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AMD

ARM Hopes To Lure Microsoft Away From Intel 333

Posted by timothy from the there-would-be-this-software-ecosystem dept.
Steve Kerrison writes "With the explosion of netbooks now available, the line between PC and mobile phone is becoming much less distinct. ARM, one of the biggest companies behind CPU architectures for mobile phones (and other embedded systems), sees now as an opportunity to break out of mobiles and give Intel a run for its money. HEXUS.channel quizzes Bob Morris, ARM's director of mobile computing, on how it plans to achieve such a herculean task. Right now, ARM's pushing Android as the OS that's synonymous with the mobile Internet. But it's not simply going to ignore Microsoft: 'What if Microsoft offered a full version of Windows (as opposed to Windows Mobile or Windows CE) that used the ARM, rather than X86 (Intel and AMD) instruction set? Then it would be a straight hardware fight with Intel, in which ARM hopes its low power, low price processors will have an advantage.'"
Technology

Transparent Aluminum Is "New State of Matter" 406

Posted by timothy from the baseball-bats-will-never-be-the-same dept.
Professor_Quail writes with this interesting excerpt: "Oxford scientists have created a transparent form of aluminum by bombarding the metal with the world's most powerful soft X-ray laser. 'Transparent aluminum' previously only existed in science fiction, featuring in the movie Star Trek IV, but the real material is an exotic new state of matter with implications for planetary science and nuclear fusion."

What Open Source Can Learn From Apple 309

Posted by ScuttleMonkey from the good-design-always-a-good-idea dept.
Linux and open source have long struggled to gain acceptance from the wider (read: non-technical) audience. This has improved in recent years, but still has a long way to go. Columnist Matt Asay suggests that perhaps open source projects should attempt to emulate Apple's design philosophy, with whoever succeeds becoming the "winner" of the hearts and minds of the vast majority of users. "Some projects already accomplish this to some extent. The strength of Mozilla, for example, is that it has figured out how to enable 40 percent of its development to be done by outside contributors, as BusinessWeek recently wrote. The downside is that these contributors are techies, but the upside is that they're techies who add language packs, accessibility features, and other "niche" areas that Mozilla might otherwise struggle to deliver. This suggests a start: enable your open-source project to accept meaningful outside contributions that make the project reflective of a wider development community. But the real goldmine is broadening the definition of "developer" to include lay users of your software. The day that I, as a nontechnical software user, can meaningfully participate in an open-source project is the day that open source will truly have won."

Comment Re:Uh huh. (Score 5, Interesting) 1089

by warrior (#28623883) Attached to: Google Announces Chrome OS, For Release Mid-2010
Not all of us like KDE and Gnome. Although they have innovated in some areas, they're otherwise both just attempts to make an MS clone. While this might be the right thing to make "Linux on the desktop" succeed, it's not what some of envision as the future of computing or even how we'd like the current state of computing.

I've been a Linux user since 1996 and I've watched the entire "Linux on the desktop" debacle unfold. It's sad to see that the /. crowd has changed from the attitude of "these MS clones are crap, desktop Linux should be something better" to "ho hum, this is how it should be, why innovate"? Back when this was just "Rob's page" you would've been flamed into oblivion for that public show of affection for KDE/Gnome.

Who are you to tell Google what they can and cannot build? It's about time someone put a face on the Linux desktop other than that of an MS clone. Hopefully it's not just a new window manager but a new window system. X, while great in its day, has run its course. I'd like to something fresh that builds on the concept of using modern graphics hardware to do all the heavy lifting for the GUI instead of clever CPU-intensive hacks on top of Xlib**.

You don't like Google's vision for Linux on netbooks. What's your alternative vision?

