Computers-Plus

Remember when Ethernet networks were invented? Probably not: it was over 30 years ago, after all, and you are probably too young.

Even if you are not, you have probably dismissed from memory the woefully inadequate 10 meg of bandwidth on offer at the time – less than you get with most broadband services these days.

Still, the world struggled on with 10Mbps for well over a decade before first Fast (100Mbps), then Gigabit Ethernet became available.

Now we are firmly into 10Gig territory, with even faster 40Gig products starting to appear and 100Gig likely to make it into the mainstream next year.

Do we really need technology about 100 times quicker than Gigabit Ethernet or, to put it into perspective, 10,000 times faster than the original Ethernet standard?

There is no easy answer, unless you are talking about the desktop, where 100Gig is way beyond what anyone needs right now, or maybe ever – although perhaps we should never say ever.

Speed freaks

Similar pontifications were heard when Gigabit Ethernet was introduced and now, just a few years later, it is standard on most desktop and notebook PCs. The

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What happens when you mix technology with the strategic board game of Risk? For those unfamiliar with the game, the basis is world domination. Players roll dice and place tiny plastic soldiers and armies onto countries until they have taken over the world. Risk was originally titled La Conquête du Monde (“The Conquest of the World”), but a new game has been created that only has you conquering New York City, borough by borough. At a

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This Green Power Island is designed to combat two things that the Earth might be greatly lacking in the future: land and energy.

The architectural firm of Gottlieb Paludan from Copenhagen created a serious combination of eco-friendly power with the wind turbines near the shore, not to mention all of the solar panels taking up the landmass.

Thats pretty visible from this mock-up image, but what you dont see is that the green space is for biofuel crops. Not only that, seawater is pumped into a lagoon-like reservoir, which is emptied by the turbine-powered pumps when it is low.

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It looks like it’s time to kiss that sweet HOV goodbye for lone California hybrid drivers. No, there hasn’t been a spike in Clean Air Vehicle sticker thievery — this time it’s official. According to the California DMV, those little yellow stickers that once gave hybrid owners the right to ride solo in carpool lanes have expired, leaving some 85,000 drivers to fall in line with the rest of the state’s commuters. You’ll forgive us if we don’t shed a tear over this announcement.