Monday, August 29, 2011
iPhone hacker Comex says he's landed an internship ... at Apple
A 19-year-old who is probably the world's most noted iPhone hacker said Thursday he's been hired by Apple, the very company whose products he's been hacking into.
No more hypothesis: First-Ever Images of an Electron In Orbit
The IBM breakthrough was amazing enough, but now we have images of the electron's orbital path around a nucleus! This is good, good news, because until now physicists only had models and hypotheses to work with.
How Steve Jobs' Apple Married Mass Marketing With Unabashed Creativity
When it comes to marketing, Steve Jobs has proven to be 100% old-school: back up great products up with creative advertising, big media spending and, don't forget, smart retail.
Supersymmetry and standard model of physics are both dead in water !
"Pallab Ghosh of the BBC reports on another piece of evidence hitting the beleaguered Supersymmetry community. Scientists at the Lepton Photon conference in Mumbai, India confirmed that extra levels of B-Meson decay have not been found in the LHC beauty experiment. Coming on the heels of a March report in Nature , this news seems to reinforce what many have suspected all along. Dark Matter is probably not explainable through massive shadow particles like squarks and selectrons, and for all practical purposes, the Supersymmetric Extension of the Standard Model of Physics is dead."
BAD HARDWARE WEEK: On illusions. By the end of 19th century everything in physics was almost discovered, and physics house built seemingly forever based on absolute premises. Only one experiment was a problem. Michelson Morley experiment proving there is no ether. Solving that problem by special theory of relativity gave us a big new undiscovered world of physics. IT IS GOOD to have a problem in physics ! Another cloud on a clear sky was ultraviolet catastrophe, that later born quantum theory. Einstein has gotten a Nobel prize just for solving ultraviolet catastrophe problem in a photoelectric effect. However, never for contribution to theory of relativity or gravity.
BAD HARDWARE WEEK: On illusions. By the end of 19th century everything in physics was almost discovered, and physics house built seemingly forever based on absolute premises. Only one experiment was a problem. Michelson Morley experiment proving there is no ether. Solving that problem by special theory of relativity gave us a big new undiscovered world of physics. IT IS GOOD to have a problem in physics ! Another cloud on a clear sky was ultraviolet catastrophe, that later born quantum theory. Einstein has gotten a Nobel prize just for solving ultraviolet catastrophe problem in a photoelectric effect. However, never for contribution to theory of relativity or gravity.
Friday, August 26, 2011
Alone in the space: HAL let me in, pleeease; Robonaut 2 to be alive soon !
Robonaut (R2B) powered up for the first time on the ISS on August 22nd, 2010. It was put through a two hour power soak. This test was an initial checkout allowing the team to monitor power and thermal levels. R2 performed as expected and is scheduled for a movement test on September 1st.
R2 is capable of speeds more than four times faster than R1, is more compact, more dexterous, and includes a deeper and wider range of sensing. It can move its arms up to 2 m/s, has a 40 lb payload capacity and its hands have a grasping force of roughly 5 lbs. per finger. There are over 350 sensors and 38 PowerPC processors in the robot.
BAD HARDWARE WEEK. Look at here.
R2 is capable of speeds more than four times faster than R1, is more compact, more dexterous, and includes a deeper and wider range of sensing. It can move its arms up to 2 m/s, has a 40 lb payload capacity and its hands have a grasping force of roughly 5 lbs. per finger. There are over 350 sensors and 38 PowerPC processors in the robot.
BAD HARDWARE WEEK. Look at here.
China is preparing to work on a supercomputer with a capacity of 100 petaflops by 2015
"China is preparing to work on a supercomputer with a capacity of 100 petaflops by 2015 and try to produce the first exascale computer in 2020," said Hu Qingfeng, deputy chief designer of Tianhe-1A, one of the world's top 10 fastest supercomputers.
BAD HARDWARE WEEK: 100 Petaflops Chenese Supercomputer in a 4 years. Seems that work on it has just begun.
BAD HARDWARE WEEK: 100 Petaflops Chenese Supercomputer in a 4 years. Seems that work on it has just begun.
Thursday, August 25, 2011
Russia's recent catalogue of space disasters
The failed launch of the unmanned Progress cargo space craft which crashed into Earth instead of delivering supplies to the ISS was the latest in a spate of mishaps in the Russian space program.
Will the PC will be replaced by the Apple iStack?
