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AMD

Submission + - 45nm Phenom II matches Core 2 Quad, trails Core i7 (techreport.com)

An anonymous reader writes: AMD is debuting its 45nm Phenom II processors today, and The Tech Report has already run them through a complete suite of benchmarks to see how they perform compared to Intel's latest and greatest. The result? The new 2.8GHz and 3GHz Phenom IIs are in a dead heat with like-priced Core 2 Quads, but they generally fall well behind Intel's new Core i7 chips. TR concludes that AMD's future doesn't look as bleak as some say, and future Phenom IIs could compete favorably with more affordable Core i7 derivatives.
Idle

Submission + - More Brains Needed

Hugh Pickens writes: "BBC reports that more people need to donate their brains to medical research if cures for diseases like dementia are to be found and are urging healthy people as well as those with brain disorders to become donors. "For autism, we only have maybe 15 or 20 brains that have been donated that we can do our research on. That is drastically awful," said Dr Payam Rezaie of the Neuropathology Research Laboratory at the Open University. "We would need at least 100 cases to get meaningful data. A lot of research is being hindered by this restriction." Part of the problem, according to Professor Margaret Esiri at the University of Oxford, may be that people are reluctant to donate their brains because they see the organ as the basis of their identity. "It used to be other parts of the body that we thought were important," says Esin. "But now people realize that their brain is the crucial thing that gives them their mind and their self." Dr Kieran Breen, of the Parkinson's Disease Society, said over 90% of the brains in their bank at Imperial College London were from patients, with the remaining 10% of "healthy" brains donated by friends or relatives of patients. "Some people are under the impression that if they sign up for a donor card that will include donating their brain for research. But it won't," says Breen. "Donor cards are about donating organs for transplant, not for medical science.""
Wireless Networking

Submission + - SPAM: Researchers apply P2P principles to car traffic

alphadogg writes: University of California, Irvine researchers are applying lessons learned from music and video peer-to-peer file transfer networks to a system for reducing traffic jams on the roads. Their Autonet plan would center around ad hoc networks of vehicles and roadside monitoring posts supported by 802.11 technology (the prototype uses 11b). The vehicles would essentially be the "clients" in such a system and feature graphical user interfaces to pass along information to drivers. They're building the system to be able to handle data on thousands of traffic incidents and road conditions.
Link to Original Source
Social Networks

Submission + - Researcher: Social networks link terrorists (idg.com.au)

An anonymous reader writes: At the International Conference on Cyber Security 2009 in New York, Evan Kohlmann, a senior investigator and private consultant for Global Terror Alert, claimed that a new breed of terrorists are using online forums to recruit people who align themselves with the mission of Al Qaeda, creating global networks of would-be terrorists.
X

Submission + - SPAM: X Power Tools

stoolpigeon writes: "The X Window System has been around for over twenty years and is the display system for an incredibly wide range of operating systems. With the number of Linux users growing, there are more people working with X than ever before. Most modern desktop environments provide user friendly interfaces that make modifying X rather simple. There is not so much need to dig into config files and settings as in the past but for those environments without such tools or for the user who loves to dig deep into their environment this book can be a simple way to understanding how X works and how to tweak it in any number of ways. If you want things that 'just work' and have no interest in digging around below the surface this book is not for you. On the other hand, if you think the best thing to do with a shiny new tool is to take it apart, well "X Power Tools" by Chris Tyler may be just for you.

The author, Chris Tyler, is a professor at Seneca College in Toronto as well as a programmer and Linux user. His first book published by O'Reilly was "Fedora Linux: A Complete Guide to Red Hat's Community Distribution", published in 2006. He cites the growth in X users, combined with active development and the lack of existing books that address X as the motivation for writing "X Power Tools."

X is the windowing system on a wide range of Unix and Unix like systems. Chris is obviously most familiar with Linux and so the material is heavily Linux oriented. This is most apparent when the book deals with Session Managers, Desktop Environments and Window Managers. The material focuses on Gnome, KDE and Xfce and their associated components in regards to X. For the Linux user this could be a valuable resource.

