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AMD

AMD Demos Llano Fusion APU, Radeon 6800 Series 116

Posted by timothy from the onward-ever-onward dept.
MojoKid writes "At a press event for the impending launch of AMD's new Radeon HD 6870 and HD 6850 series graphics cards, the company took the opportunity to provide an early look at the first, fully functional samples of their upcoming 'Llano' processor, or APU (Applications Processer Unit). For those unfamiliar with Llano, it's 32nm 'Fusion' product that integrates CPU, GPU, and Northbridge functions on a single die. The chip is a low-power derivative of the company's current Phenom II architecture fused with a GPU that will target a wide range of operating environments at speeds of 3GHz or higher. Test systems showed the integrated GPU had no trouble running Alien vs. Predator at a moderate resolution with DirectX 11 features enabled. In terms of the Radeon 6800 series, board shots have been unveiled today, as well as scenes from AMD's upcoming tech demo, Mecha Warrior, showcasing the new graphics technology and advanced effects from the open source Bullet Physics library."
First Person Shooters (Games)

Berlin Wall 'Death Strip' Game Sparks Outrage In Germany 193

Posted by Soulskill from the sweet-zombie-reagan dept.
gzipped_tar writes "According to Spiegel Online, 'A new computer game where players assume the roles of border guards and shoot people trying to escape from communist East Germany has unleashed a storm of controversy in Germany. The game's creator says he wanted to teach young people about history, but he has been accused of glorifying violence. ... The name of the multi-player FPS game, 1,378 (kilometers), was inspired by the length of the border between East and West Germany. ... [Players] choose between the roles of the border guards or would-be escapees: the escapee only has one goal — to get over the wall, but the border guard has more options, and can shoot or capture the escapee. He can also swap sides and try to clamber over the border defenses himself.' By choosing to play the border guard and kill the escapee, the player would win an in-game medal from the government of East Germany. But then the guard would time-travel forward to the year 2000, where he would have to stand trial. Jens Stober, 23, designed the game as a media art student at the University of Design, Media and Arts in Karlsruhe. He said that his intention was to teach young people about German history."
Open Source

Open Source Developer Knighted 101

Posted by samzenpus from the knights-who-say-free dept.
unixfan writes "Georg Greve, developer of Open Document Format and active FOSS developer, has received a knighthood in Germany for his work. From the article: 'Some weeks ago I received news that the embassy in Berne had unsuccessfully been trying to contact me under FSFE's old office address in Zurich. This was a bit odd and unexpected. So you can probably understand my surprise to be told by the embassy upon contacting them that on 18 December 2009 I had been awarded the Cross of Merit on ribbon (Verdienstkreuz am Bande) by the Federal Republic of Germany. As you might expect, my first reaction was one of disbelief. I was, in fact, rather shaken. You could also say shocked. Quick Wikipedia research revealed this to be part of the orders of knighthood, making this a Knight's Cross.'"
NASA

Dying Man Shares Unseen Challenger Video 266

Posted by Soulskill from the new-perspective-on-an-old-tragedy dept.
longacre writes "An amateur video of the 1986 Space Shuttle Challenger explosion has been made public for the first time. The Florida man who filmed it from his front yard on his new Betamax camcorder turned the tape over to an educational organization a week before he died this past December. The Space Exploration Archive has since published the video into the public domain in time for the 24th anniversary of the catastrophe. Despite being shot from about 70 miles from Cape Canaveral, the shuttle and the explosion can be seen quite clearly. It is unclear why he never shared the footage with NASA or the media. NASA officials say they were not aware of the video, but are interested in examining it now that it has been made available."
Hardware Hacking

Submission + - Blind Accessibility, VAXen, and BSD

Submitted by Mortimer.CA
Mortimer.CA writes: The most recent BSDTalk (#143) has an interview with Deborah Norling (who's blind) where she talks about: command-line accessibility, documentation quality, using (serial port) Braille and speech systems on old PDPs and VAXen/s, GUI screen readers, and SIMH.
Operating Systems

FreeBSD 7.0 Bests Linux In SMP Performance 288

Posted by kdawson from the coulda-been-a-contender dept.
cecom writes "After major improvements in SMP support in FreeBSD 7.0, benchmarks show it performing 15% better than the latest Linux kernels (PDF, see slides 17 to 19) on 8 CPUs under PostgreSQL and MySQL. While a couple of benchmarks are not conclusive evidence, it can be assumed that FreeBSD will once again be a serious performance contender. Some posters on LWN have noted that the level of Linux performance could be related to the Completely Fair Scheduler, which was merged into the 2.6.23 Linux kernel." Update: 03/06 21:32 GMT by KD : An anonymous reader sent in word that Linux kernel developer Nick Piggin reran the benchmark today and came to a different conclusion: In his benchmark Linux was faster than FreeBSD.
AMD

Submission + - AMD/ATI's opensource efforts revealed

Submitted by mattaw
mattaw writes: Phoronix have revealed in some detail the plan of AMD/ATI to support a community written Radeon opensource driver.

To whit, they are releasing specs and some example code under NDA and an opensource library that connects to the card's BIOS. They already have XOrg developers onboard and have also attracted Jerome Glisse who reverse engineered ATI cards to make the Avivio driver (incidentally probably killing that driver but the new ATI open driver will surely benefit from his excellent work).

While not completely open, this is pretty open for starters, HOWEVER I for one am not certain of things like support for hardware video decoding or extra on board hardware (TV-Out etc.).

Checkout the final comments: "The aim of this open-source driver is not to overtake the fglrx driver but rather is designed for those who just want a working desktop with 3D capabilities and basic video playback. This new driver is ideal for FOSS enthusiasts and those wishing to run the latest development kernels and versions of X.Org."