Windows 8 Explorer: improved copy, delete, and conflict resolution
Ahh, the Windows Explorer progress dialog. For years it has been struggling to figure out how to calculate how long our copy and delete operations would take, sliding the progress bar back and forth in a seemingly random, haphazard way, the laws of time all but ceasing to exist — five seconds remaining one moment and 13 minutes the next. That’s (almost) all going to change, with the arrival of a greatly improved file management experience in Windows 8.
STEVE JOBS RESIGNS AS CEO OF APPLE
Apple’s Board of Directors today announced that Steve Jobs has resigned as Chief Executive Officer, and the Board has named Tim Cook, previously Apple’s Chief Operating Officer, as the company’s new CEO. Jobs has been elected Chairman of the Board and Cook will join the Board, effective immediately.
BAD HARDWARE WEEK: Apple shares down 4% immediately. Some says Apple is not SJ. Well, let see Apple after 1986 leave.
In 1985, John Sculley–Apple’s president and Steve Jobs’ partner and confidante–became frustrated with Jobs’ management style. He forced Jobs into a role as Apple’s chairman that was designed to prevent him from making any decisions. A few months later, Jobs resigned and founded NeXT. And that, it seemed, was that.
BAD HARDWARE WEEK: Apple shares down 4% immediately. Some says Apple is not SJ. Well, let see Apple after 1986 leave.
In 1985, John Sculley–Apple’s president and Steve Jobs’ partner and confidante–became frustrated with Jobs’ management style. He forced Jobs into a role as Apple’s chairman that was designed to prevent him from making any decisions. A few months later, Jobs resigned and founded NeXT. And that, it seemed, was that.
Wednesday, August 24, 2011
$10B hardware to prove existence of nothing !!
These gentlemen spend their days debating nothing. ~King Charles II on vacuum disputes
We now know something is missing, but we simply don't quite know what this new something might be,' wrote CERN blogger Pauline Gagnon. The Brout–Englert–Higgs mechanism also solves another fundamental problem called “unitarity violation”. In simple words, unitarity means that the sum of all probabilities is equal to one.
BAD HARDWARE WEEK: LEt me remind you what is actually missing: Expected cornerstone of the current standard particle model. Nothing less than that. At the probability equal to one. :)
We now know something is missing, but we simply don't quite know what this new something might be,' wrote CERN blogger Pauline Gagnon. The Brout–Englert–Higgs mechanism also solves another fundamental problem called “unitarity violation”. In simple words, unitarity means that the sum of all probabilities is equal to one.
BAD HARDWARE WEEK: LEt me remind you what is actually missing: Expected cornerstone of the current standard particle model. Nothing less than that. At the probability equal to one. :)
Superphone for 2013
BAD HARDWARE WEEK: Enough computer power to replace your laptop? What about power charging?
Intel's solar spinoff files for bankruptcy
Samsung invokes Kubrick's 2001 as prior art vs. Apple
Microsoft demos USB 3.0 support for Windows 8
Each and every USB device, low, full, high, and SuperSpeed, has to work in Windows 8," Sinofsky wrote.
Sony Announces New D-SLR and NEX Cameras
Tuesday, August 23, 2011
BAD HARDWARE WEEK close to 200 000 page views !
Mainly from very serious organizations.
Jedec readies DDR4 memory spec
The Double Data Rate 4 (DDR4) memory chip standard will include three data width offerings, differential signaling, data masking and a new termination scheme, according to the Jedec Solid State Technology Association
IBM Blue Gene /Q - Sequoia supercomputer details
The Blue Gene/Q system is the third generation in the IBM Blue Gene line of massively parallel, energy efficient supercomputers. The Blue Gene/Q architecture scales to tens of Petaflops. The network and the highly parallel message unit, which provides the functionality of a network interface card, are integrated onto the same chip as the processors and cache memory and occupy only 8% of the chip's area, including IO cells. The chip has 11 ports; each port can transmit data at 2 GB/s and simultaneously receive at 2 GB/s for a total bandwidth of 44 GB/s. The network consists of a five dimensional compute node torus with a subset of compute nodes using the 11th port to connect to I/O nodes. The five dimensional torus provides both excellent nearest neighbor and bisection bandwidth; a Blue Gene/Q machine has approximately 46 times the bisection bandwidth than that of a first generation Blue Gene/L machine with the same number of nodes. It can be partitioned into non-interfering sub-machines. A single network supports point-to-point and collective traffic such as MPI all reduces at near link bandwidth. The collectives can be over an entire partition or any rectangular subset of a partition. The network provides bit reproducible, single pass floating point collectives. The message unit has multiple injection and multiple reception engines that parallelize the injection and reception of messages, permitting full utilization of all the links on the torus.
