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Wikipedia

Submission + - The 10 biggest hoaxes in Wikipedia's first decade (networkworld.com)

Submitted by jbrodkin
jbrodkin writes: Wikipedia will celebrate its 10th birthday on Saturday, with founder Jimmy Wales having built the site from nothing to one of the most influential destinations on the Internet. Wikipedia's goal may be to compile the sum total of all human knowledge, but it's also, perhaps, the best tool in existence for perpetuating Internet hoaxes. Top hoaxes include a student who fooled the entire world's media with a fake obituary quote, Rush Limbaugh spouting inaccurate facts lifted from Wikipedia, the incorrect declaration of Sinbad's death, Stephen Colbert's African elephant prank, Hitler posters on the bedroom wall of a teenage Tony Blair, and several fake historical figures invented out of thin air. Wales has taken steps to head off vandalism including preventing unregistered editors from creating new pages and temporarily protecting controversial articles, but Wikipedia's very nature makes it susceptible to the hoaxes described in this story.
Hardware

Submission + - EDSAC to be Rebuilt at Bletchley Park (bit-tech.net)

Submitted by arcticstoat
arcticstoat writes: EDSAC, one of the first computers in the world, is to be rebuilt at the National Museum of Computing in Bletchley Park, thanks to a replica commissioned by the Computer Conservation Society. The room-sized system, named the Electronic Delay Storage Automatic Calculator (EDSAC), was developed by Sir Maurice Wilkes and Bill Renwick at the University of Cambridge Mathematical Laboratory in order to help researchers and staff perform complex calculations. However, despite its size, the machine was considerably less powerful than your mobile phone. The project is expected to cost around £250,000 ($397,038) to complete, and funding has been promised from a consortium of companies and computing pioneers led by Acorn co-founder Hermann Hauser.

Submission + - Autism-Vax Doc Scandal was Pharma Business Scam (bmj.com)

Submitted by Sockatume
Sockatume writes: In his second report, Brian Deer exposes how MMR-autism prophet Andrew Wakefield aimed to profit from the vaccine scare. Two years before the research that "discovered" the MMR-autism link, Wakefield began courting interest in a hundred-million-dollar diagnostics firm. The doctor hoped to seed the company with government legal aid money and profit by charging "premium prices" for new diagnostic tests to be used in vaccine injury lawsuits. By the time Wakefield published, the proposals had expanded into producing new "safe" vaccines, two businesses to gather legal aid funding, and interest from partners including Wakefield's own hospital. The scheme ultimately disintegrated with the arrival of new leadership at Wakefield's hospital and ongoing scrutiny into his research.
Graphics

Submission + - Wireless GeForce Graphics Card Announced (bit-tech.net)

Submitted by arcticstoat
arcticstoat writes: PC gamers who are sick of being constantly distracted by whirring fans could now have a helping hand from a new wireless graphics card. Galaxy sub-brand KFA2 has announced a graphics card with no display outputs. Instead, the KFA2 GTX 460 WHDI uses a wireless link to send the display output from your PC to your screen, whether that’s a conventional monitor or the HD TV in your lounge. You just need to attach the bundled receiver to the back of your chosen screen and you’re done. With a wireless keyboard and mouse, you could place your PC at the other end of the room, letting you crank up those fans without having to listen to the whirring next to you.

Submission + - OCZ Abandons RAM Market to Focus on SSDs

Submitted by arcticstoat
arcticstoat writes: Premium memory maker OCZ is now no longer a premium memory maker. The company has surprised the PC industry by announcing its departure from the DRAM market in order to concentrate on the apparently more lucrative SSD sector. In figures unveiled as a part of the company's regular earnings call, OCZ explained that it made a mere 22 percent of its revenue from DRAM products in the third financial quarter of this year. The company's exit from the DRAM market is expected to be completed by 28 February, although it will take time for stock to work its way out of retailers' inventories.

Submission + - Toshiba demos glasses-free 3D (bit-tech.net)

Submitted by arcticstoat
arcticstoat writes: Whether you think 3D is a cynical fad to gouge cinema audiences out of extra cash, or a genuine step forward, the largest drawback of the technology remains its dependence on dorky looking bulky glasses. Out at CES in Las Vegas, though, Toshiba has raised a few eyebrows by demonstrating its glasses-free 3D technology. The demo panels are sized at 56in and 65in, with both boasting 4,096 x 2,160 pixel resolutions. Rather than previous attempts to make glasses-free 3D TV, which have used methods such as ridged panels, Toshiba claims its technology offers wide viewing angles, and doesn't even require a 'sweet spot' in which you have to sit. When pushed on how the technology precisely worked, Toshiba described it as a sheet across the display, which pitch-shifts certain frames to create the 3D effects, with the help of an on-board software algorithm named CEVO.

