Top 10 Brains

1. The largest brain belongs to the sperm whale: 7 kg (17.5 kg). The blue whale, the largest animal on the planet, being twice longer and thrice heavier, has a brain weighing 5 kg (12.5 pounds).

2. Human brain has an average weight of 2.7 pounds (1.2 kg), variations between 1.1 and 1.4 kg being considered normal. Our brain represents 2% of our weight, the largest brain
in the animal world compared to the body size.

3. The brain of the men is, on average, 100 grams (0.3 pounds) heavier than that of the women.

4. The largest brain of a terrestrial animal is that of the elephant: 10.5 pounds (4.78 kg). Still, the brain of the elephant makes less than 0.1% of its body weight.

5. Amongst our relatives, the primates, apes have the largest brains. The mountain gorilla (Gorilla gorilla beringei) has a 0.95 pounds (430 g) brain. Still, that of the chimpanzee is larger compared to its body size: 0.77 pounds (350 g) (a chimpanzee male is 2.5-3 times lighter than a gorilla male).

The smallest primate brain is detained by the mouse lemur (Microcebus murinus) of Madagascar: 0.004 pounds (2 g) (this is also the smallest primate in the world).

6. The largest brain of a carnivore mammal is that of the walrus (Odobenus rosmarus): 2.4 pounds (1.1 kg).

7. Domesticated animals have smaller brains than those of their wild forebears. At a similar body weight, the brain of the domestic cat (with an average value of 0.06 pounds or 30 grams) is 23.9 % lighter than that of the wild cat, the brain of the dog is 29 % lighter than that of the wolf, and the brain of the pig is 34 % lighter than that of the wild boar.

8. The octopus is known to be the most intelligent invertebrate. Its brain is made by the largest neurons (brain cells) found in nature.

An octopus brain is formed by 500 million large neurons (while the human brain is made of roughly 100 billion smaller neurons), but the intelligence of this aquatic creature is comparable with that of the apes.

9. After humans, the nature's relatively largest brain is that of the dolphin: 2 kg. A dolphin weighing 120 kg (280 pounds) has a 1.7 kg (4 pounds) brain; compared to its size, this is almost thrice than a chimp.

10. Amongst vertebrates, the smallest brain in relation with the body size seems to have belonged to a dinosaur: Stegosaurus was 6 m (20 ft) long and weighed 2 tons. Its brain was just the size of a walnut! To compensate this, the spine presented a second "brain" in the pelvic area.

AMD to Release Bulldozer in 2009

Advanced Micro Devices' President and Chief Operating Officer Dirk Meyer confirmed, during the last week’s conference call, that the chip manufacturer plans to release its next CPU

architecture, also known as Bulldozer, in 2009.

The multi-core processor will come straight in the 45-nanometer flavor. However, the 45-nanometer chips will be available only for a short period of time, as AMD will make the transition to the 32-nanometer CPU micro-architecture right after Bulldozer is introduced.

AMD will start sampling the Bulldozer chip in late 2009, but the chip will not be publicly available in the 45-nanometer technology. This means that there is a long way ahead until it finally appears in retail systems, given the fact that AMD has not even started producing chips at the 45-nanometer node.

The slow transition is mostly due to the fact that AMD's Fab 36 is currently manufacturing the company's Athlon, Phenom, Sempron and Turion families of processors, and replacing the whole technology will likely affect the manufacturing operations.

The Bulldozer chip will come as a 16-core silicon, touted by the company as the first substantially new CPU core since the original Athlon 64 processor. Moreover, the new chip will be built from scratch and will offer a solid foundation for the company's upcoming architectures. The chip is aimed at the "Sandtiger" server and workstation platforms that are expected to arrive in mid-2009.

However, the recent wave of layoffs that hit the chip manufacturer's headquarters are likely to make the company miss its deadlines. According to previous reports, the Austin and California offices are the most affected locations. While the Austin facility is working on the Barcelona and Phenom families, the Bulldozer chip is exclusively baked in California, and the layoffs will leave the company with less workforce available for the project.

Updated Web Browsers: Which One Works Best?

Back when the earliest programs for viewing Web content simply browsed flat pages of images and text, the name browser truly fit the software.

But yesterday's amateur pages have evolved into dynamic, content-rich portals and powerful online programs. For many online habitués, the do-it-all browser has become a PC's single most important program.

Recognizing that fact, Apple's Safari, Microsoft's Internet Explorer, and Mozilla's Firefox are battling to win the nod as your browser of choice. So which one should you use--Safari 3.1, Firefox 3, or Internet Explorer 8?

Apple's latest offering, Safari 3.1, preserves the company's signature focus on clean design and smooth usability, but it lacks any phishing or malware filters.

For its part, Mozilla should have applied the finishing touches to Firefox 3 by the time you read this (I tested the feature-complete beta 5 release). From under-the-hood memory improvements to a major reworking for bookmarks, version 3 represents a big step forward.

Whereas the new Firefox and Safari browsers are ready to roll, Microsoft's early beta of Internet Explorer 8 remains a work in progress. Bugs and rough edges are to be expected in a first beta intended for developers and testers. But IE 8 beta 1 provides a glimpse of new features such as WebSlices (which let sites create widgety snippets of information that you can view by clicking a bookmark button) and Activities (which add right-click menu options for looking up selected text and pages on map, translation and other sites) that will distinguish the browser Microsoft eventually releases.

Firefox, IE, and Safari are the three most popular browsers, according to Internet usage statistics, but they aren't the only ones available. So I also took a separate look at two worthwhile, free programs--Flock and Opera.

Open Source Licenses

I've been working on a small piece of software that I plan on releasing with an open source license. There are so many licenses out there that I often forget what differentiates them. So I put together a small chart outlining some of the differences.

The recent debacle with Ray Camden's blog software is a good example of what can happen when you don't have a clear license. Some open source licenses require derivatives to be open source. Other licenses allow derivatives to be sold commercially, or sub-licensed (this is what Apple does with Darwin - which is based on BSD).

I picked out the some of the most popular licenses to compare. A full text copy of each license may be found at the Open Source Institute.

	Apache	GPL	LGPL	BSD	MIT
Disclaimer of liability	x	x	x	x	x
Preserve Copyright Notice	x	x	x	x	x
Can be used in commercial closed source software	x	-	*	x	x
Can be sublicensed	*	-	-	*	x
Prevents the authors name from being used to promote derived works.	x	x	x	x	-

x = yes
- = no
* = under certain circumstances, yes

Are there any other points to compare?

My Disclaimer

I am not an attorney, and this article is based upon my interpretations of the licenses, which may be incorrect. This information has been posted for my own use. It in no way constitutes legal advice. You should hire an attorney and read the licenses yourself before making any decisions.

Additionally any comments posted by third parties should not be taken as legal advice.