Thank you, I thought it was something like that.

Only in the states is it popular to mortgage your house and minimize payments. Something about interest and taxes? Is it just in California? Hopefully an American homeowner can bring me up to speed. But my point is that other countries have different forms of taxation which encourage homeowners to actually own their house. I do not know what it is like in Sweden, but in Canada you have a much higher percentage of people who own their house when compared to, for example, California.

If you already have a ARM processor, the FPGA will likely be used for real-time interfacing with the outside world - for example, many robotic applications. If this is the situation you are in then it might be worth looking at the Lattice iCE40 line of FPGA. They're small, cheap, use almost no power, and are programmed via SPI. The high-end versions have around 7500 LUTs so they are reasonably powerful.

There are some very inexpensive iCE40 developer boards on the Lattice website - between $25 and $40 (I believe). Makes for an inexpensive introduction to programmable logic. Just do not expect them to be as large and powerful as other FPGAs on the market. They were designed to compliment a CPU by interfacing and filtering sensor data thereby allowing the CPU to remain asleep for as long as possible. Most other FPGAs were designed to implement CPUs...

... compared to other forms of lighting when taking into account his source of heating.

Incandescent light bulbs make for great heaters so at times they are almost perfect. Significant heat can be lost through the lighting fixture so hanging lights are best. The position of the lights can also reduce efficiency. Electric heaters typically go under windows in an effort to reduce drafts. Putting heaters on the ceiling has the opposite effect.

The grandparent's point that in colder climates incandescent bulbs are not as bad is valid. But they are still worse then higher efficiency bulbs so it is hard to argue against a nation wide ban. To do so is somewhat selfish and shortsighted. Even if one does rely on electric heat, (and very few people in cold climates do), then you still benefit from reduced load / pricing on the electric grid. Even if prices do not go down, at least the power company will not have to raise them in order to pay for additional infrastructure.

Yes, other parts will degrade far faster then the magnetic media so the magnetic media essentially does not degrade.

The bits on a hard disk do get corrupted with time - I believe it is referred to as bit-rot. You would be lucky to have a hard drive last for 20 years even if unplugged. Just like those old floppies go bad - so do drives. But bit-rot can be prevented. ZFS includes an option where it will re-write data every so often. In addition, it automatically detects and corrects these errors - so long as you have redundancy configured on the ZFS drive(s). Don't know enough about btrfs but it probably has the same feature.

Sure, but they you are paying far too much for your health care. Hospitals charge individuals significantly more then the insurance companies. You're better off just buying insurance - it'll be less expensive and you don't have to worry about what happens when you get diagnosed with cancer (or some other unavoidable and expensive illness). Regardless of how much you put away, there are some conditions for which it will not be enough.

yes. Apple has purchased several companies that specialize in ASIC design and the latest A6 CPU is the fruit of their labor. It is very different from other ARM processors on the market so this should not be much of a surprise.

To a certain point, yes. But using that same logic, all other cell phone manufacturers are even worse. And there is nothing wrong with contracting out design when a company requires a unique part. There are times you want to do it in-house and times when contracting out is the preferred solution. Apple performs more in-house design then any other cell phone manufacturer. Only Samsung comes close - but their displays are developed a separate division and sold to everyone so it really doesn't count.

My point is that you are greatly under-appreciating the difficulty and importance of integrating / specifying the various different system components. Combining the different hardware and software to produce an efficient final product is typically the hardest part - assuming it's done right. And this is precisely why the market for premium cell phones exists. If it was easy, everyone would do it.

Based on sales - less then iPhones. Don't forget the Intel is not the only designer and manufacturer of CPUs. IBM has their Power7 series which outperform Intel - if you're willing to pay for it. Numerous low cost, highly efficient, low power CPUs exist from other companies. So while Intel is impressive, their value is still limited by the market in which they operate - just like every other company. It's why they're trying so hard to break into the mobile market.

This browser based app must bring something new to the table to be relevant. My guess is that it will greatly simplify multiple people collaborating on the same project. Solutions already exist but they are not nearly as seamless as they could be. I still remember seeing Smultron for the first time and being very impressed. As far as text editors go, it's nothing special but the ability for several people to edit the same file at the same time was (and still is) impressive.

No one knows exactly how this project will turn out but you can bet Google has their reasons for funding it. I'll take a wait and see approach before passing judgement. It is probably not for me (or you) but will be perfect for others. And if it requires all of these layers to accomplish it's goals then it is not a waste.

I assume there are constraints on continuous battery output for electric vehicles. Batteries will eventually overheat unless specifically designed otherwise. So while the Model S has 416hp available to it, it will only be accessible for a short period of time. Makes passing and accelerating very comfortable but does not necessarily translate to a higher top speed. No doubt this could change with firmware changes and cooling mods.

What is impressive is that the 5s is a dual core 1.3GHz processor while the LG uses a 2.3GHz quad core CPU. The A7 processor appears to be very well designed. I wonder how much power it uses when compared to the snapdragon 800.

I remember attending labs in CompSci only to hear people complain about how the Solaris machines sucked because their compiler had bugs. They would program at home on their x86 Windows box using Visual C++ and then complain when GCC for SPARC didn't like their code. Funny to hear in second year but when you hear it in 4th year it becomes a little disturbing.

This served as an excellent example as to why cross-platform code is almost always better. If code can not compile on a different platform then there is something wrong with your code and it should be fixed.

There is no way to support enforcement without mandatory licensing. And in regards to the bike advocacy groups, they all shame the bad apples. But you have to understand that they were established for other reasons so shaming the bad apples will not be their priority.

A solution to this problem would be to require licensing for those who want to ride on bike lanes located on public streets. Licensing not required in parks, sidewalks, or off road - only when biking with traffic on specified bike lanes.

The license requirement would guarantee that everyone at least knows the rules of the road. They would know exactly how they are supposed to behave and how they are expected to interact with drivers. Proper lighting can then be mandated along with safety gear (helmets*). Those "bad apples" can be ticketed just like a driver would be - a few police "bike lane checks" and those bikers will change their ways in no time.

Riding on existing roads should not require a license so the impact would initially be minimal. But as infrastructure is updated and more bike lanes are created, the improved infrastructure along with more law abiding cyclists will help generate an atmosphere with drivers that makes cycling safer and more attractive to new cyclists. In the end, everyone wins.

*helmets - In BC, all cyclists require helmets by law - unless you wear a turban. I hate this law because it affects far more people then it should. Limit it to bike lanes I say...

This is true if you are talking about a 100" screen. On a 9.7" screen the issue is mute.

If you want to be able to ask someone for help then it would be best to use the same tools they use. The point is that any programming language will work. Some languages are easier then others but the difference is negligible compared to the advantage of being able to ask your piers for assistance.

I would say you are being way too optimistic. We are still at the stage where we are trying to prove the theory can be made real. Have not even thought about designing a usable reactor nor do we know how big such a reactor would be. All we know for sure is that it will be so bloody expensive that failure is not an option - which is why there are doing these far cheaper tests.