When I've had issues in working with X locally and over the network, I've found that while what I need is available on the web, getting just what I need can be very labor intensive at times. Usually just what I want is spread across tutorials, on-line man pages and forum posts. Sorting out what applies to my situation can be especially difficult when I'm not even sure just how things work for my setup. Chris makes this kind of guessing unnecessary and provides the locations and function of key files. He also spells out how the most important files and tools can be best used.

For the sysadmin on another platform, these Linux specific sections are not going to be much help. Most of the book though, deals with X itself. I've already loaned my copy to one of our AIX admins more than once and I think he plans on picking up a copy of his own.

When Gnome and KDE provide an interface for modifying or customizing X functionality, the book gives at least the name of the program and sometimes screen shots and explanations of how the tool works. This is always after an illustration of how to get the job done with the tools that are a part of X itself. From fonts to keyboard layouts, multi-display to kiosks, everything required is laid out in straight forward terms.

For me, as a Fedora user myself, this means that having read this book I approach my work environment with a new level of confidence. Behaviors that used to puzzle me, now make complete sense. Quirks that bothered me, no longer need to be tolerated as I know have the tools to get things working just the way I want, rather than using defaults.

The book has just come out, so it was being written before the release of KDE 4. I've looked through the documentation and I don't think any of the changes to programs like KDM or KWin make the information in the book out of date. In fact, according to the KWin release notes, when discussing KWins new compositing support, "...manual configuration of X may be required for proper results..." So if you are a KDE user that likes to live on the edge, this book may come in handy.

O'Reilly says that their "Power Tool" books are comprised of a series of stand-alone articles that are cross-referenced to one another. To be honest, it didn't feel much different from reading any other tech book. Topics flowed naturally and the articles are analogous to sections that divide up chapters in other books. One nice navigation feature is that page numbers are on the bottom of the pages while chapter and article numbers are at the top corner in a decimal notations. For example at the top of page 58 there is a grey square containing the number 3.13 which means that it is the 13th article in chapter 3.

The book has a thorough index. It also comes with 45 days free access to an electronic version through O'Reilly Safari.

For me the only real weakness of the book is that I would like to have seen more information on working with X on Unix. When reference is made to specific implementation of X it is almost always in regards to Linux. I wouldn't want to lose that, but I think a mixed environment of Unix, Linux and Windows is more the rule than the exception today. It would be more work to include other operating systems, but it would have also made the book much more valuable.

All tech books face the danger of becoming quickly useless as progress marches forward. X is actively being developed, but at the same time, looking back on its history I think this book will be useful for sysadmin and user for some time to come."
Government

Submission + - Geeks Help In Government Coverup (wsj.com)

covaro writes: "Seems those on-site computer services are helping cover up government dirty deeds these days. From the article:

Bypassing his agency's computer technicians, Mr. Bloch phoned 1-800-905-GEEKS for Geeks on Call, the mobile PC-help service. It dispatched a technician in one of its signature PT Cruiser wagons. In an interview, the 49-year-old former labor-law litigator from Lawrence, Kan., confirmed that he contacted Geeks on Call but said he was trying to eradicate a virus that had seized control of his computer. Mr. Bloch had his computer's hard disk completely cleansed using a "seven-level" wipe: a thorough scrubbing that conforms to Defense Department data-security standards. The process makes it nearly impossible for forensics experts to restore the data later. He also directed Geeks on Call to erase laptop computers that had been used by his two top political deputies, who had recently left the agency.
This also makes you wonder if the technician had the necessary clearance to be performing the work he was doing. They were after all machines being used in a government investigation."

Announcements

Submission + - Linux 2.6.22 Kernel Released (kerneltrap.org)

An anonymous reader writes: Linux creator Linus Torvalds announced the official release of the 2.6.22 kernel, "it's out there now (or at least in the process of mirroring out — if you don't see everything, give it a bit of time)." The previous stable kernel, 2.6.21, was released a little over two months ago on April 25'th. New features in the 2.6.22 kernel include a SLUB allocator which replaced the slab allocator, a new wireless stack, a new firewire stack, and support for the Blackfin architecture. Source level changes can be tracked via the gitweb interface to Linus' kernel tree.

