I’m pretty late in noticing this, but the Microsoft Flight Simulator is no more. Microsoft shut down ACES Studio, the internal group that developed Microsoft Flight Simulator, back in January 2009.

I think this is a shame because the Flight Simulator was one of the oldest personal computer programs still being actively developed. Although some sources (including Microsoft) state that the first version was for the IBM PC in 1982, the program actually dates back further than that.

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Here’s an article from the Wall Street Journal with a startling title: Nuclear Ambitions: Amateur Scientists Get a Reaction From Fusion. It focuses on amateur researchers who have built their own fusion reactors.

Their fusion reactors, or fusors, aren’t used for power generation. That’s because a fusor consumes more energy than it produces. Fusors have been used commercially as neutron sources, but the interest among these researchers seems to be improving the device itself.

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The Boston Herald published an interesting article recently: Designers on quest to build $12 computer. The idea seems to be to develop educational software for inexpensive 8-bit computers that are commonly available in China and India. What caught my attention was the mention that those 8-bit computer are based on the Apple II.

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Robert Scoble wrote a thought-provoking article titled Has/How/Why tech blogging has failed you. It addressed an idea I have been considering for a while: are technology weblogs just not as interesting and relevant as they used to be? Have they become too focused on the business of ideas and not the ideas themselves?

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