Pinboard (guardiantech)

Tablets v. the world >> Learning by Shipping

guardiantech — 2014-05-12T14:23:29+00:00

Steve Sinofsky (you know, used to have a job at Microsoft):

The characterization of tablets as “neither here nor there” or “in between tablet and a laptop” misses the reality that the modern nature of tablet platforms—both hardware and software—will drive innovation and subsequent transition for many many scenarios from traditional laptop platforms to tablet platforms. We’re in the middle period where this is happening—just as when people said cars were too expensive for the masses and would not be mainstream or when the GUI interface lacked the hardware horsepower and “keystroke productivity” to replace character based tools.

The examples he cites are intriguing. (It's probably also the most readable blog post he's ever written.)

The electronic holy war >> The New Yorker

guardiantech — 2014-03-26T17:59:10+00:00

In May, 1997, IBM's Deep Blue supercomputer prevailed over Garry Kasparov in a series of six chess games, becoming the first computer to defeat a world-champion chess player. Two months later, the New York Times offered machines another challenge on behalf of a wounded humanity: the two-thousand-year-old Chinese board game wei qi, known in the West as Go. The article said that computers had little chance of success: "It may be a hundred years before a computer beats humans at Go – maybe even longer."
Last March, 16 years later, a computer program named Crazy Stone defeated Yoshio Ishida, a professional Go player and a five-time Japanese champion. The match took place during the first annual Densei-sen, or "electronic holy war" tournament, in Tokyo, where the best Go programs in the world play against one of the best humans. Ishida, who earned the nickname "the Computer" in the 1970s because of his exact and calculated playing style, described Crazy Stone as "genius".
The victory was not quite a Deep Blue moment; Crazy Stone was given a small handicap, and Ishida is no longer in his prime. But it was an impressive feat.

Terrific piece by Patrick House.

The first carbon nanotube computer >> MIT Technology Review

guardiantech — 2013-09-25T17:50:38+00:00

For the first time, researchers have built a computer whose central processor is based entirely on carbon nanotubes, an incredibly tiny form carbon with remarkable material and electronic properties. The computer is slow and simple, but its creators, a group of Stanford University engineers, say it shows that carbon nanotube electronics are a viable potential replacement for silicon when it reaches its limits in ever-smaller electronic circuits.
The carbon nanotube processor is comparable in capabilities to the Intel 4004, that company’s first microprocessor, which was released in 1971, says Subhasish Mitra, an electrical engineer at Stanford and one of the project’s co-leaders.

When will tablets outsell traditional PCs? >> asymco

guardiantech — 2013-09-12T16:48:30+00:00

Horace Dediu, in March 2012:

Given these assumptions, the day when the tablet market (by units) will exceed that of traditional PCs will come sometime in the fall of 2013.

IDC forecast on Thursday that tablets will outsell traditional PCs in the fourth quarter of 2012. How was your prediction?

On the NSA >> The Daily Dot

guardiantech — 2013-09-08T20:38:15+00:00

Matthew Green is a cryptographer and a professor at Johns Hopkins University:

It should be extremely difficult to weaken a standard without someone noticing. And yet the Guardian and NYT stories are extremely specific in their allegations about the NSA weakening standards.
The Guardian specifically calls out the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) for a standard they published in 2006. Cryptographers have always had complicated feelings about NIST, and that's mostly because NIST has a complicated relationship with the NSA.
Here's the problem: the NSA ostensibly has both a defensive and an offensive mission.

It’s time to reinvent the personal computer >> Mobile Opportunity

guardiantech — 2013-05-06T20:02:14+00:00

Michael Mace:

There are pending changes in interface, hardware, and software that could be just as revolutionary as graphical computing was in the 1980s. In my opinion, this would be a huge opportunity for a company that pulls them all together and makes them work.
Introducing the Sensory Computer
I call the new platform sensory computing because it makes much richer use of vision and gestures and 3D technology than anything we have today. Compared to a sensory computer, today’s PCs and even tablets look flat and uninteresting.
There are four big changes needed to implement sensory computing.

Now read on.. though 3D remains unpersuasive. See his guesses for who will actually implement this.

If it ain't broke, don't fix it: ancient computers in use today >> PCWorld

guardiantech — 2013-04-23T12:39:44+00:00

Sparkler Filters of Conroe, Texas, prides itself on being a leader in the world of chemical process filtration. If you buy an automatic nutsche filter from them, though, they’ll enter your transaction on a “computer” that dates from 1948.
Sparkler’s IBM 402 is not a traditional computer, but an automated electromechanical tabulator that can be programmed (or more accurately, wired) to print out certain results based on values encoded into stacks of 80-column Hollerith-type punched cards.
Companies traditionally used the 402 for accounting, since the machine could take a long list of numbers, add them up, and print a detailed written report. In a sense, you could consider it a 3000-pound spreadsheet machine. That's exactly how Sparkler Filters uses its IBM 402, which could very well be the last fully operational 402 on the planet. As it has for over half a century, the firm still runs all of its accounting work (payroll, sales, and inventory) through the IBM 402. The machine prints out reports on wide, tractor-fed paper.

But wait! Before the data goes in, it has to be encoded into punch cards. Amazing. More examples welcomed.

Chris Chant calls for goverment IT heads to step down >> Computer Weekly

guardiantech — 2013-01-24T16:30:44+00:00

Outspoken former government IT reformer Chris Chant has called for the resignation of the Cabinet Office's chief operating officer Stephen Kelly and chief procurement officer Bill Crothers following the procurement of an Oracle enterprise resource planning (ERP) framework worth up to £750m.
The former G-Cloud head slammed Kelly and Crothers for rubber-stamping the deal, which he described as an outrageous waste of money.
The ERP tender, worth between £250m and £750m, is being led by the Foreign and Commonwealth Office (FCO) as part of the government’s shared services strategy. It will cover existing Oracle platforms across departments.

