Its like comparing Apples and Intels

After years of making fun of Intel and shunning their chipsets agressively, Apple unveiled a mac which uses Intel chipsets and processors. The switch from IBM chips to Intel was announced last year and I still wonder what led to that decision. As Apple still points out on their website http://www.apple.com/powermac/performance/ the IBM benchmarked twice as fast as the Intel xeon. So ditching a tested and appreciated chip to use two chips that give only half the performance of the previous provides what distint advantage is beyond me. In fact the hardware complexity is needlessly increased and you are throwing away a good, performing and appreciated platoform and ruining your relationship with a long standing partner.
Well, perhaps theres more business logic going on backstage than I can understand at this step.

Flip/Flops

Wait; shouldnt this be filed under 'US'? No. Because this is not about students wearing flip-flops to the White House. Neither is it about John Kerry. (What happnes to those who lose elections anyways - where do they all suddenly disappear to?).

This is about those research flip-flops we constantly keep seeing. One research tells us xyz in moderation decreases cholesterol. Another tells us to avoid it at all times. I read somewhere that some 30 odd percent of all research is contradicted by another finding soon enough. I believe the percentage is way more than 30. I believe this finding itself that 30 odd percent of research is contradicted soon enough -- will soon be contradicted.

Along these lines, I propose the scientific research community (not me - I am not that scientific and I definitely am not a research community) to come up with a comprehensive index. A number scale which shall be used henceforth for all products; whether congenial or vile. In fact, it is this scale itself which shall tell us if a product is good for us or bad. No grey areas. No 'good if taken in moderation'. The scale shall range from say +1000 to -1000. So if something is say +500 .. then I goddam very well know its good for me. If some other thing is -10 .. its up to me to decide whether the pleasure is worth the risk.

Ha! That'll keep them busy for a while.

And what are the by-products?

Scientists in Singapore have developed a pee powered battery. People not familiar with gobar-gas will probably wrinkle their noses, but I think its neat. Practical uses might be limited though. The linked articles says they intend to use it to power biochips. AFAIK biochips already have a decent enough design which enables them to derive/harness power from external electromagnetic fields.

Coming back to gobar-gas. Why did the whole concept dwindle off? I am not sure how extensively it is used even in rural India nowadays, but my impression is that the use is decreasing. We are a country with the largest cattle population in the world. Put all the stray cattle to use! Might as well get some good old methane out of all of them huh?

Now Showing .. HIV vs Cancer

Now, scientists at UCLA have a novel approach in the fight against cancer. Quite an interesting approach.. to use a virus to do the work of a drug .. sort of. It will be easier to understand if you recall your high school biology and remember how virii work. They search for host cells, make them their home and are frankly quite immune to any defense mechanism the cell itself may have.

The scientists added a new coat to a depleted HIV .. giving it a new target .. a molecule located on the surface of cancer cells. The virus effectively destroys this molecule and weakens the cancer cells defenses against traditional treatments like chemotherapy.

More hype than hope?

Nanotechnology and Stem Cell research .. two areas that promise to change life as we know it. One would give us entirely new materials, chemicals .. something never seen before .. maybe as light as a plastic with strength more than steel, more tensile, inert and biodegradable to boot. Or maybe teeny-tiny vaccum-cleaners that eat up all the dirt and also generate power from it. Or whatever. The other tells us it would be the source of the cure to all illnesses, allowing ad-hoc growth of body-parts and such. While both are very promising areas, me thinks both have been hyped up a lot by the media.

Nanotechnology does have current applications but even they are limited right now, and are nowhere close to what we have been dreaming about [along the lines of Michael Crichton's Prey]. Chinmay may be able to tells us more about this.

Stem-cell research also has a lot of potential, but cures are far away. The hype by supporters may make it seem that a cure for say .. diabetes is just around the corner. Embryonic stem cell research (the one most likely to yeild results) is still lagging and we are yet to understand a lot about the functioning of stem cells. Current applications include mostly bone marrow stem cells, and recently, cord blood stem cells.

Any technology needs to be given time, much more so at the magnitude we are dreaming about. My point is that both the abovementioned technologies have been hyped up too much. Maybe because right now, the media did'nt get much to hype about, or maybe because its a trend now .. the media dictates what the public thinks .. we just lap it all up. Don't we?

iPod therefore I am?

Duke University, this fall, plans to provide freshmen with iPods. While I know many friends who would love to get their hands on one (an iPod .. come to thinbk of it maybe also a Duke degreee), this is not the prescribed method of getting one. The easiest course is to buy one at your local friendly electronic delearship. ($250 onwards). The iPod is unarguably the best of the high capacity mp3 players around .. though it's high price tag keeps it from the public. (And also mainatins its elitist image).

Digression performed, lets get back to the main theme. I doubt Duke had anticipated the kind of publicity this announcement has made. 1650 lucky freshmen will get 20Gb iPods .. which will cost Duke a whopping half a million dollars!! While the main aim is to make academic use of the gadgets, I doubt that will be the case. The 2 parties to benefit most are (a) The Freshmen and (b) Apple .. though that is not the order I have in mind. For Apple .. this marks overcoming of a major hurdle .. and signifies the entry (theoretically atleast) of the iPod into markets with uses other than listening to music. (Also I wonder how many Duke freshmen already own iPods?) Definitely more than the national average .. with $40,000 a year in fees .. $250 is like .. affordable.

