Scientists create first Memristor: Missing fourth electronic circuit element

In an exciting breakthrough, scientists from HP Labs have built working prototypes of a new electronic circuit component called a ‘Memristor’. The device may lead to instant-on PC’s and analog computers that act in the same way a human brain does.

Until recently the Memristor had only been described using mathematical equations written back in 1971 by engineering student Leon Chua. Although Chua knew this circuit element should exist, he was unable to come up with a physical manifestation of the component.

“Thirty-seven years later, a group of scientists from HP Labs has finally built real working memristors, thus adding a fourth basic circuit element to electrical circuit theory, one that will join the three better-known ones: the capacitor, resistor and the inductor.”

The researchers believe this discovery may be integral in the production of Instant-on PC’s and more energy efficient computers and even computers that act in the same way as the human brain.

See the full story at the website link below.

Website: Memristor

Weird Microsoft Stuff

3 interesting idiosyncrasies re Microsoft that I found while surfing the net recently. 2 out of the 3 worked on my Windows Vista machine with Office 2003. See how they work for you.

1. CON is not allowed as a folder name

An Indian discovered that nobody can create a FOLDER anywhere on the computer which can be named as ‘CON’.

See if you can create a con folder on your PC.

This is not really a bug and Microsoft do know about this. It goes back to the DOS days and reserved filenames.

Below are other reserved names.

2. Notepad Bug

1.) Open an empty notepad file
2.) Type “Bush hid the facts” (without the quotes)
3.) Save it as whatever you want.
4.) Close it, and re-open it.
is it just a really weird bug? :-??

3. =rand (200, 99) bug

This is a strange bug. At Microsoft the whole Team, including Bill Gates, couldn’t answer why this happened. It was discovered by a Brazilian. Try it out yourself.

Open Microsoft Word and type
=rand (200, 99)
And then press ENTER and see what happens.

Gigabyte Cool Rain - Water Cooled PC Memory

Water cooling now available for your computer memory.

Image: Geeky Gadgets

See the full story here

Palm Centro released by AT&T

“AT&T, the largest mobile carrier in the US, will offer Palm’s Centro handset to its subscribers starting tomorrow, 19 February 2008, for $199 with a $100 mail-in rebate and a 2-year contract.”

“Apparently there will be a white, a black and a pink version of the Centro, which is pretty cool, as users have more colors to choose from.”

See more pictures at The Wizard’s Blog Read more

Firefox releases Version 3 beta 3

Firefox has just release beta 3 of Firefox 3. Confused? Well it is the third beta release of version 3 and its seems not too bad except that some plugins don’t work yet as well as some sites not displaying properly too.

I would imagine it wont be long before all the problems are fixed and I would be pretty keen to jump right in and use it, but for now I’ll stick with version 2.

You can download version 3 at the link below, and also get the full details of the new version as well.

Website: Firefox Version 3 via Techcrunch

Super computer made from cluster of Apple G5’s

Video: Google Video

This video shows a cluster of 1100 Apple G5 computers at Virgina Tech. It is the 3rd most powerful super computer in the world and the least expensive system in the top 10.

Internet Explorer or Firefox ?

Video: YouTube

It would seem from this small survey, that most computer savvy people prefer Firefox over Internet Explorer. The people who use Internet Explorer seem to do so because that is all that they know.

How some major computer companies got their names

Here are some of the names you would know as the most well known computer companies in the world, but how did they get their names?

Apple, Cisco, Hewlett Packard etc

See the answers Read more

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