Feed Study Says Video Games Do Affect People, But Hardly At All (techdirt.com)

Violent video games have been back in the news lately, following the Virginia Tech massacre (even though the shooter apparently wasn't a big gamer) and renewed efforts by state legislators to pass unconstitutional video-game bans. The overall issue here is that plenty of people want to eliminate responsibility for violent behavior by blaming it on video games, and saying they make people killers. Studies that claim to prove a link between games and violent or aggressive behavior generally fail miserably, with all that can really be agreed on is that video games do cause some sort of mental reaction in players -- as you might expect. Still, it's quite a leap to go from that to saying that video games make people behave a certain way after they're done playing. That's the general point made by the author of the latest study in the field, who says that games do create aggression in some people, but that the overall effect on people is very small, and has been exaggerated by activists, politicians and the media (it's probably worth noting that the title of the article about the study does this, by saying "Games Do Cause Violent Behavior (But Not Much)", when the study didn't look at violent behavior, just feelings of aggression). This gets to the heart of the matter: it's common sense that some video games could evoke certain feelings or mindsets in people -- but that's a completely separate issue from acting out those feelings through real-world violence outside the game. Plenty of other factors have far more impact the behavior of people -- particularly kids -- than video games. Trying to ban violent games is misguided, and overlooks all the other, more culpable, pieces of the puzzle that make people act out violent behavior.
Space

Submission + - The Solar oxygen crisis

Astrophysicist writes: The Astrophysical Journal publishes this week an article about the abundance of oxygen in the Sun. Oxygen (O) is the third most abundant atom in the universe, behind Hydrogen (H) and Helium (He). Most of the H and He was formed in the Big Bang, which means that O is the element most frequently produced by nuclear fusion reactions in the interior of the stars. The solar abundance of O, which is key in Astrophysics because of its use as a calibration reference for other objects, was thought to be well established since the 80s. However, recent evidence indicates that it has been overestimated by almost a factor of two. A revision of the Solar oxygen abundance would have a cascading effect on other important elements, such as Carbon, Nitrogen and Neon, whose abundance is only known relative to that of O. In addition to the impact on the chemical composition of many stars, models of solar interior may require some reworking in order to be consistent with the new data.
Microsoft

Submission + - Microsoft is Sued for Patent Violation over .NET

randomErr writes: "As reported by Info World Microsoft was issued a cease and desist order on February 7 of this year by Vertical Computer Systems. The order was for patent infringement by the current implementations of the .NET framework. Both the .NET framework and Vertical Computer Systems' SiteFlash use XML to create component-based structures that are used to build and operate web sites. Vertical Computer Systems is requesting a full jury trial. If successful fought .NET technology implementations may completely change as we know it and Microsoft would have to pay out a hefty sum."
AMD

Submission + - The Gigahertz Race is Back on

Anonymous Coward writes: "When CPU manufacturers ran up against the power wall in their designs, they announced that "the Gigahertz race is over; future products will run at slower clock speeds and gain performance through the use of multiple cores and other techniques that won't improve single-threaded application performance." Well, it seems that the gigahertz race is back on — This CNET story talks about how AMD has boosted the speed of their new Opterons to 3GHz. Of course, it the new chips also consume better than 20% more power than their last batch. The real question is: "What happens when they approach 4GHz this time?""
Google

Submission + - Google Pushes Open Source OCR

SocialWorm writes: "Google has just announced work on OCRopus, which it says it hopes will "advance the state of the art in optical character recognition and related technologies." OCRopus will be available under the Apache 2.0 License. Obviously, there may be search and image search implications from OCRopus."
Enlightenment

Submission + - Communicating Persuasively: Email or Face-to-Face?

Jeremy Dean writes: "Our intuitive understanding is that face-to-face communication is the most persuasive. In reality, of course, it's not always possible to meet in person, so email wins out. How, then, do people react to persuasion attempts over email? Persuasion research has uncovered fascinating effects: that men seem more responsive to email because it bypasses their competitive tendencies (Guadagno & Cialdini, 2002). Women, however, may respond better in face-to-face encounters because they are more 'relationship-minded'. But is this finding just a gender stereotype?"

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