It's worth a visit

I'm glad that the Swindon MoC has achieved this - Simon and the volunteers put in a LOT of effort to keep it running. It's well worth a visit if you're ever in Swindon, they have a fine collection of old computers and consoles, many of them in full working order.

Full disclosure... I (far too seldom) help out with activities and teaching at the MoC!

Second picture in the article

What's with the dodgy Photoshoppery in the second article image? Looks like a strip of the faux-leather texture has been duplicated & pasted several times towards the top of the camera (well, that's how it appears on my webbrowser, at least). If I were of a suspicious turn of mind, I'd suggest that there was some other ODM logo in that part of the original picture, and Polaroid "re-badged" it... Sorry. I'm pedantic.

Thank you - a lone voice of common sense in a sea of eco-hysteria

Thank you Lewis for a cogent, well-reasoned and above all rational (in the Enlightenment sense) defence of nuclear power. Already the greenies and watermelons in the media are seizing upon the tragedy in Japan as an argument AGAINST nuclear energy - as you've explained, this is 180 degrees out from the rational interpretation of events, but we all know how quickly lies can get around the world. A particularly impressive example of the "this is the final nail in the coffin of the nukular industry" genre from Geoffrey Lean in the Telegraph, here:

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/energy/nuclearpower/8379926/Japan-earthquake-Nuclear-power-under-fire.html

...although somewhat gratifyingly, the comments below his article show he hasn't convinced many readers!

Turbo on Intel chips

From the article:

"(To use Turbo Core mode on Intel chips, you have to shut down all the cores but one on the chip, and you only get a nominal increase in clock speed during the time the cores are sleeping)."

I think this is incorrect, you may want to double-check your facts (or perhaps, take press releases from AMD with a pinch more salt?). My understanding is that on the Intel processors, the core(s)' speed(s) will be automatically increased, the only constraint being that the power consumption/thermal dissipation must remain below the maximum allowed for that processor. It doesn't matter how many cores are in use at the time, and no cores will be shut down whilst others are getting the speed boost. There's a summary page for the Xeon X7560 processor here (http://ark.intel.com/Product.aspx?id=46499&processor=X7560&spec-codes=SLBRD) that shows a 400MHz / 18% clock speed boost - I wouldn't call that "nominal", and in my experience it leads to a commensurate improvement in performance for workloads running on the faster cores.

Belkin? No thanks.

A Belkin product with serious issues out-of-the-box? Say it ain't so!

My score-card with Belkin so far:

-USB 802.11G dongle - brand new, latest drivers, but wouldn't keep a connection for more than 30 seconds and kept losing the SSID completely. Could have returned it to the store but in the end I just snapped it in half in frustration and threw the remnants against the wall. Yes, I have anger management problems :)

-ADSL router - wouldn't work with AOL-over-BT-ADSL. My ol' trustworthy D-link one worked fine in its place. Advised the friends in question to a) take the router back to PC World and b) switch their ISP.

After that, I started avoiding Belkin, a strategy that's worked well since. Your experiences with this router just don't surprise me.

VNC and Intel vPro

It's perhaps worth mentioning here that the latest version of Intel's vPro business PC platform has VNC server technology built-in to the desktop/notebook computer hardware - so you can view / control a machine even before it's got to the operating system. BIOS setup screen, BSOD screen, Windows Safe Mode - it handles them all rather well, across the LAN or even the Internet, using any standard VNC client at the other end.

Full disclosure - I work for Intel (but am speaking here in a personal capacity).

Oooh, compelling

7 new quangos/schemes (Life Sciences Super Cluster, Patent Box, Green Investment Bank...) all of which will be funded at vast expense to the taxpayer; lots of new laws to make more things illegal; compulsory ID cards; heavy taxation on the segment of the population that a) makes the money and employs people and b) is best-placed to emigrate to lower-tax locations; oh, and "we'll make all your existing radios redundant purely so we can flog off another public resource and pi** the proceeds away on our pensions". Mmm. Tempting. Gets my vote.

Someone at Google's a "Look Around You" fan?

Any fan of "Look Around You" knows that this is what happens when you put AC and DC current through an iron pyramid.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2eVN55NEREo

It could be a bizarre photo-stitching accident after a Google Earth operative left a pair of pliers on the spymobile camera.. but I prefer the first explanation!

Ciao? Really?

"Microsoft-owned outfit, Ciao!"

Really? Ciao.co.uk? That nuisance site that's all over the first page of my Google results whenever I search for anything, even motherboard spec documents or technical references? Bah!

I say take off and nuke them from orbit, it's the only way to be sure.