{"id":3044,"date":"2014-01-11T13:24:35","date_gmt":"2014-01-11T20:24:35","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.contrapositivediary.com\/?p=3044"},"modified":"2014-01-11T13:25:49","modified_gmt":"2014-01-11T20:25:49","slug":"odd-lots-246","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.contrapositivediary.com\/?p=3044","title":{"rendered":"Odd Lots"},"content":{"rendered":"<ul>\n<li><a href=\"http:\/\/www.wired.com\/wiredenterprise\/2014\/01\/tech-time-warp-ibm-ramac\/\" target=\"_blank\">The very first magnetic hard drive had 50 platters, stored 5 megabytes, and weighed over a ton<\/a>. IBM was so proud of the RAMAC system that included the hard drive that it would take a demo unit on tour, to show it to a skeptical business community. Must have been hard on the truck&#8217;s suspension.<\/li>\n<li>Compare that original hard drive to <a href=\"http:\/\/www.theregister.co.uk\/2014\/01\/07\/intel_demos_pconsd_tiny_computer_for_internet_of_things_and_wearables\/\" target=\"_blank\">Intel&#8217;s Edison<\/a>, which is an X86 Quark processor and associated logic in an SD card chassis. The comments to the story are cautionary: There&#8217;s not much hard information on Edison right now, and it&#8217;s not clear whether it adheres to the full SD card spec or the mechanical spec only. Rumor holds that it runs Linux, though what the connectivity is I&#8217;m not sure.<\/li>\n<li>Edison is targeted at the idiotically named &#8220;Internet-of-things,&#8221; which, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.wired.com\/opinion\/2014\/01\/theres-no-good-way-to-patch-the-internet-of-things-and-thats-a-huge-problem\/\" target=\"_blank\">given Bruce Schneier&#8217;s cautions<\/a>, I&#8217;m not entirely sure I want to clutch uncritically to my oddly shaped ribcage.<\/li>\n<li>If Edison&#8217;s a little too small, consider <a href=\"http:\/\/arstechnica.com\/gadgets\/2014\/01\/smallness-uber-alles-intels-tiny-haswell-based-nuc-desktop-reviewed\/\" target=\"_blank\">Intel&#8217;s Next Unit of Computing (NUC) machine<\/a>, which crams a non-gamer desktop into a box 4 1\/2&#8243; X 4 1\/2&#8243; X 1 1\/2&#8243;. $700. As best I can tell, that would do pretty much whatever I do now on my quadcore, minus hard disk mobility.<\/li>\n<li>I don&#8217;t remember when I last saw <a href=\"http:\/\/www.spaceweather.com\/images2014\/07jan14\/hmi3796.gif?PHPSESSID=01i10guerv6val65b1adv287r6\" target=\"_blank\">a sunspot this big<\/a>. I think 2003. Must &#8230; scan &#8230; 10&#8230; meters&#8230;<\/li>\n<li>If you&#8217;re under the illusion that TV news outlets actually write the news stories that they broadcast, well, watch <a href=\"http:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=TM8L7bdwVaA\" target=\"_blank\">Conan O&#8217;Brian&#8217;s video mashup of 23 newcasters saying precisely the same thing<\/a>. And it&#8217;s a really dumb thing, too. (Thanks to Pete Albrecht for the link.)<\/li>\n<li>Calling all pop music fans Of A Certain Age. (Like me.) This may interest you: <a href=\"http:\/\/forgottenhits60s.blogspot.com\/2014\/01\/the-saturday-survey-1-4.html\" target=\"_blank\">Forgotten Hits has a collection of top 40 music surveys<\/a> for various (mostly Midwestern) radio stations from 1956-1980.<\/li>\n<li>Talk about planned obsolecence. <a href=\"http:\/\/www.gizmag.com\/canadian-ice-truck\/30263\/\" target=\"_blank\">This truck is guaranteed not to rust<\/a>&#8230;but it will melt within six months, tops.<\/li>\n<li><a href=\"http:\/\/paleofuture.gizmodo.com\/the-sno-melter-1960-512626160\/1494194980\" target=\"_blank\">We could sure use a few of these right now<\/a>.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The very first magnetic hard drive had 50 platters, stored 5 megabytes, and weighed over a ton. IBM was so proud of the RAMAC system that included the hard drive that it would take a demo unit on tour, to show it to a skeptical business community. Must have been hard on the truck&#8217;s suspension. [&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":[41,15,82,49],"class_list":["post-3044","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-oddlots","tag-astronomy","tag-hardware","tag-media","tag-music"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.contrapositivediary.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3044","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=3044"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"http:\/\/www.contrapositivediary.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3044\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3046,"href":"http:\/\/www.contrapositivediary.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3044\/revisions\/3046"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.contrapositivediary.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3044"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.contrapositivediary.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3044"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.contrapositivediary.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3044"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}