The 16-cores on a die are designed to deliver 204.8 gigaflops at a power draw of 55 watts.
BAD HARDWARE WEEK: In ten years there could be supercomputer networks using 17 degrees of torus, but data centers are trying to converge on one link, they are trying to be as flat as possible," said Torsten Hoefler. And Sequoia processor offers 4Gflops per watt. All the others supercomputer manufacturers deliver barely more than 1Gflops per watt. Most of them deep below that limit.
The 16-cores on a die are designed to deliver 204.8 gigaflops at a power draw of 55 watts.
BAD HARDWARE WEEK: In ten years there could be supercomputer networks using 17 degrees of torus, but data centers are trying to converge on one link, they are trying to be as flat as possible," said Torsten Hoefler. And Sequoia processor offers 4Gflops per watt. All the others supercomputer manufacturers deliver barely more than 1Gflops per watt. Most of them deep below that limit.
Monday, August 22, 2011
NET Framework "1935 Error" Cripples Some Users' Office, IE9 Installs
Only current fix is a complete reinstall of Windows 7
The first sign I recognized that something serious had gone wrong with Windows 7 was when I tried to install Internet Explorer 9. I wanted to include this browser's test results in my roundup of recent browsers. But I would discover something quite different -- a bug in Windows itself.
BAD HARDWARE WEEK: IE9 as a Consumer Browser -- Not Worth It.
A strong case for business users? Indeed :)
The first sign I recognized that something serious had gone wrong with Windows 7 was when I tried to install Internet Explorer 9. I wanted to include this browser's test results in my roundup of recent browsers. But I would discover something quite different -- a bug in Windows itself.
BAD HARDWARE WEEK: IE9 as a Consumer Browser -- Not Worth It.
A strong case for business users? Indeed :)
Samsung Solar Notebook
BAD HARDWARE WEEK: Great small thing for desert. But who needs notebook there?
IBM Sequoia Supercomputer 3 times more power efficient then the rest
With first transactional memory inside.
IBM only implemented transactional memory within the confines of a single chip using a tagging scheme on the chip's 32MB level-two cache memory. The tags are used to detect any load/store conflicts in data to be used in a so-called atomic transaction scheduled by the computer.
Why Software Matters ?
My own theory is that we are in the middle of a dramatic and broad technological and economic shift in which software companies are poised to take over large swathes of the economy.
BAD HARDWARE WEEK: California unemployment rate is 12%. If you’re worried, save some of that cash you’re raking in for the potential rainy day, and thank God you work in software. In a market like this, better to be the eater than the eaten.
BAD HARDWARE WEEK: California unemployment rate is 12%. If you’re worried, save some of that cash you’re raking in for the potential rainy day, and thank God you work in software. In a market like this, better to be the eater than the eaten.
Friday, August 19, 2011
"Hello Lambdas" C++ 0x, a quick guide to Lambdas in C++ with a bug
Intel's Future Technology Outlook
BAD HARDWARE WEEK: In year 2018 with max 4.6 GHz clock, 16 cores fitted in a current single 45 nm core + cache die. About that time special tiled core architectures might be able to deliver at least 3X more GFlops per Watt than old, comaptible X86 architecture.
On DOE's Exaflop plans
Some details are given here.
BAD HARDWARE WEEK Conclusion? Petaflop monsters only work at average 1% of projected peak computing capacity !. 1 Exaflops will only deliver sustained 20 Pflops machine using current technology. With future technologies 50 up to 100 PFlops sustained. Each human brain has such a computational capacity ! Optical connections alone are able to spare 33% of Exaflops power budget. That is up to 6MWs ! A lot of wasted heat.
Exxon's Billion-Barrel Secret
The only thing that surprised the energy industry more than Exxon Mobil Corp.'s mammoth oil find in the Gulf of Mexico is that it kept its size quiet for so long.
HP failed in pad bussiness
Beside, The industry blog All Things D reported this week that Best Buy has sold only 25,000 HP TouchPads, less than 10 percent of the supply sitting in warehouses. That compares with more than 9 million iPads sold in the last quarter.
