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Censorship

Submission + - Will Windows RT Be the Future? (pcper.com) 1

Submitted by
Phopojijo
Phopojijo writes: "Microsoft might be on their way to removing legacy support from future versions of Windows. With the recent announcement from Bill Gates that Microsoft intends to evolve Windows Phone and Windows 8 into a single platform, there could be a time where the Windows Store becomes our only way to install applications on our PCs. Would this mean a government could request for Microsoft to block and remove encryption applications or games which discuss same-sex relationships from your PC? At some point will we be reliant on open-source operating systems to preserve personal computing?"
DRM

Submission + - Video Games Do Not Want to Be Art? (pcper.com)

Submitted by
Phopojijo
Phopojijo writes: "Art of the past only persists today because they were based on timeless platforms such as canvas and inks. Fans want their medium to be art and will fight any critic who refutes the artistic merits of video games. These gamers also ignore community-supported platforms in exchange for proprietary and often intentionally disposable ones such as consoles and DRM in the name of simplicity and fear over piracy or used sales. If video games are intrinsically valuable art – shouldn’t we be fighting for it to be accessible forever like all other art mediums by using platforms like Linux or BSD?"
AMD

Submission + - HSA Foundation founded by AMD, ARM, Ti, Imagination, and MediaTek (pcper.com)

Submitted by
Phopojijo
Phopojijo writes: "To wrap up his “The Programmers Guide to a Universe of Possibility” keynote during the 2012 AMD Fusion Developer’s Summit, Phil Rogers of AMD announced the establishment of the HSA Foundation. The foundation has been instituted to create and maintain open standards to ease programming for a wide variety of processing resources including discrete and integrated GPUs. Founding members include ARM, Texas Instruments, Imagination, MediaTek, Texas Instruments, as well as AMD. Parallels can be drawn between this and AMD’s “virtual gorilla” initiative back from the late 1990’s."
Intel

Submission + - The Decay of the Atom Processor (pcper.com)

Submitted by
Phopojijo
Phopojijo writes: "It is easy to pass judgment on the netbook form factor but the problem was always its processing ability — the form factor just inherited the blame by association. Low-voltage adaptations of mainstream architectures will soon collide against ARM and leave low-power x86 architectures with no legitimate room to exist: “Intel is likely to continue on with Atom in computers, but only because it will be easy to offer the fruits of its smartphone endeavors in desktop and laptop PCs. There’s no particular reason for Intel to kill it but – in regards to laptops and desktops – there’s no reason for Intel to make it better.”"
Data Storage

Submission + - Indilinx Everest controller improves speed and lat (pcper.com)

Submitted by Vigile
Vigile writes: When OCZ purchased Indilinx back in March, there were a lot of questions as to what the SSD vendor would do with a controller company that seemed so far behind the performance leaders like Intel and SandForce. Today, with the release of the OCZ Octane, those questions are answered as the new Everest controller is in fact a performance beast. According to the testing done over at PC Perspective, the Octane is able to beat out even Intel's controllers in terms of low latency and high IOs per second, a feat no other controller had done, while also offering average sequential read speeds as high as 505 MB/s! Pricing is very competitive as well with the 256GB model MSRP set at $370 and a pending release of a 1TB 2.5-in model!
Graphics

Submission + - Carmack on infinite detail, integrated GPUs, more (pcper.com)

Submitted by Vigile
Vigile writes: Co-founder of id Software and one of the better interviews in the industry, John Carmack sat down with PC Perspective during Quakecon 2011 to talk about technology for gaming going forward. Collected in this ~30 minute video interview are thoughts on the GPU hardware race (hardware doesn't matter but drivers are REALLY important), integrated graphics solutions on Sandy Bridge and Llano (with a future of shared address spaces they may outperform discrete GPUs) and of course some thoughts on infinite detail engines (uninspired content viewed at the molecular level is still uninspired content). Carmack does mention a new found interest in ray tracing and how it will "eventually win" the battle for rendering in the long run. As usual, there is a lot of information collected in a short time span so pay attention!
Privacy

Submission + - Exploring how we've been reprogrammed by machines (motherboard.tv)

Submitted by HansonMB
HansonMB writes: He started out as a producer on the zany BBC magazine show “That’s Life!” But over the years, in his free-form documentary tours of the politics of science, consumerism, and fear, Adam Curtis has become a kind of smarter, wittier Michael Moore, making the argument – in a way that manages to be digestible – that we are never as free as we think we are. In his latest series of films, “All Watched Over By Machines of Loving Grace,” currently being shown in four parts on the BBC, he’s turned his attention to the Internet, a topic simply begging for his medium-is-the-message critique: aside from the car, it’s hard to think of a technology that has been as pervasive – and as laden with expectation – as a tool for individual freedom and expression.

