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Software

Submission + - SoftMaker Office 2008 vs. OpenOffice.org 3.1 (infoworld.com)

Submitted by
snydeq
snydeq writes: "InfoWorld's Randall Kennedy examines would-be Microsoft Office competitors SoftMaker Office and OpenOffice.org and finds the results surprising. OpenOffice.org — frequently cited as the most viable Office competitor — has pushed for Office interoperability in version 3.1, adding import support for files in Office 2007's native Open XML format. But, as Kennedy found in Office-compatibility testing, that support remains mostly skin deep. 'Factor in OpenOffice's other well-documented warts — buggy Java implementation, CPU-hogging auto-update system, quirky font rendering — and it's easy to see why the vast majority of IT shops continue to reject this pretender to the Microsoft Office throne,' Kennedy writes. SoftMaker Office, however, 'shows that good things often still come in small packages.' Geared more toward mobile computing, the suite's 'compact footprint and low overhead make it ideal for underpowered systems, and its excellent compatibility with Office 2003 file formats means it's a safe choice for heterogeneous environments where external data access isn't a priority.'"
Earth

Submission + - The Incredible Shrinking Genome (bytesizebio.net) 2

Submitted by Shipud
Shipud writes: Mammalian genomes have been shrinking for about 65 million years, since the dinosaur extinction. Why? And why were mammalian genomes 3 times larger than they are today before the dinosaurs went extinct? A new article in Genome Biology and Evolution tries to explain this bizarre finding, and why the genomes of mammals (but not of other living groups) are still shrinking.
AMD

Submission + - AMD releases super-overclocker 'TWKR' CPUs

Submitted by
jdb2
jdb2 writes: "As reported by Legit Reviews AMD has released a limited number of 'TWKR' edition CPUs, also known as AMD Phenom II '42' Black Edition, to a select ( and lucky ) few of the extreme overclocking community as a "Thank you" for their support. These CPUs are basically cherry-picked Phenom II X4 955 BE chips that can take significantly more voltage at the cost of high leakage current. Although these CPUs run hotter, AMD reports that they will at least overclock 100MHz higher on air and 200MHz on liquid-nitrogen/liquid-helium cooling at the same or lower voltage than that of the 955 BE. Confirming this, Tom's Hardware was able to get this chip past 6.4GHz at 1.75v using liquid nitrogen and Legit Reviews was able to reach 4.0GHz at 1.46v using air cooling and 6.6GHz at 1.8v using liquid nitrogen. More impressive results are expected with sophisticated liquid helium setups — official pictures of the CPU from AMD are available here as well as a new extreme overclocking video which is available here.

Unfortunately, only around 100 of these chips are available and are "not for sale" being given away "as is" with no warranty. According to AMD there are currently no plans to make these available for sale.

With that said, there is still a chance of getting one as Maingear and Tom's Hardware are both holding random drawings in which 2 chips will be given away."
Microsoft

Submission + - One Year Later, 'Dead XP' Still Going Strong (infoworld.com) 1

Submitted by
snydeq
snydeq writes: "Microsoft pulled the plug on Windows XP a year ago today, no longer selling new copies in most venues. Yet according to a report from InfoWorld, various downgrade paths to XP are keeping the operating system very much alive, particularly among businesses. In fact, despite Microsoft trumping Vista as the most successful version of Windows ever sold, more than half of business PCs have subsequently downgraded Vista-based machines to XP, according to data provided by community-based performance-monitoring network of PCs. Microsoft recently planned to further limit the ability to downgrade to XP now that Windows 7 is in the pipeline, but backlash against the licensing scheme prompted the company to change course, extending downgrade rights on new PCs from April 2010 to April 2011."
Operating Systems

Submission + - Ubuntu: Still Popular? (starryhope.com)

Submitted by
PoorOldFlick
PoorOldFlick writes: "There's no way to say for sure which distro is the most popular and to know exactly how many people use Ubuntu. That being said, we thought it would be interesting to take a fresh look at Ubuntu's popularity. Is Ubuntu gaining in popularity? Is it being used by more people? Are more people searching and talking about Ubuntu?"
The Internet

Submission + - The Real Difference Between Cheap and Free 1

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: The Times is reporting on an interesting spat between Malcolm Gladwell, author of The "Tipping Point", "Blink" and "Outliers", and Chris Anderson, Wired contributor and author of The Long Tail: Why The Future of Business is Selling Less of More.

The source of conflict is a fascinating review of Anderson's book by Gladwell in the New Yorker, in which Gladwell addresses Anderson's argument that technology applies an inexorable downward pressure on the price of intellectual, property. Regardless of whose position you agree with, the debate is an interesting one, even though I've yet to see an answer to the question that if it really is a race to the bottom, what happens to society once we get there?
Government

Submission + - US govt Launches Web Site to Track IT Spending

Submitted by andy1307
andy1307 writes:

According to this article in the Washington Post, Vivek Kundra, the federal chief information officer, on Tuesday announced a new Web site designed to track more than $70 billion in government information technology spending, showing all contracts held by major firms within every agency. The site shows detailed information about whether IT contracts are being monitored and budgets being met. The data also show which contracts were won through a competitive process or in a no-bid method, which has been criticized by good-government advocates for excluding firms from business opportunities. Each prime contractor is listed as well as the status of that project; sub-contractors are not yet shown on the site.

The website is http://usaspending.gov/. The view dashboard link has already been slashdoted.

