computer hardware

I Can’t Drive 55 — The New York Times and Moore’s Law

Yesterday the New York Times published an article about Moore’s Law.  While interesting in that John Markoff, who is the Times science writer, speculates that in about 5 years the computing industry will be “manipulating material as small as atoms” and therefore may hit a wall in what has become a back of the envelope calculation of the multiplicative nature of computing complexity and power in the silicon age.

This article prompted a follow on from Brian Feldman at NY Mag, that the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) has anticipated a broader definition of the phenomenon of the accelerating rate of computing power to take into account quantum computing.  Note here that the definition used in this context is the literal one: the doubling of the number of transistors over time that can be placed on a microchip.  That is a correct summation of what Gordon Moore said, but it not how Moore’s Law is viewed or applied within the tech industry.

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Super Doodle Dandy (Software) — Decorator Crabs and Wirth’s Law

decorator-crab[1]

The song (absent the “software” part) in the title is borrowed from the soundtrack of the movie, The Incredible Mr. Limpet.  Made in the day before Pixar and other recent animation technologies, it remains a largely unappreciated classic; combining photography and animation in a time of more limited tools, but with Don Knotts creating another unforgettable character beyond Barney Fife.  Somewhat related to what I am about to write, Mr. Limpet taught the creatures of the sea new ways of doing things, helping them overcome their mistaken assumptions about the world.

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