data storage
jeure | July 10, 2012One of physics’ greatest tricks is polarization. Take magnets, for example, such as those commonly found on refrigerators holding up shopping lists and Christmas cards. These have the familiar north/south polarization that we can experience as attraction and repulsion. That magnetic orientation persists all the way down to the individual molecules, which actually align to cause the larger-scale behavior.
This polar phenomenon is caused by ferromagnetism, a defining quality of some particles that gives them an intrinsic polarity – what scientists call a dipole moment. And remarkably, that…
gregladen | May 29, 2010And what can you really do with them?
I am not an expert on consumer technology. I stay a few miles behind the cutting edge where I can pick up the orts at a discount, and most stuff works. Last time I checked, newer (faster, bigger, whatever-er) versions of technology cost more per unit (of speed, size, whatever) than would be predicted by examination of price/unit relationships for lower (and thus older) values. Some have incorrectly claimed this to be a logarithmic relationship, but clearly it is more often a linear relationship between cost and amount up to some point, then the prices…
gregladen | April 12, 2010I would wager that you don't know where many of your most important files are. If you are into music, and use iTunes, you can't find a particular song file using your file manager. You would need to locate it using iTunes. iTunes would then give you limited access to that file. It does not let you do the same thing your file manager would let you do. Many of your most important pieces of information are in emails or attached to emails. Where exactly are those things? Can you access them with your file manager with little effort, print, copy, delete, duplicate, or otherwise work with…