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Education

Gaming Skills Directly Linked to Surgical Skills 54

Posted by Zonk from the all-that-trauma-center-paid-off dept.
Orinthe writes "According to Reuters, a new study involving 33 surgeons at a New York hospital shows 'a strong correlation between video game skills and a surgeon's capabilities'. A statement by the senior author of the study even suggests the use of video games as a training tool for surgeons. Another of the study's authors cautions parents to curb excessive gaming, however: 'spending that much time playing video games is not going to help their child's chances of getting into medical school'."
Announcements

Submission + - The Sky is Falling

Submitted by Chicken Little
Chicken Little writes: The sky is falling... in about 29 years. FTA "Circle your calendar. April 13th, 2036 could be a really, really bad day on planet Earth. A group of astronauts and engineers warns that an asteroid may pass uncomfortably close to Earth that day. The chances it will actually hit are just one in 45,000, but even at those odds, the scientists warn, the United Nations should consider a response."
The Internet

Submission + - Viacom to license content to Joost

Submitted by CUatTHEFINISH
CUatTHEFINISH writes: Media conglomerate Viacom is expected to announce a licensing deal with Joost, a new Internet service that specializes in commercial video content. The anticipated deal, which follows the recent collapse of similar talks between Viacom and YouTube parent Google, involves licensing hundreds of hours of programming from Viacom cable networks such as MTV, Comedy Central and Spike as well as movies made by its Paramount studios.
Data Storage

Google Releases Paper on Disk Reliability 267

Posted by Zonk from the fun-saturday-night-reading dept.
oski4410 writes "The Google engineers just published a paper on Failure Trends in a Large Disk Drive Population. Based on a study of 100,000 disk drives over 5 years they find some interesting stuff. To quote from the abstract: 'Our analysis identifies several parameters from the drive's self monitoring facility (SMART) that correlate highly with failures. Despite this high correlation, we conclude that models based on SMART parameters alone are unlikely to be useful for predicting individual drive failures. Surprisingly, we found that temperature and activity levels were much less correlated with drive failures than previously reported.'"
AMD

Submission + - AMD: "Barcelona" 40% faster than "Clov

Submitted by Dysfnctnl85
Dysfnctnl85 writes: AMD is claiming that the launch of their Barcelona chipset will represent a shift in focus for the company from price to performance. A ZDNet Blog cites that the 65nm Clovertown will be available later this year and "rather concentrate on price, AMD are instead emphasizing performance." Also from the blog: "Intel is eager to claw back some of the server market share from AMD, and this is where Clovertown comes in. Clovertown is the codename for Intel's latest quad-core Xeon 5300 line. The Xeon 5300 line will represent excellent value for money since Intel plans on pricing them the same as its dual core Xeon 5100 processors. That could make things tough for AMD."
Encryption

Submission + - AACS says hack can be contained

Submitted by Bart
Bart writes: Ars Technica reports that the AACS Licensing Authiroty is doing some damage control today on the AACS hack that effects both Blu-ray and HD DVD (previous /. coverage). From the article, "The statement was firm in expressing the viewpoint that this attack is not a wholesale attack on AACS, nor does it represent a serious threat to AACS. 'Instead,' the statement reads, 'it illustrates the need for all AACS licensees to follow the Compliance and Robustness Rules set forth in the AACS license agreements to help ensure that product implementations are not compromised.'" The group thinks that the attack can be thrwarted, and while Ars seems to aggree, they suspect another hack will soon follow.

Cox May replace its own DVRs with TiVos 223

Posted by Hemos from the eat-a-box dept.
Controlio writes "According to a posting by user BrettStah on the TiVo Community Forums, Cox Cable is currently circulating a survey to gauge customer's interest in TiVo services. From the survey, 'While Cox currently offers its own DVR service, the Cox DVR may soon be powered by TiVo, and include the features that TiVo owners have come to expect. If Cox were to offer digital cable service with a TiVo branded DVR for about the same price as you are currently paying for satellite service each month, how likely would you be to switch from satellite TV to Cox cable that featured this TiVo branded DVR service?'"

