ArsDigita Systems Journal: What can we learn from Jakob Nielsen?

The goal of this article is to pick out the most interesting stuff from Nielsen's book, leave out stuff that would be obvious to our readers (e.g., "frames suck"), and tie Nielsen's material to related ideas.

A link to Open Source DAISY via Hack the Planet

IBM's DAISY binary translator is now Open Source. Basically it's a fast PowerPC emulator for a hypothetical VLIW architecture. Anybody want to run Mac OS X on IA-64?

Very interesting!

Dallas Semiconductor Corp: Wearable Java Computer News Release

DALLAS - - Dallas Semiconductor (NYSE: DS) today announced a new wearable, Javaª computer with ample storage for safekeeping all the technology-based credentials of an individual. The DS1957B Java-powered iButton on a 2-in-1 Fob serves as both a physical key for touch and go access to buildings and a computer key for secure network log-on as well as trusted e-signatures for the Internet. Inside the 16mm steel-encased iButton is a Java computer with a 64 kbyte ROM and 134 kbyte RAM that can store over 30 certificates with 1024-bit keys using ISO X.509v3, the most widely recognized public-key certificate format. In addition, the DS1957B can store hundreds of user names and passwords, a color ID picture and the application programs of many different service providers.

I was invited to give a talk at The Computer Club of the Senior Studies Institute at Strathclyde. They thought that The Ubiquitous Chip I gave in December last year would be an appropriate topic so I repurposed that content! It seemed to go well. It was nice for a change to be talking to a room full of people who thought I was young ;-)

My favourite bits from the talk were the predictions I had dug out. For example:

Patterson's Predictions

...It is plausible that we will see improvements in the next 25 years at least as large as those seen in the past 50. This estimate means that one desktop computer in 2020 will be as powerful as all the computers in Silicon Valley today...

and Ritchie's Predictions

...Specialised [low cost] information devices... will be scattered around the home and office and connected via a mobile phone network while travelling... The PC will have to be replaced by devices that are considerably simpler to use... Perhaps one of the striking aspects of the next decade will be that the growth of the personal computer will be checked, and a whole range of other devices will be adopted.

This was the first talk for the Computer Club and we joked at the start that I was setting the standard by which the others would be judged. So they should be in for some really excellent talks ;-). Several digital photos were taken so I'll link to these once they're up on the SSI web-site.

A few days after buying the scanner from QXL, they put 10 up for auction. I could have bought one for £51 saving almost £40. QXL didn't even have a reserve price for the 10 scanners. Bummer!

Via The Register

Overclockers are getting excited about one of the coolest custom cases it has seen. They reckon it looks like a nuclear bomb with its big turbine fan in a cylindrical container.

See I had a large fan but no case sooo...

One of my students - Scott - knew I'd interested in how the Amiga DE byte code is translated to target CPUs (x86, PowerPC, M Core, ARM, StrongARM, MIPS R3000, R4000, R5000, SH 3, SH4, and NEC V850 processors) at load time. From developerWorks : Linux : The new Amiga -- VP assembly code demo

...provides an in-depth introduction to the Amiga's revolutionary VP (virtual processor) assembly code, the heart of the new Amiga's Digital Environment. By the end of the article you'll have a good understanding of how VP works, not to mention how darn cool it is!