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I was just reading up on the UltraRam from yesterdays news letter
UltraRAM Breakthrough Brings New Memory and Storage Tech to Silicon | Tom's Hardware[^]
It sounds awesome for computers in general, but it would have a huge impact on embedded applications.
feel free to chime in honey the codewitch.
to have a small embedded device that does not have to maintain power to RAM while waiting for a trigger would be a huge power savings for the embedded CPU. and if the device looses power all together, you wouldn't have to worry about writing data to flash or EEPROM, before loss. even to just have a 128K of it on an embedded CPU would be a huge step forward.
imagine having a device that someone powers up in 999 years after being dug up from some old found landfill and having it start working, is the stuff of sci-fi books. (I would say boot up, but if everything is still in memory, not much booting needs to happen)
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If Scotty had had this, he wouldn't have needed to put the transporter buffer into a continuous diagnostic loop. 
STNG "Relics" episode[^]
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the Dyson Sphere episode, that was one of my favs
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I loved that episode.
I loved when Scotty gave LaForge some good advice.
SCOTT: Do you mind a little advice? Starfleet captains are like children. They want everything right now and they want it their way, but the secret is to give them only what they need, not what they want.
LAFORGE: Yeah, well I told the Captain I'd have this analysis done in an hour.
SCOTT: How long will it really take?
LAFORGE: An hour.
SCOTT: You didn't tell him how long it would really take, did you?
LAFORGE: Of course I did.
SCOTT: Oh, laddie, you've got a lot to learn if you want people to think of you as a miracle worker.
Kelly Herald
Software Developer
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Doesn't that also apply to us developers and the stakeholders?
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I just re-watched ST:NG (all 7 seasons) last fall. I liked that episode, but one thing caught my eye.
If you were orbiting a Dyson sphere at anything less than a distance of several million miles, it would look like a flat surface. You couldn't see curvature.
Pedantic and fatuous, I know   .
Software Zen: delete this;
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This made me think, what would a Dyson sphere look like in the flat earth model, then I remembered they don't have one...
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Well,
Just ignore the journalism, there is nothing to be excited about. The paper is theoretical and not a single piece of UltraRAM exists. Looks complicated to manufacture to me. Keep in mind that FeRAM[^], MRAM[^] and ReRAM[^] were all supposedly going to be used for storage and replace RAM. Never happened.
Best Wishes,
-David Delaune
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I need to read more about this as it sounds almost like existing Pseudo-Static RAM (PSRAM) or maybe SRAM too? (I can't remember) technology that's been around for awhile the way you describe it.
EDIT: Now that I've read it, it works differently than PSRAM, and PSRAM despite being non-volatile in a sense, isn't usually set up to remember on powerdown. The non-volatility is more for avoiding needing complicated refresh circuitry in a memory controller. However, unless I miss my guess, it *could* be non-volatile on powerdown, it's just not used that way typically. I might be wrong there. It's an educated guess.
The upshot seems to be PSRAM style simplicity with DRAM style access speeds. Price is an issue according to the article. I wonder about that, since the whole point of using this stuff vs. traditional RAM is ultimately to cut down on cost (and perhaps power consumption)
This is all just initial thoughts and I'm fuzzy on some of the details of SRAM and PSRAM, since I've never needed to know them. So take all of this with a whole lot of salt. In fact, check with your doctor about your sodium intake before consuming this post.
Real programmers use butterflies
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Matt McGuire wrote: imagine having a device that someone powers up in 999 years after being dug up from some old found landfill and having it start working, is the stuff of sci-fi books. (I would say boot up, but if everything is still in memory, not much booting needs to happen)
City Of Ember does this with a 200 year window. Fun concept. (Movie grossed about 1/3 of the cost of production)
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When eating scrambled eggs, have you ever thought "tastes like chicken?"
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I also never ate chicken and thought it tasted like scrambled eggs.
Althoughiguana does taste like chicken.
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 I am still trying to process what you typed.... 
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The reptile known as an iguana tastes like chicken.
There's a space missing between "although" and "iguana".
Had to check thrice myself before I got it, especially since iguana's don't live where I live and I didn't know you could eat them 
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Chicken of today tastes like whatever spice they have been spiced with.
They are simply not able to develop that distinctive taste of hen of the old days, in the six short weeks they are allowed to live. You may praise the tenderness of the meat, and most certainly the amount of it per chicken. A hen giving you three hundred eggs before being slaughtered will give you far less meat, and require longer cooking, but it will give you a lot more taste. And definitely if that hen has been allowed to roam around in the green grass and being fed more or less unprocessed fodder, rather than no-taste soy pellets from Chile.
