N Y B B L E M O N T H L Y N E W S L E T T E R
A Free Ezine about Anything Tech and Everything Else
2008.04.05
Issue No. 199
Got rickrolled yet? Yes? Good for you. No? Don't worry, it's just a
matter of time. It's funny how an 80's icon like Rick Astley can get
resurrected now - for no apparent reason. Don't know what rickroll is?
It's like you're reading this article on The Guardian about Rick
Astley and how his hit song is being used against the Church of
Scientology. The article provides a link to an exclusive interview
with the artist. You click on it, and you get redirected to a YouTube
video of Rick Astley in all his 80's glory singing and dancing "Never
Gonna Give You Up".
Why the sudden resurgence 20 year after? It started at the 4chan.org
message board, where users would trick each other into watching a
video of a duck on wheels. In 2007, someone replaced this with a music
video of Rick Astley's song. And the rick-roll was born. The practice
of rick-rolling gained mainstream attention when masked members of the
anti-Scientology group Anonymous held up boomboxes outside Church of
Scientology centers in New York, Washington, London and Seattle and
chanted "Never gonna let you down!" During April Fools, YouTube
Australia rickrolled its own users. Clicking on any of the featured
videos actually displays you-know-what.
Have an answer, comment, suggestion, or violent reaction? Send them my
way by clicking on Reply or join
nybbletalk@yahoogroups.com to discuss
a topic. If you think Nybble is good enough, do tell the
Scientologists about it. Thanks.
_________TABLE OF CONTENTS_________
* 8-Terabit/sec Optical Transceiver
* Voiceless Speech
* Microchip Fan with No Moving Parts
* Apple Logo Makes You More Creative
* Super-Efficient Light Bulb
* Blue Light to Stay Awake
* Rubik's Cube Solution in 25 Moves
* Array-Based Memory
* Nybblets
* Likeable Links
* Questionable Question
* Quotable Quote
* Trivial Trivia
* Laughable Laugh
_________8-TERABIT/SEC OPTICAL TRANSCEIVER_________
http://www.networkworld.com/community/node/25514
IBM has developed a prototype chip that could transmit up to 8
terabit/sec of information -- equivalent to about 5,000
high-definition video streams -- using the power of a single 100-watt
lightbulb. The optically-enabled circuit boards, or "Optocards,"
employ an array of low-loss polymer optical waveguides to conduct
light between transmitters and receivers.
Big Blue was able to achieve this feat by incorporating a large number
of high-speed channels in these Optocards and packing them closely to
achieve huge densities. Each waveguide channel is smaller in size than
a human hair. In addition to the optical data bus, IBM said it
developed a parallel optical transceiver module with a higher number
of channels and an increased speed of operation: 24 transmitters and
24 receivers that each operate at 12.5 Gb/s. Compared to current
commercial optical modules the transceiver provides 10-fold greater
bandwidth in 1/10 the volume while consuming comparable power
The device was produced as part of an ongoing Defense Advanced
Research Projects Agency program to speed up chip-to-chip
communications for supercomputers. These chips could also be used to
enable widespread high definition video sharing and video on-demand by
increasing the bandwidth of video servers. Physicians and researchers
could send large files such as MRIs and heart scans for real-time
analysis and 3-D visualization.
_________VOICELESS SPEECH_________
http://snipurl.com/23j8b [technology_newscientist_com]
Ambient Corporation introduces the Audeo neckband, which can translate
thought into speech by picking up nerve signals. With careful training
a person can send nerve signals to their vocal cords without making a
sound. These signals are picked up by the neckband and relayed
wirelessly to a computer that converts them into words spoken by a
computerised voice.
Users needn't worry about that the system voicing their inner
thoughts. Users must think specifically about voicing words for them
to be picked up by the equipment. At the moment, Audeo can recognise
only a limited set of about 150 words and phrases. At the end of the
year Ambient plans to release an improved version, without a
vocabulary limit. Instead of recognising whole words or phrases, it
should identify the individual phonemes that make up complete words.
This version will be slower, because users will need to build up what
they want to say one phoneme at a time, but it will let them say
whatever they want.
_________MICROCHIP FAN WITH NO MOVING PARTS________
http://itnews.com.au/News/72400,silent-microchip-fan-has-no-moving-parts.aspx
Researchers from Thorrn Micro Technologies with support from the US
National Science Foundation (NSF), has developed a microchip
solid-state fan, touted as the most powerful and energy efficient fan
of its size. The microchip fan has no moving parts, operates silently
and generates enough wind to cool a laptop computer. The device called
RDS5 produces three times the flow rate of a typical small mechanical
fan and is one-fourth the size.
