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Government

Jack Thompson Claiming Games Industry in Collusion with DoD 289

Posted by Soulskill from the no-word-on-dick-cheneys-duck-hunt-sequel dept.
mytrip brings us a Wired blog about Jack Thompson's recent press release, which claims an "unholy alliance" exists between the gaming industry and the U.S. Department of Defense. Game Politics also has a discussion of Thompson's main points. From Wired: "Jim Blank, the head of the modeling and simulation division of the U.S. Joint Forces Command, says that commercial games don't meet the demand of the military, adding, 'first-person shooter games really don't apply in this environment.' Blank's point is that game-like simulations are a valuable tool for training soldiers in situations that would be too expensive to simulate in reality."

PC Mag Slams Cheap Wal-Mart Linux Desktop 671

Posted by Zonk from the not-all-that-the-penguin-could-be dept.
An anonymous reader writes "PC Magazine reviews the $200 Linux desktop wonder sold by Wal-Mart. This desktop sold out quickly and has been cited as proof that consumers are tired of the Windows tax and ready for Linux. Not so according to PC Magazine, which gave the gPC a 1.5 star rating." Previous discussions we've had about system reviews were realistic but not quite so harsh; is this just nitpicking or is the 'shiny' starting to wear off of the cheap Linux PC concept?
The Internet

Yahoo! Slammed Over Piracy By Chinese Court 102

Posted by Zonk from the dangerous-precedent dept.
An anonymous reader writes "Setting a precedent likely to have far-ranging consequences, a Chinese court has once again lambasted Yahoo! China over piracy concerns. The search firm is (according to the court) infringing on intellectual property rights by allowing copyrighted materials to be downloaded from the internet via search results. 'John Kennedy, chairman and CEO of the International Federation of Phonographic Industries, or IFPI, said in a statement Thursday. "By confirming that Yahoo China's service violates copyright under new Chinese laws, the Beijing court has effectively set the standard for Internet companies throughout the country."'"
Media (Apple)

Music Listeners Test 128kbps vs. 256kbps AAC 428

Posted by CowboyNeal from the perfect-pitches dept.
notthatwillsmith writes "Maximum PC did double-blind testing with ten listeners in order to determine whether or not normal people could discern the quality difference between the new 256kbps iTunes Plus files and the old, DRM-laden 128kbps tracks. But wait, there's more! To add an extra twist, they also tested Apple's default iPod earbuds vs. an expensive pair of Shure buds to see how much of an impact earbud quality had on the detection rate."

OpenSPARC and Power.org, Who has it Right? 125

Posted by ScuttleMonkey from the fight-to-the-death dept.
Andy Updegrove writes "Last summer, IBM set up Power.org, to promote its PowerPC chip as what it called 'open hardware.' This year, Sun launched the OpenSPARC.net open source project around the source code for its Niagara microprocessor. But what does 'open' mean in the context of hardware? In the case of Power.org, Juan-Antonio Carballo said, 'It includes but is not limited to open source, where specifications or source code are freely available and can be modified by a community of users. It could also mean that the hardware details can be viewed, but not modified. And it does not necessarily mean that open hardware, or designs that contain it, are free of charge.' True to that statement, you have to pay to participate meaningfully in Power.org, as well as pay royalties to implement - it's built on a traditional RAND consortium model. To use the Sun code, though, its just download the code under an open source license, and you're good to go to use anything except the SPARC name. All of which leads to the questions: What does 'open' mean in hardware, and which approach will work?"

Negroponte says Linux too 'Fat' 839

Posted by ScuttleMonkey from the not-looking-hard-enough dept.
Cadef writes "According to a story on CNet News.com, Nicholas Negroponte says that Linux has gotten too fat, and will have to be slimmed down before it will be practical for the $100 laptop project. From the article: 'Suddenly it's like a very fat person [who] uses most of the energy to move the fat. And Linux is no exception. Linux has gotten fat, too.'"

ARM Offers First Clockless Processor Core 351

Posted by ScuttleMonkey from the timeless-decisions dept.
Sam Haine '95 writes "EETimes is reporting that ARM Holdings have developed an asynchronous processor based on the ARM9 core. The ARM996HS is thought to be the world's first commercial clockless processor. ARM announced they were developing the processor back in October 2004, along with an unnamed lead customer, which it appears could be Philips. The processor is especially suitable for automotive, medical and deeply embedded control applications. Although reduced power consumption, due to the lack of clock circuitry, is one benefit the clockless design also produces a low electromagnetic signature because of the diffuse nature of digital transitions within the chip. Because clockless processors consume zero dynamic power when there is no activity, they can significantly extend battery life compared with clocked equivalents."

Wikipedia Covers April Fool's Hoaxes 129

Posted by Zonk from the check-out-what-you-missed dept.
vladd_rom writes "Wikipedia maintains an up to date list with April Fools hoaxes from this year. The list already includes hundreds of entries. Among the most popular, one could find Google Romance, a new Google.com project, Google Browser, as well as Yahoo!'s desire to buy all Web 2.0 companies on the web. However, it seems that this year hoaxes will be more interconnected: the wiki page already includes some websites that announced that they have been bought by Yahoo!, and linked to Yahoo!'s blog post from their pages."

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