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IBM

Submission + - IBM Makes A Super Memory Breakthrough 3

Submitted by adeelarshad82
adeelarshad82 writes: IBM says they have made a significant leap forward in the viability of "Racetrack memory," a new technology design which has the potential to exponentially increase computing power. This new tech could give devices the ability to store as much as 100 times more information than they do now, which would be accessed at far greater speeds while utilizing "much less" energy than today's designs. In the future, a single portable device might be able to hold as much memory as today's business-class servers and run on a single battery charge for weeks at a time. Racetrack memory works by storing data as magnetic regions (also called domains), which would be transported along nanowire "racetracks." Instead of forcing a computer to seek out the data it needs, as traditional computing systems do, the information would automatically slide along the racetrack to where it could be used.

Submission + - Add age verification to any link (pr0n.ly)

Submitted by rnd()
rnd() writes: Innovative URL shorteners like trick.ly have set the stage for innovation in the shortener space by adding small bits of logic that anyone on the net can use. pr0n.ly offers age verification. The linked URL is safe (just links back to Slashdot).
Microsoft

Submission + - Microsoft's free concerts lead fans on a chase (skunkpost.com)

Submitted by crimeandpunishment
crimeandpunishment writes: Microsoft's marketing of its new Kin cell phone is a cross between social networking and a game of Clue. The company is trying to tap into its young target audience by throwing a series of surprise free concerts featuring big names in small venues. But you have to find the show. Microsoft is using tweets, texts, and other online clues in the days leading up to each concert. The first two shows were held in New York and San Francisco, and generated a big buzz. The remaining shows will be held in Atlanta and Chicago.
Businesses

Submission + - Ninth suicide at iPhone factory. (bbc.co.uk)

Submitted by __aapspi39
__aapspi39 writes: A ninth employee has jumped to his death at Taiwanese iPhone and iPad manufacturer Foxconn, China's state media reports. The 21 year old worker was the the eighth fatality this year. This raises questions as to whether the shiny finish of the lifestyle statements available from mega corporations are tarnished by such information, and whether the mistreatment of workers deserves to be highlighted when considering such firms.

Submission + - Security at Automobile Dealerships.

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: I am in the IT security field and recently purchased a car, one of the salesmen used his laptop to enter all of my information in for the credit and many other things. While I was waiting on the car purchase to finish I walked out to my car to do some work. I looked for a customer access point and found, it was named linksys. I hopped onto it because they had a sign saying free internet access, I got interested and snooped a little around. Upon investigation I found that all kinds of customer data was being pushed through the air unencrypted, including what could be used for identity theft. Hidden under some very archaic software called Reynolds and Reynolds, http://www.reyrey.com/ with the only "encryption" being used was telnet over TVI955. In less than 30 minutes I had seen administrator screens usernames and passwords and customer information with never entering any type of password. This scared me and I put a fraud alert on my credit file, how common is this and why don't we see any more situations like this. I destroyed all the data that I saw instantly but this could be disastrous for someone.
Data Storage

Submission + - Declustered RAID - the Future of RAID Storage? (enterprisestorageforum.com)

Submitted by storagedude
storagedude writes: With disk drive capacity improving at a much faster rate than performance and reliability, RAID rebuild times keep getting longer, increasing the risk that additional failures will lead to data loss. Interestingly, some storage vendors are turning to an 18-year-old concept to keep RAID relevant: Declustered RAID, which was first described in a 1992 paper by RAID pioneer Garth Gibson and Mark Holland.

Not surprisingly, Gibson is at the forefront of the movement:

"Gibson says Panasas' parity declustering turns RAID from a local operation of one controller and a few disks into a parallel algorithm using all the controllers and disks in the storage pool. With pools of tens to hundreds of individual disk arrays, parity declustering enables recovery to be tens to hundreds of times faster. And it spreads the work so thinly per disk that concurrent user work sees far less interference from recovery.
Privacy

Submission + - Senate Bill Allows Govt to Collect Personal Info (cnsnews.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: "Senate Democrats united to pass a financial regulatory bill that allows the government to collect data on any person operating in financial markets at any level, including the collection of personal transaction records from local banks, including customer's addresses and ATM receipts." ... "The bill, if it becomes law, will create the Bureau of Consumer Financial Protection and empower it to 'gather information and activities of persons operating in consumer financial markets,' including the names and addresses of account holders, ATM and other transaction records, and the amount of money kept in each customer's account."
Lord of the Rings

Submission + - Fanboys go legit (or try atleast)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: My name is Aaron Longstreth, Vice President of 4Reelz, LLC.

