I wasn’t awake ten minutes this morning before I learned that Steve Jobs had died. I was never truly happy with Apple products — too expensive, not expandable enough, not complex enough to satisfy my geek soul — but even long before the iPhone, they had a major if indirect impact on everything I did. [...]
Archive of posts filed under the Robotics and/or Computing Hardware category.
VMware Fusion vs Parallels Revisited
I recently made an entry about trying out Parallels Desktop for the Mac. My two-week trial key still has a few days left on it, but I made up my mind days ago. For what I do (Windows and Linux software development and a few Windows games), Parallels simply offers much better performance. Much better [...]
VMware Fusion vs Parallels
I’ve used VMware products literally for years. Without them, it would have been a lot harder to run my business. So when I ended up buying a MacBook Pro as my main machine, the first program I bought for it was VMware’s Mac offering, Fusion. It worked, mostly. And over the last couple years, it [...]
“Waiting for Thunderbolt–one port to rule them all”
I sympathize with this fellow’s wish. I’d love to have a single really fast connector for everything, including video. I don’t know that it will ever catch on though, outside of Apple computers. I lived through the time of serial ports, parallel ports, AT connectors, PS/2 connectors, and the like. USB caught on, not because [...]
“Ten catastrophes: All-time worst tech industry executive decisions”
ZDNet has a roundup here, everything from IBM’s fateful 1980 decisions on MS-DOS to this year’s HP TouchPad debacle. I thought it was interesting, as a my-God-it’s-horrifying-but-I-can’t-look-away kind of thing.
“iPad bridesmaid attends wedding via FaceTime”
I doubt this sort of thing will become the preferred way to attend a wedding any time soon, but until recently it wouldn’t have been possible for the home-bound bridesmaid to attend at all. Telepresence will only get better — easier to use, more reliable, with more control for the remote user — over time. [...]
“Bacterial nanowire discovery could revolutionize bioelectronics”
An exciting discovery: [...] Similar to the flexibility of artificial nano-wires, the conducting properties of the Geobacter biofilm could be manipulated by simply changing the temperature or regulating gene expression to create a new strain, for example. By adding a third electrode, the biofilm can act like a biological transistor, able to be switched on [...]
“Security flaw found in feds’ digital radios”
This, my friends, is what happens when you try to design something securely without talking to security experts. I’m surprised that the manufacturer of the radios involved hasn’t sued the security researchers to keep them silent, in the belief that if the researchers don’t tell anybody about the problems, they effectively don’t exist (known derisively [...]
“A ‘stone-like’ optical disc that lasts for millennia”
Because in fifty generations, our descendants will really be interested in our everlasting backup copies of Doom and Master of Orion II.
“Amazon heralds unstoppable rise of the e-book”
I’ve been reading e-books since about 2001, first on my several Palm machines, and more recently on my iPod Touch. I appreciate their compactness (GoddessJ and I already have to devote an entire spare bedroom to our library), the fact they don’t wear out, that I can read them in the dark, and that (depending [...]