The-Teacher

Microsoft has lowered what it tells people are the necessary requirements to run Vista. I personally had thought it was something like that Cray Super desktop I mentioned in a previous post. It did this at the request of Intel but has managed to upset everyone else in the process because these requirements will actually only allow the user to run a basic version of the Vista OS.

 It also appears it is becoming increasingly difficult to attract girls to computer science courses at University. Girls have achieved relative parity with boys in most other technical areas but in computing it's a ratio of about 6:1. At least that's better than our class of 8:0 but don't tell anyone!

 Ok, time for some revision. Remember we looked at the measures used to compare the prerformance of computer systems? Well check out this story about NASA's newest supercomputer, 12,800 processors and giving an output of 487 TeraFLOPS!!! Remember a Tera is 1024 Giga.

And finally something off-topic. You are not a geek unless you've watched(and liked) Tron. It's a film where a hacker is digitised by a computer and he sees all of the programs inside the computer as other humans. One of these programs is charged with deleting the said hacker but he realises that as a programmer he has abilities in this environment. Well, anyway, apparently they are making a sequel.The original was mafde in 1982 and had sompretty cool effects for it's time. Hopefully this one will make good use of the technology available now.

If only Alanis Morrissette had been around with her ironies a little earlier, my English homework about examples of irony would've been a heck of a lot easier. It would have also been made easier due to the fact that the US Air Force want to change the laws of cyberspace because they are fed up with stealthy attackers. Why is this ironic I hear you ask?Well, if you remember I told you that the US miltary was heavily invovled in the origins of the internet.

It seems research in America is suggesting that there is a link between playing violent video games and child aggression. I don't believe it. Stories like that just make me want to smash things up.

Check out this new design for the Dutch 5 Euro coin. The person who designed it for a competition used entirely free software. GIMP and Inksape were two of the programs used. The coin is an image of Queen Beatrixwhose head is made up from the names of famous Dutch architects in order of their popularity on Yahoo!

 Finally, something not really computer related but interesting none the less. Check these images of the Sun's fiery jets.

Here is my second blog of relevant and worthy links to interesting stories from web-land.

Linux is an alternative operating system, this story talks about how the kernel(a part of the operating system which we will soon cover in class)has almost 7 million lines of code. Yes I know the headline says 10 but it then goes on to say that a lot are blank lines and comments(see I told you that programmers use comments... and you all thought it was a waste of time). Interesting also to note that 3% or so of the kernel is written in assemby language. Which category does assembly language fall into?

Here is an interesting story from the software devlopment world. It seems the programming language to have in your list of languages you can code in is COBOL. These developers are in high demand due it being a somewhat older language used in business and finance administration systems. The reason for this shortage is because the language appeared in the 60's and a lot of the programmers are now retiring. Students nowadays are learning more modern languages. So if you fancy putting some time in wuth COBOL you might just beat the credit crunch which has now been upgraded to a recession.

Don't get sued for leaving negative feedback on eBay.

 Ok that is all, we are almost on Saturday and I've only played about 3 rounds of Tiger Woods 09 so far...

I have decided to also contribute to the blog site. My blogs will hopefully point you in the direction of some relevant, interesting and informative news stories and websites.

 My first entry is concerning the announcement from Cray, who are famed for their supercomputers, who are to build a desktop supercomputer. The beast in question starts at $25k and reports suggest it might just be able to run Windows Vista with all it's bells and whistles. Check it out here.

This week the BBC educated us on the location of England. I bet you're thinking "I know where it is". Well, it appears they thought we didn't. Have a look.

 Anyone got a copy of LittleBigPlanet yet? Seems it's worth a few bob.

So you all thought this Software Deveopment lark would never amount to anything, well it appears there is a chance for you all to make some money on the side. The new XBox experience(what they are calling the new dashboard) will include a channel for selling games made by mere mortals like us. There are bound to be some really bad efforts but if you make something Microsoft likes you can sell it for Microsoft points where you will get 70% of the royalties! Right, all I need is an idea.....

 Finally, a really cool website. The Hubble telescope orbits the earth and scientists can compete for time using it, NASA decide who has the best proposals for use of the telescope and allocate it to different teams. It takes some amazing pictures and you can look at them here. Have a look at the photos, I guarantee they will make you ponder life, the universe and everything. They will blow you away. The site also has information for us nerdy types about how the thing works. So take a look around and stop wasting your life away on youtube! Interior, crocodile, alligator etc