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Submission + - 3D printing may face legal challenges (idg.com.au)

angry tapir writes: "A coming revolution in 3D printing, with average consumers able to copy and create new three-dimensional objects at home, may lead to attempts by patent holders to expand their legal protections, a paper from Public Knowlege says. Patent holders may see 3D printers as threats, and they may try to sue makers of the printers or the distributors of CAD (computer-aided design) blueprints, according to digital rights group Public Knowledge."

Submission + - Is SSD density about to hit a wall? (enterprisestorageforum.com)

Zombie Puggle writes: Enterprise Storage Forum has an article by Jeffrey Layton in which he contends that solid state disks will stay stuck at 20-25nm unless the materials and techniques used to design Flash drives changes and soon. “Anything smaller and the data protection and data corruption issues become so great that either the performance is abysmal, the data retention period doesn't meet JEDEC standards, or the cost increases.”

(“Why Flash Drive Density Will Stop Growing Next Year” http://www.enterprisestorageforum.com/technology/article.php/3904146/Why-Flash-Drive-Density-Will-Stop-Growing-Next-Year.htm)

Though engineers are working on performance and density improvements via new technologies (they’re also trying to drive costs down), these are fairly new techniques and are not likely to make it into devices for a while. All of which supports Henry Newman’s belief that SSDs won’t replace spinning disk drives.

("Why Solid State Drives Won't Replace Spinning Disk" http://www.enterprisestorageforum.com/technology/features/article.php/3894671/Why-Solid-State-Drives-Wont-Replace-Spinning-Disk.htm)

AMD

Submission + - It's official: AMD will retire the ATI brand (techreport.com)

J. Dzhugashvili writes: A little over four years have passed since AMD purchased ATI. In May of last year, AMD took the remains of the Canadian graphics company and melded them into a monolithic products group, which combined processors, graphics, and platforms. Now, AMD is about to take the next step: kill the ATI brand altogether. The company has officially announced the move, saying it plans to label its next generation of graphics cards 'AMD Radeon' and 'AMD FirePro,' with new logos to match. The move has a lot to do with the incoming arrival of products like Ontario and Llano, which will combine AMD processing and graphics in single slabs of silicon.
AMD

Submission + - AMD details upcoming Bulldozer architecture (pcper.com)

Vigile writes: AMD is taking the lid off quite a bit of information on its upcoming CPU architecture known as Bulldozer that is the first complete redesign over current processors. AMD's lineup has been relatively stagnant while Intel continued to innovate with Nehalem and Sandy Bridge (due late this year) and the Bulldozer refresh is badly needed to keep in step. The integrated north bridge, on-die memory controller and large shared L3 cache remain key components from the Athlon/Phenom generation to Bulldozer but AMD is adding features like dual-thread support per core (but with a unique implementation utilizing separate execution units for each thread), support for 256-bit SIMD operations (for upcoming AVX support) all running on GlobalFoundries 32nm SOI process technology.
First Person Shooters (Games)

Team Fortress 2 Update To Bring Maps, Sniper and Spy Upgrades 88

Over the past several days, Valve has been releasing details on an update to Team Fortress 2. They first revealed that the Sniper was taking its turn in a series of class upgrades, getting a bow and arrow that's capable of pinning an enemy to a wall. Next, they showed off a pair of new maps — a sawmill arena map that's in the midst of heavy rainfall and a circular map built around a doomsday weapon. Valve also mentioned a new game mode called Payload Race — it's similar to a regular Payload match, but both teams have a cart to push. The next day brought about an electrified shield for the Sniper, and hinted that the Spy would be getting an update as well. The following announcement confirmed it, introducing a device that would allow the Spy to feign death, and another that lets the Spy remain invisible permanently, only draining their power while in motion.

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