...Microsoft wants Latin America to become the new India.

You know, Rosalita from the Goonies (the 85s Steven Spielberg movie)? Everyone used to have a Latino maid, worker, dishwasher, grease-monkey doing all the hard work you don't want to. And then all the good jobs was outsourced to brainy India who had both the means and poverty to make it happen. Today most programmers come from India.

Microsofts idea is nothing but pure genious. Remember the issues America have with skilled immigration these days? This could change it all.

...The Odd Effects of Being Struck By Lightning...

And here I was hoping for special powers like instant genius or telepathic abilities, and it turns out that the best we can hope for is instant Alzheimer?

...many MANY freaking years ago (man, I'm old)...I came up with an idea slightly different from this, I never tried it so maybe some of you have some theories on if this would work or not, but I'll try to describe my Optical Cloak design idea:

You know what an endoscope is, right? If not...google it and then read this again. Now...imagine you have a million strings of fiber and utilizing the same technology as with an endoscope, filling each sides with a lens just like the endoscopes work, you should (at least in theory) have a very effective cloak from a distance.

Articles like this, makes me warm and fuzzy all over, probably because I'm an old geezer in comparison to kids of today, but I think it's very important for anyone serious about hardware development and/or software development to dive into the past once in a while, it's a great way to learn simplicity and how the hardware inside our relatively complicated devices of today really works.

I'm a moderator of a major international electronics forum, and I don't have the number on just how many times the young generation feel completely lost when they're fresh out of school, trying to understand very complex structures. They either lack understanding of general electronics, or how the microprocessor works with different layers, ram, rom (especially embedded systems when they are working with complex IDE's with a maze of classes & libraries), they simply forget how the hardware works, and get to focus too much on programming.

I understand exactly that frustration, especially since this old geezer was lucky enough to grew up with basic home computers like the Commodore 64, Zx81 (Z80 cpu), Spectrum, Oric, Dragon 32, BBC etc. We often did our own hardware modifications, made fast I/O port load&save systems ourselves because we had a basic understanding of how the innards worked, and it really wasn't rocket science.

Sometimes it is relevant to take a step back in time (Like this article does, explaining some of the oddities with the Z80 processor), and spark interest in these old CPU's and their systems & possible uses even today. As an example, I have a HUGE stash of Micro-Controllers in my workshop, these are an absolute GEM to me. Why? Because they are very simple to work with. Like the good old Commodore 64 or ZX 81 - they don't have advanced hardware layers where you have to do special addressing to access certain memory areas or have to be kind to the operating system in order to write something to control your hardware (homemade or otherwise), it's as simple as writing a few pokes into memory...and you can turn on/off some external units such as relays, lights - or read on/off states from your sensors...maybe build your own satellite tracker the easy way, or control your homemade lawnmover unit.

And we still have VAST amounts of these MCU's unused all over the world, these are SUPER USEFUL (if you didn't get the above, think standalone apps...like each MCU was an app for a specific task). Many of these CPU's (MCU usually comes with internal memory/Ram/Rom/Flash/ and the most important part...an I/O) ready to use, just program it...and watch it go. If the kids of today understood this, they'd have a BLAST programming these (just watch the maker society with their modern versions...Arduino etc.) and the sky's the limit.

More articles like these thanks, brings /. back to the roots.

Ah, MSX... weirdest computers in history. The Yamaha MSX computer was an awesome music computer with built in FM synthesis, and then you had the vastly different Spectravideo MSX, it was fully compliant with the MSX standard...but it's just that, not everyone was compliant - every MSX computer seemed to be a special variant of itself, something that confused me something so fierce back in the days, I even had a Memotech MSX, weird WEIRD computer.

The games on the MSX computers wasn't mind blowing, nowhere near the commodore 64 games, it simply lacked the awesome sound capabilities of the 64. They had a wider color range though.

I remember the war between us Commodore users (65xx type processors) vs the Z80 series, yes - the Z80 was a far superior processor in many ways and sometimes I wished we had that processor just for the extended registers alone, not to mention that the speed was 4 mhz instead of our meager 0.97mhz (could be doubled if you turned off the screen). But the hardware sprites & scrolling is what beat the living bejeezus outta the other competing products.

And I nearly cried snot when the Commodore 65 didn't make it. It was a super-cool Commodore 64 with beefed up hardware, higher resolution, stereo SID sound (6 channels!) of pure ring-modulated goodness.

Ah, I'll go stare at my stash of Z0840004PSC, 27xxxx's and the rest of the Chip Pron in my vast land of NOS components...aaaahh.. :)

Well, at least this NuTcAsE puts a name to his words unlike you, AC. :)

...even if you produce it yourself.

I too have off-the-grid dreams as a house-owner, but the power companies always find a way, same thing with the electrical car that could run on water. Lobbyist will manipulate (read: FORCE) politicians into their direction, so you'll be depending on them one way or the other. The Politicians won't have a hard time accepting this as they need their energy tax income.

Taxes are like drugs, once you're hooked - it's very hard to get off, like addicts...politicians will find a way to make you pay either way. It's now getting to be environmentally sound? Fine...that's part of what I wish for too, but even though - we won't be off the hook that easily, government and companies that had enjoyed family power for centuries won't give up without a bloody fight, that I can pretty much guarantee you.

