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Graphics

Submission + - AMD Resurrects the ATI All-In-Wonder Card (hothardware.com)

Submitted by
MojoKid
MojoKid writes: "AMD is planning to release an updated All-In-Wonder model complete with HD support, that will be available for pre-order at Best Buy very soon. The aptly named ATI All-In-Wonder HD essentially combines the functionality of a standalone TV Wonder 650 with a Radeon HD 3650 GPU. Cards will sport a hardware MPEG-2 encoder, native HDMI connections along with DVI outputs, composite video inputs and outputs, component outputs, and support OTA HD, Clear QAM digital cable TB tuning (some of the connectors are on a separate daughterboard that connects via a small ribbon cable). Of course, all of the features inherent to the Radeon HD 3650 GPU will be exposed as well, as will the features of the ATI Theater 650 chip."
The Courts

Submission + - RIAA protests Oregon AG discovery request (blogspot.com) 2

Submitted by
NewYorkCountryLawyer
NewYorkCountryLawyer writes: "The RIAA is apparently having an allergic reaction to the request by the State Attorney General of Oregon for information about the RIAA's investigative tactics, in Arista v. Does 1-17, the Portland, Oregon, case targeting students at the University of Oregon. See The Oregonian, December 1, 2007 ("UO suspects music industry of spying") and p2pnet, November 29, 2007 ("RIAA may be spying on students: Oregon AG"). Not only are the record companies opposing the request (pdf), they're asking the Judge not to even read it. (pdf)"
Databases

Submission + - MaxDB Taken Proprietary/Closed Source by SAP

Submitted by
An anonymous reader writes: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MaxDB Specifically: "In October 2007, SAP assumed full sales and commercial support for MaxDB. MaxDB 7.6 is now closed source, available free-of-charge (without support, and with usage restrictions) for use with non-SAP applications. Commercial support models for using MaxDB outside of SAP environments are under consideration." No explanation/clarification from SAP is yet forthcoming as to why MaxDB was taken closed source.
Math

Submission + - Open Source Mathematical Software

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: The American Mathematical society has an opinion piece about open source software vs propietary software used in mathematics. From the article : "Increasingly, proprietary software and the algorithms used are an essential part of mathematical proofs. To quote J. Neubüser, 'with this situation two of the most basic rules of conduct in mathematics are violated: In mathematics information is passed on free of charge and everything is laid open for checking.'"
Software

Submission + - Obama Pledges Support for Open Document Formats (consortiuminfo.org)

Submitted by
Andy Updegrove
Andy Updegrove writes: "ODF first made the headlines in Massachusetts when presidential hopeful Mitt Romney was its governor. Now, another presidential candidate has pledged his support for them as well. On November 14th, Barack Obama revealed his detailed IT plan for a more open and technically enabled government in a speech at Google's Mountainview campus. In that speech, he said: "It's no coincidence that one of the most secretive Administrations in history has favored special interests and pursued policies that could not stand up to sunlight. As President, I'll change that. I'll put government data online in universally accessible formats." In calling for open formats, Obama has introduced an IT hot potato into the presidential debate that has already riled the waters in multiple state legislatures and been the subject of heavy lobbying by vendors. Whether other candidates in general — and Mitt Romney in particular — will respond in kind or opt to keep their distance remains to be seen."
The Media

Submission + - BW's Facts-be-Damned Defense of Software Patents 1

Submitted by
theodp
theodp writes: "Citing their 'neurotic reaction to patent law,' BusinessWeek rips Slashdot readers a new one in 'Give Software Patents a Break', which takes people to task for denying credit to innovations that in hindsight seem to be no-brainers. 'For example,' argues BW, 'Amazon's 1-Click checkout patent for speeding online purchases has been challenged in both the courts and by detractors as being incredibly obvious. No evidence of a similar innovation predating the Amazon patent was found despite a large bounty offered for its discovery and the ensuing widespread search.' That's the same argument Amazon unsuccessfully lobbied Congress with. Except prior art was found, even if the Jeff Bezos-funded BountyQuest couldn't bring itself to declare an 'official' bounty winner. And some of that prior art — a TV remote patent — was cited by a USPTO Examiner as he rejected most of the 1-Click patent claims last month. Don't hold your breath for a Pulitzer on this one, BW."
Portables

Submission + - Vista, linux and overheating laptops

Submitted by trenien
trenien writes: Recently, a friend of mine has been looking to buy a new laptop. Being a linux user, he isn't interested in Macs, and a doesn't particularly care which version of microsoft os is installed. Wat's relevant is the hardware, how well it's supported under linux and — and that is the crux of it — how quiet the laptop is when not under heavy use. Were it available, he'd buy a laptop with linux pre — installed, or no OS at all (this isn't in the US, so neither Dell nor HP offers are available).

He thought he'd found an interesting deal the other day (Asus Z83TC), but ended up bringing it back as it ran like crasy and was almost as loud as his desktop right after booting. Nothing was running but Vista.

I read somewhere else that Vista was pretty bad with laptops, but that may be with specific ones only. In any case, it could be that one laptop will be particularly loud with Vista but run normally under linux. Would anybody have thoughts or advice about this?
Announcements

Submission + - $1 Million Speaker Cable Challenge Accepted

Submitted by
Adam Blake
Adam Blake writes: "$1 Million Speaker Cable Challenge Accepted

Audiophile Reviewer Michael Fremer Agrees to Double-Blind Loudspeaker Cable Test

Newton, Mass. — October 15, 2007 — Responding to accusations that the high-fidelity Pear Cable Anjou loudspeaker cables could not be differentiated from typical equivalent Monster Cable, Michael Fremer, writer for Stereophile Magazine and musicangle.com, has agreed to double-blind listening tests to prove that cables can be differentiated sonically. Accuser James Randi has claimed to offer a $1 million dollar prize if the high-fidelity cables can be detected.