Still there is no argument that this is a brilliant result.
Upgrades

Submission + - Replacing a Voice Mail System

Submitted by
mikey1134
mikey1134 writes: "I am a Network Technician for medium-sized business firm in the north-eastern US. I have been charged with creating a backup to our voicemail system. The current implementation is a Lucent Intuity Audix system running on SCO Unixware system (let the joking ensue) The system is no longer supported by the installers and the only choice offered for a redundant system is a complete replacement with a price tag upwards of $20,000. We are looking at replicating the current system, but hardware for it (PXO, cards etc.) is hard to come by. I've considered suggesting something like Asterisk but I've never personally seen a voicemail-only implimentation. Can anyone point me in the right direction for either keeping the old system going (new hardware, etc.) or failing that, suggestions for a drop-in replacement system, preferably utilizing free software."
Operating Systems

Submission + - ASK Slashdot: Which Linux Flavor for Servers 1

Submitted by BrownBag
BrownBag writes: First off, I'm a linux noob. My buddies and I are currently running our website on a webhost's Linux server. We've got the "AMP" part of LAMP down pretty good, and are now looking to colocate our own server running Linux. We are looking for a Linux distro that can scale well for multiple server growth (future), is rock solid, and configures well with memcache, load balancer, firewall etc. A free distro would be ideal, but if the Slashdot community recommends a Linux distro that is not free, that is fine as well, since our minds are open to grow with the right distro. I've done some searching on linux, but that is not yielding the fruit I am looking for. Our first goal would be to run it (learn it) as a localhost and configure it with Plesk or similar, to get ready for the real thing.
The Internet

Submission + - Gunplay blamed for Internet slowdown (networkworld.com)

Submitted by
coondoggie
coondoggie writes: "Internet service providers in the U.S. experienced a service slowdown Monday after fiber-optic cables near Cleveland were apparently sabotaged by gunfire. TeliaSonera AB, which lost the northern leg of its U.S. network to the cut, said that the outage began around 7 p.m. Pacific Time on Sunday night. When technicians pulled up the affected cable, it appeared to have been shot. "Somebody had been shooting with a gun or a shotgun into the cable," said Anders Olausson, a TeliaSonera spokesman. The company declined to name the service provider whose lines had been cut, but a source familiar with the situation said the lines are owned by Level 3 Communications Inc. Level 3 could not be reached immediately for comment. http://www.networkworld.com/news/2007/082107-gunpl ay-blamed-for-internet.html"
Linux Business

Submission + - BMC throws down open source licensing gauntlet (bmc.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: BMC threw down an open source licensing gauntlet at OSCON by making several open source integration projects available under the BSD License. Claiming that the BSD conferred the most freedom on developers, and doesn't mandate what they can or must do with code they modify BMC's open source leader whurley continues to shock the systems management marketplace into submission publicly challenging HP, IBM, and CA to follow suit and provide their users and developers with true freedom. Linux Today , eWeek , The Register , and industry analyst James Governor all are shocked and impressed by this move, but the real question is...Can HP, CA, and IBM possibly keep up with BMC's new open source leadership and their unexpected openness.
Linux Business

Submission + - Linux and the Indy 500

Submitted by
tbone1
tbone1 writes: "Teams from the Indy Racing League are in Indianapolis to prepare for The Indianapolis 500 on the 27th of May. There is a story in the Indianapolis Star about a local Linux programmer who is trying to get the Linux logo on a car. Usually it's the big companies who have year-long deals with the top IRL teams — Marlboro, Target, Motorola, etc — but for a small team racing at the 500 only, a small logo can be purchased for $11,000, or you can be a primary sponsor for about $350,000, and possibly get "Team Linux" in the car's name."
Linux Business

Submission + - Open-source wants open-wheel exposure

Submitted by
kurtis25
kurtis25 writes: "An Article in the Indianapolis Star shares the hopes of a computer programmer who is trying to raise enough money online to become an IRL sponsor, putting a big Linux penguin logo on a car in this years Indianapolis 500. According to the Tux 500 website the group is hoping to raise $350,000 by May 21 to be the primary sponsor of the car; they have already raised $11,000, enough to be a minor sponsor for a car which will sport a small penguin logo."
Businesses

Submission + - H1-B visa abuse by Indian outsourcing firms

Submitted by sledge_hammer
sledge_hammer writes: I found several articles detailing the ways in which the H1-B visas are being abused by Indian outsourcing firms. It provides evidence to a lot of the arguments already made on Slashdot including how lack of skilled labor should be driving IT wages up. Even though I am an Indian citizen that would need an H1-b to work in this country, I have to say that this a gross miscarriage of the program and raising the visa cap is not the solution to the problem. Personally, these abusive practices have resulted in me not having an H1 visa slot after this year's lottery even though I am a recent mech. engineering graduate of a top 10 school working for an industrial goods fortune 500 company and getting paid better on par with my peers and industry standards. http://www.sharedprosperity.org/bp187.html — Paper from the Economic Policy Institute detailing problems with the current system and ways in which it can be abused. http://www.businessweek.com/bwdaily/dnflash/conten t/feb2007/db20070208_553356.htm — Article detailing how numerous outsourcing firms are abusing the system to gain visas. This in turn prevents legitimate employers from hiring foreign nationals. http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/ch ronicle/archive/2007/03/30/EDGRJN7CFB1.DTL — Article about how Microsoft has been abusing the system for years. BTW sorry about the links, but I am a n00b, so I have no clue how to do HTML tags! :-)

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