1967's predictions for the "World of 1999"

From a film called "1999 A.D.", this clip shows 1967's vision of computing in the home of 1999. I particularly like the visionary view that it would still be the man paying all the bills - nice !!

Can you trust Wikipedia ?

This is the question asked by Luca de Alfaro who has written software which looks at the content of a Wikipedia entry and rates its veracity based on the history of the content. It "counts the degree to which any given contributor's work survives subsequent edits by other people" and assigns a colour to the words based on this reputation.

It is currently a standalone application which uses an older subset of Wikipedia entries, but Luca is hoping to work with the Wikimedia Foundation to offer it as a web application on the live site.

More here.

New cooling solution for the next generation...

As we all know, the main barrier to having super-fast processors and chips is that they need cooling and today's technology just isn't up to the job. A few (nutters) people have experimented with overclocking processors and cooling them using liquid nitrogen - see this site for a P4 that reached 5.24Ghz clock speed when cooled to -190 degrees C, but this isn't really practical for most of us !

The BBC news site today mentions a new method of cooling chips which uses "ionic wind" to dissipate the heat produced by increasingly powerful devices. Apparently the reason why fans don't cool as much as we think they do is that as the air from the fan wafts over the chip, the molecules nearest to the chip's surface can get stuck and therefore hinder the cooling process. Purdue University researchers have developed a way to shift these "stuck molecules" by using a small voltage which when applied to the ionic engine positively charges particles at one end of the chip which are then dragged towards a negatively charged wire at the other end thereby forcing constant air movement. This effect apparently increases the cooling effect of conventional fans by a massive 250% which could mean that faster and smaller chips can be produced.

Blimey !

Microsoft - apparently not the innovator we thought it was...

This rather long, and rather angry sounding (!) article by F.W. van Wensveen argues that Microsoft has not actually innovated anything since its foundation in 1975. We all know the story of the design for the Windows GUI being "nicked" from Apple, but the article argues that precisely nothing has been innovated by the mega-corp since its inception. If you have a spare few minutes (read: half hour !) it makes some interesting points about Microsoft's products over the years...

Worried about data security on your old hard disks ?

As we all know, there's only one way to ensure that your data can not be retrieved from your old hard disks - and that's by destroying them ! Have a look at the video below to see an industrial shredder make mincemeat of a number of hard disks. I want one !

Linden Lab shuts down the fun in Second Life

On wednesday Linden Lab announced a new policy which bans all forms of gambling within Second Life to comply with the American government's outlawing of online gambling which came into effect last October. A large amount of revenue is generated in Second Life from the many casino owners who buy land from Linden Lab and the fear is that those people will be forced to sell their land and may even leave the virtual world altogether. This will cause a massive drop in land prices but Linden Lab itself may not recover the money lost due to the new policy.

To me this seems to be an example of how laws and policies are unable to cope with an entity such as Second Life which has thousands of non-American "residents" and who shouldn't really be subject to American law. Many of the casino owners weren't American but they are having their businesses shut down because their virtual land is on a server which is physically located in America. It could be said that it'd be good for each country to have a server farm for its residents to connect to Second Life which would allow those who connect access to those activities that the country says are legal, but this is really missing the point of Second Life. It's supposed to be an international community which regulates itself. Linden Lab itself advertises "Your World, Your Imagination", but really it's "American World, Your Imagination (within limits)".

Oh yeah, I ended up in the Linden Village last night and found myself part of a rally against the new anti-gambling policy. There's me in the front holding the small banner !!

Environ-Mentalism targets Google

Slashdot reports that a blogger by the name of Mark Ontkush claims that Google, with its white background, consumes 74 watts of power whereas if it changed the background colour to black it would "only" use 59 watts. Heap Media, listening to these claims have created a black version of Google's search page appropriately named Blackle. Really though, the saving in energy is negligible and is apparently so small as to be within the error margin of most power meters. The Wall Street Journal did an investigation into Mark's claims and concluded that turning down the brightness of the monitor had a far greater effect than any change of background colour could produce. The small power saving is also only applicable to those using CRT monitors (now in the minority) as LCDs consume the same (small amount) or power no matter what is displayed on screen.