Microsoft End User License Agreement

By touching any computer ever made, you agree to the terms of this agreement....

Microsoft shall have the rights to your first born child. This child shal be called Bill or Billina. Said child shall be assigned an activation code, which must be used prior to this child playing outside....

User furthermore agrees to sing praises to Microsoft every morning upon waking and each evening before retiring.... Simply raise your hands in the air and repeat aloud, ''All hail Microsoft!''

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From Wal-Mart for $198

Need a new computer at home and don't want to pay the earth for it? Your next computer could very well be the Everex gPC bought from Wal-Mart for just US$198.



This is a rather modest little number, but has the added feature of a Ubuntu 7.10 (the latest version of the best Linux software) already installed. Great for a kids machine in the family or rumpus room.

The computer features a middle of the road computer as far as capability, and can very well be a good Internet ready machine. It already has installed the Open Office suite of programs, including a word processor, spreadsheet program, diagram editor etc., and has Google Aps, Skype, iPod compatible software and more . . . all free-ware software.

Now isn't the price really coming down on computers!

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Tablet Computers

Would a tablet computer help you in your business?

Tim Berry has a blog entry at Small Business Trends were he talks about what he likes about a tablet computer over a standard laptop.

The biggest advantage tablets have according to Berry is that they are easier to use on airplanes. It allows you to adjust the screen if the person in front of you lowers his seat back. Another versatility offered by the tablet is the ability to do handwriting or use the keyboard.

He also points out several other ideas that benefit from using a tablet.

Is it right for you? Well that depends on your computing needs.

If you are traveling frequently, using it for power points, or have other needs that will benefit from a tablet, then consider a tablet.

Personally, I purchased my first laptop computer last May. So far I have used it on all of my trips and found it handy. Would a tablet computer be more useful for me? It is possible but the laptop is working for now. However, as my consulting increases and I have to be on the road even more the benefits of a tablet may become more apparent.

It all comes down to what is best for you and how you operate your business.

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Roadrunner: A New Age of Super- computing

Roadrunner
Credit: LeRoy N. Sanchez, Records Management/Media Services and Operations

Laboratory officials celebrated Los Alamos's decision to pursue, pending approval by the National Nuclear Security Administration, the final phase of Roadrunner, a high-performance computer (HPC) slated to become the computational cornerstone of Laboratory mission-related work.

"Roadrunner ushers in a new era in high performance computing," said Terry Wallace, principal associate director for science, technology, and engineering (PADSTE). Wallace praised the hard work and dedication of the entire Roadrunner Project Team at the celebration last Thursday.

Roadrunner is designed to achieve a sustained operating speed of 1,000 trillion calculations each second, or a "petaflop/s" in computer jargon-peta signifying the number 10 followed by 15 zeros, and flop/s meaning "floating point operation per second." The fastest current supercomputer is rated at 478 teraflop/s (teraflop/s meaning one trillion floating point operations per second); Roadrunner would be roughly 3 times faster.

The computer will be developed in partnership with IBM and will utilize commercially available hardware, including aspects of commercial gaming and graphics technologies. Because of its off-the-shelf design, the computer costs significantly less than a one-of-a-kind machine. It uses a Linux operating system.........

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Active computer games no substitute

New generation active computer games stimulate greater energy expenditure than sedentary games, but are no substitute for playing real sports, as per a research studyin this weeks Christmas issue of the BMJ.

Young people are currently recommended to take an hour of moderate to vigorous physical exercise each day, which should use at least three times as much energy as is used at rest. But a number of adolescents have mostly sedentary lifestyles.

Time spent in front of television and computer screens has been associated with physical inactivity and obesity.

The new generation of wireless based computer games is meant to stimulate greater interaction and movement during play, so scientists at Liverpool John Moores University compared the energy expenditure of adolescents when playing sedentary and new generation active computer games.

Six boys and five girls aged 13-15 years were included in the study. All were a healthy weight, competent at sport and regularly played sedentary computer games.

Before the study, each participant practiced playing both the active and inactive games.

On the day of the study, participants played four computer games for 15 minutes each while wearing a monitoring device to record energy expenditure.........

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Google's Knol against Wikipedia?

Google loves the content of Wikipedia. Just do some Google searches and you’ll see the Wikipedia articles among the top results. While Google tries to battle Wikipedia and to create their own encyclopaedia ( under the name Knol), I thought I should share my thoughts with you as a Wikipedia administrator. But Larry Sanger, the head and founder of Citizendium, the expert-encyclopaedia, has beat me to it:

There are a few problems.

First, quality. It looks to me as if Knol is a high-level attempt to do what many others have done… Time will tell, but Knol will probably resemble other such websites, and have a huge amount of mediocre content, with a little excellent content mixed in. The concept does not sound like a model that would attract many genuine experts. I say that because the notion that anyone may write a "knol" and be compared and ranked by "the crowd" - not by expert peers - is apt to attract relatively little notice from experts who are very careful about where they publish.

Second, lack of buy-in from the free culture crowd. Many of the sort of people who contribute knowledge to projects like Wikipedia and the Citizendium are likely to be very skeptical of a giant corporation organizing such a project, particularly with Google Ads appearing on the articles. It does not appear to be in the spirit of the free culture movement. Still, it is good that Google has decided to make ads optional.

As an encyclopaedia, Knol has no chance against Wikipedia or Citizendium. As an other place for advertisements where people can promote their products, it seems to be a perfect solution. We’ll see…

I highlighted the features: article rating, Google ads and peer reviews.

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How about a 40-hour laptop battery?

Unbelievable isn''t it? A laptop battery that can keep your laptop going for 40 hours! Yes, research is underway at Stanford Tech to develop a hi-tech lithium ion battery that can juice up your laptop for 40 hours, keeping those charging woes at bay for a longer period.

Apparently, the new battery uses a discarded technology that has been been revamped by Professor Yi Cui and team - silicon anodes in the form of nanowires for charging. This technology was earlier abandoned as the silicon expands up to 400 times when charged, exploding the battery in the process. Using silicon in the form of nanowires eliminates this danger.

So when can you start rejoicing? In a "few years time" is all the information we have at this moment.

Via Newlaunches.

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