I'm emailing you representing 4Reelz, LLC, a new start-up film and animation production company based in Los Angeles.

Our team (Larry Longstreth and animator Jacob Drake in particular) has created award winning online short films and cartoons that have gained literally millions of viewers. Some of our past works were "Batman's Gonna Get Shot in the Face" (4th on Filmthreat's) list of best shorts of 2006), "The Wimp Whose Woman Was a Werewolf" (a live-action short featuring the famous Lloyd Kaufman and featuring a 9 foot werewolf created by "Chronicles of Narnia" fx man Paul Molnar), and "The Greatest Fan Film of All Time" (an animated epic featuring the voicework of Our Lady Peace lead singer Raine Maida, WWE/TNA wrestler Stevie Richards, and many others).

    What we're trying to do now is to make the leap from "internet fame" to legitimate success. We're now working on two projects that are much bigger than anything we've done before. Larry himself is working under the guidance of Mr. Mark Ordesky, producer of films such as "Lord of the Rings", "The Golden Compass", and the upcoming film: "Chariots of the Gods". Mark has offered his services as a consultant to our company and also financially, as an investor into our current animated TV pilot: "Four Tanks and a Healer", an Adult-Swim style cartoon that takes place inside a roleplaying fantasy video game. We're also currently in production on a live-action feature film comedy titled "The Long, Slow Death of a Twenty-Something", which is about 2/3 of the way through it's production in North East Ohio.

The reason I'm contacting you is because we are now at a stage where our new projects are going to be done very soon. Any publicity we can get is a "must" and will greatly help us with gaining momentum and taking these works to the next stage: distribution. We've been interviewed by newspapers or fan sites before and we've even had articles written about us, but now we're actually pursuing the publicity. If you guys would be interested in helping us, it would be greatly appreciated.

Thank you very much.

Aaron Longstreth
VP Production
4Reelz, LLC
4Reelz.com
Earth

Submission + - Costner's Centrifugal Separator to Clean Oil Spill

Submitted by
Hugh Pickens
Hugh Pickens writes: "The NY Times reports that Kevin Costner has been overseeing the construction of centrifugal oil separation machines for 15 years to prepare for the possibility of another disaster of the magnitude of the 1989 Exxon Valdez spill. Disturbed by the effects of the Valdez spill in Alaska, Costner bought the nascent technology from the government in 1995 and put $24 million of his own money into developing it for the private sector. “Kevin saw the Exxon Valdez spill, and as a fisherman and an environmentalist, it just stuck in his craw, the fact that we didn’t have separation technology,” says John Houghtaling, Costner’s lawyer. Ocean Therapy’s machines use centrifuge processing technology — giant vacuum-like machines that suck oil from water, separate the oil, store it in a tanker and send the 99.9- percent-purified oil back into the water. The largest machines have the capability of separating 210,000 gallons of oil from water per day, 200 gallons per minute. BP officials and Ocean Therapy are working to determine where best in the gulf to test the machines, and if all goes well, six separators will be running within the week. The company says it can gear up to produce twenty machines each month. “I’m very happy the light of day has come to this,” says Costner adding that the technology is "prepared to go out and solve problems, not talk about them.""
Intel

Submission + - Atom-Based Nettop With Next Gen NVIDIA Ion Tested (hothardware.com)