Submission + - Asus reveals new Eee Pad and Eee Slate tablets (bit-tech.net)

Submitted by arcticstoat
arcticstoat writes: Asus has just revealed photos of three new interesting tablet designs that it's got in the works. There's the larger 12.1" Eee Slate EP121, which is targeted at businesses and features a Core i5 CPU and a 1,280 x 800 screen. Perhaps the tastier designs are the new Eee Pads, though, which are dubbed the Transformer and the Slider. The former is based on Nvidia's ARM-based Tegra 2 platform, and features a neat detachable keyboard to turn the tablet into a netbook. Meanwhile, the Slider features a different approach, integrating the keyboard underneath the tablet, so that it can slide-out, pop up the screen and turn the device into a netbook.
IBM

Submission + - IBM's Jeopardy strategy: Divide and conquer (networkworld.com)

Submitted by alphadogg
alphadogg writes: When it comes tackling a challenge as tough as answering a human question, the best computational approach may be to break the job down into multiple parts and run them all in parallel, IBM is betting.

IBM will be taking this strategy next month when its custom-built computer, nicknamed Watson, will compete in an episode of the Jeopardy game show against two previous champions. While IBM has been thus far been silent about Watson's exact configuration, Watson lead manager David Ferrucci recently shared a few insights with the IDG News Service about how the system was built to take on this formidable task. "In chess, there is nothing tacit, nothing contextual," Ferrucci said, referring to IBM's past Deep Blue computer victory over chess champ Garry Kasparov. In contrast, the questions in a Jeopardy match assume an understanding of how people communicate, including the many references and allusions they use. "It's a huge challenge," he said.

Watson's approach is to divide and conquer. "You have to look at the data from so many different perspectives and combine the [results], because you can never rely on there being only one way to express that content."

Submission + - Energy Drinks Taste Test (bit-tech.net)

Submitted by arcticstoat
arcticstoat writes: Here's the essential group test for gamers who don't trust their bodies to keep them awake through an all-night LAN session. From Monster, through Relentless to the various flavours of Mountain Dew, this test goes through many popular brands of energy drinks to see which ones taste the least offensive. Why? So that you don't have to.
Hardware

Submission + - 20 stunning PC mods from 2010 (bit-tech.net)

Submitted by arcticstoat
arcticstoat writes: Who says PC modding is dead? UK tech site bit-tech has rounded up 20 of the best PC mods from the year, showcasing an incredible amount of innovation, skill and craftsmanship. From a PC made of concrete, through a replica of a Cray-1 chassis to an Art Deco style wooden radio, these 20 stunning PC mods are just amazing pieces of work.
AMD

Submission + - AMD axes ATI brand (thinq.co.uk) 1

Submitted by Stoobalou
Stoobalou writes: If you have any kind of sentimental attachment to the familiar, red-bordered ATI brand with its friendly curvy letters, then dig out your mourning gear. Yep, it turns out that all the rumours were 100 per cent true. AMD is axing the ATI brand for good, and it's now official.

AMD says the decision to drop the 25-year-old brand was made after polling a large collection of "graphics-processor-aware consumers" in seven different countries, to ensure it had "permission" to dismiss it.
AMD

Submission + - AMD axes ATI brand (thinq.co.uk)

Submitted by arcticstoat
arcticstoat writes: Following weeks of rumours, AMD has now officially announced that it plans to axe the ATI brand on its graphics products. The processor maker says the decision to drop the 25-year-old brand was made after polling a large collection of "graphics-processor-aware consumers" in seven different countries, to ensure it had "permission" to dismiss it. According to AMD, the research revealed that a 'combination of AMD and Radeon actually proved to be a stronger combination than ATI and Radeon in the minds of processor-aware consumers, by a statistically significant amount.' Existing graphics products will retain the ATI brand, but new graphics chips such as the forthcoming Radeon HD 6000-series will now be branded with a new AMD Radeon logo. The same also goes for new Fire Pro products. Not only that, but several other brands also on the way out, including Sempron, Athlon Turion and Phenom, as well as AMD's Game and Live programmes. The idea is that future AMD-based systems will feature just a single AMD Vision logo.

Submission + - Mother wins MMR case (bbc.co.uk)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: A mother from the UK has won her case claiming that the MMR vaccine severely retarded her child. The main factor in her winning the case was, as the panel put it, "the balance of probabilities". A doctor Michael Fitzpatrick said, "...although a causal link has been established in law in this instance, exhaustive scientific research has failed to establish any link between MMR and brain damage." (http://www.telegraph.co.uk/health/healthnews/7970199/Mother-wins-MMR-payout-after-18-years.html) Since when did law trump exhaustive scientific research in scientific matters?

It's a shock that such a case has succeeded as, despite the mother's claims that she is not anti-vaccination and it has been stated in every article which prints the story that it does not confirm a link between MMR and autism, this will only fuel the anti-vaccination movement.

Does anyone else find this story slightly troubling?
Graphics

Submission + - Radeon HD 6800 Benchmarks Leaked (thinq.co.uk)

Submitted by Stoobalou
Stoobalou writes: You know we're building up for a big new hardware release when the leaked benchmark results start rolling in, and a mysterious screenshot of a 3DMark Vantage score from a Radeon HD 6800 card has just bobbed above the surface.

The screenshot shows a 3DMark Vantage score and a GPU-Z screenshot and as you would expect, the latest version of GPU-Z (0.4.5) hasn't detected all the GPU's details, but it has come up with some goodies.

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