Thursday, August 18, 2011
Latest in Web Tracking: Stealthy 'Supercookies'
Major websites such as MSN.com and Hulu.com have been tracking people's online activities using powerful new methods that are almost impossible for computer users to detect, new research shows.
The new techniques, which are legal, reach beyond the traditional "cookie," a small file that websites routinely install on users' computers to help track their activities online. Hulu and MSN were installing files known as "supercookies," which are capable of re-creating users' profiles after people deleted regular cookies.
BAD HARDWARE WEEK: These statistics come from a study by the University of California, Berkeley, and they’re are a little alarming. Apparently half the sites on the Internet use Flash to track people, but very few actually tell you that’s what’s being done in their privacy policies.
The new techniques, which are legal, reach beyond the traditional "cookie," a small file that websites routinely install on users' computers to help track their activities online. Hulu and MSN were installing files known as "supercookies," which are capable of re-creating users' profiles after people deleted regular cookies.
BAD HARDWARE WEEK: These statistics come from a study by the University of California, Berkeley, and they’re are a little alarming. Apparently half the sites on the Internet use Flash to track people, but very few actually tell you that’s what’s being done in their privacy policies.
Facebook will broadcast FA Cup tomorrow
Sony NEX 7 to cost around $1000, will start shipping in November
- 24.3 MP Exmor sensor
- ISO range: 100-16000
- 1920×1080 60p/60i/24p AVCHD video recording
- XGA OLED viewfinder
- 3″ 921k dots TruBlack LCD display
- 10 fps
- HDR functionality
- Built-in flash
- Battery life: over 400 shots
- Magnesium alloy body
- Improved startup time and AF speed
Energy-Harvesting LCD Screens
Wednesday, August 17, 2011
Wall Street thinks Intel will buy Micron
A Wall Street analyst claims that Intel will buy the DRAM maker Micron Technology in a move to diversify its product offerings.
Tuesday, August 16, 2011
Resurrect Dead Blue Waters Power7 Supercomputer As IBM iCloud
To give you some perspective, that is probably about half of the aggregate IBM i processing capacity in the world. BAD HARDWARE WEEK: That price doesn't include the IBM i software licenses. Even at the modest $2,245 per core that IBM charges for the entry PS700 blade server (with 90 days of Software Maintenance), across those 349,440 cores you would be talking about another $1.5 billion for the operating system software and three years of maintenance. Call it $3 billion for 2 billion Commercial Performance Workload.
On a balanced Power 775 superserver, that would be $24.8 billion for 2.1 billion CPWs just for the software, plus another $1.5 billion for the hardware. That's a truly stupid price--and it is exactly what Big Blue charges (at list price) for the IBM i software on its largest Power systems iron.I think it would be interesting to get IBM i running on these machines and turn it into an IBM iCloud.
Monday, August 15, 2011
Google Acquires Motorola for $12.5 Billion
“We expect that this combination will enable us to break new ground for the Android ecosystem,” added Andy Rubin, senior vice president of Mobile at Google.
BAD HARDWARE WEEK: What we wrote recently about ANdroid impact on the mobile market in the near future?
Intel To Offer CPU Performance Upgrades Via Software
Pakistan let China see crashed U.S. "stealth" copter
During the raid, one of two modified Blackhawk helicopters, believed to employ unknown stealth capability, malfunctioned and crashed, forcing the commandos to abandon it.
TSMC Reportedly Starting Trial Production Of Apple A6 SoC
The information comes from sources in the industry and comes as a confirmation of the Apple-Samsung break-up (at least in SoCs as Cupertino still might order some iPad screens though).
Intel: Apple threatened to dump us over our greedy chips
Intel has admitted that Apple threatened to pull its chip business from the company if it did not dramatically reduce the power consumption of processors, providing “a real wake-up call” to the firm.
Earlier this month, analysts predicted that Apple would launch an ARM MacBook Air by 2013, while its iOS and OS X software would eventually merge.
BAD HARWDARE WEEK: Apple will launch the iPad 3 and the Apple A6 SoC in Q1 2012, along with a new iPhone in the summer of that year.
Earlier this month, analysts predicted that Apple would launch an ARM MacBook Air by 2013, while its iOS and OS X software would eventually merge.
