Blog: The iPhone's guts are revealed.

Filed under: Desktops

We've seen what (little) a quantum computer can do, but a pair of curious scientists flipped the equation around and sent a humdrum PC to do a supercomputer's work. Professor Peter Drummond and Dr. Piotr Deuar were able to "successfully simulate a collision of two laser beams from an atom laser using an everyday desktop computer," which would typically only be attempted on a substantially more powerful machine. Notably, the achievement wasn't entirely without flaw, as the purported randomness in the testing eventually "swamped everything" and forced the simulation to be halted in order to gather any useful data whatsoever. Unfortunately, we're all left to wonder exactly what kind of machine was used to chew through such grueling calculations (Compubeaver, perhaps?), but feel free to throw out your suggestions below.

[Via Physorg, image courtesy of ACQAO]

Read | Permalink | Email this | Comments

Office Depot Featured Gadget: Xbox 360 Platinum System Packs the power to bring games to life!

There's a silver lining in every Blu-ray patent cloud

Sony is facing legal action from a Californian company over claims of patent infringement in its use of Blu-ray technology in the PlayStation 3 games console.

Companies that have invited consumers to create advertising often find it to be more stressful, costly and time-consuming.

By studying the addition of sugars to proteins in the nervous system of insects, researchers believe they may be able to better understand neurodegenerative diseases in humans. This research could lead to producing therapeutic drugs more efficiently and understanding neurodegenerative diseases such as epilepsy and memory loss better.

The fastest of the fastest computers - supercomputers used at national research centers, research universities and major corporations - will soon gain even more performance by taking advantage of multicore computing. Despite the promise of almost unimagined computing power, however, even computing experts wonder whether this time the hardware developers have raced too far ahead of many programmers' ability to create software.

Filed under: Gaming

Meet Adam McConnell: Wii enthusiast... future criminal. See the wee lamb purposely (this time) smashed his father's 42-inch plasma after losing in Wii sports. Father Brian left the lad alone playing tennis to get the boy a drink -- presumably, a pint. While in the kitchen the father "heard two big bangs." Brian returned to find his son "using the handset to smash the TV screen." No claims of a broken Wiimote strap this time folks, the responsibility lies in the kind of pure, seething rage only a 3 year old can muster. Oh we feel ya Adam, we feel ya.

[Thanks, Mark A.]

Read | Permalink | Email this | Comments

Office Depot Featured Gadget: Xbox 360 Platinum System Packs the power to bring games to life!