This news got forwarded around to me today. From what I was told, it was up on Digg.com today as well.
Tom’s Hardware has a review of a recently released Intel chip that can be overclocked to 4.1 Ghz. The chip is dual-core! (so 4.1Ghz x 2… if you know what you are doing).
The chip costs $130!
WOW!
The chip is the Pentium D 805, Smithfield core and the review is here.
Wow!
I could think of a lot of things that I would like to run at 8.2 Ghz!
For the last two weeks, I’ve been pretty busy at work. As a result, I’ve taken an RSS holiday. No news. Even before that, I’ve cut back on a lot of feeds. There is just too much information out there that isn’t crucial or important.
I’ll resume this week and I’ll start by reading the blogs of my friends.
I talked about this chip on my blog back in October. Today, though, there is an actual review over at Anandtech of the new Ageia Physx GPU. The results are less than spectacular, unfortunately. Go read the review (yeah, it’s annoyingly cut into 5 pieces)
Side note. Once in my life, I will work on a game from start to finish.
Hey if you need a good Play-Do recipe, here is a good one on my other site. My wife has used it for the kids on many occasions and it is just like the stuff from the toy stores.
Fairly recently, the concept of ‘weak links’ have become mainstream in programming languages. Even python has them with the weakref system.
Recently, after thinking about a problem, this got me thinking about filesystems. On the Mac (OS X), software is installed by just dragging the Application into an ‘Applications’ directory. Occasionaly, though, you need to have a reference to the application from other directories for various reasons. For example, you may have an InputManager or Plugin or some similar thing. To register these systems, you must create an entry in a directory. This entry can be a real file OR a symbolic link to a real file. Lets assume that you use a symbolic link. This would allow you to remove the application by dragging the application to the trash. This is a good thing for a Macintosh app.
The problem with the above scenario is that you would be left with those dead symbolic links. That is where I got to thinking about some other structure. What if there was some structure in an inode that kept track of these links? You could have the benefits of symbolic links with the consistency of hard links. You could have options on whether the links are valid when the Application is moved or not. The tricky part here is that the filesystem would have to notice who links to an inode or when a link is destroyed.
Here is how it would work. You or the application creates a weaker link in the InputManagers directory to some directory (bundle) in the Applications real directory. Everything works. Now, when the user drags the Application somewhere, the hard link the the Application is changed. This causes a chain of events for the filesystem. It will go though any of the weaker links and remove the entries if that is desired. Now, the filesystem is rid of any dead links.
I haven’t worked out all of the details, but I think this would be an interesting and useful addition to Unix filesystems.
So, for my last snowboarding trip, I bought some Flow Bindings. I tried them out for two days. Overall, I’m a little mixed on them. They were definitely easy to use, but the response wasn’t what I expected. At the end of the afternoon, I was getting lazier, and caught a lot of edges. I think my boots just don’t work as well with the flow bindings as some other brand. (I have Vans boots).
So, until I use them some more, I don’t have a recommendation other than this initial one: I wasn’t floored by them, but they worked fine.
Ok. The internet has been around a long long time now. Back in the day, we used to use names to differentiate hosts, usually around protocols (ftp, smtp, telnet, etc.). Back then, ‘www’, was just another protocol.
Today, it is obvious that www is the #1 protocol and address that people type in. It is also not a requirement for the hostname to have www in order for the web to work.
Can we all finally drop the ‘www’ off of hostnames?
The other day, just as I was going to lunch, I heard a tap-tap-tap sound as I was driving. I’ve heard that sound enough times to know that it could be a fricking nail in the tire. Sure enough, I pull over and there was a huge bolt in the tire. So, I turned around and went to lunch in a coworkers car.
At work, I asked around to see if anyone knew a good tire shop near the office. Everybody mentioned this place called America’s Tire Co.. They were right.
I called them up. They have a shop right off of 85 in Mountain View on El Camino. I took the car in, they looked at the bolt and then proceeded to fix the tire for FREE. That’s right. FREE. They found that the damage was minimal and that it could be patched. After they patched it they balanced it as well. They were fast and courteous. When I took my car to costco last time, they just didn’t treat me that well.
If I have a tire problem again, I will be heading to America’s Tire as my first choice.
