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AMD

Submission + - AMD Announces Release Date for Barcelona in Q3 (yahoo.com)

Submitted by
An anonymous reader writes: Rumors said the release wouldn't be until late Q4 but an August ship date is now promised. They're only releasing up to 2.0 GHz processors at first, with the top speed devices coming out later in the year.
Robotics

Submission + - Robots, With Fricken Laser Beams on Their.....

Submitted by Blitz22
Blitz22 writes: Autonomous robots with weapons? http://www.usatoday.com/tech/news/robotics/2007-06 -28-robot-soldiers-tasers_N.htm?csp=34 By adding Tasers to robots it already makes for the military, iRobot says it hopes to give soldiers and law enforcement a defensive, non-lethal tool. But some observers fear such developments could ultimately lead to robots capable of deciding on their own when to shoot and kill. "It's one more step in that direction," said John Pike, director of GlobalSecurity.org, an Alexandria, Va.-based military research organization. "It is not the first step in that direction, but I think at some point toward the end of the next decade, you're going to start seeing RoboCops, or a Terminator," Pike said, referring to a pair of 1980s robot-themed sci-fi films. "We may see autonomous robots capable of inflicting lethal force."
Intel

Submission + - Power consumption and the future of computing (arstechnica.com)

Submitted by mrdirkdiggler
mrdirkdiggler writes: ArsTechnica's Hannibal takes a look at how the power concerns that currently plague datacenters are shaping next-generation computing technologies at the levels of the microchip, the board-level interconnect, and the datacenter. In a nutshell, engineers are now willing to take on a lot more hardware overhead in their designs (thermal sensors, transistors that put components into sleep states, buffers and filters at the ends of links, etc.) in order to get maximum power efficiency. The article, which has lots of nice graphics to illustrate the main points, mostly focuses on the specific technologies that Intel has in the pipeline to address these issues.
Democrats

Submission + - John Edwards on IP and open source

Submitted by goombah99
goombah99 writes: John Edward, the presidential candidate and lawyer, is emerging as quite techno savy. He has been guest hosting on Lawrence Lessigs Blog, giving his view on the current imbalance between property right protection and the good of public access. And he has become the first presidential candidate to support "open source code" for election systems in addition to voter verified paper records. He's even personally using a twitter.
XBox (Games)

Submission + - The Cost of Gaming and the Current Review System (gamerswithjobs.com)

Submitted by
Mordiceius
Mordiceius writes: "Sean "Elysium" Sands and Cory "Demiurge" Banks have two great articles up on Gamerswithjobs.com right now. The first (http://www.gamerswithjobs.com/node/32864) talking about the high prices of current "next gen" games and if they are really justified. The second (http://www.gamerswithjobs.com/node/32879) talks about if the current way games are reviewed is a good method or if there should be a better way. The two articles really give a good view of where the industry is and why today's gamers view it as they do."
Biotech

Submission + - Scientists take step to making synthetic life (jcvi.org)

Submitted by xLittleP
xLittleP writes: Researchers at the J. Craig Venter Institute claimed to accomplish the "First Bacterial Genome Transplantation Changing One Species to Another". This is seen by many as a breakthrough in the field of synthetic life, because it demonstrates the possibility of producing custom designed bacteria capable of producing biofuels from greenhouse gas. While this Rueters article is less optimistic, Craig Venter tells Edge, "This is a major advance in the field of synthetic genomics. We now know we can create a synthetic organism. It's not a question of 'if', or 'how', but 'when', and in this regard, think weeks and months, not years." Craig Venter, you may remember, was a pioneer in Shotgun Sequencing of the human genome at Celera Genomics, a private endeavor running parallel to the Human Genome Project.
Nintendo

Submission + - The Beginners Guide To DS homebrew (scorpei.com)

