bobibleyboo - Slashdot User

Submission + - Graphics-enabled CPUs to take off in 2011 (techworld.com.au)

Submitted by

angry tapir

on Thursday March 17, 2011 @06:10PM

angry tapir writes: "Half the notebook computers and a growing number of desktops shipped in 2011 will run on graphics-enabled microprocessors as designers Intel and Advanced Micro Devices (AMD) increase competition for the units that raise multimedia speeds without add-ons. The processors with built-in graphics capabilities will be installed this year on 115 million notebooks, half of total shipments, and 63 million desktop PCs, or 45 percent of the total, according to analysts."

Submission + - Advance in PCM Memory Offers 100 Times the Storage (gizmag.com)

Submitted by Zothecula on Monday March 14, 2011 @04:19PM

Zothecula writes: Researchers from the Electrical and Computer Engineering Department of the University of Illinois have developed a new low-power digital memory which uses much less power and is faster than other solutions currently available. The breakthrough could give future consumer devices like smartphones and laptops a much longer battery life, but might also benefit equipment used in telecommunications, science or by the military.

Submission + - Exclusive : ARM Cortex-A15 "40%" Faster Than A9 (itproportal.com)

Submitted by siliconbits on Monday March 14, 2011 @09:46AM

siliconbits writes: We've received an email from ARM that confirms that the Cortex-A15 will be at least 40 per cent faster than the A9 when it comes to raw performance (Dhrystone MIPS), all things equal; same number of core, same speed. According to our contact at ARM, the A15 has a "published but not formal number" of 3.5 DMIPS/MHz but told us that the performance difference across generation is "dependent on many factors" before adding that "Other benchmarks can show less improvement on specific devices, others a greater improvement". ARM has yet to officially publish the Cortex-A15 figures on its website. The Cortex-A8 reached 2.0 DMIPS/MHz while the Cortex-A9 reached 2.5 DMIPS/MHz, a 25 per cent improvement. Given that startups like Caldexa are already developing quad-core iteration of the Cortex-A9, one can easily envision that a 4-core Cortex-A15 will shatter the 40K DMIPS barrier, putting it within touching distance of the AMD Phenom II X4 940 Black Edition which reached almost 43K DMIPS running at 3GHz.

Submission + - Reactors in Fukushima have 23 sisters in US (msn.com)

Submitted by

cultiv8

on Sunday March 13, 2011 @09:17PM

cultiv8 writes: "The General Electric-designed nuclear reactors involved in the Japanese emergency are very similar to 23 reactors in use in the United States, according to Nuclear Regulatory Commission records.

The NRC database of nuclear power plants shows that 23 of the 104 nuclear plants in the U.S. are GE boiling-water reactors with GE's Mark I systems for containing radioactivity, the same containment system used by the reactors in trouble at the Fukushima Daiichi plant. The U.S. reactors are in Alabama, Georgia, Illinois, Iowa, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, Nebraska, New Jersey, New York, North Carolina, Pennsylvania and Vermont."

Submission + - ARM chips designed for 480-core servers (computerworld.com.au)

Submitted by

angry tapir

on Sunday March 13, 2011 @06:32PM

angry tapir writes: "Calxeda revealed initial details about its first ARM-based server chip, designed to let companies build low-power servers with up to 480 cores. The Calxeda chip is built on a quad-core ARM processor, and low-power servers could have 120 ARM processing nodes in a 2U box. The chips will be based on ARM's Cortex-A9 processor architecture."

Submission + - The Current Status of Japan's Reactors (tepco.co.jp)

Submitted by Xenographic on Saturday March 12, 2011 @07:34AM

Xenographic writes: There's so much panic over Japan's nuclear power plant malfunctions that a lot of misinformation has started showing up in the media from people who don't know anything about BWR safety systems or even what a Sievert is. The Tokyo Electric Power Company (TEPCO) has been issuing detailed reports concerning the status of each of the reactors and the operations they're performing on each. Fukushima Daiichi has all six units shut down and everyone within 10km has been asked to evacuate. That's the same plant where the explosion took place, which experts believe to have been caused by built-up hydrogen. Also, before the explosion near unit 1, one worker, who was working on that same unit was accidentally exposed to 106.3mSv of radiation and hospitalized. Fukushima Daini currently has all four units shut down and everyone within 3km of it has been evacuated, while those within 10km are on standby. Kashiwazaki Kariwa is still up, with four of its seven units active and the other three undergoing regular inspections. Several other non-nuclear plants and power substations have been shut down as well. This leaves about 600k people in the area without power.

Flash On Android Is 'Shockingly Bad' 657

Posted by timothy on Thursday September 02, 2010 @05:59PM from the not-so-flash dept.

Hugh Pickens writes "Ryan Lawler writes on GigaOm that although many have touted the availability of Flash on Android devices as a competitive advantage over Apple's mobile devices, while trying to watch videos from ABC.com, Fox.com and Metacafe using Flash 10.1 on a Nexus One over a local Wi-Fi network connected to a 25-Mbps Verizon FiOS broadband connection, mobile expert Kevin Tofel found that videos were slow to load, if they loaded at all, leading to an overall very inconsistent experience while using his Android device for video. 'While in theory Flash video might be a competitive advantage for Android users, in practice it's difficult to imagine anyone actually trying to watch non-optimized web video on an Android handset,' writes Lawler. 'All of which makes one believe that maybe Steve Jobs was right to eschew Flash in lieu of HTML5 on the iPhone and iPad.'"

