{"id":2876,"date":"2013-05-30T11:13:49","date_gmt":"2013-05-30T17:13:49","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.contrapositivediary.com\/?p=2876"},"modified":"2013-05-30T14:06:33","modified_gmt":"2013-05-30T20:06:33","slug":"odd-lots-229","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.contrapositivediary.com\/?p=2876","title":{"rendered":"Odd Lots"},"content":{"rendered":"<ul>\n<li><a href=\"http:\/\/www.pcworld.com\/article\/2039979\/pc-industry-bleeding-to-explode-into-full-blown-hemorrhaging-in-2013-says-idc.html\" target=\"_blank\">IDC says that desktop PC sales will drop by 7.6% in 2013<\/a>. This may well be due to what I call <a href=\"http:\/\/www.contrapositivediary.com\/?p=962\" target=\"_blank\">the Silverware Effect<\/a>: PCs are pretty damned good, aren&#8217;t getting better very quickly, and people are keeping them way longer than they used to. Good ones can be had dirt-cheap. (And the dirt-cheap ones don&#8217;t have Windows 8 sticking to their boots!) Thanks to Pete Albrecht for the link.<\/li>\n<li>And a leaked screen shot seems to indicate that Microsoft heeded the technopeasants with torches and pitchforks: With Windows 8.1, <a href=\"http:\/\/gizmodo.com\/leaked-windows-8-1-screenshot-oh-hello-start-button-510309304\" target=\"_blank\">the Start button is back<\/a>!<\/li>\n<li>A day later, <a href=\"http:\/\/blogs.windows.com\/windows\/b\/bloggingwindows\/archive\/2013\/05\/30\/continuing-the-windows-8-vision-with-windows-8-1.aspx\" target=\"_blank\">Ars published a much more detailed look at Windows 8.1<\/a>.<\/li>\n<li>While some people still struggle to get their Raspberry Pi keyboards to stop stuttering, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.cl.cam.ac.uk\/projects\/raspberrypi\/tutorials\/os\/\" target=\"_blank\">other people are writing brand-new operating systems for it<\/a>. I know one of those guys, and if he wants to announce here, I&#8217;ll applaud!<\/li>\n<li>The <em>Siberian Times<\/em> reports that <a href=\"http:\/\/siberiantimes.com\/science\/casestudy\/news\/exclusive-the-first-pictures-of-blood-from-a-10000-year-old-siberian-woolly-mammoth\/\" target=\"_blank\">a frozen mammoth carcass yielded a surprise: Blood<\/a>. The other surprise in this story is that there&#8217;s an English-language publication called the <a href=\"http:\/\/siberiantimes.com\/home\/\" target=\"_blank\">Siberian Times<\/a>.<\/li>\n<li>A third surprise was <a href=\"http:\/\/siberiantimes.com\/science\/casestudy\/news\/how-dogs-were-early-mans-best-friend-in-siberia-8000-years-ago\/\" target=\"_blank\">how<\/a> <a href=\"http:\/\/siberiantimes.com\/science\/casestudy\/news\/new-study-shows-siberians-kept-pet-dogs-33000-years-ago\/\" target=\"_blank\">much<\/a> <a href=\"http:\/\/siberiantimes.com\/weird-and-wonderful\/news-and-features\/news\/is-this-the-first-sighting-of-a-baby-yeti\/\" target=\"_blank\">cool<\/a> <a href=\"http:\/\/siberiantimes.com\/other\/others\/features\/dont-miss-it-one-of-the-greatest-races-on-earth-which-can-be-won-or-lost-in-siberia\/\" target=\"_blank\">stuff<\/a> is published in the <em>Siberian Times<\/em>.<\/li>\n<li>That all the commenters in the <a href=\"http:\/\/siberiantimes.com\/home\/\" target=\"_blank\">Siberian Times<\/a> appear to be Americans somehow comes as no surprise.<\/li>\n<li><a href=\"http:\/\/www.swpc.noaa.gov\/SolarCycle\/\" target=\"_blank\">In 2008, NOAA predicted that the Cycle 24 sunpost maximum would take place in May 2013.<\/a> A quick look at my watch suggests that it&#8217;s over. So does a quick look at the sunspot graphs. After the second hump, it&#8217;s all over but the plunging.<\/li>\n<li>As much as people scream when anyone says so, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.wired.com\/opinion\/2013\/05\/so-you-know-that-10000-hours-makes-an-expert-rule-bunk\/\" target=\"_blank\">talent trumps practice<\/a>. 