Duke students will receive models stocked with school-related information, including freshman orientation details, the academic calendar, campus tours and even the school's fight song. The university also will create a Web site modeled on the Apple iTunes online music site from which students can download songs and course content from faculty, including language lessons, lectures and audio books.

Noones complaining though as Duke is shelling out the dough from its own pocket (supposedly). Much unlike our own UMD which, until recently, forced freshmen to buy their own iPaqs.

Related:
Duke iPod FAQ. [Link]
Hirak writes abt the same. [Link]
Post title courtsey: Patrix. [Link]

Superconductivity coming of age?

Superconductivity holds a lot of promise. Problem is, it has been showing us that it holds a lot of promise for a while now. I remember going on a school trip when I was in the 7th grade to the Univ. of Pune, and visiting the superconductivity research lab. I don't recall much what the guy talked about, but I do recall being fascinated by the liquid nitrogen [-195C]. 'The guy' demonstrated how cold it was by dipping a fresh red rose into it and taking it out immediately .. the rose was dry and brittle as any fine dried specimen you will find. *shudder*
Trip down memory lane over; lets talk about current things. The reason superconductors are evading our lives is that they need a very low temperature to operate. Heck, if I remember it right, any material can be a superconductor if cooled to a cold enough temperature (somewhere frighteningly close to absolute zero probably). So material scientists have been trying hard to come up with something that will exhibit these properties even in a considerably less cold environment. The Economist [registration reqd.] has an article which talks about how the various obstacles that lie in the way of superconductive practicality are being overcome and how they will soon find enter our lives. Good technology this, will change things as we know them for sure.

Nok Nok ..

I switched my cell phone from a Motorola v120c to a Nokia 3589i . This was a week back, and I have noticed a general cheerfulness about me that after carefully analyzing can be attributed to the above act.

Nokia is a company I like. Okay, here perhaps I should make it clear that there is a short list of companies I like. There are a multitude of reasons, but nothing specific really .. and the 'list' has been there for a long time. Entries include:
Honda, Toshiba, Nokia , GE, Sharp [edit: sacrilege! I had forgotten Sharp].
Nokia has always been the market leader in mobile phones with lots of reason. Their phones are awesome. Simple. So, while news reports continued for weeks in the past month declaring the beating Nokia had taken in the Q1 losses, I was not too worried. The company has always pioneered the cellphone market with around a third of all units sold being Nokia cells. The downturn was mainly due to laudable advancement of Samsung and LG mobile phones. (Note that both companies do not belong to the elite 'list').
Nokia though has vowed to come back with an agressive approach and even deciding to launch more flip-phones, a category they are generally shy of. I am hoping they will introduce a camera phone for the CDMA market. (hopefully around the time I get a job)

Meanwhile heres a pathetic little Nok Nok joke I made up ..
Nok Nok
Who's there?
Nokia
Nokia who?
Nokia teeth off if ya continue these jokes.

If a Simputer ..

If a simputer is a simple computer then a computer is a ...? Ha .. got you there!
Chinmay in this post talks about the new Simputer. Read his post first.

First of all. I like it. It looks good and promises a lot of things. It'll be fun to have (and use) if you can afford it. But I emphasize on fun.

I had visited the PicoPeta website and the website of some other Simputer Licensee maybe 7-8 months back. Then I never felt these guys were anywhere close to launching the product .. and felt like this is another good initiative down the drain. But looks like they pulled a fast one! Let me first congratulate these gusy for the same. A cursory look at the Amida simputer reveals a sleek lil handheld .. at par with the iPaq or maybe any Palm one. It certainly holds it own against the competition and teaches them a thing or two.

But I doubt that the Simputer will achieve what it's creators said they wanted it to. Chinmay gets it right when he says it will be touted probably as a status symbol .. rather than a computer for the masses. Honestly if I wouldn't go for the simputer as my first computer, if I were short on moolah, still I would rather get a second-hand P2 or maybe even a P3 (in a few months?) for the same cost.

Finally ... I fear that the simputer may not be a status symbol of choice. (Ha ha). Reasons?
1. The competition has the same price range AND ..
2. the simputer has a 'Made in India' tag.
Sick as it may sound, I really fear that the 'Made in India' tag may itself go against it. I am not talking about quality etc ... just the tag .. if you want to tout something .. tout something phoren na!

GloFish (TM)

A few days back I talked about Genetically Modifed food and how its gonna be the norm soon. Incidentally here I am today, writing about the world's first genetically modified animal specifically engineered for sale as a pet. GloFish (TM) is it's name. The GloFish (TM) is a genetically modifed Zebra fish with a neon fluorescence. An original zebra fish has black and white stripes and is a native of India.

Originally scientists in Singapore had engineered this fish for tracking pollution levels in water [so says the GloFish(TM) website]. The fish would show fluorescence only in polluted water. Though this latter part has yet to be implemented. A taiwanese company saw the commercial potential behind this fish and started marketing them in Taiwan. Now they are available in the US for $5.00 a piece.

The ethical and safety aspects of this will no doubt be discussed for a long time. California has already banned the sale/possession of GloFish(TM). The company vhemently denies that the fish pose any hazard to the environment as such or to humans (As they are not meant for ingestion).

Anyways, as I always say - we just wait and watch - see whether the amriki junta latches on to a new fad. Kids would love them - no doubt, and they are decently priced.

While we are still on fish .. have you seen Finding Nemo? I liked it. In fact watched it twice. In the movie the fish in the aquarium talk about escaping thru a drain / toilet .. After the movie was released there were numerous incidences of kids flushing their fish down the toilet so that they could 'escape'.