Odd Lots
- IDC says that desktop PC sales will drop by 7.6% in 2013. This may well be due to what I call the Silverware Effect: PCs are pretty damned good, aren’t getting better very quickly, and people are keeping them way longer than they used to. Good ones can be had dirt-cheap. (And the dirt-cheap ones don’t have Windows 8 sticking to their boots!) Thanks to Pete Albrecht for the link.
- And a leaked screen shot seems to indicate that Microsoft heeded the technopeasants with torches and pitchforks: With Windows 8.1, the Start button is back!
- A day later, Ars published a much more detailed look at Windows 8.1.
- While some people still struggle to get their Raspberry Pi keyboards to stop stuttering, other people are writing brand-new operating systems for it. I know one of those guys, and if he wants to announce here, I’ll applaud!
- The Siberian Times reports that a frozen mammoth carcass yielded a surprise: Blood. The other surprise in this story is that there’s an English-language publication called the Siberian Times.
- A third surprise was how much cool stuff is published in the Siberian Times.
- That all the commenters in the Siberian Times appear to be Americans somehow comes as no surprise.
- In 2008, NOAA predicted that the Cycle 24 sunpost maximum would take place in May 2013. A quick look at my watch suggests that it’s over. So does a quick look at the sunspot graphs. After the second hump, it’s all over but the plunging.
- As much as people scream when anyone says so, talent trumps practice. 10,000 hours will make you better if you have talent, but it won’t make you better without the natural gifts to excel in your chosen field. Choose the wrong field, and all the practice you might attempt won’t make you great.
- Moore’s Law seems to be stalling, on NAND flash memory, at least.
- Twenty home technologies that were way ahead of their time. (Thanks to Pete Albrecht for the link.)
- The husband of a local rising star in bichon grooming is a comics artist. And he is beyond amazing.
- One of the few things I miss about California is the Weird Stuff Warehouse in Sunnyvale. Ars has a photo tour that makes it look precisely the way I remember it looking in 1989. (I guess that makes it a “comfort junk shop.”)
- I haven’t laughed out lout at PVP in a long time, but today’s strip did it.
- Physicists have created quantum entanglement between two photons that don’t exist at the same time. If my head didn’t hurt before, it hurts now. (Thanks to Jonathan O’Neal for the link.)
- We thought we knew what organism caused the mid-19th century potato famine in Ireland, but we were wrong.
Posted in: Odd Lots.
Tagged: art · hardware · humor · rpi · science · software
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I suppose that the decline in desktop PC sales is a factor in the (delusional) belief some have that tablets and phones will replace the desktop. Ain’t gonna happen anytime soon.
– Surely I am not the only one who hates typing without a dedicated keyboard?
– Am I the only person who understands the need for massive local data storage?
– Am I the only person who sees the need for a plug-in bus and beefy power source?
We do not all make our living with web apps. And many of the non-Web apps are thoroughly unpleasant when reduced to browser compatibility.
Thanks for the pointer to the Siberian Times – perfectly timed as I’m currently in Udachny doing some preliminary work for a remote control mining machinery project, and will be returning later in the year.
On an unrelated note, you and your readers might be interested in an older television show from the UK entitled “The Secret Life of Machines”. The eighteen witty half hour episodes from 1988-1993 discuss various pieces of everyday technology and explain (usually with whimsical demonstrations) how they work, and the history of their invention. All of the episodes can be downloaded in various forms, and the program website can be found at here. Some of the other wonderful things that Tim Hunkin creates can be seen at his website.
The desktop computer can be replaced by tablets and smartphones for the vast majority of consumers that are simply “content sponges” who never create anything. But the desktop is an indispensable tool for anyone who *creates*.
The desktop made a *drastic* improvement in my life as an engineer. It was a new tool of unparallelled power and flexibility; like a milling machine for creativity. Without it, technology would be decades behind where it is today. There is also no practical alternative for creating *tomorrow’s* wonderful new gadgets.
To think that smartphones and tablets can replace desktops is like thinking that playing the radio is the same as playing a violin, or that taking pictures with a cellphone is the same as painting, or that tweets are the same as great literature. If the desktop ceases to be fashionable and so is no long common among the general public, our society will lose an important tool for the development of creativity and thinking ability in future generations.
Asynchronous quantum entanglement was predicted!
… in, um, a silly answer in a long-vanished physics discussion website to someone wanting to know about the dangers of radiation in CERN accelerators. After he had had a straight answer, he asked again, and I posted an excerpt about accelerator zombies. AQE was said to explain why zombies-to-be couldn’t see the bioluminescence of the ones approaching them. “In some interpretations this theory has the unhappy property of requiring that there can never be a last member in such a chain.”
The Weird Stuff Warehouse reminds me of a similarly unique store in Orlando, FL: Skycraft
Google street view goes inside the store for those who aren’t in Orlando.