A major change is occurring in how computers are increasing their performance. For many years, processor manufacturers have increased the performance of their wares by making them run faster. This approach is starting to reach the end of its usefulness, however, partly due to things like the speed electrons can be persuaded to travel and other hard to change physical properties of the world in which we live.

Alternative ways to speed up computing operations exist, and one of these seems to be the New Way which is being trodden. The chosen path involves having multiple processors which can execute different bits of code at the same time, thus enabling more work to be done in a given amount of time. This approach has been used in servers for years by having multiple physical processors, of course, but is now becoming more mainstream on desktop computers. This is due to manufacturers starting to build more than one logical processor onto a single physical processor chip. Each logical processor is called a core. Both Intel and AMD now have been producing multi-core processors for long enough they are now common in desktop computers.

When I write a post for dx13, I write it in plain text with a special markup syntax. Some hacked together regexes then translate my markup into bold text, links and the like. This solution was a duct tape and string solution, often meaning that I had to go out of my way to make sure the regexes could parse and format my writings correctly.

It is not unknown for me to miss a failure in the parsing and for bits of formatting markup to then end up in the published items. This is somewhat unsatisfactory.

I received an email from Amazon today telling me my order had dispatched. The interesting part of this was I received the package for the order two days ago. So I figure Amazon now have a new delivery option I must have chosen: Back in Time Delivery — Even better than Just in Time!

Either that, or I shall soon have a second iPod nano…

Warren Ellis Comments on Second Life

I didn’t know who Warren Ellis:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Warren_Ellis was until I looked him up on Wikipedia, but these articles on the Reuters website are fun and interesting comments about what happens in Second Life. I have no experience of Second Life, and find its popularity rather bemusing, but nevertheless it’s something fun to keep half an eye on. These articles are at a much more human level than most about Second Life, simply because they are about Ellis’s experiences of the game.

As I hammer home (over) regularly, I don’t agree with the use of DRM on download-to-keep media. After all, you have downloaded it to keep and shouldn’t have to go through a large amount of hassle to be able to use it in a manner the content owners disapprove of, such as having it on two computers at once (shock! horror!). I can see DRM having uses in other fields and pricing models, however.