While Pear Cable remains highly skeptical that the challenge is genuine, full support for Michael Fremer's effort has been offered. Although the cables to be used in the test have not yet been selected, Pear Cable has offered to loan Mr. Fremer any Pear cables necessary to conduct the test if he desires to use them.

To date, James Randi has provided no scientific evidence of any kind to support his accusations. No test protocol for the challenge was stipulated in the original accusation, however James Randi reserves the right to change test protocol in any way he personally desires.

Official rules for the James Randi Educational Foundation challenge state that $1 Million will be paid to "any person who can demonstrate any psychic, supernatural or paranormal ability." Michael Fremer has expressly stated as a condition of his challenge acceptance that he does not possess any psychic, supernatural, or paranormal abilities, and that he does not believe he has above average hearing. Fremer has also asked that interconnects be tested in addition to loudspeaker cables unless James Randi will concede that they affect sound quality.

About Pear Cable, Inc.
Pear Cable is a manufacturer of high fidelity audio cables for both home and car audio. Using custom designed manufacturing equipment and cutting edge scientific principles; Pear Cable brings quality products to the audio marketplace. For more information visit: http://www.pearcable.com/"
AMD

Submission + - AMD Announces 'SSE5' Instructions (yahoo.com)

Submitted by LWATCDR
LWATCDR writes: Yahoo News is reporting that Advanced Micro Devices on Thursday announced an extension to the X86 instruction set, which the company calls "SSE5".

The set of instruction extensions — 47 base extensions, expanding to a total of 170 instructions — will be included first in the "Bulldozer" processor family, scheduled to be released in 2009.

The new extensions will be optimized for high-performance computing workloads. AMD designers examined existing instruction sets, such as the Apple/IBM/Freescale Altivec instruction set, then identified three software types to optimize SSE5 around: compute-intensive applications, such as financial simulation and life sciences; multimedia applications, like high-definition video encoding and image processing; and security applications, where data is encrypted across the Internet as well as an entire hard drive.

The article has one statement that I found odd, "Traditionally, Intel has issued improvements to the X86 ISA used within PCs, crafting all of the earlier SSE extensions, which AMD has eventually supported. This time, the shoe's on the other foot.". Wow how soon they forget. I guess that whole X86-64 things just slipped their mind.
Announcements

Submission + - Elderly Woman Jailed for Not Watering Lawn

Submitted by i_like_spam
i_like_spam writes: BBC news is running a story about Betty Perry, a 70-year-old resident of Orem, Utah. Betty was cited and sent to jail for not watering her lawn. Like many other communities around the country, Orem (aka 'Family City USA') has rules mandating that residents maintain and water their lawns. In terms of privacy, is it right for communities to enforce lawn maintenance? And, in this day and age of energy and water conservation, shouldn't well-manicured lawns be a thing of the past?
United States

Submission + - Global Warming Solution Overlooked 3

Submitted by
SheldonLinker
SheldonLinker writes: "In the global warming debate, the politicians have been ignoring an immediate remedy to global warming. (Note that I'm not claiming that global warming is good or bad.)

Global heat retention is a matter of energy in versus energy out. There's not much we can do about energy in, and most of the Energy Out part of the question relies on atmospheric greenhouse gasses and ground albedo. Atmospheric greenhouse gasses consist of more than carbon dioxide. Two other big constituents are methane and water vapor. Methane is something we can deal with by switching to be vegans. (This would mess up my dinner plans, so let's skip that one.) Water vapor is not something we can easily deal with, on a planet mostly covered in water. And as the debate rages, we see that carbon dioxide emissions are expensive to deal with. So what's left? Ground albedo.

If you work through the numbers, you'll find that something like 10 square meters of aluminum foil per household, planet-wide, would counteract all the global warming we're currently seeing. Do that (albedo offset), and you can barbecue to your heart's content.

When global cooling is the big problem, as it is from time to time, we can take down our foil and replace it with flat-black construction paper."
Democrats

Submission + - Obama rips Clinton on outsourcing (nydailynews.com)

Submitted by
slashdotlurker
slashdotlurker writes: "Senator Obama's supposed to be secret scoop on Senator Clinton and Bill Clinton's secret dealings with Indian interests was released to the media by the Clinton campaign and has made for some embarrassing reading given Senator Obama's previous commitment to indulge in a different kind of politics. The Obama campaign has tried to mollify the Indian-American community, but the impact of the episode is likely to be minimal given the low level of support he enjoys among Indian-Americans.

However, the scoop does raise some questions about Senator Clinton's record and the issue of outsourcing. This will probably need to be addressed and not just brushed aside."
Privacy

Submission + - TSA: 1, Bloggers: 0 - The case of the sippy cup (yahoo.com)

Submitted by
SierraPete
SierraPete writes: "The PR department at TSA is working overtime. Earlier this week, Bill Adler, in his blog entry, reported that Monica Emmerson, a Secret Service agent, was detained at Reagan National Airport and threatened with arrest for "spilling 3-4 ounces of water" in her child's sippy cup that would not be allowed through a security checkpoint due to limitations on liquids. Yahoo! News and the AP reports that the TSA has posted their rebuttal to the blog to include the security videos and redacted incident report. Great derailing of the bad press, but it also begs two questions for debate. Should the TSA have posted the video without her permission (and the permission of the people walking by)? And will Discovery Channel sue the TSA for trademark infringement because TSA's response came in a section titled "Mythbusters"?"

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