I own a Drobo FS and would recommend that you get something else. (I've read good things about Synology, but haven't tried it myself nor do I personally know anyone who has tried it.)

It's pretty slow (I rarely get over 20MB/s read or write over gigabit ethernet) and the way they handle "applications" is pretty scetchy and seems a bit problematic. A few times applications have stopped responding and I've had to reboot the Drobo.

You also need a Windows or OSX machine to get started. At least when I got it it was impossible to do the first configuration without the special software. After that you can do most of the work (but not all) over the web interface (which runs as one of the previously mentioned rather scetchy applications).

It has noticed and warned me when a drive failed though. So that was nice. I'm not entirely sure that the "self healing" did the work properly though as some videos have seemed a bit wonky afterwards. (The entire point of self healing is to avoid bit rot.) Really I'd rather use a good established system for that (like ZFS or perhaps Btrfs) than something "home grown" where they keep the details secret.

There is quite a lot of material he's made on YouTube (and one of his records is on Spotify).

Eg his interview on Conan is often linked online regarding entitlement: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8r1CZTLk-Gk (Everything is amazing and nobody is happy).

For anyone interested in this I recommend taking a look at Shut Up & Sit Down (http://www.shutupshow.com/). It's a pretty funny show where they review a couple of board games with a specific theme ever episode. Well worth watching and they tend to be pretty funny as well.

If you use the simplistic style of raytracing then yes, but there are many additions which make it possible to do extremely realistic scenes.

The fundamental problem is that ray tracing is only half of the puzzle. Typically you trace from each pixel on a "screen" into the 3d scene and look at where that ray intersects with an object. You then calculate the color of the object at that point and this becomes the color of that pixel on the screen. (In a real scenario you typically calculate multiple rays per pixel.)

The problem is how you calculate the color, with simple algorithms (such at color of the surface and distance and angle to the nearest light-source) then the effect is not very realistic. But global illumination methods like photon mapping (where you basically first run a ray tracing from all light sources which "light" the scene and then run a screen ray tracing and use the data from the first run to calculate the color of pixels become a lot more advanced) or image based rendering (where you use an HDR image as a light source) can produce very good results.

There is a reason why most professional rendering is done using ray-tracing techniques. It may be slow, but if you can trade speed for quality you can get very realistic results.

I think the term you're looking for regarding "normal" graphics cards is "rasterising". Both rasterisation and ray-tracing are examples of rendering, which is the general term for turning data into an image. (Typically 3D data onto a 2D screen.)

Intel have been trying this technique of putting x86 cores on a board for quite some time now. But they still seem to be struggling to figure out a good use for them. One thing traditional GPUs have going for them is that they are rather dumb and limited in their capabilities. They basically do a lot of calculations, very fast, and that's it. Intel is obviously hoping that their "one trick pony" x86 will be able to do some new things here. But in the end you have a limited amount of transistors and at least so far putting lots of more limited GPU cores on there have outperformed putting fewer more complex x86 cores there instead.

If you want more on this topic PCPer did a few interviews with John Carmack on this topic. First one in 2008 regarding rasterisation vs raytracing (http://www.pcper.com/reviews/Graphics-Cards/John-Carmack-id-Tech-6-Ray-Tracing-Consoles-Physics-and-more, there is a podcast for that too which I recommend). Back then Carmack talks about the possibilities of a combined raytracer and rasteriser. (Because a rasteriser is a lot more efficient, and for most of the things in a game you will not see much of a difference.) There is also one from last year (http://www.pcper.com/reviews/Editorial/John-Carmack-Interview-GPU-Race-Intel-Graphics-Ray-Tracing-Voxels-and-more, there is a video for that online as well) where he has updated his research a bit. And Carmacks speech at QuakeCon is also interesting if you want to hear more (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=00Q9-ftiPVQ).

Well worth reading/watching/listening to if you want a more critical view on the possibilities of these (and other future) technologies.

You mean struggling to build enough units of the previous version to keep it on shelves? (http://www.tgdaily.com/mobility-features/55579-asus-eee-transformer-sold-out-on-best-buy)

It seems like the version has some problems but it also seems like ASUS acknowledged them and delayed the launch. Hopefully they will be fixed on the devices which reach consumers.

The article (and report) conclude that "24 percent of 16-74 year olds across the 27 countries in the European Union have never accessed the Internet". Meanwhile in the parts of the EU with the highest Internet use (such as in the Scandinavian countries) the rate of Internet access (ie people who actively use the Internet, not people who've used it only once) is in the 90%.

I would assume part of the reason for the statistic is that 16-74 is a pretty big age span. Particularly when it comes to new technology. It wouldn't surprise me if the "never used internet" population is almost entirely in the 50+ age bracket. Unfortunately the article, and report, doesn't give that information.

Because that's the point of the HAL: Hardware Abstraction Layer. To software running above the HAL everything looks like normal. But the HAL and the stuff underneath make sure that's the case.

Often the drivers will handle the nitty-gritty details of how to communicate with the hardware and the HAL will call the driver (and other systems) to fulfill the API defined by the common HAL interface.

I work with camera stuff, but other systems have similar behavior. So if you're playing a video file you want that to be routed to your super-fast hardware chip. But in order to use it you need the HAL to set it up properly (different chips behave in different ways) and then handle feedback to the UI and stuff like that.

I'd recommend anyone interested in complex computer systems to take a look inside Android. It's way more complex than you'd expect at first. But quite a lot of fun. :-)

I have found many problems in CM releases that would typically not have made it into a real manufacturers release. (Eg, on a my Desire HD I find that sometimes the "open application tray" button disappears every now and then.)

And manufacturers do have internal beta tests, that's why sometimes prototypes are found in bars and other places. :-)

It is quite hard to develop software on hardware that isn't finished with drivers and an OS that isn't finished. And to do it in typically very short time as well. (Not saying that customers should accept buggy phones though, that pisses off me as well when it happens.)

(And yes, I work as a mobile phone developer. But not at a company making phones.)

Fascinating that none of the articles mention that the dudes are virtual as well. And they don't use any guys in the example images either. (If you visit the HM website it's easy to find some obvious body-doubles for swimming trunks.)

Focusing on issues with body images is not necessarily a bad thing, but only focusing on women is a bit sexist IMHO. Kind of ironic considering that's the drum they are banging on.