"BBC TWO tells the story of Professor Stephen Hawking's early years, in a major new drama starring Benedict Cumberbatch.

The story begins in 1963, as the young cosmologist celebrates his 21st birthday with a party at his home in St Albans, unaware that his life is about to change dramatically and leave only his brilliant intellect undamaged"...

Inspiring drama and one that I predict will have people reaching for their unread copy of A Brief History of Time:

"Stephen Hawking's A Brief History of Time may have sold nine million copies world wide, but it is also supposed to have earned the dubious honour of being the world's most unread book."

"After investigating the instruction sets used by 64-bit chips from AMD and Intel, an industry analyst has concluded that Intel reverse-engineered the AMD64 instruction set to create its own 64-bit microprocessor architecture."...

"When Intel said last week that it plans to stop using gigahertz figures to market its microprocessors, analysts said it was about time. A chip's clock speed is almost irrelevant in determining the overall performance of a computer.

But while Intel won praise for the move, industry analysts in the same breath said it's now even harder for consumers to shop for computers that fit their needs -- mainly because none of the chipmakers can agree on how to measure performance.

"What consumers really want is the number, but there really is no number" that quantifies a processor's overall performance, said Linley Gwennap, founder of the Linley Group, a research firm that tracks the microprocessor and networking industries."...

The cynic in me can't but help wonder what slow-clocking processors Intel will soon introduce to a mass market and so this de-empahsis is paving the way for that. After all AMD did it with QuantiSpeed(tm) [Googled] so what's source for the goose is sauce for the gander.

I often tell my students that choosing a processor based on clock-speed alone is like going into a car salesroom and choosing a car on the sole basis of how high the engine revs! Speaking of cars it does seem that Intel's proposal for naming future processors is exactly akin to the naming conventions that car manufacturers use! I've mentioned this before in several posts.

"...my reasons for intermittent silence in the past couple of weeks have  very little to do with my numerous failings, but more to do with the  small successes and provocative challenges that have been coming my way."...

David has been busy. Lots of good links in his update today. His goal of 350,000 weblogs per annum for Virginia Community College faculty and students is mind-blowing. Good luck David. I'll be watching with much interest.