — Thu, 22 Oct 2009 19:38:22 +0000

Not sure how I missed this, but apparently, the first device certified for USB 3.0 released in September.

Just want to make sure everybody knows how cool this is! It can transfer about 600 Megabytes each second. That’s most of the contents of a full CD, transferred to your flash drive in 1 second. It also carries substantially more power, so charging devices over USB won’t take nearly as long over USB 3.0.

A Poem of Remote Access

Sunny — Thu, 22 Oct 2009 11:55:29 +0000

Composed by Paul Lord.

Lies! Oh, how I loathe this remote access!
Sneaking in, thru wires and tubes, the back door,
To tweak and twiddle, to fix other’s mess!
Information technology? No more!

Now, go on begone; I’m done with you all.
I’ll fix it from my cave; you can forget
I’m here, until something goes wrong. Then call.
Still absent from you; I stay not well met.

Am I efficient or a misanthrope?
Ah, but these tools make it irrelevant.
Spooky action at a distance: I grope
In the darkness and straighten what is bent.

Personable people flee the hamthrax,
Remote access means I work, they relax.

Windows 7 Burger Debuts in Japan

Sunny — Thu, 22 Oct 2009 13:15:39 +0000

Oh yeah, and Windows 7 is officially out today. I can say that the operating system is considerably better for your health than the burger.

Be the first to view the Gootenberg Press

Sunny — Thu, 17 Sep 2009 13:12:13 +0000

As part of a deal announced Thursday, Google is opening up part of its index to the maker of a high-speed publishing machine that can manufacture a paperback-bound book of about 300 pages in under five minutes. The new service is an acknowledgment by the Internet search leader that not everyone wants their books served up on a computer or an electronic reader like those made by Amazon.com Inc. and Sony Inc.

Google to reincarnate digital books as paperbacks
The machines sell for $100K, so there will probably be one in every college bookstore by 2015. The breakdown was that the sample 300 pg book should retail for $8, with $1 each going to the retailer and $1 going to Google.
The Gutenberg Press was revolutionary because it made it affordable to to print a million copies of any 1 document. The Gootenberg press can print any public domain book, probably in less than 10 minutes.

For the record, this was already fully possible with a simple laser printer and access to Gutenberg.org.

Data Rumble – All Out Windows – XP – Vista – 7

Sunny — Wed, 16 Sep 2009 18:57:31 +0000

Test Freaks Blog ran benchmarks on one machine for each of the 3 recent versions of Windows.

Based on these tests, it would seem that if you are trying to maximize system performance, you’d have to investigate further to see if you want to XP or 7. But if you are trying to maximize user productivity, the tests support my experience using Windows 7 that it is awesome.

Time required to calculate Pi, (lower is better)

IT Support Techniques Revealed

Sunny — Tue, 25 Aug 2009 15:29:32 +0000

Add in ‘Restart your computer, return to box #1′ at the bottom and you’ve fixed a lot of tech support problems.

Republished without the express permission of Adam Pash @ LifeHacker. I’m hoping he doesn’t mind.

For you reference if you don’t understand the above…

No Twitter @WhiteHouse

Sunny — Mon, 27 Jul 2009 15:14:07 +0000

White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs tells CNN that Twitter is blocked by White House IT. Kind of makes one wonder if they use the same tricks everybody else does to publish the White House Twitter feed.

[UPDATE: Problem Solved. Deputy Press Secretary Bill Burton sets us straight by basically telling us that Robert Gibbs didn't know what the **** he was talking about. Yeah, that's right.]