Submitted by
Simon "scorpei" van de Berg
Simon "scorpei" van de Berg writes: "I've released my Beginners Guide to DS homebrew sometime ago but during the recent few months there have been tons of developement in the DS homebrew world. Now that I have had some spare time I've been really busy the past few days to update my guide and make it more in tune with current developements. I've finished my work for this revision and well, here it is ;):

http://nds.scorpei.com/TBGTDSHB.html

"I try to aim at people new to the scene, and explain a bit about the history and current aspects of homebrew. Though I do not get to technical (as that would most probably confuse readers), my guide is a nice step-up for starting out brewers. Once you have read my guide and understand it well, you can follow the links in my guide to learn more specific things about for example programming with paLIB for the NDS.""
Hardware Hacking

Submission + - Steampunk-style Problem Indicator (flickr.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: This is a flickr photoset of the construction of a steampunk-styled Problem Light — a light that comes on in the event of a problem, though it does not provide any information about the actual problem. Simply that one has been detected. Quote from flickr: Think of a smoke alarm...but more general. It's been posted on Brass Goggles, BoingBoing, and TeamDroid already. The photo set is detailed enough to follow in building your own, in case you find yourself aboard an airship and wary of some sort of undefined problems.
Supercomputing

Submission + - NVIDIA Tesla High Performance Computing Products (pcper.com)

Submitted by
SuperComPute
SuperComPute writes: "NVIDIA is taking the wraps off a new product line dubbed Tesla comprising of desktop, deskside and rack mount server based hardware solutions for high-performance supercomputing. They are offering up add-in cards that will install in existing systems, a "deskside" solution that is really dual add-in cards in an external case and 1U rack mount systems featuring up to four of these cards. Basically rebranded G80 graphics cores, the Tesla line up will not have monitor connections and will still use SLI connections for some data communication. Claiming up to 2 Teraflops per 1U server, NVIDIA is hoping that this will make a big impact in the HPC world. PC Perspective has a nice summary of the products being launched today with photos, specs and prices starting at $1500."
Software

Submission + - How can we keep software from being lost forever?

Submitted by TheRealMindChild
TheRealMindChild writes: Recently, I obtained a contract who ran some system critical applications on Windows NT 4.0 Embedded machines. They have been having problems with the system crashing and the application failing. Inspecting the machine, core DLL files were corrupt enough that they weren't even recognized as executables by utilities like depends.exe. It was pretty obvious that the system image needed rebuilt (no backup... how lucky). The client INSISTS that we not upgrade the system to a more recent Windows Embedded product. The previous contractor who set up the systems took all of the software with him, and convieniently, he can't be located. So I start my search for a copy of Windows NT 4.0 Embedded, somewhere... anywhere. Simply put, it can not be found, legally or otherwise. Contract issues aside, it started really getting me down that software can actually be lost in time. It is a sad state of affairs, as such things can be learning tools for the future, if even only about the history of how things progressed. Is there some sane manner of which we can keep this from happening? What are some solutions?

On a similar note, Magnussoft Zeta 1.5, released this year, seems also as impossible to find anymore. Ignoring the legal implications, this bit of BeOS history is quite a milestone for so many reasons. I went through contacting everyone that has even reviewed this operating system, and they all either threw it away or gave it to a friend (who convieniently doesn't have it anymore either). Something needs to preserve our software history, but I am completely lost on what I/we can do.
Biotech

Submission + - FAA plan looks to clean up the skies (networkworld.com)

Submitted by
coondoggie
coondoggie writes: "On top of its recently announced plan to reduce flight delays, Federal Aviation Administration officials today launched what they hope will be pan U.S. and European Union joint action plan to cut greenhouse gas emissions from aircraft. Specifically the group announced the Atlantic Interoperability Initiative to Reduce Emissions or AIRE — the first large-scale environmental plan aimed at uniting aviation players from both sides of the Atlantic.A couple things the alliance will work on: -Trajectory-based operations on the ground to minimize aircraft flight time. -Collaborative oceanic trajectory optimization, which promises major fuel reduction at cruise. http://www.networkworld.com/community/?q=node/1652 7"

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