** I've written many apps with Xlib. The underlying ideas/primitives that X uses for graphics ops are obsolete so doing anything "cool" (and sometimes useful!) requires using crufty extensions rather than calling routines that are a "natural" part of the system.
Portables

Jim Zemlin Pitches Linux App Stores For Telcos 83

Posted by Soulskill from the eventually-your-toaster-will-have-an-app-store dept.
angry tapir writes "Mobile carriers may start giving away netbooks for free, and Linux-based application stores could help them profit by doing so, the Linux Foundation's Jim Zemlin argued at a recent forum in Beijing. 'Selling discounted netbooks to users who buy a mobile data subscription would extend a sales strategy widely used for mobile phones. Carriers often sell phones for below retail price and let a user's subscription fees make up for the loss. AT&T already sells subsidized 3G netbooks in the US, and China Mobile has announced similar plans. Carriers worldwide are likely considering the option, which lets them charge for added services like downloads of music, videos and software, said [analyst Jack Gold]. Those downloads could come from platforms like the iPhone App Store that target mainly mobile phones today. Competition could push netbook prices down as more carriers subsidize them, which would make putting Linux on the laptops an attractive way to cut costs, said Zemlin.'"
Earth

DoE Considers Artificial Trees To Remove CO2 418

Posted by timothy from the putting-the-artifice-in-artificial dept.
eldavojohn writes "CNN is running an article on a new angle of attack to reducing greenhouse gases. After meeting with the US Department of Energy on the concept, the researchers revealed the details that each 'tree' (really a small building structure in the concept design) would cost about as much as a Toyota and remove 1 ton of CO2 from the air per day. Don't worry, they're accounting for the energy the 'tree' uses to operate: 'By the time we make liquid C02 we have spent approximately 50 kilojoules [of electricity] per mole of C02. Compare that to the average power plant in the US, which produces one mole of C02 with every 230 kilojoules of electricity. In other words, if we simply plugged our device in to the power grid to satisfy its energy needs, for every roughly 1,000 kilograms [of carbon dioxide] we collected we would re-emit 200, so 800 we can chalk up as having been successful.' Each unit would remove 20 automobiles' worth of CO2 from the air and cost about as much as a Toyota... so the plan might be a five percent surcharge on automobiles to fund these synthetic tree farms."
Games

Videogame Places You're Not Supposed To Go 261

Posted by Soulskill from the is-second-life-one-of-them dept.
Ssquared22 writes "The eight far-off realms in this article exist for different reasons. They could be developer test areas, or forgotten pieces of landscape that somehow made their way into the final code. Whatever their reason for being, they all have one thing in common: they weren't meant to be explored by the likes of you and me. But through persistence, hacks or some combination of the two, you can take in these rare delights for yourself. Pack your bags." What odd, interesting, or funny game locations have you wandered into?

Comment No Opteron???! (Score 1) 185

by warrior (#27795341) Attached to: Microchips That Shook the World

While it's relatively new compared to everything on this list, the AMD Opteron, which came out in 2003, will be the face of computing for the foreseeable future. Even now in 2009 AMD's archival Intel is just coming out with integrated memory controllers and high-speed serial direct interconnects. The Opteron also forced Intel to give everyone 64-bit memory addressing in x86 (which Intel wanted to stay in the realm of high-end RISC/Itanium machines).

Opteron wasn't the first chip to have any of these features, but it was the first _x86_ chip to have all of them - making it an affordable "high-end" processor for small businesses and tech junkies. It really was a "world-shaking" product that put AMD on the map. No one expected little AMD to make a splash so big with Opteron (except Intel, which paid off companies to not release Opteron-based products, a55holes!).
Math

March 14th Officially Becomes National Pi Day 321

Posted by Soulskill from the pi-in-the-sky-legislation dept.
whitefox writes "The scoop from CNet is that 'The US House of Representatives on Wednesday approved a resolution introduced two days earlier that designates March 14, 2009 (3/14, get it?) as National Pi Day. It urges schools to take the opportunity to teach their students about Pi and "engage them about the study of mathematics."' The resolution is available online. I doubt it'll ever become a national holiday, but the Pi string in the article is pretty cool in a nerdy sort of way."