RSD5 incorporates a series of live wires that generate a micro-scale
plasma (an ion-rich gas that has free electrons that conduct
electricity). The wires lie within uncharged conducting plates that
are contoured into half-cylindrical shapes to partially envelop the
wires. Within the intense electric field that results, ions push
neutral air molecules from the wire to the plate, generating a form of
corona wind.
The technology has the power to cool a 25W chip with a device smaller
than one cubic-cm and can someday be integrated into silicon to make
self-cooling chips.
_________APPLE LOGO MAKES YOU MORE CREATIVE_________
http://www.physorg.com/news125073871.html
According to recent research from Duke University's Fuqua School of
Business and the University of Waterloo, Canada, even the briefest
exposure to well-known brands can cause people to behave in ways that
mirror those brands' traits.
The team conducted an experiment in which 341 university students
completed what they believed was a visual acuity task, during which
either the Apple or IBM logo was flashed so quickly that they were
unaware they had been exposed to the brand logo. The participants then
completed a task designed to evaluate how creative they were, listing
all of the uses for a brick that they could imagine beyond building a
wall. People who were exposed to the Apple logo generated
significantly more unusual and creative uses for the brick compared
with those who were primed with the IBM logo.
The team conducted a follow-up experiment using the Disney and E!
Channel brands, and found that participants primed with the Disney
Channel logo subsequently behaved much more honestly than those who
saw the E! Channel logos.
_________SUPER-EFFICIENT LIGHT BULB_________
http://news.zdnet.com/2422-13568_22-192842.html
A Silicon Valley-based company Luxim has developed a tiny,
full-spectrum light bulb that gives off as much light as a streetlight
while using less power. The Tic Tac-sized bulb gives off light based
on a plasma of argon gas. It operates at temperatures up to 6000K and
produces 140 lumens/watt, almost ten times as efficient as standard
incandescent lamps, and twice the efficiency of high-end LEDs. The new
bulbs also have a lifetime of 20,000 hours.
_________BLUE LIGHT TO STAY AWAKE_________
http://snipurl.com/23j8c [technology_newscientist_com]
Scientists at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, New York, are testing
blue LEDs that shine light at particular wavelengths to reduce
accidents caused by drowsy drivers. It turns out that bathing night
drivers in the right light can convince the brain it is morning,
increasing their alertness by resetting their body clocks. Nearly 30%
of all fatal accidents involving large trucks in the US happen during
the hours of darkness, according to a recent report by the Federal
Motor Carrier Safety Administration, while fatigue causes half of all
truck accidents in the early hours on UK motorways.
Car manufacturers already market systems to warn or wake drowsy
drivers. They use measures of eye movements, blink rates or small
steering-wheel movements to tell if a driver is losing alertness. But
preventing drowsiness in the first place would be more effective.
Scientists are planning experiments on a driving simulator using
different light spectra, of 450 and 470nm, and intensities of 2.5, 5
and 7.5 lux, to see which combination works best without obscuring the
driver's view of the road. An alternative is to build goggles with
blue LEDs for the driver to wear before setting off. Drivers could
take 30-minute "light showers" in truck stops fitted with similar
lights, or the lights could be fitted into truck cabs.
_________RUBIK'S CUBE SOLUTION IN 25 MOVES_________
http://arxivblog.com/?p=332
To be more precise, that's 25 moves or less.
Last year, a couple of fellas at Northeastern University with a bit of
spare time on their hands proved that any configuration of a Rubik's
cube could be solved in a maximum of 26 moves. Now Tomas Rokicki, a
Stanford-trained mathematician, has gone one better. He's shown that
there are no configurations that can be solved in 26 moves, thereby
lowering the limit to 25.
Rokicki's proof is a neat piece of computer science. He's used the
symmetry of the cube to study transformations of the cube in sets,
rather than as individual moves. This allows him to separate the "cube
space" into 2 billion sets each containing 20 billion elements. He
then shows that a large number of these sets are essentially
equivalent to other sets and so can be ignored. Even then, to crunch
through the remaining sets, he needed a workstation with 8GB of memory
and around 1500 hours of time on a Q6600 CPU running at 1.6GHz.
