Catch up on stories from the past week (and beyond) at the Slashdot story archive

 


Forgot your password?
Close
typodupeerror
×
Intel

Submission + - Intel releases CPUs for gaming laptops & mobil

Submitted by
adeelarshad82
adeelarshad82 writes: "The Core i7 processor, codenamed "Nehalem," created quite the buzz in the desktop community, tearing up performance charts. Thankfully, every Intel chip that ends up in a desktop is usually followed by a mobile version. At the IDF this year, Intel introduced three top-shelf mobile Core i7s, codenamed "Clarksfield": The Core i7-920XM (Extreme), the Core i7-820QM, and the Core i7-720QM. The launch is focused primarily on high-end and gaming laptops that are also affordable. With Clarksfield, Intel gives us a glimpse of what to expect for laptops in the coming year. We knew performance would tip the scales in the Core i7's favor, and the benchmark tests proved it. The big picture here is that these processors, especially the Core i7 820QM and 720QM, will begin to show up in hardcore gaming and very high-end multimedia systems for a lot less than what you would pay for the Alienware M17x ($4,850) and Falcon Northwest Fragbook DRX ($6,449)."
Security

Submission + - Health care exemption on data breeches (theregister.co.uk)

Submitted by
Combat Wombat
Combat Wombat writes: "New data breach rules for US healthcare providers have come under criticism from a security firm that specialises in encryption. As part of the Health Information Technology for Economic and Clinical Health (HITECH) Act, which comes into effect from 23 September, health organisations in the US that use encryption will no longer be obliged to notify clients of breaches."
Censorship

Submission + - Amazon bans public domain from Kindle (sacred-texts.com) 6

Submitted by
John B. Hare
John B. Hare writes: "John B. Hare writes "Many publishers of public domain content on the Kindle are being turned away for reasons which Amazon declines to clarify. In the past two weeks any publisher posting a public domain book (or a book which appears to be a public domain book) have received the message "Your book is currently under review by the Kindle Operations team as we are trying to improve the Kindle customer experience. Please check back in 5 business days to see if your book was published to the store."

Amazon claims that this is a quality control issue, that readers can't figure out on their own that a five page Kindle book for $9.99 is a rip-off or yet another Kindle edition of 'Pride and Prejudice' is pointless. This was supposed to be the point of user feedback and the Kindle return policy: the user can quickly decide what the best choice is, and if they don't like it, back out without any harm done.

I own and run one of the primary contributors of new public domain etexts on the web: sacred-texts.com. When the ban went into effect, I was just back from an intense round of chemo. I was disappointed to get this message. I am (was?) in the process of converting all of the 2000+ ebooks at sacred-texts into Kindle editions. I use a homebrew preflight Kindle filter to construct the Kindle binary from my master files, which we have invested nearly a million dollars into creating. We spend thousands a month in-house doing legal clearance, scanning, OCRing, and proofing, often by domain experts. So we are hardly a fly-by-night operation. In fact, many of the PD texts floating around on the Internet and on the Kindle were originally done at sacred-texts at great investment of labor and time. Our Kindle return rate is close to zero.

This morning I received an email stating:

Dear Publisher,

We're working on a policy and procedure change to fix a customer experience problem caused by multiple copies of public domain titles being uploaded by a multitude of publishers. For an example of this problem, do a search on "Pride and Prejudice" in the Kindle Store. The current situation is very confusing for customers as it makes it difficult to decide which 'Pride and Prejudice' to choose. As a result, at this time we are not accepting additional public domain titles through DTP, including the following: The Unknown Life of Jesus Christ
The Aquarian Gospel of Jesus the Christ
Traces of a Hidden Tradition in Masonry and Medieval Mysticism
The History of the Knights Templar by Nicolas Notovitch...


If you believe that we have wrongly identified this title as a public domain title, and you are the copyright holder or are authorized to sell it by the copyright holder, then please reply to title-submission@amazon.com with appropriate documentation of your e-book rights.

Thank you, Amazon.com

As can be seen, this brings an entirely new issue into play: apparently, if I owned the rights to a public domain book and can prove it, they will reconsider. However, nobody can own a public domain book. Amazon is telling us that in order to post our books we need to prove a contradiction!