At least here in Norway, turkey factoring hasn't gone quite as crazy with super-fast growth; the meat still has a distinct taste of bird, and you can enjoy it without covering it with spices. (Well, a little garlic is nice to support that taste of bird, though ...)
In Norwegian, there is a way of speech: "This is taking the taste of a bird!", meaning "This seems to turn into something really great". The expression is certainly not based on the 'taste' of modern chicken.
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I wouldn't know, haven't eaten chicken in 24 years
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Same here, not many iguanas in the American South, but there are anodes, which are like mini iguanas with the crests on their heads.
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You Man - Birdcage[^]
This SOTW is actually last week's recommendation by @David-ONeil, so thanks, David!
Didn't know You Man, but they're two DJ's from France who used to party in Belgium.
Their genres and influences are mostly new to me... "their new EP embracing everything from dark disco to muscular EBM, euphoric trance to Konnakol, a percussive vocal effect used in Southern Indian Carnatic music, and even Di Falco’s background as a trained psychologist and hypnotherapist."
So there's that, but in short I can say it's just a great (minimal) dance track
Other than that not much to mention, except great track, been listening to it daily 
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This is one of my go-to tracks for coding. it's basically a really long mix of b-sides from Aesop Rock that never made it on to his actual albums. he's a rapper (more of a poet really because of his lyrics - largest performance vocab of any artist of any genre AFAIK) but he doesn't put lyrics in this so it doesn't distract while coding.
Aesop Rock - The Blob - YouTube[^]
Real programmers use butterflies
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It can be beautiful when he wants it to be
We them cats talking noise behind that New York trash heap
Where the stench of commuter briefcase replaces a bad sleep
And it's, worker zig-zagers versus piggy badge flashers
Training Generation Fallout
Waterfall bricklayer pincushion crawl out
There's smoke in my iris
But I painted a sunny day on the insides of my eyelids
So I'm ready now (What you ready for?)
I'm ready for life in this city
And my wings have grown almost enough to lift me
I'm a dinosaur with Jones Beach in my hourglass
Passing the time with serial killer coloringbooks and bags of marbles
Don't tell me you ain't the droid that held the match to the charcoals
Don't tell me Lucifer and God don't carpool
(This is our school)
I'm not trying to graduate to life at the personalized barstool
Head in a jar on the desk, feet dangling in a shark pool
(Man please) Man please
My name stands for my being
And my being stands for the woman who stood
And braved the storm to raise the seedling
(Brother, sun, sister, moon, mother beautiful)
Yeah middle sibling suitable but far from son of excellence
Beckoned a long time ago, I was to way the wishes wish
But missers miss, I slept through my appointment
Saw the liquid dreams of a thousand babies solidify
And picked the rose that wilted
The second I introduced myself as Nervous
Well it appears the scars of learning have spoken
Some are burning, some have frozen
Some deserve tall tales, some wrote them
Some are just a brutal repercussion of devotion
Mine are all of the above cuz everything leads to erosion
Now where I live there's a homeless man, he sits upon a crate
He makes a rusty trumpet sound like the music that angels make
Now if you ever come and visit me, I suggest you watch the show
Tell him Aesop Rock sent ya just to hear his horn blow like this
Real programmers use butterflies
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That's a good one to play with a group of friends, "Guess the Pop Culture" scene. Some of them I saw were The Simpsons, Max Headroom, Pink Floyd & Gandalf.
Similarly, I used to show Johnny Cash - God's Gonna Cut You Down (Official Music Video) - YouTube[^] to friends and then (without Googling) get everyone to try and identify who's who in the clip. And I like the song.
// TODO: Insert something here Top ten reasons why I'm lazy
1.
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yacCarsten wrote: That's a good one to play with a group of friends, "Guess the Pop Culture" scene. Some of them I saw were The Simpsons, Max Headroom, Pink Floyd & Gandalf.
Tiffani Thiessen from Saved By The Bell, Ronald McDonald, Bill Murray, Superman, Heath Ledger as the Joker, Donnie Darko, The Shining, Alice in Wonderland, Pikachu, Gravity Falls... Plenty of stuff in there 
yacCarsten wrote: Similarly, I used to show Johnny Cash - God's Gonna Cut You Down (Official Music Video) - YouTube[^] to friends and then (without Googling) get everyone to try and identify who's who in the clip. And I like the song.
Nice one too!
I don't know that many celebrities, but I recognized Kanye West, Jay-Z, Johnny Depp, Amy from Evanescence, Chris Rock, Woody Harrelson, Bono I think, ZZ Top guy, Bill from Kill Bill (David Carradine(?)), and did I see the doc from Back to the Future flashing by at 2:23?
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, but no Doc or Kill Bill.