Submission + - Terry Pratchett Considers Assisted Suicide Process (boingboing.net)

Submitted by
cHALiTO
cHALiTO writes: "Beloved science fiction and fantasy writer Terry Pratchett has terminal early-onset Alzheimer's. He's determined to have the option of choosing the time and place of his death, rather than enduring the potentially horrific drawn-out death that Alzheimer's sometimes brings. But Britain bans assisted suicide, and Pratchett is campaigning to have the law changed. As part of this, he has visited Switzerland's Dignitas clinic, an assisted suicide facility, with a BBC camera crew, as part of a documentary will include Britain's first televised suicide. Pratchett took home Dignitas's assisted suicide consent forms."
Science

Submission + - Google offers $280M to help businesses go solar (networkworld.com)

Submitted by
coondoggie
coondoggie writes: "Continuing its love of all things green, Google today said it was building a $280 million fund to help businesses and home owners finance solar panels. Specifically, Google said it was investing $280 million to create a fund that will help SolarCity finance solar installations across the country. Google added that the investment was its largest clean energy project investment to date and brings our total invested in the clean energy sector to more than $680 million."

Submission + - Samsung Chromebook Series 5 Has $344 BOM (itproportal.com)

Submitted by bob.grigoryan
bob.grigoryan writes: Teardown specialist iSuppli has carried out its regular "bill of materials" analysis on the Samsung Series 5 laptop, the first Chromebook available in the US Market, and found out that the total cost of materials including manufacturing costs was just shy of $335, leaving the retailer, the manufacturer and other third parties to share the estimated $165 profits.

Read more: http://www.itproportal.com/2011/06/14/samsung-chromebook-series-5-has-344-bom/#ixzz1PGFAo8tw
AMD

Submission + - AMD A-Series Llano APU Platform Review (pcper.com)

Submitted by
Phopojijo
Phopojijo writes: "AMD kicked off their AMD Fusion Developer Summit 2011 today and reviews of their new Llano APU are starting to trickle out. The thought is that combining a GPU on the CPU decreases the barrier to entry to having a decent GPU in your system. While the CPU performance seemed to be a bit behind Intel's offering the GPU performance is definitely a step or more above Intel's offering."
Businesses

Submission + - OCZ acquires Indilinx; but it's not monogamous (pcper.com)

Submitted by
auld_wyrm
auld_wyrm writes: "The fabless SSD controller manufacturer Indilinx has been acquired by one time DRAM mogul now turned solid state storage leader, OCZ. It seems that OCZ won't be quitting it's Vertex relationship nor will Indilinx stop it's partnership with other vendors, which should lead to a rich and possibly diverse lineage. This obviously has nothing to do with the recent drop in price of the 240GB Vertex 2."
Graphics

Submission + - StarCraft II Performance - Even your mom can play (pcper.com)

Submitted by Vigile
Vigile writes: StarCraft II is the most anticipated PC game in a long time and after waiting over a decade since the release of the first iteration, it's not hard to see why. The new version moves from the world of 2D into 3D even though much of the game play and style remains the same. With the beta nearing completion and the full retail release just a short week or so away, PC Perspective posted a performance review of the game to demonstrate how different graphics cards perform in the new engine. It turns out that only NVIDIA cards will currently work with anti-aliasing and while the performance hit for enabling it is steep, the game is generally running quickly enough even on $200 GPUs for it to not be an issue. There is more good news for PC gamers as the article finds that even the aging Radeon HD 4850 is more than capable of allowing users to play 1080p resolutions.
Power

DARPA To Turn Humans Into Batteries 183

Posted by samzenpus from the electric-personality dept.
DARPA is working on a project that will convert energy from the human body to power a variety of military gadgets. From the article: "Obviously, our bodies generate heat — thermal energy. They also produce vibrations when we move — kinetic energy. Both forms of energy can be converted into electricity. Anantha Chandrakasan, an MIT electrical engineering professor, who is working on the problem with a former student named Yogesh Ramadass, says the challenge is to harvest adequate amounts of power from the body and then efficiently direct it to the device that needs it." If I remember the movie correctly, this didn't turn out so well for the humans.

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