One key point is that Amazon has applied this ban completely non-selectively. Established publishers such as myself and others who have never had any quality control issues whatsoever, and give good value for the price, have all been tarred with the broad brush of 'Public Domain Publisher--do not post'.

By banning new public domain books from the Kindle, they are making an implicit decision as to which books people should read. You can argue that 'you can get these texts anywhere' but by excluding high quality Kindle books of them from the nascent Kindle marketplace, Amazon is implicitly trying to decide what is a valid part of our culture and what isn't. This trend does not bode well for the future of ebooks.

"
Windows

Submission + - Microsoft offers Windows 7 to students for $30

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Microsoft today announced students would be able to purchase upgrade versions of Windows 7 for a significantly reduced price until January 3, 2010 at 12:00am CST. A valid e-mail address given by a college or university must be used. An e-mail will be sent telling the student if he or she qualifies for the discount. Eligible students are allowed to purchase one copy of either Windows 7 Home Premium or Windows 7 Professional from the online store. The discount price applies to the following countries: the UK (£30) and the US ($30). More information is available at 741.com, a site just launched today that is dedicated to advertising Windows 7 to students.

"In the US, students can pre-order their copy of Windows 7 beginning September 17th and can download the OS beginning on October 22nd (general availability)," a Microsoft spokesperson confirmed with Ars. "Students in the UK can pre-order their copy beginning on September 30th for download on October 22nd. Students in all other participating markets can take advantage of the offer beginning on October 22nd. In most markets, the offer ends on January 3rd (in Australia the offer is available until March 31st).

Submission + - Security/Privacy Advice

Submitted by James-NSC
James-NSC writes: My employer is changing its policy towards employee use of social networks. I've been asked to give a 40 minute presentation to the entire company (attendance is mandatory) on the security and privacy concerns pertaining to social networking. While I was putting it together, I ended up with some miscellaneous information that pertains to security/privacy in general. Ex: the emerging ATM skimming (mainly for our European employees), a reminder that email is not private, malware/drive-by in popular search results, things of that nature. Since these don't really fall into the slated topic, I've ended up with a section titled "While I have you...". I'm going to have the attention of every employee and with attendance being mandatory, I thought it would be a great opportunity to give advice on security/privacy issues as a whole and not just those pertaining to social networks. As it's an opportunity that one seldom gets, I'd hate to not utilize it to its full potential. If you had the attention of an entire company with employees in the US, UK, Asia and Australia, what advice would you give?
Privacy

Submission + - Secret GPS tracking now legal in Massachusetts

Submitted by dr. fuzz
dr. fuzz writes: The Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts has ruled in favor of John Law tracking you with secret GPS devices in Massachusetts provided a warrant is obtained. You've been warned. To the dissenters' credit Justice Ralph Gants is quoted with "Our constitutional analysis should focus on the privacy interest at risk from contemporaneous GPS monitoring, not simply the property interest"

Submission + - Cirque DuSoleil Founder will pay $35 Million to Cl (reuters.com)

Submitted by TechnologyResource
TechnologyResource writes: Guy Laliberté, the Canadian founder of Cirque DuSoleil, will pay $35 million to blast into space from a Russian space station on September 30, 2009. His mission is to put on a two-hour live show for the astronauts in orbit on the eleven day trip. Laliberté is also using the event to promote global access to clean water. Laliberté wants to "tickle the station's astronauts" just in case mach 12 at 17,500 mph into space doesn't tickle them enough. The live clown show will be broadcast from the International Space Station on October 9, 2009. Laliberté will be the first clown (with a red nose) and the seventh private citizen to tour space.

