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Linus Torvalds derides Slashdot-> 4

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes "In an otherwise fine interview in the popular TWIT FLOSS Weekly podcast, Linus Torvalds criticized Slashdot for, among other things, group think and a religious attitude towards Open Source. The interview did throw some insights on the life and times of Linus in Finland and in USA."
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NVidia Cripples PhysX "Open API" 1

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes "In a foot-meet-bullet type move, NVidia is going to disable PhysX engine if you are using a display adapter other than one that came from their company. This despite the fact that you may have an NVidia card on your system specifically to do this type of processing. "For a variety of reasons some development expense, some quality assurance and some business reasons Nvidia will not support GPU accelerated PhysX with Nvidia GPUs while GPU rendering is happening on non-Nvidia GPUs." Time to say hello to Microsoft dx physics or Intel's Havok engine."
Operating Systems

Microsoft releases new OS attempt, Barrelfish->

Submitted by
Julie188
Julie188 writes "You've likely heard of Microsoft's next-gen operating system projects Midori and Singularity, but earlier this month researchers released a prototye for another OS, code-named Barrelfish. Barrelfish is an OS written specifically for multicore environments. It hopes to improve the performance of boxes with such chips by creating a network bus, if you will, between cores. Today such systems tend to share resources like memory. As demand increases, performance of the box decreases as shared resources don't scale well. Barrelfish instead passes messages between cores on its bus, and reportedly uses a database-like approach to keep track of the hardware available."
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AMD

AMD Radeon HD 5870 Adds DX11, Multi-Monitor Gaming 195

Posted by Soulskill
from the still-won't-run-crysis dept.
Vigile writes "Few people will doubt that PC gaming is in need of a significant shot in the arm with the consistent encroachment of consoles and their dominating hold on developers. Today AMD is releasing the Radeon HD 5870 graphics card based on the Evergreen-series of GPUs first demonstrated in June. Besides offering best-in-class performance for a single-GPU graphics board, the new card is easily the most power efficient in terms of idle power consumption and performance per watt. Not only that, but AMD has introduced new features that could help keep PC gaming in the spotlight, including the first DirectX 11 implementation and a very impressive multi-monitor gaming technology, Eyefinity, which we discussed earlier this month. The review at PC Perspective includes the full gamut of gaming benchmarks in both single- and dual-GPU configurations as well as videos of Eyefinity running on three 30" displays."
Microsoft

Early Details On Courier, Microsoft's Take On a Tablet 175

Posted by Soulskill
from the page-turners dept.
rbanffy points out an article on Gizmodo about Courier, a tablet (or more accurately, a booklet) in development at Microsoft. "The dual 7-inch (or so) screens are multitouch, and designed for writing, flicking and drawing with a stylus, in addition to fingers. They're connected by a hinge that holds a single iPhone-esque home button. Statuses, like wireless signal and battery life, are displayed along the rim of one of the screens. On the back cover is a camera, and it might charge through an inductive pad, like the Palm Touchstone charging dock for Pre." A concept video shows off the ability to use the two different screens for separate purposes, like browsing the web or a photo album on the left and using the right as a notepad or workspace.

Comment: Excerpt (Score 2, Informative) 181

by Eddy Luten (#29506791) Attached to: EU Funding "Orwellian" Artificial Intelligence Snooping System
For those who do not feel comfortable going to the Project INDECT site here's an excerpt:

Project Description

Intelligent information system supporting observation, searching and detection for security of citizens in urban environment.

The main objectives of the INDECT project are:

  • to develop a platform for: the registration and exchange of operational data, acquisition of multimedia content, intelligent processing of all information and automatic detection of threats and recognition of abnormal behaviour or violence,
  • to develop the prototype of an integrated, network-centric system supporting the operational activities of police officers, providing techniques and tools for observation of various mobile objects,
  • to develop a new type of search engine combining direct search of images and video based on watermarked contents, and the storage of metadata in the form of digital watermarks,

The main expected results of the INDECT project are:

  • to realise a trial installation of the monitoring and surveillance system in various points of city agglomeration and demonstration of the prototype of the system with 15 node stations,
  • implementation of a distributed computer system that is capable of acquisition, storage and effective sharing on demand of the data as well as intelligent processing, construction of a family of prototypes of devices used for mobile object tracking,
  • construction of a search engine for fast detection of persons and documents based on watermarking technology and utilising comprehensive research on watermarking technology used for semantic search,
  • construction of agents assigned to continuous and automatic monitoring of public resources such as: web sites, discussion forums, UseNet groups, file servers, p2p networks as well as individual computer systems,
  • elaboration of Internet based intelligence gathering system, both active and passive, and demonstrating its efficiency in a measurable way.

Sinister indeed.

SPAM: Court to scammer: Give up your house or go to jail 1

Submitted by
coondoggie
coondoggie writes "Too many online scammers get away with what amounts to a wrist slap but a case if Las Vegas this week seems to be heading the right direction at least.

According to the Federal Trade Commission, a business opportunity scammer has been held in contempt for the second time by a federal court and ordered to turn over the title of his home in Las Vegas or face jail time.

The court found that the operator of the scam, Richard Neiswonger, failed to deliver marketable title to his home, in violation of a previous court order entering a $3.2 million judgment against him, the FTC stated. The FTC charged that the defendant deceived consumers with false promises that they could make a six-figure income by selling his "asset protection services" to those seeking to hide their assets from potential lawsuits or creditors.

[spam URL stripped]"
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A great nation is any mob of people which produces at least one honest man a century.