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* Posts by Tim

3 publicly visible posts • joined 10 Dec 2008

5,000-year-old 'ice man' was shot to death

Tim

Worth seeing, if you're down that way.

I visited the museum where he resides a couple of years ago, & it's quite moving. They have his body in a small humidifed chamber, with subtle lighting, & you can view it through a small glass window.

More interesting is the collection of artefacts recovered with the body: there are seeds in his clothing, food, tools & a partially-completed bow that he was presumably carrying and working on. When you see the stuff all laid out & the research work that's going on, it's clearly about much more than the man himself - there's lots of useful stuff about nature & life at the time that can be discovered.

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Linux to spend eternity in shadow of 'little blue E'

Tim
Paris Hilton

Betterment Refusenicks

Good article, though it pains me to say it, & its scope extends beyond computing. There are huge numbers of people who have no interest in doing *anything* new or better: no interest in improving their driving skills, cooking skills, communication skills (or presumably their 5hagging skills either). They seem happiest being able to do something badly than invest a little effort to do it better & more efficiently.

Suits me, since there's less competition with the rest of us.

Tim.

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Intel completes 32nm development process

Tim

...what does it all mean

It means that as the transistors get ever smaller, their reliability becomes more of a gamble. Voltage spikes, cosmic rays, quantum effects & International Terrorists[1] mean that the MTBF falls sharply compared to 'old' 100nm fabrication, and perhaps more worryingly 'failure' may no longer mean 'works/is dead', but might mean 'once per 100-million clock cycles, you'll get a dodgy data value'. Not sure I'd want to be on an aircraft where a 32nm CPU was making important decisions.

[1] I might have made that bit up.

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