bain writes "MarketWatch reports that Dell has decided to use AMD chips in its Dimension desktops due next month. The move to use AMD chips signals a break from its long standing reliance on Intel chips. The information slipped out of Dell's quarterly earnings report." From the article: "Before the announcement, which had been speculated in the financial community and the press, Morgan Stanley analyst Mark Edelstone wrote in a research note: 'It should have a negative impact on Intel and it could be a large offset to the expected benefits from Intel's restructuring efforts.' AMD, which has become a more formidable competitor to Intel, has been expanding its manufacturing capacity, a sign that it expects to be shipping more chips. Its chief goal is to put itself in position to supply 33% of the global microprocessor market by 2008. "

Max Spevack writes: "Hi everyone. I'm looking forward to answering all of the questions, but before I start diving into that, I guess it would be useful to give a little bit of perspective about me and my role within Fedora and Red Hat, because it will offer some context around the things I have to say."

anthemaniac writes "Earth's moon is drifting away from us more than an inch every year. In a few billion years, if the system survives, the moon would be reclassified as a planet under the new IAU definition. You gotta wonder if the astronomers who dreamed this definition up had thought of that."

Dreamwalkerofyore writes "According to the BBC, Boeing has recently announced that it has abandoned Connexion, its in-flight broadband service. Said Boeing CEO Jim McNerney: 'Regrettably, the market for this service has not materialized as had been expected. We believe this decision best balances the long-term interests of all parties with a stake in Connexion by Boeing.'"

jlaxson writes "Back in June, a number of accusations were leveled at Apple regarding labor practices in its overseas manufacturing and assembly plants. At the time, Apple denied the allegations and said that it would launch an investigation. Today, the results of the investigation were released. From the report: 'We found the supplier to be in compliance in the majority of the areas audited. However, we did find violations to our Code of Conduct, as well as other areas for improvement that we are working with the supplier to address. What follows is a summary of what we've learned, what's already being done in response, and our commitment to future diligence and action.'"

ZenFodderBoy writes "It's official! Judge Folsom entered his ruling today granting TiVo nearly $90 million in damages, plus granting a permanent injunction calling for the disabling of nearly all of EchoStar's DVRs within the next 30 days. EchoStar's motion to stay the injunction pending appeal was denied. Additionally, the judge reserves the right to grant additional damages in the future, so treble damages may still be coming. Excellent news for TiVo!"

bain writes to tell us that iLounge has put up details on the Zune, Microsoft's MP3 player. According to the article, "Zune is a bit bigger than a standard 30GB iPod, and apparently made entirely of plastic." Interestingly, Microsoft forgoes a touch-sensitive scrollwheel in favor of wheel-shaped buttons. Included are WiFi capabilities, an FM tuner, and (in stark contrast to the iPod) a white-on-black color scheme. The 30GB model is expected to sell for $300. This story selected and edited by LinuxWorld editor for the day Saied Pinto.

DCEmu writes "Deniska has released a GPS Map Viewer for the PSP. The program uses imagery from Google Maps, which currently has pretty good coverage of North America, Western Europe, Australia, Japan. There's also a video on YouTube." According to the post, map data can be retrieved via WiFi or an external GPS receiver. This story selected and edited by LinuxWorld editor for the day Saied Pinto.

nbannerman writes "The BBC is reporting about a new kind of transistor, that recently set a world record of 110Ghz. From the article: 'To achieve the speed gain, researchers at the University of Southampton added fluorine to the silicon devices. The technique uses existing silicon manufacturing technology meaning it should be quick and easy to deploy.' The apparent applications for this process include mobile phones and digital cameras."

Via Kotaku, a post on the Oblivion forums on a polymorph mod for Oblivion. The Kotaku story has a video attached, showing the shapechanging in action with a rocking musical background. The mod seems awesome, but I'm not sure I agree with poster Eckhardt's commentary: "This could be just the thing for me to forget how unbearably stagnant and boring I ultimately find Oblivion to be: the ability to transmogrify into huge ogres, gigantic walking sticks and carnivorous cephalopods."

paulmac84 writes "Stars that don't have enough mass never shine, dying billions of years before their bigger counterparts. But astronomers have never been able to measure the exact mass limit, because the lightest stars that do shine can be simply too faint to detect. Now, new images show for the first time how big a star must be to avoid impending doom. The long-awaited new images finally lay this question to rest, say the authors. The dimmest stars were measured as being 8.3% of the Sun's mass. All protostars that are smaller than this are headed for life as a brown dwarf."

Grv writes "Macrovision's best-known form of copy protection inserts noise into analog video signals to make it difficult to get a good copy of the DVD or VHS recording. A company named Sima has products that eliminate this noise when digitizing such video, as any good digitizer would do. Macrovision argues that this is a violation of the DMCA, and a court sided with them in June. Now the injunction is being reviewed, and several organizations are siding with Sima and Fair Use, including the American Library Association, the Consumer Electronics Association, the Home Recording Rights Coalition, and the Electronic Frontier Foundation. If it isn't overturned, this decision could make it illegal to develop products for making copies of commercial analog recordings." This story selected and edited by LinuxWorld editor for the day Saied Pinto.

baloney farmer writes "How much do search engines influence the availability of information online? A new study gives some surprising results. Search engines help with popularity, but not as much as you'd think: 'Traffic increased far less than would be expected if search engines were enhancing popularity. It actually increased less than would be predicted if traffic were directly proportional to inbound links. In the end, it appears that each inbound link only increases traffic by a factor of 0.8. The results suggest that the reliance of web users on search engines is actually suppressing the impact of popularity.'"

An anonymous submittor says "Today's young generation can use Linux on the desktop provided it works with their iPod. Linux on the desktop still hasn't reached that stage and has to be compatible with multimedia applications like iTunes and iPod if it has to beat Microsoft's Windows dominance on the desktop. Open source gurus at LinuxWorld discuss solutions to make Linux more consumer-friendly."

Next Generation is reporting that Gamestop has declined to take preorders for the Wii and PS3, on the grounds that they don't know how many units will be available at launch. They're apparently trying to avoid a repeat of last year's problems with the 360's launch. From the article: "Analysts also inquired what would happen if PS3 launch quantities fell short of expectations. '[Last year,] the 360 in short supply had an effect of freezing the market,' said DeMatteo. 'But if you look at it, there wasn't anything new. I mean, there weren't any new platforms out there, so the 360 was the newest thing in the last four or five years. This year, there will be a Wii and there will be a 360, so I can't believe that it will have the same kind of impact that the 360 [shortages] had.'"