CNET expose Intel’s comeback to the Mac mini. These are both inexpensive boxes which can be easily carried from place to place and connected to some peripherals.

Some might recall the dysphoric feeling when Sony left the PDA scene in most of the world. They have now halted their sales in Japan as well, thereby saying farewell to the world of miniature computing.

Jeffrey Kaplan from comp.sys.palmtops.pilot commented on the news:

It was only a matter of time until they dropped completely out of the Palm PDA market. Japan was their last market, they pulled out of the rest of the world last Summer. Expect their next entry to be either a Symbian or MS Smartphone due to their cellphone partnership with Ericsson.

It was rumored last year that Sony had bid to purchase what became PalmSource from Palm Inc. It is my opinion that failure to complete that bid is what made them decide to drop the PalmOS specifically, not the more general drop in sales after they flooded the market.

Cited by: PalmAddict

Slashdot report on Skype-ready phones from Motorola. These are devices that are designed to operate over the Internet, thereby making phonecall virtually free.

…one could use Skype for outgoing calls near wi-fi hotspots (essentially free) but default on GSM for outgoing calls in areas that lack coverage…

This takes us a step closer to communication that is purely-Internet based.

A recent item from the BBC reports on the severity of global warming. Although it means that our children can enjoy bathing in the sea, the consequences world-wide are devastating as ice continues to thaw.

…Unless we know what we’re dealing with, I think it’s going to be pretty hard to fix it…
 
    Dr. Tim Barnett, Scripps Institution of Oceanography

Bill Gates arrested in his younger days (photo in public domain)

President of the Free Software Foundation, Richard Stallman, writes in CNET:

…Thanks to Mr. Gates, we now know that an open Internet with protocols anyone can implement is communism…
 
…Mr. Gates’ secret is out now–he too was a “communist;” he, too, recognized that software patents were harmful–until Microsoft became one of these giants…

The Cell processor is shown on the right (image from AP via the BBC). Chips of similar scale can hold gigabytes of storage space.

Will the entire human knowledge fit in a matchbox one day?

One of the notable pioneers of modern computing and mathematics died in February 8th 48 years ago. I found writings relating to his death quite mystifying:

… his mind, the amulet on which he had always been able to rely, was becoming less dependable. Then came complete psychological breakdown; panic, screams of uncontrollable terror every night. His friend Edward Teller said, “I think that von Neumann suffered more when his mind would no longer function, than I have ever seen any human being suffer.”

Von Neumann’s sense of invulnerability, or simply the desire to live, was struggling with unalterable facts. He seemed to have a great fear of death until the last… No achievements and no amount of influence could save him now, as they always had in the past. Johnny von Neumann, who knew how to live so fully, did not know how to die.