Raid explained
April 30, 2009
About 12 years ago I went to work with an international company in Sydney, Australia. I was a young IT guy and had only been in IT for about 6 years at the time and had mostly worked on desktops and small microsoft networks.
While working there I met a number of experienced IT people and gained a vast wealth of knowledge and I am greatful for the experience that I gained. One of the people that I learned a great deal from was the Lotus Notes administrator. I once asked him what was this RAID thing all about, he pointed me to a document that he had created in one of the company help databases and I instantly had a working knowledge of RAID.
I just ran across a video on YouTube which is just as good at describing what RAID is all about. See the full story and video HERE
History of the Internet
January 13, 2009
Video: YouTube
The History of the internet is an animated documentary which outlines the inventions from time-sharing to file sharing, from Arpanet to Internet. The animated video is using PICOL icons from picol.org , these are available for download soon. See more from blog.picol.org where you can get news about this project.
Whatever happened to the BumpTop Desktop?
January 4, 2009
Video: YouTube
About 1 and a half years ago the BumpTop desktop was featured on Ted Talks. Now I haven’t heard anymore about it, I wonder why it seems to have paled into insignificance.
Website: Bumptop Desktop on Getalookatthis.com
Scientists create first Memristor: Missing fourth electronic circuit element
May 1, 2008
In an exciting breakthrough, scientists from HP Labs have built working prototypes of a new electronic circuit component called a ‘Memristor’. The device may lead to instant-on PC’s and analog computers that act in the same way a human brain does.
Until recently the Memristor had only been described using mathematical equations written back in 1971 by engineering student Leon Chua. Although Chua knew this circuit element should exist, he was unable to come up with a physical manifestation of the component.
“Thirty-seven years later, a group of scientists from HP Labs has finally built real working memristors, thus adding a fourth basic circuit element to electrical circuit theory, one that will join the three better-known ones: the capacitor, resistor and the inductor.”
The researchers believe this discovery may be integral in the production of Instant-on PC’s and more energy efficient computers and even computers that act in the same way as the human brain.
See the full story at the website link below.
Website: Memristor
Weird Microsoft Stuff
April 20, 2008
3 interesting idiosyncrasies re Microsoft that I found while surfing the net recently. 2 out of the 3 worked on my Windows Vista machine with Office 2003. See how they work for you.
1. CON is not allowed as a folder name
An Indian discovered that nobody can create a FOLDER anywhere on the computer which can be named as ‘CON’.
See if you can create a con folder on your PC.
This is not really a bug and Microsoft do know about this. It goes back to the DOS days and reserved filenames.
Below are other reserved names.
|
CON |
KEYBOARD AND DISPLAY |
2. Notepad Bug
1.) Open an empty notepad file
2.) Type “Bush hid the facts” (without the quotes)
3.) Save it as whatever you want.
4.) Close it, and re-open it.
is it just a really weird bug? :-??
3. =rand (200, 99) bug
This is a strange bug. At Microsoft the whole Team, including Bill Gates, couldn’t answer why this happened. It was discovered by a Brazilian. Try it out yourself.
Open Microsoft Word and type
=rand (200, 99)
And then press ENTER and see what happens.
Gigabyte Cool Rain - Water Cooled PC Memory
March 9, 2008
Water cooling now available for your computer memory.
Image: Geeky Gadgets
See the full story here
Palm Centro released by AT&T
February 25, 2008
“AT&T, the largest mobile carrier in the US, will offer Palm’s Centro handset to its subscribers starting tomorrow, 19 February 2008, for $199 with a $100 mail-in rebate and a 2-year contract.”
“Apparently there will be a white, a black and a pink version of the Centro, which is pretty cool, as users have more colors to choose from.”
See more pictures at The Wizard’s Blog Read more
Firefox releases Version 3 beta 3
February 13, 2008
Firefox has just release beta 3 of Firefox 3. Confused? Well it is the third beta release of version 3 and its seems not too bad except that some plugins don’t work yet as well as some sites not displaying properly too.
I would imagine it wont be long before all the problems are fixed and I would be pretty keen to jump right in and use it, but for now I’ll stick with version 2.
You can download version 3 at the link below, and also get the full details of the new version as well.
Website: Firefox Version 3 via Techcrunch