Security

Submission + - Nine-Ball Attacks Spread New Click Fraud Tactics (washingtonpost.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: From The Washington Post's Security Fix blog comes news of a new Trojan horse program that takes click fraud to the next level. The Trojan, dubbed FFsearcher by Atlanta-based SecureWorks, was among the pieces of malware installed by sites hacked with the Nine-Ball mass compromise that attacked some 40,000 Web sites this month. The Trojan takes advantage of Google's "Adsense for Search," application programming interface (API), which allows Web sites to embed Google search results alongside the usual Google AdSense ads. The story notes that while most search hijackers give themselves away on the victim's machine by redirecting the browser through some no-name search engine, FFsearcher 'converts every search a victim makes through Google.com, so that each query is invisibly redirected through the attackers' own Web sites, via Google's Custom Search API. Meanwhile, the Trojan manipulates the victim's PC and browser so that the victim never actually sees the attacker-controlled Web site that is hijacking the search, but instead sees the search results as though they were returned directly from Google.com (and with Google.com in the victim browser's address bar, not the address of the attacker controlled site). Adding to the stealth is the fact that search results themselves aren't altered by the attackers, who are merely going after the referral payments should victims click on any of the displayed ads. What's more, the attackers aren't diverting clicks or ad revenue away from advertisers or publishers, as in traditional click fraud: They are simply forcing Google to pay commissions that it wouldn't otherwise have to pay.
United States

Submission + - Open Government Initiative Enters Phase Three

Submitted by
circletimessquare
circletimessquare writes: "The Obama administration opened a discussion forum in January of this year which has become an electronic suggestion box. It is now entering stage three, following brainstorm and discussion phases: the draft phase, in which the top subject matter is codified into suggestions for the government. 'Ultimately, the visitors advanced more than 3,900 ideas, which in turn spawned 11,000 comments that received 210,000 thumb votes. The result? Three of the top 10 most popular ideas called for legalizing marijuana, and two featured conspiracy theories about Mr. Obama's true place of birth.'"
Biotech

Submission + - DNA suggests three basic human groups (washingtonpost.com) 1

Submitted by
Death Metal
Death Metal writes: "All of Earth's people, according to a new analysis of the genomes of 53 populations, fall into just three genetic groups. They are the products of the first and most important journey our species made — the walk out of Africa about 70,000 years ago by a small fraction of ancestral Homo sapiens."
Earth

Submission + - Diamond CPUs to follow silicon (pcauthority.com.au)

Submitted by Slatterz
Slatterz writes: Analysts at Gartner have got all excited about the fact that carbon chips are now ready for mass production. The company reported that carbon chips appear destined to supplant silicon as the material of choice for future semiconductors. Gartner's oracles foresee that carbon can surpass silicon's abilities in thermal performance, frequency range and perhaps even superconductivity. Dean Freeman, senior analyst at Gartner, said that diamonds will probably be the first carbon chip seen. Diamond offers 10 times the heat dissipation of silicon and has been used for 40nm to 15 diamond films on silicon wafers.
Power

Submission + - Wind could provide 100% of world energy needs (mongabay.com)

Submitted by Damien1972
Damien1972 writes: Wind power may be the key to a clean energy revolution: a new study in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Science finds that wind power could provide for the entire world's current and future energy needs.

To estimate the earth's capacity for wind power, the researchers first sectioned the globe into areas of approximately 3,300 square kilometers (2,050 square miles) and surveyed local wind speeds every six hours. They imagined 2.5 megawatt turbines crisscrossing the terrestrial globe, excluding "areas classified as forested, areas occupied by permanent snow or ice, areas covered by water, and areas identified as either developed or urban," according to the paper. They also included the possibility of 3.6 megawatt offshore wind turbines, but restricted them to 50 nautical miles off the coast and to oceans depths less than 200 meters.

Using this criteria the researchers found that wind energy could not only supply all of the world's energy requirements, but it could provide over forty times the world's current electrical consumption and over five times the global use of total energy needs.
Graphics

Submission + - Augmented reality shaping future of games (pcauthority.com.au)

Submitted by Slatterz
Slatterz writes: Microsoft's Natal can recognise a player's skeletal structure, as well as doing some sophisticated translation of body physics into in-game movement. As a control mechanism this is fascinating, but next step is to merge the game graphics with the real world. Now basic examples of augmented reality (AR) are being shown using a mobile phone, unlike previous demos which have involved walking around with a large backpack strapped to your body. A game titled Arhrrrr blends live action video overlayed with game graphics. The processing is taken care of by Nvidia's new Tegra platform, while the game's "maps" are generated by pointing the phones camera (in this case 5MP) at a 2D drawing/printout lying on a table. The end result is a 3D world which seems to spring forth in realtime, with buildings popping up, as players move the real world around the game "map". This story shows two other interesting videos demonstrating AR, including the ability to add real life objects into the virtual game world and have the gameplay respond and react accordingly.
Censorship

Submission + - Chinese citizens plan internet boycott (pcauthority.com.au)

Submitted by Slatterz
Slatterz writes: Internet users in China are planning a day-long boycott in protest of the country's controversial new filtering laws. Protestors are calling on users in China to log off the internet on 1 July to protest the country's mandated Green Dam filtering tool. The Chinese government is mandating that all computers sold in the country be bundled with the software. While both the government and the software company behind the Green Dam software claim that the tool can be disabled and is only intended to filter out pornographic content, critics have charged that the software will allow the state to gain tighter control on user access and more closely monitor user activity.

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