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Comment Re:Neuromorphic CPUs (Score 2) 320

While processing speeds are certainly linked to Moore's law, it is really only about the bi-yearly doubling of the transistor count while keeping prices roughly the same. Increasing the amount of cores and adding more on-die memory are easy ways to keep Moore's law going.

...well, easier than decreasing the half-pitch below 12nm.

By the way, Moore's law applies to memory density and CCD properties as well, neither of which appear to be close to their limits.

Censorship

ACTA Is Backta, New Round of Talks Start Today 73

An anonymous reader writes "Negotiations on the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement resume today in Lucerne, Switzerland, with the ninth round of talks. The Toronto Star highlights the mounting opposition to the deal from developing world countries such as India and China, while Michael Geist has posted a video of a recent lecture that provides background on the agreement and where things currently stand."

Comment Re:The End Of The Abandonware Golden Age? (Score 3, Interesting) 147

Unlikely...

The titles you see appearing in places like GOG and Steam are almost all well-known big titles by companies that still exist. This is only a very small part of what most abandonware websites offer. There's a huge number of great games that never gained any real following due to various reasons, or are owned by companies which no longer exist now.

In short, the real meaning of "abandonware" is exactly what its name implies: software which can be considered abandoned, preferably because there is no (clear) copyright holder anymore.

Then again, I can probably be considered biased, since I am webmaster of an abandonware site myself :)
Emulation (Games)

Submission + - Project of the month on SourceForge.net: DOSBox (kingofgng.com) 1

KingofGnG writes: "DOSBox, the emulator designed to run DOS games on modern operating systems (and not necessarily on a PC), has been chosen as project of the month for May 2009 on the open source platform SourceForge.net. It's the latest award granted to a software that "simply does what it is supposed to do", as the authors state, and that after having summed up more than 10 millions downloads is ready for an update awaited since almost two years."
Businesses

Interest Growing For Pre-Paid Game Cards 70

Worlds in Motion is running an interview with GMG Entertainment, a company finding success marketing pre-paid "digital currency cards" used online for games and other entertainment services. Customers and retailers alike are enjoying the simplicity and utility of the cards, and GMG suggests that this segment of the industry will only continue to grow: "I estimate this year that you'll see EA enter this space for some of their games, and a few other big names are absolutely interested. In fact we're in final negotiations with a couple of recognizable names. We tend to estimate the size of the total pre-paid gaming card business when we do our numbers, and this year we're looking to something between $75-100 million dollars in sales across North America. We see that going to $250-300 million in 2009 and being in the region of a half-billion by 2010. We see this market growing dramatically in the next two to five years."
The Internet

Belgian ISP Scores Victory In Landmark P2P Case 76

secmartin writes "Belgian ISP Scarlet scored an important victory in the first major European test of copyright law. The interim decision forcing them to block transfers of copyrighted materials via P2P has been reversed, because the judge agreed with Scarlet that the measures the Belgian RIAA proposed to implement proved to be ineffective. A final decision is expected next year."
Microsoft

Submission + - Office 2003SP3: Old file formats, now unavailable! 3

time961 writes: "In Service Pack 3 for Office 2003, Microsoft has disabled support for many older file formats, so if you have old Word, Excel, 1-2-3, Quattro, or Corel Draw documents, watch out! They did this because the old formats are "less secure", which actually makes some sense, but only if you got the files from some untrustworthy source.

Naturally, they did this by default, and then documented a mind-bogglingly complex workaround (KB 938810) rather than providing a user interface for adjusting it, or even a set of awkward "Do you really want to do this?" dialog boxes to click through. And, of course, because these are, after all, old file formats, many users will encounter the problem only months or years after the software change, while groping around in dusty and now-inaccessible archives.

One of the better aspects of Office is its extensive compatibility mechanisms for old file formats. At least the support isn't completely gone—it's just really hard to use. Security is important, but there are better ways to fulfill this goal.

This was also covered by the Windows Secrets newsletter, although I can't find a story URL for it."

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