August 26th, 2004
That's C as in carbon, not C the language. The Register reports that researchers at Toyota's central R&D labs in Nagakute, Japan, have developed a method of growing near-flawless silicon carbide crystals up to 7cm across, opening up the possibility for use of silicon carbide in place of pure silicon in electronics. Silicon carbide withstands higher voltages than silicon, carries current more efficiently, and can operate at much higher temperatures and endure intense radiation.
Throw another planet on the barbie: In other news, a "super-Earth" planet has been spotted orbiting mu Arae, a star only about 50 light-years from Earth and visible with the naked eye in the Southern constellation of the Altar. The newly discovered planet is approximately 14 times the Earth's mass and has a gassy atmosphere, but is very close to its star, taking only 9.5 days to complete an orbit. (One wonders what that atmosphere is composed of .... aluminum vapor? It's gotta be hot as hell.)
"No FUD, please, we're British." Closer to home, the UK's Advertising Standards Association ruled that a Microsoft ad attacking Linux is misleading, and has ordered Microsoft to change the ad copy. Microsoft's ad purported to be a comparison between running costs of Linux and Windows 2003 Server, and found Windows 2003 to be ten times cheaper; the ASA found that in fact, when examined, what the ad was really comparing was the cost of buying and running an IBM zSeries mainframe vs. a commodity 900MHz Xeon box. Yeah, sure, that's a fair comparison.... NOT!
"Hey, look, a wolf!" Almost last and almost certainly least, today's reported "electronic jihad" failed to materialize. Did anyone really expect it to?
And just so you get your daily ration of weirdness, a gang of scrap metal dealers has stolen a 12m iron bridge near the Bosnian town of Mostar, unofficial capital of Herzegovina. Built by the Austro-Hungarian Empire, the bridge had survived three wars before being stolen and sold for scrap to a local scrapyard. Most of the parts of the historic bridge were melted down before they could be identified and saved.