Submission + - Twitter survey causes tweet-alanche (skepticblog.org)

Submitted by JLavezzo
JLavezzo writes: Brian Dunning, host of the Skeptoid podcast, decided to combine a survey he needed data for with an experiement into the dynamics of Twitter's social networking. Did it work?
'The good parts worked better than I hoped,' he says 'and unfortunately, undesired side effects ... which rendered your Twitter account nearly useless on September 14 and 15, if you follow me or anyone else who follows me ... were just as potent. Now, before I describe what happened, let me state outright that it was shockingly naive of me not to foresee what would happen. It was dumb, it annoyed a lot of people, and I have no excuse other than failure to think it through very well. So, my apologies, and I offer no defense of what turned out to be a giant mess.'
Read on so you'll be prepared when your marketing director asks you to set up the same thing.
Space

Submission + - Planck Satellite Releases First Images (wordpress.com)

Submitted by davecl
davecl writes: The Planck Satellite has released its first images. These are from the 'First Look Survey' and show a strip of the sky scanned at a range of radio and submillimetre wavelengths. The results are already better than what was seen by the previous microwave background satellite, WMAP. ESA's coverage of the results can be found here, with more details and images available in English and French. The Planck Mission Blog contains more details of the project and continuing coverage. I maintain the mission blog but even I am impressed with these first images!
Transportation

Submission + - New split cycle engine may revolutionize cars (blogspot.com)

Submitted by
egghat
egghat writes: "Scuderi Group demoed the first real prototype of their new split cycle engine at the IAA in Frankfurt this week. Scuderi claims the torque and mileage of diesel engines combined with the agility and quietness of normal gasoline engines and up to 80% less nitrogen oxide. The trick is simple: Two cylinders work together. The first cylinder sucks and compresses air, pumps it to the second cylinder that fires and burns the gasoline. The Scuderi engine achieves pressures that a way higher than normal engines and are therefore more efficient. The good thing: Most parts of the engine (pistons, ignition plug, cylinders, etc.) are standard parts that are available today. Scuderi plans to build turbo and diesel version and even a hybrid that uses compressed air as an energy storage instead of electricity in batteries. 7 Geeky Tech Designs from the 2009 Society of Automotive Engineers World Congress Washington Times: Company says air is fuel of future"
Earth

Submission + - What happened to Google's Project 10 to the 100?

Submitted by Andy
Andy writes: Google will be turning 11 years old this month. It got me thinking about last year's media stunt: project 10 to the 100 . Google committed $10 million to implement the ideas that would change the world by helping as many people as possible. The plan was to announce the winners January of this year which has come and gone. The Slashdot community had a lot of great ideas. Some of us were even motivated enough to write them down and submit for Google scrutiny. What the hell's taking Google so long? If they don't have time to review, post them online and let the public decide — or at least weed out the dumb ideas.
Space

Submission + - The First Rocky Extrasolar Planet Confirmed (google.com)

Submitted by chill
chill writes: As scientists search the skies for life elsewhere, they have found more than 300 planets outside our solar system. But they all have been gas balls or can't be proven to be solid. Now a team of European astronomers has confirmed the first rocky extrasolar planet. Scientists have long figured that if life begins on a planet, it needs a solid surface to rest on, so finding one elsewhere is a big deal.
Operating Systems

Submission + - Reduce Linux power consumption

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: This article will get you up to speed on the components and concepts you need to fine-tune a Linux-based System x server for power efficiency. Learn how to enable the Linux CPUfreq subsystem, get instruction on C and P states, and determine which of the five Linux in-kernel governors you need to boost power efficiency on your system.
Intel

Submission + - ARM takes the fight to Intel, risks hurting its pa (hexus.net)

Submitted by unts
unts writes: UK CPU designer ARM is moving to make it easier for companies to produce systems containing ARM processors. The company is offering up "hard macro" implementations of its newest Cortex-A9 CPU, ready for integration into System-on-Chip designs, reducing the cost and time involved in designing and testing them. In doing so, it claims it is upping the ante in its battle to beat Intel in the mobile and netbook spaces, and indeed beyond. This is a departure from the existing so-called "ARM ecosystem" whereby its partners must come up with the hard implementation of the cores themselves. However, HEXUS.channel mulls over the possibility of such a move creating issues with existing partners who've already invested heavily in their own ARM-based designs:

The likes of Qualcomm and NVIDIA didn't spend zillions of dollars developing Snapdragon and Tegra respectively, only to find themselves having to compete with numerous other entrants to the market, all facilitated by their supposed partner ARM. This could be an additional reason for ARM to continually make such a big point about how its targeting Intel.

Slashdot Top Deals

Top Ten Things Overheard At The ANSI C Draft Committee Meetings: (5) All right, who's the wiseguy who stuck this trigraph stuff in here?

Close