But Rokicki isn't finished there. He is already number-crunching his
way to a new bound of 24 moves, a task he thinks will take several CPU
months. And presumably after that, 23 beckons.
_________ARRAY-BASED COMPUTER MEMORY_________
http://snipurl.com/23j8f [www_computerworld_com]
Fremont, Calif.-based Nanochip Inc. has developed a new kind of flash
memory technology with potentially greater capacity and durability,
lower power requirements, and the same design as flash NAND.
The capacity of current memory circuits is determined by lithography,
the ability to "print" to a smaller and smaller two-dimensional plane.
The limit is about 32 to 45 nanometers, which describes the smallest
possible width of a metal line on the circuit or the amount of space
between that line and the next line. Nanochip's technology doesn't
have that limitation as its array-based memory uses a grid of
microscopic probes to read and write to a storage material. The
storage area isn't defined by the lithography but by the movement of
the probes. If Nanochip can move the probes one-tenth the distance,
for example, then they can get 100 times the density with no change in
the lithography.
The company said its current generation of probes has a radius smaller
than 25nm, but it projects that eventually the probes could be shrunk
to two or three nanometers apiece. For a first generation, anticipated
in 2010, the company expects a small number of chips to be in excess
of 100GB, but a more realistic number is "tens of gigabytes" per
integrated circuit, a capacity comparable to the current generation of
flash devices.
Current memory chips increase their capacity by packing the
transistors tighter and tighter.
_________NYBBLETS_________
* Want YouTube videos in high resolution? Just append &fmt=6 at the
end of the URL.
* The US Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) reports that
one in ten Americans are chronically sleep-deprived.
* NASA running out of plutonium for future space missions as the US
hasn't produced plutonium since 1988.
* The Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe says the universe is 3.73
billion years old, +/- 120 million. Spacetime is flat to within a 2%
error margin.
* March 14 is Pi-Day. Why? Because it's 3.14 (MM/DD).
_________LIKEABLE LINKS_________
Google April Fool's Search
http://www.googleaprilfools.com/
Top 5 April Fool's Day Pranks You Can Build in the Office
http://www.popularmechanics.com/home_journal/workshop/4256362.html
Top 10 Harmless Geek Pranks
http://lifehacker.com/373817/top-10-harmless-geek-pranks
Rickroll Database
http://rickrolldb.com/Wanna get rickrolled?
_________QUESTIONABLE QUESTION_________
Why do our heads itch when we think?
_________QUOTABLE QUOTE_________
Love is blind, but friendship closes its eyes.
~ Anonymous ~
_________TRIVIAL TRIVIA_________
Does a snail have teeth?
Snails have teeth. They are arranged in rows along the snail's tongue
and are used like a file to saw or slice through the snail's foot.
Source: Arcamax Trivia
_________LAUGHABLE LAUGH_________
A husband and wife were involved in a petty argument, both of them
unwilling to admit they might be in error.
"I'll admit I'm wrong," the wife told her husband in a conciliatory
attempt, "if you'll admit I'm right."
He agreed and, like a gentleman, insisted she go first.
"I'm wrong," she said.
With a twinkle in his eye, he responded, "You're right!"
_________DOWNLOADABLE DOWNLOAD_________
Tiny USB Office
http://www.xtort.net/office-and-productivity/floppy-office/Portable office in 2.5MB
PortableApps.com Suite
http://portableapps.com/suite
That's all for this week. Nybble is and will always be a work in
progress. Please do send me your comments and suggestions on how to
improve Nybble. Just hit the reply button to you know, reply.
For the past 4 days, I've bought a total of three brand new Swatches from eBay. Given that I already have an Irony, a Jelly in Jelly, and an AutoQuarz, I really shouldn't be buying more. Then again, this is what eBay does to new users. I mean, compared to the SRP, these things are CHEAP.
That same night, I bought an automatic Swatch Roundabout SAN108 for US $35. On Squiggly, it's EUR 54.62. Actually, I didn't win the auction for the Roundabout. From an initial price of US $0.99, the bids went all the way up to $29. I put in an extra dollar, but looks like somebody has already put in a max bid. I kept upping the ante until I'm the winner at $31, with only a few minutes to go. Just to be on the safe side, I put in my own max bid of $35. After the deadline has passed, I found out that I lost the auction to a guy who put in $35.99 in the last 5 seconds. I was dumbstruck - now I know what the expression "having the rug pulled underneath you" felt. 
Anyway, the good news is that I was sent a second chance offer, which I immediately grabbed.