Microsoft May Delay Windows Vista Again 482

Posted by Zonk from the redux-redux dept.
UltimaGuy writes to mention a Reuters report, stating that Vista may be delayed again, this time by up to three months. From the article: " The research note, released to clients [by the Gartner Group] on Monday, said the new Windows Vista operating system is too complex to be able to meet Microsoft's targeted November release for volume license customers and January launch for retail consumers. A Microsoft spokeswoman said the company disagreed with the Gartner report and it was still on track to meet its launch dates."

It Does Little and Not Very Well 318

Posted by Hemos from the unfortunante-path dept.
wiredog writes "A Washington Post (frryyy) review of the Nokia 770 Internet Tablet, a handheld Linux device. The reviewer complains about the lack of keyboard, poor WiFi implementation, outdated software, non-standard memory card, and almost as many crashes as an unpatched Win98 install."

Oracle and PostgreSQL Debate 330

Posted by Zonk from the warring-dbas dept.
Mark Brunelli writes DBAs are talking about the merits of the open source PostgreSQL database management system (DBMS) as compared to Oracle - and their opinions truly run the gamut. DBAs responding to the interview said they liked the low cost and ease of use of the open source database, while others said that Oracle's rich feature cannot be ignored. Still others talked about how well the two systems play together. According to one DBA, a gateway product from Oracle would be a welcome offering."

Microsoft Subpoenas Thrown out of Court 172

Posted by CowboyNeal from the take-your-business-elsewhere dept.
liliafan writes "Following Microsoft's attempt to subpoena documents through US courts, relating to their ongoing anti-trust case in the UK, the judge in California has thrown the case out of court citing: 'As a matter of comity, this court is unwilling to order discovery when doing so will interfere with the European Commission's orderly handling of its own enforcement proceedings.' as his reasoning."

MS Gives 60-Day Deadline to Web Devs 375

Posted by ScuttleMonkey from the annoyances-and-other-wastes-of-time dept.
capt turnpike writes "Since losing the patent case filed by Eolas, Microsoft has to change radically the way IE works with a lot of content, especially video and other ActiveX controls. eWEEK is reporting that Microsoft has gotten a one-time, 60-day extension in which developers and companies can try to re-engineer their Web pages and ads to work with the new regime. If devs don't make that deadline, users could face pages asking them to activate much of the content, plus ads."

Two Unofficial IE Patches Block Attacks 233

Posted by ScuttleMonkey from the egg-is-good-for-the-complexion dept.
Pentrex writes "eWeek reports that two well-respected Internet security companies (eEye and Determina) have released unofficial patches to correct the vulnerability being exploited to load spyware, bots and Trojan downloaders on Windows machines. Microsoft isn't sanctioning the third-party patches, which include source code for review. As always, the advice is to weigh the risks before opting for an unofficial hotfix."

48 Core Vega 2 in the Making 206

Posted by ScuttleMonkey from the packed-in-like-sardines dept.
TobyKY76 writes to tell us The Inquirer is reporting that upstart Azul Systems is planning to integrate 48 cores on their next generation chip. From the article: "The first-generation Vega processor it designed has 24 cores but the firm expects to double that level of integration in systems generally available next year with the Vega 2, built on TSMC's 90nm process and squeezing in 812 million transistors. The progress means that Azul's Compute Appliances will offer up to 768-way symmetric multiprocessing."

Viiv 1.5 May End Traditional Media PCs 263

Posted by Zonk from the don't-trust-things-with-two-i's dept.
An anonymous reader writes "CNET.com.au makes an interesting case for why the next revision of Viiv will kill off living room PCs as we know them. Instead, we'll be streaming content to digital media adapters from a PC in our home office. From the article: 'The existence of digital media adapters will totally remove the need to have a media centre PC taking up space in your living room, unless you're one of the few users that finds it practical to do anything other than passively soak up multimedia content whilst relaxing on the couch.'"

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