BAD HARWDARE WEEK: Apple will launch the iPad 3 and the Apple A6 SoC in Q1 2012, along with a new iPhone in the summer of that year.
Now Cromebooks virtualized for Windows
Inconvenient Truth on Made in China label!
The rest went to U.S. businesses and workers transporting, selling, and marketing goods carrying the "Made in China" label.
Friday, August 12, 2011
Advanced CMOS drives 100 GbE towards mainstream markets
Cost-effective, energy-efficient 100 Gigabit Ethernet (100 GbE) links will soon become essential tools for data center and service provider networks, which are struggling to satisfy the global economy’s relentless hunger for more bandwidth.
Failed Falcon: Pentagon loses hypersonic aircraft over Pacific Ocean
BAD HARDWARE WEEK: Loss of memory? , because Space Shuttle was able to do it even 30 years ago ! Let as warn you: When operational HTV will be able to carry 5 tons thermo nuclear bomb in a Stealth Falcon airplane less than hour in the whole World. More of those Falcons will make any current nuclear deterrent agreement quite obsolete.
Thursday, August 11, 2011
Nanotechnology ludists strike in MExico
An anti-technology group calling itself "Individuals Tending to Savagery" was responsible for a package bomb that injured two university professors just outside Mexico City, a prosecutor said Tuesday.
The explosion at the Monterrey Technological Institute's campus in the State of Mexico on the outskirts of the capital Monday injured two professors, one of whom was involved in robotics research. Neither suffered life-threatening injuries.
"Open fire on the development of nanotechnology and those who support it!"
The explosion at the Monterrey Technological Institute's campus in the State of Mexico on the outskirts of the capital Monday injured two professors, one of whom was involved in robotics research. Neither suffered life-threatening injuries.
"Open fire on the development of nanotechnology and those who support it!"
PC Designer Says PC "Going the Way of the Vacuum Tube"
IBM CTO Mark Dean of the company's Middle East and Africa division, one of a dozen IBM engineers who designed that first machine unveiled Aug. 12, 1981, says PCs are "going the way of the vacuum tube, typewriter, vinyl records, CRT and incandescent light bulbs."
Sony NEX 7 soon
Opportunity rover on the crater edge
AT&T plans for all networks to be on IPv6 by 2020 !
US NETWORK OPERATOR AT&T believes that by 2020 most networks should have completely moved onto IPv6.
20 years we have been trained for passwords hard to rembember but easy to guess by computer
Sony makes brighter/lower power 'WhiteMagic' LCD panel
Sony has developed the 'WhiteMagic' high-resolution LCD panel that can be brighter or consume less power than existing units.
Wednesday, August 10, 2011
End of the PC age: Tablet devices to outpace PC shipments by 2013
Shipments of Internet-enabled devices are projected to hit 503.6 million units in 2013, up from 161 million in 2010. In comparison, PC shipments will hover around 253.3 million, up from 222.3 million.By 2015, however, shipments of Internet-enabled consumer devices are projected to break three-quarters of a billion units - at 780.8 million units - exceeding PC shipments of 479.1 million units.
Tuesday, August 09, 2011
Assistant pastor Hardwareholic
An assistant pastor who confessed to stealing computer equipment and embezzling from his church twice tried to commit suicide after he was found out, according to authorities and church officials.
IBM / NCSA Petaflap Supercomputer “Blue Waters” Project Abandoned
“It’s not often you hear of contract money being returned, especially with government contracts. IBM was putting a lot of resources into the contract [but] It wasn’t a profitable direction for IBM.” – Rick Doherty
BAD HARDWARE WEEK: Blue Waters before became murky.
HAL, open that doors please.
Blue Waters will be the first production deployment of PERCS technologies, 100 times more powerful than today's general purpose supercomputers but dramatically simpler to use.
BAD HARDWARE WEEK: Yeah, extremely simple to use. :)
BAD HARDWARE WEEK: Blue Waters before became murky.
HAL, open that doors please.
Blue Waters will be the first production deployment of PERCS technologies, 100 times more powerful than today's general purpose supercomputers but dramatically simpler to use.
BAD HARDWARE WEEK: Yeah, extremely simple to use. :)
Monday, August 08, 2011
20 Years Ago Today: The First Website Is Published
It was August 6, 1991, at a CERN facility in the Swiss Alps, when 36-year-old physicist Tim Berners-Lee published the first-ever website.
AMD's notebook 2012 roadmap