Comment Re:Why He Did It (Score 1) 672

by warrior (#27080211) Attached to: Lars Ulrich Pirates His Own Album

What I've heard is the band thought the GH version is what's on the cd. Having the band come out and say the cd version is in any way "defective" would constitute a PR nightmare and people demanding recall & replacement of their discs. So they've spun it as "the cd version is what we (the band) wanted" so their label doesn't lose money due to the label's mastering mistake.

Comment Why He Did It (Score 1) 672

by warrior (#27077953) Attached to: Lars Ulrich Pirates His Own Album

He did it b/c he couldn't figure out how to get the Guitar Hero version onto his PC himself. He was fed up with the static-laden "loudness war" version that's on the audio compact disc and this was his only avenue.

At least that's what I'd like to think as it's the funniest scenario in my mind.

Comment Re:access to space (Score 1) 183

by warrior (#26819625) Attached to: Fly Me To Which Moon?

Yeah, the big accomplishment of the US is doing all of that while keeping the rest of the economy going, ie food on the table. The USSR channeled everything into space/military R&D for short term gain but in the end we all know how that worked out. The USSR was kind of like the morons I see sprinting at the beginning of a 10k run that then get passed up somewhere in the first couple miles and eventually finish walking.
Space

Fly Me To Which Moon? 183

Posted by kdawson from the life-don't-talk-to-me-about-life dept.
Hugh Pickens writes "NASA and the European Space Agency are expected later this week to settle an ongoing debate on whether to send a robotic mission to Jupiter's moon Europa or Saturn's moon Titan. Both are difficult places to get to — a mission to either would cost several billion dollars/euros to build and execute — and both have become alluring targets in the quest to learn whether Earth alone supports life. On the one hand, Europa is believed to have liquid oceans beneath its frozen crust which (on Earth at least) are a source of life-supporting chemistry. Scientists would like to scan Europa's surface for bits of material that may have seeped up from beneath the ice. 'Imagine if there were microbes entrained in material that has exuded onto the surface of Europa and they've been sitting there for maybe three million years,' says planetary scientist Dr. Brad Dalton. On the other hand, Titan has two enticing features in the search for life: liquids on the surface, and a thick atmosphere that can be used to slow down a spacecraft and help put it into orbit. Titan's surface water is locked into the crust as ice, but scientists suspect there may be a subsurface ocean where water mingles with ammonia. The mission will not get to the launch pad before 2020. 'It's unfortunate that there has to be a decision,' says NASA/JPL astrobiologist Dr. Kevin Hand. 'It's important to go to both. They are both such amazing and tantalizing worlds in terms of finding life.'"
Earth

Global Warming Irreversible, NOAA Scientist Finds 1061

Posted by kdawson from the is-it-hot-in-here dept.
Tibor the Hun writes "NPR reports that Susan Solomon, one of the world's top climate scientists, finds in her new study that global warming is now irreversible. The study, published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, concludes that even if we could immediately cease our impact on pollution and greenhouse gasses emissions, global climate change would continue for more than a thousand years. The reason is the saturation of oceans with carbon dioxide. Her study looked at the consequences of long-term effect in terms of sea-level rise and drought."
Science

The Universe As Hologram 532

Posted by kdawson from the surface-projection dept.
Several readers sent in news of theoretical work bolstering the proposition that the universe may be a hologram. The story begins at the German experiment GEO600, a laser inteferometer looking for gravity waves. For years, researchers there have been locating and eliminating sources of interference and noise from the experiment (they have not yet seen a gravity wave). For months they have been puzzling over a source of noise they could not explain. Then Craig Hogan, a Fermilab physicist, approached them with a possible answer: that GEO600 may have stumbled upon a fundamental limit where space-time stops behaving like a smooth continuum and instead dissolves into "grains." The "holographic principle" suggests that the universe at small scales would be "blurry," its smallest features far larger than Planck scale, and possibly accessible to current technology such as the GEO600. The holographic principle, if borne out, could help distinguish among competing theories of quantum gravity, but "We think it's at least a year too early to get excited," the lead GEO600 scientist said.

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