The general customer isn't that wise, they have no clue how anything affect our environment and politicians can pretty much tell them any half-truth to make them believe the complete lie. Half-truth is a classic, and widely used within leadership: Say...you purchase a new and better battery, but the management is taking losses on that purchase, it's environmentally sound - but they want the less eco-friendly solution because it earns them MONEY (and government profits on higher taxes as well), so they will tell you that YOUR SOLUTION isn't any good because of "insert-some-dubious-chemical-and-its-production-environment-here" and use that as a legitimate excuse. Nevermind the fact that it's actually a LOT more eco-friendly than the previous product, half-truth folks, it's a winner every time.

You as the consumer just need to educate yourselves a little bit more, stop accepting every thing imposed onto your lives by your elected politicians, demand scrutiny and don't just trust everything you hear. Be skeptical.

You're very right.

I've reverse engineered enough cheap knockoffs in my life to verify your story. Everything from cheap PSU's with barely more than a Triac inside, to USB-hubs, cheap lasers, cheap communications transceivers (a chip & an half).

But yeah, we really DO get what we pay for. So dear consumers who are reading this, please protest by not settling for the crappy stuff. Buy quality and prove to the world that's what we want! I've been 30+ years into electronics (many as a service tech). We've got a heck of a job in front of us, but I honestly believe the public will tire of the crappy products, hopefully NOT before it's too late.

...because it doesn't pay very well to sell you something that'll last forever, whether it's an Oled screen or LED bulb.

It's no coincidence that the CFLs die off after 1-2 years albeit they're supposed to last 10-20 years with normal usage. My first Philips 11w CFLs that I bought 20 years ago, still glows like mad and simply refuse to die. That is back when the CFLs was new, and cost like 40 bucks just for ONE bulb, but hey...it's actually worth the money, it still is my best bulb.

With LED's, it's a walk in the park for the industry to make them last less, all you need to do for your LED to last less than specified, is to OVERDRIVE them just a little, a little higher current and the LED's will die rapidly, they should be able to make the new LED lamps last just out the warranty period (that in most countries AFAIK is around 3-6 months), or cheap enough to avoid the warranty altogether.

There is nothing wrong with the LED's themselves, (we're talking the components...DIODES...not the whole circuit with drivers and all), I ordered strong RGB leds from China many MANY years ago, they're still glowing on my homemade alarm-systems so strong that I can use them as night-lights, yes...4 years later 24H day use...they still glow enough to lit up an entire room. And I just used Ohms law + 1% resistor values to calculate the right resistor value for my circuits. You can pretty much BET the manufacturers will "miscalculate" these values, or make the drivers for the stronger LED's last MUCH less in order to keep pumping out new ones for the consumers to waste and waste.

I'd rather pay a proper price for my LED lamps - and keep our environment safe from this mad overproduction that now has escalated totally out of hands. :(

...of radio wave sensing, would be to analyze how radio waves reflect on various surface materials & mass.

If we could do this (it would require MASSIVE programming & knowledge of structures and algorithms to recognize structures via RF waves & reflection), then we could use the RF waves as sort of echo-location, kind of like how bats see with the help of sound waves.

I've known this since I was a kid, when I was messing around with FM-transmitters to listen to my parents quarrel from a safe distance (ok, I was a weird kid), I noticed how I could sense my parents move around because they affected the signal strength and even the frequency shift depending on where they were located in that room. I've been pondering this ever since.

I know, but for the sake of simplicity.

It has 1300+ cores (some of the bigger cards got over 2300+ cores), and yes - I realize that they're not full-fledged CPUs and just highly specialized to perform certain calculations, kind of like FPGAs if you like.

They should improve their screening process.

Also, it's important to consider that funding a kickstarter project, is kind of like investing money in the lottery or purchasing one of those scratch lottery tickets. You may or may not win, the likelihood of actually winning is bigger than the lottery, but in reality very small, it's like going to the casino and betting it all on one of 3 rows.
Kickstarter is a gold-mine right now for scammers as well. All you need, is a well thought out plan to CONvince a lot of people out there, and since most people aren't very technical...this isn't hard at all (thus, why we need a better screening process). Many of the funded projects gets WAY more than they asked for, and then GREED grabs them...they lack no skills when it comes to find a reason to use the extra money, and have you noticed how certain products doesn't get cheaper for the public even thought they receive MASSIVE support?

Money baby! It's the shit.

Oh wow. This will do wonders for the Blender Cycles rendering engine. Thanks to Blender & Brecht (The coder behind Blenders Cycles rendering engine) I've been able to enjoy the power of a thousand computers in one card thanks to the accelerated powers of the Nvidia GPU based cards with multiple GPUs, mine has about 1300 GPUs and renders like insanity knows no bounds, I love it. YAY the future looks even better now.

Reading this makes me behave like a kid in a candy store, seriously.

I bought the LG 920 Optimus 3D phone some years ago. Awesome 3D screen, 2 x HD cameras for taking 3D photos. Fun for 14 days, after that...it just became an annoyingly big bulgy battery guzzling smartphone just like any other oversized phone out there.

3D TV? I so wanted them when they came out. After a while with very little use for them I thought Meh... and after an even longer while, the 3D tv sets went for a few hundred dollars, even in 50" sizes. I still thought...Meh...I'll stick to my old 47" LG full HD tv.

Same thing with Kinect, fun the first few days, fun to also connect it to the PC and play with all the hacks out there....same issue, technically useless stuff, fun...for a little while, but ultimately useless.

3D scanners? Meh... it'll probably be another fad, scan your objects, watch them on a 3D screen kind of like my Optimus 3D phone or the Nintendo 3DS...novelty item at best.

Well, if they're like Mr. Nash in the movie A beautiful mind - then I can sort of see this as a problem.

He basically asks the girl to simply skip the pleasant introduction, courting etc. and just go for the sex.