Submitted by Ninjakicks
Ninjakicks writes: Most nettop PCs have historically offered an underwhelming experience for most users, at least beyond the requirements of general purpose computing. However, the recently launched Zotac Zbox is a bit more robust in it that combines both Intel's latest dual-core Atom D510 processor and NVIDIA's next-gen Ion graphics chip for much more capability and performance. The new Pineview dual-core Atom based system still offers low power, small form-factor computing on the cheap but with respectable multimedia performance, full 1080p HD video playback and even a bit of light-duty gaming capability. Regardless, the machine still only consumes about 30 Watts under load and at roughly 7.5-inches square and 1.7-inches thick, will fit in virtually any bookshelf or entertainment center, blending in with the scenery.
Math

Submission + - Google recognizes the Hella- prefix (google.com)

Submitted by joabj
joabj writes: For at least one search query, Google has recognized the proposed hella- prefix for numbers in the 10^27 scale. A California physics major is lobbying the scientific community to make the California slang term the next official SI prefix, for the as-of-yet unnamed 10 to the 27th scale, following the yotta, zetta, exa and peta. ""There is no question as to what you mean," he has said. "If you say something weighs hellagrams, you'd think 'Well that's a lot of grams.'" One day will we be measuring our bandwidth in Hellabits?
Canada

Submission + - Canada Getting Heavy-Handed Copyright Law Next Wk (michaelgeist.ca)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Canada National Post reports what Michael Geist reported weeks ago — that the Canadian government is set to ignore last year's copyright consultation and introduce a Canadian DMCA. The bill could come as early as next week and Geist says that it will include the same anti-circumvention provisions found in the defeated Bill C-61 and reject a flexible fair dealing approach.
Privacy

Submission + - Google Demands Phone Number for All Registrations (uswgo.com) 1

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: We have now discovered after receiving complaints and reports from both the silenced YouTube activist and other sources that YouTube now requires all future Google and YouTube registrant users to verify their accounts via SMS or Voice Call....This is one step closer to a police state internet where just to get on the internet you'll be required to give out your drivers license identification maybe even your license plate number...

This also means that if you get your account suspended by YouTube or post a lot of controversial political videos you would either have to own a lot of phone numbers, cell phones, or have to resort to identity theft just to get back on YouTube. This is alarming now that YouTube is forcing all future users to tie their cell phone numbers or regular traceable phone numbers to their online accounts.

If you don't want to live in a police state I suggest boycott Google after calling them and telling them that until they stop the SMS verification or make it optional that you won't ever use a Google product or else one day Google may require a Social Security Number just to use an account....
HP

Submission + - Plug-and-Poo? 10,000 Cows Can Power 1,000 Servers (computerworld.com)

Submitted by CWmike
CWmike writes: Reducing energy consumption in data centers, particularly with the prospect of a federal carbon tax, is pushing vendors to explore an ever-growing range of ideas. HP engineers say that biogas may offer a fresh alternative energy approach for IT managers. Researchers at HP Labs presented a paper (download PDF) on using cow manure from dairy farms and cattle feedlots and other 'digested farm waste' to generate electricity to an American Society of Mechanical Engineers conference, held this week. In it, the research team calculates that 'a hypothetical farm of 10,000 dairy cows' could power a 1 MW data center — or on the order of 1,000 servers. One trend that makes the idea of turning organic waste into usable power for data centers is the moves by several firms to build facilities in rural locations, where high-speed networks allow them to take advantage of the cost advantages of such areas. But there are some practical problems, not the least of which is connecting a data center to the cows. If it does happen, the move could call for a new take on plug and play: plug and poo.

Submission + - New 'Circuit Breaker' Imposed To Stop Market Crash (computerworld.com)

Submitted by Lucas123
Lucas123 writes: The SEC and national securities exchanges announced a new rule that would help curb market volatility and help to prevent "flash crashes" like the one that took place on May 6, when the Dow dropped almost 1,000 points in a half hour. That crash was blamed in part on automated trading systems, which process buy and sell orders in milliseconds. The new rule would pause trading on individual stocks that fluctuate up or down 10% in a five-minute period. "I believe that circuit breakers for individual securities across the exchanges would help to limit significant volatility," the SEC's chairman said. "They would also increase market transparency, bolster investor protection, and bring uniformity to decisions regarding trading halts in individual securities."

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