Category Archives: Tech

Robosaurus

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This 40 foot, 30 ton, fire breathing robot was created to WOW crowds at various shows in the US. It is pictured here at a Military / Civil air show… which got me thinking. Sure, this was built as a huge toy for the American people’s amusement BUT what about it’s potential militarily? OK, tanks and attack helicopters are highly effective combat vehicles, but the enemy has trained for such and will be dug in to resist them. Now imagine showing up with your tanks, helicopters, troops, and your 40 FOOT FIRE BREATHING DINOSAUR!! That thing starts ripping cars in half somewhere near the real fighting and that has GOT to increase the desertion rate of your opposing troops.

MS vs Linux

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Well after several years of losing server market share to Linux, Steve Ballmer, CEO of Microsoft finally mentioned the open source “problem” in his annual strategy memo to employees.

“While the noncommercial model may lead to many flavors of software, getting broad, consistent innovation requires coordination across many technology components. In the event of needed enhancements or fixes, the Linux development community, no matter how well intentioned, simply cannot advance Linux the way we can – and must – innovate in Windows.” — Steve Ballmer I’m sorry: ” broad, consistent innovation “…. I think Mr. Ballmer has forgotten the definition of innovate(tion):innovate
\In”no*vate\
1. To begin or introduce (something new) for or as if for the first time.
2. To change or alter by introducing something new; to remodel; to revolutionize.

There is NO such thing as CONSISTENT INNOVATION. You can’t create something out of nothing on a schedule… you can’t revolutionize every tuesday…

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Da Vinci’s Clockwork Car

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Researchers have finally unlocked the secrets to a drawing of the first self propelled vehicle created by Leonardo Da Vinci 426 years ago. The vehicle was clockwork powered and may have been created for some very avant garde special effects.

  • Guardian Clockwork car with pic
  • CNN Clockwork car with picThere were some interesting comments about this article at Slashdot.org as people debated why Da Vinci “encrypted” his drawings and documents.

    “Even a simplten with a mere IQ of 210 will be able to understand these drawings, no need to document”I saw somewhere that DaVinci purposely put flaws into his drawings as a type of copy protection. Only another genius would be able to see the flaw and build the device correctly. This would come in handy if his plans were stolen or captured since many of his designs were commissioned for siege craft. — Radial Rad

    In fact, my experience is that only another genius would recognize that the work of a genius could have flaws that require correcting.
    Most people are sheep and blindly follow “the directions,” even when those directions result in nonfunctioning items. They blame the nonfunctionality on themselves, rather than on the design.

    Hence the notations you’ll find on many processed food products these days, “You’ll find that this might taste good with a little cheese on it. Or maybe some salt.” They have to be told to “think outside the box,” as it were. Many people get all weird about the idea of even modifying a published recipe. The published version is the “correct” version in their minds. Perhaps this phemonenon is a good part of why some people get all weird about the idea of open source software. They need to feel that out there, somewhere, is a definatively “correct” version, handed down from the mountain engraved on stone tablets by some programing god or other.

    Most people who play classical music play it as if they were some sort of flawed mechanism in a player piano whose function is to reproduce the markings on the paper as closely, and mechanically, as possible.

    The musical genius recognizes that the markings on the paper are one genius talking to another genius, saying, “Hey, look at this idea,” and interprets the music. — kfg

    • Xscale Processor Explained

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    This was originially posted by reddragon on 6-09-2003 at PocketPCPassion.com

    The Samsung chip is based on V4 of the Arm tech, this is the same as the StrongARM from Intel. Xscale is based on V5 of the Arm tech both from www.arm.com. Samsung has taken the V4 chip put it into a .13u process and put the ROM and main memory with the processor, so it’s an all in one chip design. Intel’s strongARM was a .32u process which caused it to draw more power. The Samsung chip will be faster than the old StrongARM chips and run with less power, but it will have none of the new code which is in the V5 Arm tech, so some of the new code in PPC2003 will not be taken advantage of due to the lack of processing capability. This is however not a bad thing as this is a beefier version of the V4 Arm chip. Only time will tell if it does pan out, so don’t make any judgments yet.