The coming civil war over general purpose computing >> Boing Boing

guardiantech — 2012-09-08T21:04:36+00:00

Cory Doctorow has a call to arms.

Windows 8 productivity: Who moved my cheese? Oh, there it is. >> Scott Hanselman

guardiantech — 2012-08-27T16:53:49+00:00

I upgraded from Windows 7 Ultimate to Windows 8 Pro. There's fewer SKUs in Windows 8 now, basically just Windows 8, Windows 8 Pro (for super users) and Windows RT (for Tablets).
However, once it's installed, it's initially confusing but I have been using it every day all day since it was released and have got myself productive again. Here's what I ran into and how I realized that there's less reason to freak out than I originally thought.

Detailed and helpful.

An unexpected ass Kkicking >> Blog Of Impossible Things

guardiantech — 2012-08-19T17:12:34+00:00

Joel Runyon thought the old man who sat next to him and dissed his MacBook Air was just another person with an opinion. Turns out he wasn't.

Wearable technology: a vision of the future? >> The Guardian

guardiantech — 2012-07-18T21:31:50+00:00

Waiting for Godot >> asymco

guardiantech — 2012-07-12T15:24:50+00:00

If we are to believe the analyst community reflects consensus, the industry, in the aggregate, continues to treat the potential for disruption from devices as unlikely. There always seems to be a wrinkle, a quirk, or an exceptional circumstance that is to blame. I won’t get into all the excuses given by analysts for the slowing of PC sales but will point out that there’s been a series of initiatives put forward by the industry to act as “catalysts” for growth.

The graphs that go with this are amazing.

BYOD won't save you money, says Blackpool ICT chief >> Guardian Government Computing

guardiantech — 2012-05-01T05:34:48+00:00

On the one hand, costs up because there are more calls to the support desk; on the other, fewer desks and more flexible working.

"Local authorities hoping to introduce similar [Bring Your Own Device] schemes should view it as a way of supporting employees and helping to bring about job satisfaction, according to [Blackpool head of ICT services Tony] Doyle.

Thanks @jforbes for the link; note this is where the article originally appeared - on the Guardian's Government Computing Network.

Raspberry Pi - Review >> bit-tech.net

guardiantech — 2012-04-17T16:36:10+00:00

A thorough review of all aspects of the device, including the software:

Even assuming the distribution itself isn't causing problems, a surprising amount of software has yet to be ported to the Pi's ARM11 instruction set architecture. At present, it's impossible to view Flash content, the only version of Firefox available is the archaic 3.6.3 version, and getting Java to work is an exercise in futility.
For now, a modicum of Linux know-how is a prerequisite for Pi use.
As increasing numbers of developers and hackers get their hands on the boards, however, this will change. We've already heard that Oracle is being drafted in to create a Pi-centric Java VM while Adobe is rumoured to be looking into the possibility of porting an existing ARM build of its Flash Player to the Pi.
In short, the Pi promises much - but the software just isn't there yet. For end-users hoping to get going with their new Pis straight out of the box, it could prove a problem - but improved software is on the horizon, and developers from user-friendly and lightweight distributions like Puppy Linux are already working to get their systems up and running on the devices.

It's the software that really has to do the job. The hardware is up to it.

Education in Peru: Error message >> The Economist

guardiantech — 2012-04-10T05:16:47+00:00

One Laptop Per Child arrived in Peru. How well did it fare?

An evaluation of the laptop programme by the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB) found that the children receiving the computers did not show any improvement in maths or reading. Nor did it find evidence that access to a laptop increased motivation, or time devoted to homework or reading. The report applauded the government for providing much-needed hardware: less than a quarter of Peruvian households had a computer in 2010. But it now needs to improve teacher-training and the curriculum, said Julian Cristia of the IDB. Above all, the classroom environment needs to change.

The World's first computer password? It was useless too >> Wired.com

guardiantech — 2012-02-01T11:56:40+00:00

This may not come as a surprise. But it goes back a long way.

Disruptions: wearing your computer on your sleeve >> NYTimes.com

guardiantech — 2011-12-20T06:19:05+00:00

"Wearable computing is a broad term. Technically, a fancy electronic watch is a wearable computer. But the ultimate version of this technology is a screen that would somehow augment our vision with information and media. "…A person with knowledge of the company’s plans told me that a “very small group of Apple employees” had been conceptualizing and even prototyping some wearable devices. "One idea being discussed is a curved-glass iPod that would wrap around the wrist; people could communicate with the device using Siri, the company’s artificial intelligence software." "Over the last year, Apple and Google have secretly begun working on projects that will become wearable computers. Their main goal: to sell more smartphones. (In Google’s case, more smartphones sold means more advertising viewed.)"

DRAM pricing to plunge in Q3 and rest of second half >> iSuppli

guardiantech — 2011-08-31T09:39:49+00:00

"The average selling price for Double Data Rate 3 (DDR) in the 2-gigabit (Gb) density—the bellwether DRAM product—is projected to drop to $1.60 in the third quarter, down 24% from $2.10 in the second quarter. The dive would be the biggest decline for the year, following a surprisingly solid second quarter during which pricing fell only 5% from the first quarter. Moving into the fourth quarter, the price could plummet another 22% to $1.25—dangerously close to cash costs for many manufacturers. Only a year ago in the third quarter, pricing stood at $4.70."

There's been a fall in demand, while yields are about to rise. The money now is shifting towards NAND Flash.