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AMD

Submission + - AMD reports $611 million loss

Submitted by mpfife
mpfife writes: Toms hardware reports that "Declining microprocessor sales as well as dropping average selling prices for its microprocessors have pushed AMD deeper into the red. The company reported a net loss of $611 million on revenues of $1.233 billion, which is more than 20% below the guidance the company expected at the end of Q4 2006. The loss includes charges related to the ATI acquisition in the amount of $113 million, but is mainly a result of the increasing competition with Intel in the microprocessor market."
United States

Submission + - "Dark Side" of the H1-B Program

Submitted by TheGrapeApe
TheGrapeApe writes: Froma Harrop examines the "Dark Side" of the H1-B Visa program, and the subtle ways that corporations are using it to dismantle and extract American programming, graphic design and other service-sector jobs to overseas economies in this piece from the Seattle Times:

Ron Hira has studied the dark side of the H-1B program. A professor of public policy at the Rochester Institute of Technology, he notes that the top applicants for visas are outsourcing companies, such as Wipro Technologies of India and Bermuda-based Accenture.

The companies bring recruits in from, say, India to learn about American business. After three years here, the workers go home better able to interact with their U.S. customers.

In other cases, companies ask their U.S. employees to train H-1B workers who then replace them at lower pay. "This is euphemistically called, 'knowledge transfer,' " Hira says. "I call it, 'knowledge extraction.' "
Quickies

Submission + - Adamantium

Submitted by HomeySmurf
HomeySmurf writes: Not really adamantium, but scientists at UCLA have designed a new super hard and incompressible metal, rhenium diboride which is relatively easy to fabricate and can scratch diamond. Now we can start working on the Weapon X project and develop Wolverine claws.
Communications

Record High Frequency Achieved 141

Posted by ScuttleMonkey from the music-to-their-ears dept.
eldavojohn writes "Researchers at UCLA Henry Samueli School of Engineering and Applied Science managed to push our control of frequencies to another level when they hit a submillimeter 324 gigahertz frequency. As any signal geek out there might tell you, this is a non-trivial task. 'With traditional 90-nanometer CMOS circuit approaches, it is virtually impossible to generate usable submillimeter signals with a frequency higher than about 190 GHz. That's because conventional oscillator circuits are nonlinear systems in which increases in frequency are accompanied by a corresponding loss in gain or efficiency and an increase in noise, making them unsuitable for practical applications.' The article also talks about the surprising applications this new technology may evolve into."
Games

Feed Xbox 360 scratching discs? Maybe, says Microsoft (engadget.com)

From feed by engfeed

Filed under: Gaming, Storage

So far the Xbox 360 has had its fair share of hardware problems, both large and small, and while Microsoft has dealt with most of these challenges by extending warranties and offering up free fixes, it usually takes its own sweet time to come around, which seems to be the case here. After completely ignoring a minor public outcry over what appeared to be a problem with a decent number of the 360s produced in December 2006 -- where a missing part in the drive caused the Xbox to scratch the disc it was reading -- Microsoft is finally confessing that there might actually be a problem and promising to look into it. This statement comes after Dutch TV show "Kassa" gave the movement some PR and ran its own tests on the 360, proving it to be the scratching culprit. Microsoft's still pretty wishy-washy about the whole thing: "We are not able to respond in detail on the results. It is possible that scratches on discs originate from frequent use. However, we have no indication that the results of the tests from Kassa are a large scale problem." But at least now Microsoft is willing to hear out customer complaints on the matter, and recommends that affected users contact support to deal with the issue. We're not quite sure what kind of pyrotechnics it'll take for Microsoft to actually run its own tests on these things, but at least things are moving in the right direction.

[Via gadgetzone.nl]

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Privacy

Submission + - FBI Admits Abuse of Patriot Act to Obtain Info

Submitted by SydShamino
SydShamino writes: CNN, the Associated Press and others are reporting that an independent audit of the FBI revealed "serious misuse" of power to acquire private information granted in the Patriot Act. FBI Director Robert Mueller has accepted responsibility for problems and says they are being corrected, but Congress has already called for hearings. There's no word yet on criminal charges against anyone in the FBI who might have broken the law.
Security

Submission + - Modern Day Witch-Hunt in Connecticut

Submitted by zhenya00
zhenya00 writes: USAToday is reporting on a story most of us are already familiar with; the case of Julie Amero, a 40 year old Norwich, Connecticut substitute teacher who has been convicted of four counts of risk of injury to a minor when the un-patched Windows 98 computer she had used to check her email began to display a flurry of pornographic pop-ups to the students in her classroom. She faces up to 40 years in prison when she is sentenced this Friday March 2.
From the article:

"Julie Amero was a victim of a school that couldn't be bothered to protect its computers, of a prosecutor without the technology background to understand what he was doing, a police "expert" who was not, and a jury misled by all of them. "Miscarriage of justice" doesn't begin to describe it."
Can this country really allow something like this to happen? Why isn't there general outrage on the front page of every newspaper? Why aren't those responsible being flooded with calls and emails from angry citizens?
Television

Submission + - TV delays drive viewers to piracy

Submitted by Astat1ne
Astat1ne writes: The Register has a story about the delays Australian TV viewers are experiencing with overseas-produced series and how it is driving many of them to download the shows via BitTorrent and other peer-to-peer networks. From the story: "According to a survey based on a sample of 119 current or recent free-to-air TV series', Australian viewers are waiting an average of almost 17 months for the first run series' first seen overseas. Over the past two years, average Australian broadcast delays for free-to-air television viewers have more than doubled from 7.9 to 16.7 months." According to the article, the situation is compounded by the fact that Australian viewers are unable to download legal copies of the episodes from the US iTunes website and are turning to unauthorised means to get copies of their favorite shows.
The Courts

RIAA Admits ISPs Have Misidentified "John Does" 271

Posted by kdawson from the record-keeping dept.
NewYorkCountryLawyer writes "The RIAA has sent out a letter to the ISPs telling them to stop making mistakes in identifying subscribers, and offering a 'Pre-Doe settlement option' — with a discount of '$1000 or more' — to their subscribers, if and only if the ISP agrees to preserve its logs for 180 days. Other interesting points in the letter (PDF): the RIAA will be launching a web site for 'early settlements,' www.p2plawsuits.com; the letter asks the ISPs to notify the RIAA if they have previously 'misidentified a subscriber account in response to a subpoena' or become aware of 'technical information... that causes you to question the information that you provided in response to our clients' subpoena'; it notes that ISPs have identified 'John Does' who were not even subscribers of the ISP at the time of the infringement; and it requests that ISPs furnish their underlying log files, not just names and addresses, when responding to RIAA subpoenas."
Republicans

Submission + - Congress Wants ISPs to Log Your Online Life

Submitted by
walmartshopper67
walmartshopper67 writes: "Crooks and Liars is reporting that Representative Lamar Smith (R-TX) has introduced a bill that would require ISPs to "record all users' surfing activity, IM conversations and email traffic indefinitely". The bill would impose heavy fines and jail time on ISPs that do not save the required information. Not that this will pass, but come on, how can anyone think this is a good idea?"
Music

Submission + - EU may force iTunes Store to accept returns

Submitted by Sweet Harmony
Sweet Harmony writes: The European Union may require online music stores to accept returns, according to Ars Technica. A review of European consumer protection laws has highlighted online sales of 'digital content services' as an area where existing consumer protection laws need to be harmonized. 'The EC would like to standardize cooling offer periods along with other aspects of the EU's consumer protection laws. One of the issues being considered is whether the rules on consumer sales should apply to "digital content services" like music.'

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