Wednesday, July 9, 2003

I'm watching this PBS special on Martin Luther. I have to say my history professors couldn't cover this one guy in much depth. But this program was something else! Really tried developing the theme of indepence of thought and the manipulation of a new invention,... the printing press. Media had a big role to play in Luther's rise to popularity in Germany. He really wanted to right the wrongs he saw in the Catholic church. And boy did the Papacy hate that. They didn't like their power being threatened. 10:44:25 PM    comment []

New Memory That Doesn't Forget. The next generation of RAM, due next year, will be magnetoresistive, which in plain terms means data will stay put even with the power off. For users, that means slow starts could be history. By Elliot Borin. [Wired News] I've followed developments on IEEE's website EETimes for the last 6 years and when I first read about the Magneto-Resistive RAM efforts undertaken by IBM, I thought something interesting was afoot. This article however makes it sound like it will become the dominant paradigm in RAM production once it's fully perfected. All reports say "density" is a problem with some of the architectures. The smallest ruling I've seen quoted so far for prototype units is .13micron. That's about as dense as the average CPU, but not as thin as the average DRAM module. Wired seems to be really trying to whip up interest by making some slightly exaggerated claims about the promise of the new RAM architectures in the article. 10:14:14 PM    comment []