10,000 hours will make you better if you have talent, but it won&#8217;t make you better without the natural gifts to excel in your chosen field. Choose the wrong field, and all the practice you might attempt won&#8217;t make you great.<\/li>\n<li><a href=\"http:\/\/www.eetimes.com\/electronics-blogs\/other\/4415175\/London-Calling-Did-Moores-Law-just-fail\" target=\"_blank\">Moore&#8217;s Law seems to be stalling<\/a>, on NAND flash memory, at least.<\/li>\n<li><a href=\"http:\/\/www.cepro.com\/article\/10_technologies_way_ahead_of_their_time\/\" target=\"_blank\">Twenty home technologies that were <em>way<\/em> ahead of their time<\/a>. (Thanks to Pete Albrecht for the link.)<\/li>\n<li>The husband of <a href=\"http:\/\/christiehenriksen.blogspot.com\/\" target=\"_blank\">a local rising star in bichon grooming<\/a> is a comics artist. And <a href=\"http:\/\/bhenart.blogspot.com\/\" target=\"_blank\">he is beyond amazing<\/a>.<\/li>\n<li>One of the few things I miss about California is <a href=\"http:\/\/www.weirdstuff.com\/cgi-bin\/category.cgi?category=sunnyvalestore\" target=\"_blank\">the Weird Stuff Warehouse in Sunnyvale<\/a>. Ars has <a href=\"http:\/\/arstechnica.com\/gadgets\/2013\/05\/the-weird-stuff-warehouse-is-where-old-tech-goes-to-retire\/\" target=\"_blank\">a photo tour<\/a> that makes it look precisely the way I remember it looking in 1989. (I guess that makes it a &#8220;comfort junk shop.&#8221;)<\/li>\n<li>I haven&#8217;t laughed out lout at PVP in a long time, but <a href=\"http:\/\/www.pvponline.com\/comic\/2013\/05\/28\/masked-man\" target=\"_blank\">today&#8217;s strip did it<\/a>.<\/li>\n<li><a href=\"http:\/\/news.sciencemag.org\/sciencenow\/2013\/05\/physicists-create-quantum-link-b.html\" target=\"_blank\">Physicists have created quantum entanglement between two photons that don&#8217;t exist at the same time<\/a>. If my head didn&#8217;t hurt before, it hurts now. (Thanks to Jonathan O&#8217;Neal for the link.)<\/li>\n<li>We thought we knew what organism caused the mid-19th century potato famine in Ireland, but <a href=\"http:\/\/phys.org\/news\/2013-05-whodunnit-irish-potato-famine.html\" target=\"_blank\">we were wrong<\/a>.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>IDC says that desktop PC sales will drop by 7.6% in 2013. This may well be due to what I call the Silverware Effect: PCs are pretty damned good, aren&#8217;t getting better very quickly, and people are keeping them way longer than they used to. Good ones can be had dirt-cheap. (And the dirt-cheap ones [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[25],"tags":[133,15,43,128,54,14],"class_list":["post-2876","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-oddlots","tag-art","tag-hardware","tag-humor","tag-rpi","tag-science","tag-software"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.contrapositivediary.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2876","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.contrapositivediary.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.contrapositivediary.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.contrapositivediary.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.contrapositivediary.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2876"}],"version-history":[{"count":9,"href":"http:\/\/www.contrapositivediary.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2876\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2885,"href":"http:\/\/www.contrapositivediary.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2876\/revisions\/2885"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.contrapositivediary.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2876"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.contrapositivediary.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2876"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.contrapositivediary.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2876"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}