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Intel

Submission + - Intel's Penryn & Nehalem Cores: New Details Em

Submitted by 4130-Chromoly
4130-Chromoly writes: Roughly two years ago, Intel talked about their proposed "tick-tock" product strategy which entailed the shift to a new process technology followed by an enhanced or entirely new microarchitecture approximately every year. In this article, HotHardware.Com has new details regarding 2007's "tick", the Penryn core, and next year's "tock", the Nehalem core, which also all ushers in significant changes with Intel's platform architecture as a whole. According to this new information, Nehalem can execute two threads per core, and in some configurations will feature on-die memory controllers and integrated graphics cores.
Television

Submission + - Atheist Debate: Should we rid the mind of God?

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: The video from this debate is now online. It was between [theist] Alister McGrath, Professor of Historical Theology at Oxford University, author of "Dawkins' God" and "The Dawkins Delusion" and Peter Atkins, Professor of Chemistry at Oxford University, well-known atheist and supporter of Richard Dawkins. As seen on Channel 4's "The trouble with atheism". This event was organised jointly by The University of Edinburgh Philosophy Society and The Christian Union. The lecture theatre it was held in seats 500, and it overflowed. More than 300 people had to be turned away.
Space

Submission + - Spaceport America Takes Off

Submitted by
SeaDour
SeaDour writes: "Spaceport America, being built north of Las Cruces, New Mexico, is finally becoming a reality and is set to become the world's first commercial spaceport. Governor Bill Richardson recently secured 33 million dollars from the state legislature for the final design, and a proposed 0.25% sales tax increase in Dona Ana County, where the facility is to be constructed, is expected to bring an additional 6.5 million dollars per year (if approved by voters next week). Richard Branson, the head of upstart Virgin Galactic, on Monday agreed to lease the facility for 27.5 million dollars over twenty years. If all continues to go as planned, SpaceShipTwo will make its first suborbital joy ride in two to three years."
Republicans

Submission + - McCain's MySpace Misuses IP, Pays Consequences

Submitted by Nakanai_de
Nakanai_de writes: We all know how the 2008 Presidential candidates are looking to integrate their campaigns with the internet as much as possible. It should therefore come as no surprise that Clinton, McCain, Edwards, and Obama all have MySpace pages. Well, as TechCrunch and Newsvine are reporting, John McCain's page used a template made by Mike Davidson without proper attribution, and even used images on his server without permission. As payback, Mr. Davidson changed one of the links so that instead of listing contact info, McCain now proclaims his support for gay marriage!
Software

Submission + - 20 Million Copies of Vista Sold

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Microsoft has sold 20 million copies of Vista during the first two months of availability to consumers. This exceeds the same period following XP's release by 18%, during which time 17 million copies were sold. It seems as though the general public isn't as turned off to the new product as those on Slashdot (and the Apple commercials) would like to believe.
Security

Submission + - Wireless LAN security myths that won't die

Submitted by
maggard
maggard writes: "George Ou is a Ziff Davis / TechRepublic writer who actually knows his beat: Security.

Several years ago he wrote "The six dumbest ways to secure a wireless LAN", which articulated what most folks who do WiFi security (as opposed to repeat rumors about it) already knew. The article is still well regarded as a powerful document to be presented in IT staff discussions and to under-informed IT decision makers ("PHBs") dispelling accrued misinformation.

Ou has just written a follow-up column revisiting wireless security, what works, what is worth the effort, and what is just wasting time & effort that could be better spent on real security measures. Titled "Wireless LAN security myths that won't die" he makes strong cases against useless & even counter-productive WiFi security technologies & strategies.

Best of all, Ou names names and provides supporting hyperlinks, all in about 15 tightly written paragraphs. The entire article is well worth reading, however for general WiFi owners users the last two sentences in the article are probably the most important:

For small businesses and homes, all you need to do is use WPA-PSK security with a random alpha-numeric pass-phrase that's a minimum of 10 characters long. If WPA security isn't available to you, at least run WEP as a 10-minute deterrence mechanism.