Happy Towel Day 122

Posted by samzenpus on Tuesday May 25, 2010 @11:42AM from the wringing-out-the-wit dept.

An anonymous reader writes "While Douglas Adams continues his attempt to set a new record for the longest extended lunch break, geeks all over the universe pay tribute to the beloved author by celebrating the tenth edition of Towel Day. Towel Day is more alive than ever. This year Richard Dawkins, one of Adams' best friends, has tweeted a Towel Day reminder to his numerous followers. The CERN Bulletin has published an article on Towel Day. There has been TV coverage and there will be a radio interview. The Military Republic of the Deltan Imperium, a newly formed micronation, has recognized Towel Day as an official holiday. In Hungary several hundreds of hitchhiker fans want to have a picnic together in a park. And there's a concert, a free downloadable nerdrap album, a free game being released, the list goes on and on."

Hollywood Stock Exchange Set To Launch In April 100

Posted by samzenpus on Wednesday February 24, 2010 @03:08PM from the put-me-down-for-$10-on-portman dept.

You can buy and sell actor or movie "stock" for virtual cash on the website Hollywood Stock Exchange (HSX). Starting in April the company plans on letting you turn those movie performance predictions into real dollars. HSX filed with the US Commodity Futures Trading Commission for approval as an active trading site in November 2008 and has just entered the final phase of regulatory review. Richard Jaycobs, president of HSX's parent company, said, "The number of people who visit movie theaters each year and form opinions about a film's success is in the tens of millions. We believe that's the reason the public response to this product has been very positive."

64-Bit Flash Player For Linux Finally In Alpha 172

Posted by Soulskill on Tuesday February 16, 2010 @01:03PM from the new-and-shiny dept.

Luchio writes "Finally, a little bit of respect from Adobe with this alpha release of the Adobe Flash Player 10 that was made available for all Linux 64-bit enthusiasts! As noted, 'this is a prerelease version,' so handle with care. Just remove any existing Flash player and extract the new .so file in /usr/lib/mozilla/plugins (or /usr/lib/opera/plugins)."

GNOME 2.24 Released 163

Posted by timothy on Wednesday September 24, 2008 @04:25PM from the ekiga-has-the-best-screenshots dept.

thhamm writes "The GNOME community hopes to make our users happy with many new features and improvements, as well as the huge number of bug fixes that are shipped in this latest GNOME release! Well. What else to say. I am happy." Notably, this release is also the occasion for the announcement of videoconferencing app Ekiga's 3.0 release.

Submission + - Java Artificial Intelligence Sample Code Liberated

Submitted by

F452

on Friday September 14, 2007 @05:56PM

F452 writes: "An objection I've had to many programming books and web sites is that they don't make sample code available under a free software license. This is within the rights of the author, of course, but it seems counter to the spirit of teaching and sharing knowledge to restrict the use of example code.

I was happy to exchange words recently with an author who was open and responsive to making the sample artificial intelligence code from his book available under a free license. With Saturday being Software Freedom Day, it seemed like a good time to write about our email conversation and point you to the freed code. Topics include: Control Systems, Scripted Behavior, Discrete Searching, Searching State Space, Genetic Algorithms, Thinking Logically, and Supervised and Unsupervised Neural Networks."

Submission + - iPhone outsold all smartphones in July (arstechnica.com)

Submitted by mangini on Tuesday September 04, 2007 @01:03PM

mangini writes: Apple's iPhone quickly shot to the top of the sales chart for smartphones, even though its considered a 'crossover phone' and not a smartphone. 'The device accounted for 1.8 percent of all mobile handset sales in July. This number sounds pretty paltry at first glance, but iSuppli says that the iPhone matched the popular LG Chocolate phone in sales during July. It also outsold all other smartphones during the same time period — this included all BlackBerrys, the entire Palm portfolio, and anything from Motorola, Nokia, or Samsung, to name a few.' iSuppli thinks that Apple could sell 4.5 million iPhones by year end — a figure that would surpass Apple's projections.

Submission + - AMD Linux Driver Interview Opportunity

Submitted by

Sarah Vella

on Tuesday September 04, 2007 @12:32PM

Sarah Vella writes: "AMD would like to set up an interview with Slashdot.org for September 4th or 5th to discuss a major development on their open source drivers. AMD would like to share this news first with the Slashdot community.

Let me know if Slashdot is open to having an interview with Chris Schlaeger our resident Linux guru and Pat Moorhead, VP, Marketing.

Cheers,
Sarah Vella
High Road Communications
416 644-2270"

Submission + - Scientology to be prosecuted in Belgium (ap.org)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday September 04, 2007 @12:25PM

An anonymous reader writes: Scientology will be prosecuted as a criminal enterprise in Belgium as a result of a 10 year investigation into their behavior and finances.

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