Lots of people say that we count in base 10 because we have 10 fingers. To which, I ask, If we can count from 0 to 10, then why do we need two digits to write down the highest number we can have with fingers?

A much more natural base for counting on your fingers is base 6. Here’s what I want you to try. Your right hand will serve as the ones digit, and your left hand serves as the tens. Start counting.

One is easy. Raise your right index finger. Two, raise the next one. Similarly through five. At six, it becomes slightly trickier, because six is now ‘ten’. Your left index finger goes up, and your right hand closes. Now again, counting from 11 to 15 is very simple. To go to 20, close your right hand and raise another finger.

In this manner, you can count up to 55 – which would be 35 in base 10 terms, far more than the paltry 10 you claim your ten fingers are for counting! Switching bases back and forth is a bit tedious, I’ll agree, but once you get used to it, it’s far more useful than a simple 10 fingers.

Did you know that Google has books in the public domain scanned in, and you can download them in EPUB format, load them right on and go to town? Isn’t that just awesome?!

Consider this: Right now, Google has over 7.5 million books scanned written in English and in the public domain. If I could read those at a rate of one per minute, for 16 hours a day, I’d be finished in… roughly 21 years. And that’s just the free ones I actually can understand. I’ve been threatening to learn to read Japanese and Russian for a while, but if occurs to me now that if I do, I’ll have yet more books to read.

As it is, I already have over 200 books on the thing. Most of them science fiction paperbacks. If you stacked them one on top of another, they’d reach 12.5 feet high. I haven’t had to charge it in a month. Pretty impressive for something that’s only a third of an inch thick.

In a single copy of the New York Times, there is more information than your average medieval peasant was exposed to in their entire life. In the Information Age, you will not be characterized by the amount of information you have available to you. You will be characterized by the quality of information you receive, the choices of what you take in.

Think about that next time somebody sends you another email with a LOLcat in it.

Was reloading the wife's grandmother's computer after a particularly nasty crash. When I attempted a Windows repair install, the mythical 0XDEADBEEF reared its ugly head not once, but three separate times.

So, yeah. I ended up formatting and wiping out the whole thing.

they lost some stuff, but the whole experience was somewhat surreal.

tom

tom

Memo From Ki-Tae Lee
To: All Samsung Employees
CEO and President,
Samsung
December 3rd, 2007

Would someone tell me how this happened? We were the fucking vanguard of graphics memory in this country. Samsung's GDDR3 was on the card to own. Then the other guy came out with a GDDR3 graphics chip. Were we scared? Hell, no. Because we hit back with a little thing called XDR. That's GDDR3 on crack. For cokehead gamers. But you know what happened next? Shut up, I'm telling you what happened–the bastards went to GDDR4. Now we're standing around with our cocks in our hands, selling XDR & GDDR3. Cokehead gamers or no, suddenly we're the chumps. Well, fuck it. We're going to GDDR5.

Sure, we could go to GDDR4 next, like the competition. That seems like the logical thing to do. After all, three worked out pretty well, and four is the next number after three. So let's play it safe. Let's make a more crackhead gamer RAM and call it the XDR3SuperTurbo. Why innovate when we can follow? Oh, I know why: Because we're a business, that's why!

You think it's crazy? It is crazy. But I don't give a shit. From now on, we're the ones who have the speed in the memory game. Are they the best a man can get? Fuck, no. Samsung is the best a man can get.

What part of this don't you understand? If GDDR2 is good, and three is better, obviously five would make us the best fucking memory that ever existed. Comprende? We didn't claw our way to the top of the memory game by clinging to the GDDR2 industry standard. We got here by taking chances. Well, GDDR5 is the biggest chance of all.

Here's the report from Engineering. Someone put it in the bathroom: I want to wipe my ass with it. They don't tell me what to invent–I tell them. And I'm telling them to stick enough transistors on there to call it GDDR5. I don't care how. Make the chips so thin they're invisible. Put some on the handle. I don't care if they have to make the ram hang halfway off the motherboard, just do it!

You're taking the “safety” part of “safety electronics” too literally, grandma. Cut the strings and soar. Let's hit it. Let's roll. This is our chance to make memory history. Let's dream big. All you have to do is say that GDDR5 can happen, and it will happen. If you aren't on board, then fuck you. And if you're on the board, then fuck you and your father. Hey, if I'm the only one who'll take risks, I'm sure as hell happy to hog all the glory when the GDDR5 card becomes the gaming video card for the U.S. of “this is how we game now” A.

People said we couldn't go to three. It'll cost a fortune to manufacture, they said. Well, we did it. Now some egghead in a lab is screaming “Five's crazy?” Well, perhaps he'd be more comfortable in the labs at Sony, working on fucking electrics. Cell processing chips, my white ass!

Maybe I'm wrong. Maybe we should just ride in SanDisk's wake and make flash USB drives. Ha! Not on your fucking life! The day I shadow a penny-ante outfit like SanDisk is the day I leave the silicon game for good, and that won't happen until the day I die!

The market? Listen, we make the market. All we have to do is put her out there with a little jingle. It's as easy as, “Hey, shaving with anything less than GDDR5 is like playing Warcraft on a Commodore 64.” Or “It'll be so smooth, I could snort lines off of your monitor.” Try “Your frame rate is going to be so friggin' fluid, someone's gonna walk up and confuse it with a urinal.”

I know what you're thinking now: What'll people say? Mew mew mew. Oh, no, what will people say?! Grow the fuck up. When you're on top, people talk. That's the price you pay for being on top. Which Samsung is, always has been, and forever shall be, Amen, GDDR5, sweet Jesus in heaven.

Stop. I just had a stroke of genius. Are you ready? Open your mouth, baby birds, cause Mama's about to drop you one sweet, fat nightcrawler. Here she comes: Put another microcontroller on that fucker, too. That's right. GDDR5, two microcontrollers, and make the second one a porn downloader. You heard me–the second controller downloads porn while you play your games. It's a whole new way to think about gaming. Don't question it. Don't say a word. Just key the music, and call the chorus girls, because we're on the edge–the bleeding edge–and I feel like gaming.