I've regularly seen folks post here about how they're "hiding" their SSID "for security"; here's an easy introduction to the fact you're actually lessening your security by doing so. Also for those relying on static IP / MAC address filtering this is a reminder that all of your painful manual management, time that could have been spent on other more productive duties, can be trivially undone in a few seconds to minutes of automated cracking."
Portables (Apple)

Submission + - The world's first iPod - made in 1924

Submitted by
surburban
surburban writes: "The Mikiphone was the grandfather of portable music players and was billed as an orchestra of music in the palm of your hand. The player was made in Switzerland and marked a trend for portable players. It comes in a silver tin and can play 10in records. But before you can listen to your favourite tracks, you have to assemble together the Mikiphone which was tricky without the manual. Instead of batteries, the Mikiphone is a wind up gadget, and instead of headphones or speakers, a resonator is used to play the sounds."
IBM

Submission + - IBM to demonstrate high-speed chip

Submitted by
Hedbonker
Hedbonker writes: "http://www.mercurynews.com/breakingnews/ci_5523978 IBM will demonstrate a new chipset today that can download a high-definition movie in a single second, compared to the current time of 30 minutes or more. The company said its optical transceiver chipset transfers information eight times as fast as currently available components. Such high speeds would have a significant impact on the way people share and access media and informmation, from video to music to corporate financial data."
Role Playing (Games)

Rethinking the MMOG 163

Posted by Zonk from the do-it-better-and-make-it-funner dept.
Gamasutra is running a piece right now called Rethinking the MMO. Game designer Neil Sorens takes issue with some of the consistent blights on the traditional Massive gaming experience, like the phenomenon of the 'ordinary' hero, and the extremely large time investment required to 'get anywhere'. Though he doesn't offer a lot in the way of concrete solutions to these issues, his appraisal of the genre is sure to spark a few conversations: "As long as developers and publishers do nothing but copy what is successful, they--and gamers--will continue to miss out on these games' staggeringly awesome potential. And as long as [MMOGs] are designed by and for stat geeks (whom I know and love and sometimes am) with little regard for traditional game design fundamentals, they will continue to waste that potential."
Movies

Submission + - Movie Pirates Try to Throw Dogs Off Scent

Submitted by YesL
YesL writes: Movie pirates are spraying chemicals on their bootleg DVDs to confuse two U.S.-loaned dogs that helped Malaysian authorities sniff out nearly 1 million illegal discs, an official said Monday. The two female Labradors have been trained to detect polycarbonate chemicals used in manufacturing discs. But officials received a tip that bootleggers are using chemical sprays to throw Lucky and Flo off the scent, said Fahmi Kassim, the Domestic Trade Ministry's enforcement chief in southern Johor state.
Space

Submission + - NASA Institute for Advanced Concepts

Submitted by
Maggie McKee
Maggie McKee writes: "NASA will likely shut down its Institute for Advanced Concepts, which funds research into futuristic — and often far-out — ideas in spaceflight and aeronautics, officials say. "This is one of the few places at NASA that embodies far-thinking, new stuff," NASAWatch editor Keith Cowing says. "When they're cutting stuff like this, they're desperate, or stupid, or both." The move was apparently motivated by a lack of money in NASA's budget — a problem that led to much criticism last year, when the agency cut science funding to pay for overruns in the shuttle program. But shutting down the institute to save $4 million in NASA's annual $17 billion budget shows NASA is now "going after nickels and dimes," Cowing says."
Censorship

Submission + - NFL Caught Abusing the DMCA

Submitted by
Implied Oral Consent
Implied Oral Consent writes: "You know how the NFL puts up those notices before every game saying "This telecast is copyrighted by the NFL for the private use of our audience, and any other use of this telecast or of any pictures, descriptions or accounts of the game without the NFL's consent is prohibited"? Well, Ars Technica is reporting that Wendy Seltzer thought that that was over-reaching and posted a video of the notice on YouTube. Predictably, the NFL filed a DMCA Take Down notice on the clip. But Ms. Seltzer knows her rights, so she filed a DMCA Counter Notice. This is when the NFL violated the DMCA, by filing another Take Down notice instead of taking the issue to court — their only legitimate option, according to the DMCA. Unfortunately for the NFL, Ms. Seltzer is a law professor, an EFF lawyer, and the founder of Chilling Effects. Oops!"
Media

Submission + - How MediaSentry Poisons P2P

Submitted by
Quid custodiet ipsos custodes?
Quid custodiet ipsos custodes? writes: "Ars Technica has an interesting tour of MediaSentry's operations. MediaSentry, best known for putting fake files on P2P networks, apparently has no less than 60 employees, 2,000 geographically diverse co-located servers, and 9 GBps of bandwidth which it uses to attack P2P networks that serve files it has been hired to protect. They use no less than four different tactics: decoy files, some of which are now advertisements; spoofing results to P2P network search requests; spamming uploaders with download request to eat their bandwidth; and swarming, where they join BitTorrent or similar swarms and serve bogus data to slow or corrupt the downloads. While some of this has been known for a while now, it would be interesting to see how this admission to the details of their operation plays in court. Given that the RIAA has offered little more than screenshots as evidence on infringement, could they not be mistakenly accusing people based on spoofs they paid MediaSentry to create?"

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