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Power

DARPA targets computing's Achilles Heel: Power->

Submitted by
coondoggie
coondoggie writes "The power required to increase computing performance, especially in embedded or sensor systems has become a serious constraint and is restricting the potential of future systems.

Technologists from the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency are looking for an ambitious answer to the problem and will next month detail a new program it expects will develop power technologies that could bolster system power output from today's 1 GFLOPS/watt to 75 GFLOPS/watt."
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Microsoft

Microsoft Wants OLPC's XO Redesigned For Windows

Submitted by Preedit
Preedit writes "There's an Infoweek story today that says Microsoft has asked Nicholas Negroponte's One Laptop Per Child organization to redesign its Linux-based XO laptop so it can accommodate Windows XP. Specifically, Microsoft wants slots added so extra memory can be introduced to the system via an SD Card. The story notes that the XO was previously chided as unusable by Bill Gates, so this might be tacit admission that Microsoft and Intel's Classmate PC for emerging markets has failed to catch on."
Software

Sage wins Award for Free Mathematical Software

Submitted by
Ponca City, We Love You
Ponca City, We Love You writes "Since 2003, Cetril has organised the Trophées du Libre contest to reward innovative free software and this year Sage won first place in the Scientific Software category. Sage faced initial skepticism from the mathematics and education communities. "I've had a surprisingly large number of people tell me that something like Sage couldn't be done — that it just wasn't possible," said William Stein, lead developer of the tool. "I'm hearing that less now." The big commercial programs — Matlab, Maple, Mathematica and Magma — charge license fees. The Mathematica Web page, for example, charges $2,495 for a regular license. But the frustrations aren't only financial. Commercial programs don't always reveal how the calculations are performed. This means that other mathematicians can't scrutinize the code to see how a computer-based calculation arrived at a result. "Not being able to check the code of a computer-based calculation is like not publishing proofs for a mathematical theorem," Stein said. "It's ludicrous.""
Government

Swiss DMCA quietly adopted->

Submitted by roady
roady writes "We have seen a lot of talk about the Canadian DMCA. But few know about the Swiss version recently adopted by law makers, not even the Swiss people. The government and media have been very quiet, probably to avoid a referendum. Indeed, Switzerland is a direct democracy and if 50'000 citizens sign a referendum, the whole country will have a chance to vote against the new copyright law. In this version of the DMCA, sharing a file on P2P networks will land you one year in jail, even though the law mandates a levy on blank media. The history of the law can be read here."
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We prefer to speak evil of ourselves rather than not speak of ourselves at all.