Pretty much every math class today lists "TI-83 or equivalent" as a list of required materials. Personally, I always felt $100 was a bit pricey for a graphing calculator, so for quite some years I've gotten away with a Casio fx-9750GII calculator instead. It doesn't have nearly as much memory, but it's actually much faster, and programming it has been quite interesting.

On the other hand, being the one guy in class shuffling through my manual's pages while everyone else is doing math wasn't my favorite experience with my cheap calculator, but if you can't afford the expensive ones, why pay for them?

I personally am a huge fan of programming graphing calculators. I almost finished programming minesweeper on mine, although there was one thing I never quite figured out. Any other calculator fanatics out in the community?

Everyone thought that by now, 5GHZ processors would pretty much be the standard. Instead, dual-core processors hit the market. The effectiveness of the second core was initially in question, since few applications at the time were really designed to make use of them. Over time, manufactures found that simply making more cores was cheaper than raising the clock speed, and as a result, instead of 5GHZ processors, we're seeing as many as twelve cores inside of one CPU, at a clock speed of around 2GHZ or so. It looks like a similar trend is beginning to hit mobile devices, as it's simply cheaper to add more cores than to raise the clock speed further, and software is slowly adapting. This raises many questions about whether having a single, very fast core would be more effective than tons of smaller cores.

So, the question I'd like to raise is, in theory, would 100 100mhz cores, or a single 10GHZ core be better for today's computing, and how would such a model work for future computing models as technology continues to evolve?

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My personal feeling is that our current software does not make good use of 100mhz cores, so having 100 cores clocked at 100mhz would significantly hurt PC performance. If we're thinking from a theoretical standpoint, it is quite possible that 100 slow cores could be put to very good use, depending on the use. Graphics cards, for example, use a similar model. If software can be developed to be heavily multi-threaded to run across many cores, each core could have its resources, such as its own cache, registers, etc... and these threads would not have to share a universal L1 cache. This could either boost or harm performance, depending on whether a shared cache is more ideal for a multithreaded application, or whether each thread will be using different data entirely. Either way, such a CPU setup has the potential to work if software development makes use of it, but as it stands now, most software, outside of graphics, is not currently designed to make use of that many cores.

In other words, my current feeling is that our current software and our current model of computing simply isn't designed to make use of 100 cores, so a large amount of those cores would simply go to waste in a current system. I do believe that the computing trend will continue to add more cores, and clock speeds may drop slightly as more cores are added, but I believe that we'll always be looking at desktop CPU clock speeds of at least 2GHZ as more cores get added. What are your thoughts? 

What are your favorite styles of music? You are allowed to vote for up to six styles. If you've voted "other," let us know in your replies below!

Obviously, one of the biggest disadvantages to using Linux as opposed to Windows is the fact that Windows programs won't run. Thankfully, a diligent group of developers have developed WINE, a program that makes Linux compatible with some windows programs. (It doesn't work that well, but some programs will run great. )

WINE is free, but if you are willing to pay, there is also a product by codeweavers called crossover linux. I have never tried it myself, but from what I hear, it works significantly better than WINE.

Needless to say, Ubuntu has changed quite a lot over the past few years, especially since the launch of Unity. Ubuntu, once a favorite among many linux distributions, has received much new criticism. At the same time, it remains the most popular linux distribution with a rapidly growing user base. What does this mean for the future of the distribution?

Personally, I feel that Ubuntu will continue to grow, but I am keeping my eyes out for alternatives. While the rather short support cycle of Fedora isn't the most comfortable thing ever, pretty much everything else about Fedora is much better than that of Ubuntu, and it is a much cleaner, better distribution overall. Many other distributions are rising up as well.

What are your thoughts?

Personally, I'm a huge linux fan. It's also much nicer with RAM usage, making it a good option for older computers as well. With distributions such as Ubuntu, openSUSE, and Fedora, Linux is no longer something only an expert can use. My personal preference is Fedora, as Ubuntu seems to be losing its quality a bit.

What is your preference?

^^ pretty self explanatory. Just post your avatar, then add a caption to explain its meaning.


Personally, mine just goes along with my username.

Everyone has to start somewhere, and web design is no exception. First websites can be some of the most laughable things ever created in the history of mankind, but if it's a launching pad, I don't consider it a waste.

So, what was your first website?
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Personally, mine is hard to even share. It was pure HTML, written when I was in elementary school. Absolutely no CSS or PHP whatsoever. Thankfully, I no longer have the files

I'm not particularly great at graphics design, but I still enjoy creating whatever I can in the GIMP.



Having a little fun with Fedora and the Gimp



Hey, I enjoy it!

In the past decade, we went from expensive Pentium 4s to quad-core i7s. We went from 1GB of RAM being considered too much to 8GB of RAM in many home computers. With such a trend of rapid progression in technology, there is no telling what will be coming next.

What do you expect technology to become over the next decade?