Interesting Links for 14-09-2012

[andrewducker]

• How Buzz Aldrin's communion on the moon was hushed up
  (tags: moon religion space astronauts )
• Intel predicts 10GHz chips by 2011 (the first comment is _awesome_)
  (tags: intel technology speed )
• A Dozen Android Features Missing From iOS
  (tags: iphone ios android )
• Publishers Hate Money, Clearly (Stross, Doctorow and Tor all try to do the

Comments

Naked Rambler: We should be ashamed

[cartesiandaemon]

Oh, good, a petition.

I saw one on the government petition site, but it was closed because the government claimed it was purely a court/police matter. Which seemed to miss the point -- the petition may not have been exact, but it was right, and we really need two things: (i) the police, prosecutors, and prison authorities should use their discretion to recognise that he's harmless and not to detain him (ii) the law should be changed so it says something sensible.

How Buzz Aldrin's communion on the moon was hushed up

[cartesiandaemon]

Oh, that's really interesting. I almost didn't read it, just because anything with "moon" and "hushed up" in makes me assume it's false.

I liked that he later said that it was meaningful for him, but he wished he'd done more to be deliberately inclusive. And I also felt the atheist protester was basically right: lets not stop cultural expressions in space, but it sends the wrong message if you only have a Christian one.

[drainboy]

Although it's not an apples to apples comparison, the Intel i7-3770T Processor has 4 cores running at up to 3.7GHz, giving "one processor" the speed of up to 14.8GHz.

If you consider that it's fair to compare what's on one modern processor compared to one old processor and that a 1 single Hz is a single instruction (not entirely true, obviously, but a reasonable generalisation), then Intel are actually beating their prediction. Even better if you consider that each core has two hardware threads with pretty smart multi-tasking at the instruction level then I wonder what a decently multi-threaded application could achieve in terms of sheer computation compared between now and then.

And 4 cores is a bit low tech these days. I've had 6 for quite a while (though I've never seen the term hexa core before google searching just now).

Of course I'm not suggesting that's what Intel meant by 10GHz, but it's what what one processor can do overall.

[andrewducker]

If all tasks were inherently parallellisable I'd agree with you. But that's clearly not what Intel meant at the time.

Which isn't to say that modern processors aren't amazing beasts (particularly as I believe that they can do _more_ work per clock cycle than older processors).

[drainboy]

I agree. I wonder if there will be any new programming methodology that allows semi-automatic parallelisation of processing that can be low-cost written into new code by default (i.e. by the company deciding to make programmers do it more, not by "magic") thus future proofing your apps for multi-core (not that that's the future any more).

I think C++11 has something for doing this sort of thing.

Most modern apps should be thought of in this way even on smart devices. I'll certainly be doing any side projects in a multi-core proof way :)

[andrewducker]

That's what the async stuff in the latest version of c# is designed to do:
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/hh191443.aspx

[ashfae]

In the case of printer ink, what I learned is that the printer itself actually costs about the amount that you pay for it, and the company makes almost no profit on the hardware. They make up for this by overcharging for peripherals, especially ink. Same reason why cables are marked up so much. (if anyone knows better, please inform me; this info is years old and gleaned from when I worked in a computer store, so not exactly researched

[andrewducker]

You're completely correct on the ink. And cables are similar - if you buy a 1m HDMI cable from Comet you're paying £20-£60. You can get an Amazon Basics one for £6.

There is a cost involved in money transfers - they have to set things up in the first place, and the cost of that and maintenance needs to be paid for somehow. But they definitely charge a surplus, because most of the customers are corporations who will pay for it without blinking.

[bohemiancoast]

Interestingly, the Olympics took on this criticism (because you could not take in drinks) and provided drinking fountains that you could fill bottles from. Not enough, and rather badly designed, so there were queues. But it was a step in the right direction.

Also, in the matter of outrageous charges for water, a chilled 500ml bottle of water, for which the going rate (in both Tesco and my local Turkish supermarket) is 59p, was £2.75 at the Odeon the other week. I thought that impressively ludicrous, far more than most airports or festivals.

[momentsmusicaux]

The only one of those Android features I think is useful is the back button, and at least last time I tried an iPad, swiping backwards did that too.

Though the back button has UX problems of its own: if I go into an app, and hit back, does that mean 'back to main screen', or 'back one screen in the internal history of my usage of the app', or 'back up one level in the internal UI hiearchy of the app'? On my android at least, all three seem to happen depending on the app.

> Widgets: Don't open an app, view its status directly on your homescreen, such as your itinerary for this week from your calendar. Simple, yet very useful.

Ugh. That's on reason I hate android tablets -- clutter and mess.

[andrewducker]

I don't see why "Display the information you use the most without making you dig through apps" is necessarily clutter.

[momentsmusicaux]

It possibly wouldn't be if well-designed. But what I see on Android tablets in the shops is a total dog's dinner of different widgets of all sizes and shapes with different controls and I can't figure out what it's all meant to mean. Or rather, I don't want to have to.

[andrewducker]

Presumably you'd only use the well-designed widgets, and ones that worked how you wanted them to :->

The only ones I use are the ones for turning WiFi/mobile data on and off, and the one for using the phone as a torch, all other widgets are happily unused.