Comment: Re:Procrastination (Score 1) 225
Yes, Android is filling that need as we speak.
This article of course has to do with the *Mac* App Store, with which Android does not compete.
Comment: Procrastination (Score 2, Informative) 225
They've had over a year to get this straightened out, not three months. If MplayerX won't sell in the app store, some other product will fill the void in that market. This is of course assuming people are going to the app store for such a media player.
+ - New Brain Stem Cells Discovered
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by
Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes "Researchers have found a stem cell population that exclusively leads to the birth of nerve cells responsible for intelligence in higher mammals, especially humans. Researchers say that this discovery could help them grow nerve cells in a lab and could in turn help treat brain disorders."
+ - IBM Makes Spintronics Memory Breakthrough->
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by
CWmike
CWmike writes "In a paper set to be published this week in the scientific journal Nature, IBM researchers are claiming a huge breakthrough in spintronics, a technology that could significantly boost capacity and lower power use of memory and storage devices. Spintronics, short for 'spin transport electronics,' uses the natural spin of electrons within a magnetic field in combination with a read/write head to lay down and read back bits of data on semiconductor material. By changing an electron's axis in an up or down orientation — all relative to the space in which it exists — physicists are able to have it represent bits of data. For example, an electron on an upward axis is a one; and an electron on a downward axis is a zero. Spintronics has long faced an intrinsic problem because electrons have only held an 'up or down' orientation for 100 picoseconds. A picosecond is one trillionth of a second [one thousandth of a nanosecond.] One hundred picoseconds is not enough time for a compute cycle, so transistors cannot complete a compute function and data storage is not persistent. In the study published in Nature, IBM Research and the Solid State Physics Laboratory at ETH Zurich announced they had found a way to synchronize electrons, which could extend their spin lifetime by 30 times to 1.1 nanoseconds, the time it takes for a 1 GHz processor to cycle."
Link to Original Source
Link to Original Source
Comment: Guidelines (Score 0) 395
"Living standard"? They're more like guidelines.
Comment: Password Recoevery (Score 0) 233
Maybe my 1990s-era Yahoo account password was leaked--I'll finally be able to regain access to my account!
Comment: Indistinguishable from a bird? (Score 0) 269
Aircraft makers that create stealth craft have to make them indistinguishable from a bird from the perspective of a radar. I recently watched a TED talk that featured an airplane that looked and flew like a bird.
Is it too much to ask that AI designed to replicate humans do so effectively?
Comment: Electronics Kit and a Microcontroller (Score 0) 799
Start out with an electronics kit and get them a small 8-bit microcontroller. Use assembly. Don't go for x86 either-I pity Intel for the monster they have created. Freescale's S08 core is a nice starter-you can get a programmer for ~ $30.
The reason this is better: They get to build a circuit that has a function. No matter how simple the circuit is, it is built to fulfill a specific function that they can understand. The microcontroller code can is programmed to make the circuit behave in different ways.
The reason this is more fun that high-level programming for a 12-year old: At this stage in life, they want to become in control. Hoping that your event handler ends up being called is not being in control. Wondering what on earth the computer is actually doing when you give it a command is not being in control either.
Comment: Leave it to the French... (Score 0) 5
...to come up with something like this.
Comment: Re:Last Post! (Score 0) 4
booyah!
Comment: Dig Right In? (Score 0) 6
Sorry sir, chainsaws don't dig in. They cut by chipping away in very small increments. If they dug in, I'd have a few fingers less right now instead of having to buy new gloves.
Comment: Salt Water (Score 0) 310
I prefer to use salt water.
Comment: Re:Working in the Space Industry (Score 0) 125
-500? Wow, either you've discovered how to reach temperatures less than 0K or you're not an engineer.