Indeed, but PC architecture is going in this direction. The powerful and flexible main CPU will remain, but there are more and more devices with their own specialised processors and memory. First graphics cards, then HDDs and other devices followed suit, and now we think nothing of putting microcontrollers in mice, keyboards, even speakers. Perhaps in the future I/O could be handled entirely by the in-memory processors. The more work the CPU can outsource to specialised processors, the faster it's going to get done.

The SPARC64 VIIIfx can carry out 8 floating-point instructions per core per cycle.

88,128 cpus x 8 cores x 2.0e9 cycles/s x 8 flops/cycle = 11.28 petaflops maximum theoretical speed.

Y'know I think they might have taken that into account. My local friendly electronics store is selling 7" displays for $265, three times the cost estimate in TFA.

I can't tell if you're serious. On my car arc-discharge headlamps are a thousand-euro option; goodness knows what BMW will charge for laser-beams.

Meanwhile my oh-so-inefficient filament headlamps consume about 100MJ/year. Accounting for engine and alternator efficiency that's about half a tank of petrol per year, or 500 euros over the lifetime of the vehicle.

Ahhh, it's a money-saving measure. Of course.

There's always a way to elegantly express yourself whilst avoiding the mangled nouveau-English spoken in offices. Try "exploit" or even "use".

Yes please!

timg73 gmail

Huh? Every morning I go out to work whilst my cat lies flat-out on the sofa/kitchen-table/garden-wall/expensive-and-fragile-plants, with his eyes closed and a big grin on his face. There's no doubt about who's the slave.

What they mean is that they have tested the symmetry of the electron and found it to be equivalent in all directions, like a sphere. The hair's-width thing is just an analogy to describe the degree to which that symmetry has been tested; the electron does not have an intrinsic size or shape. If there were any detectable asymmetry, that would imply that the electron and positron are not perfect opposites, and may explain why there is so little antimatter in the universe.

I'm afraid this is pretty much true, although the hobbyist in me doesn't like to admit it.

The amount of radioactivity you're looking for is small compared to natural background, and small even compared to the normal variations in background. To identify any un-natural contamination you'll need a detector capable of distinguishing different isotopes, in a low-background environment, and it'll need to be regularly calibrated with standard sources. That entails a lot more gear than a Geiger-Muller tube, all of which is very very expensive, not to say tricky to operate.

With a GM counter about the best you can do is to try to measure the radioactive decay of a sample, although most relevant isotopes have very long lifetimes which will be too hard to measure. 131-iodine is easy to detect and has a measurable half-life at 8 days, but I expect the authorities would find it before you do, and anyway most of it has gone by now.

Alternatively you might befriend a physicist at your nearest nuclear research institute. Even then he or she will need to be quite a good friend, because the time and effort involved is significant, and this kind of expensive gear tends to be permanently in-use.