Slashdot Mirror

An anonymous reader writes to point out a giant gift to the world from the Internet Archive: a massive collection of MAME ROMs, playable in your browser using Javascript Mess. From the blog post announcing this extension of the already mind-blowing Internet Archive: "Like the Historical Software collection, the Console Living Room is in beta – the ability to interact with software in near-instantaneous real-time comes with the occasional bumps and bruises. An army of volunteer elves are updating information about each of the hundreds of game cartridges now available, and will be improving them across the next few days. Sound is still not enabled, but is coming soon. Faster, more modern machines and up-to-date browsers work best with the JSMESS emulator."

hcs_$reboot writes "After the disastrous Apple Maps replacement over Google Maps in September, Google has a Maps app on iOS approved and released by Apple today. The app includes turn-by-turn directions, vector-based graphics and live traffic data. It's available from the Apple Store for iPhone and iPod touch (and iPad — iPhone format)." Adds reader snowtigger: "It's a sharper looking, vector-based map that loads quickly and provides smooth tilting and rotating of 2D and 3D views. Google also released the Google Maps SDK for iOS, and a simple URL scheme to help developers use Google Maps when building their beautiful and innovative apps. The new Google Maps app is available for the iPhone and iPod Touch (4th gen) iOS 5.1 and higher, in more than 40 countries and 29 languages." SlashCloud points out that Apple's own maps will be forced to improve as a consequence: "Directions will become more accurate, major towns and landmarks will appear in their proper places. But now that a free, standalone Google Maps app is available for download from Apple’s App Store, will iOS users even give those improving Apple Maps a chance?"

Hugh Pickens writes "Jean-Louis Gassée says Apple and Samsung are engaged in a knives-out smartphone war. But when it comes to chips, the two companies must pretend to be civil because Samsung is the sole supplier of ARM-based processors for the iPhone. So why hasn't Intel jumped at the chance to become Apple's ARM source? 'The first explanation is architectural disdain,' writes Gassée. 'Intel sees "no future for ARM," it's a culture of x86 true believers. And they have a right to their conviction: With each iteration of its manufacturing technology, Intel has full control over how to improve its processors.' Next is pride. Intel would have to accept Apple's design and 'pour' it into silicon — it would become a lowlymerchant foundry.' Intel knows how to design and manufacture standard parts, but it has little experience manufacturing other people's custom designs or pricing them. But the most likely answer to the Why-Not-Intel question is money. Intel meticulously tunes the price points for its processors to generate the revenue that will fund development. Intel's published prices range from a 'low' $117 for a Core i3 processor to $999 for a top-of-the-line Core i7 device. Compare this to iSuppli's estimate for the cost of the A6 processor: $17.50. Even if more A6 chips could be produced per wafer — an unproven assumption — Intel's revenue per A6 wafer start would be much lower than with their x86 microprocessors. In Intel's perception of reality, this would destroy the business model. 'For all of Intel's semiconductor design and manufacturing feats, its processors suffer from a genetic handicap: They have to support the legacy x86 instruction set, and thus they're inherently more complicated than legacy-free ARM devices, they require more transistors, more silicon. Intel will argue, rightly, that they'll always be one technological step ahead of the competition, but is one step enough for x86 chips to beat ARM microprocessors?'"

FatLittleMonkey writes "You may recall Cody Wilson's project to create a 3D printed gun, mentioned previously on Slashdot. Well, the Defense Distributed project has suffered a decidedly non-technical setback, with printer manufacturer Stratasys revoking the lease and repossessing the printer (presumably prying it from plastic models of Cory's cold dead hands). According to New Scientist, the manufacturer cited his lack of a federal firearms manufacturer's license as their reason for the repossession, adding that it does not knowingly allow its printers to be used for illegal purposes." Homemade firearms are not (in the U.S.) per se illegal on a federal basis, though states have varying degrees of regulation. It would be helpful if anyone more conversant with firearms law than me can point out what law or laws this project might be breaking.

SternisheFan writes with news of a settlement in a case of Rent-to-Own firms grossly violating the privacy of their customers. From the article: "Seven rent-to-own companies and a software developer have settled federal charges that they spied on customers, ... The companies captured screenshots of confidential and personal information, logged keystrokes, and took webcam pictures of people in their homes. Their aim was to track the computers belonging to customers who were behind with their payments. 'An agreement to rent a computer doesn't give a company license to access consumers' private emails, bank account information, and medical records, or, even worse, webcam photos of people in the privacy of their own homes,' says FTC chairman Jon Leibowitz. 'The FTC orders today will put an end to their cyber spying.' Developer DesignerWare produced the software that was used to gather the information, PC Rental Agent. The package included a 'kill switch' designed to disable a computer of it was stolen, or if payments weren't made. However, an add-on program called Detective Mode could log key strokes, capture screen shots and take photographs using a computer's webcam, says the FTC in its complaint (PDF)."

DevotedSkeptic writes "Californian senators have passed a bill that looks set to make the state the second in the US to approve self-driving cars on its roads. The bill was passed unanimously by state senators, and now hits the desk of governor Jerry Brown, who's expected to sign it into law. It calls on the California Department of Motor Vehicles to start developing standards and licensing procedures for autonomous vehicles. 'This bill would require the department to adopt safety standards and performance requirements to ensure the safe operation and testing of 'autonomous vehicles', as defined, on the public roads in this state,' it reads."

Hkibtimes writes, quoting the International Business Times: "The Anonymous hacking collective has landed in China, home of some of the most tightly controlled Internet access in the world, and defaced hundreds of government websites in what appears to be a massive online operation against Beijing. Anonymous listed its intended institutional targets on Pastebin and has now attacked them."

n1ywb writes "Goerge 'geohot' Hotz, famous for being the first to jailbreak an iPhone and for his spat with Sony over PS3 jailbreaking, was busted for possession of a small amount of marijuana at a U.S. Border Patrol checkpoint in Texas on his way to SXSW. The shakedown goes like this: drug dogs are run around vehicles; when they signal, DHS searches the car and finds the contraband; DHS then turns evidence and suspects over to the local sheriff. Willie Nelson, actor Armie Hammer (who played the Winklevoss twins in The Social Network), and Snoop Dogg have all gotten in trouble at the same checkpoint under similar circumstances."

New submitter newmission33 writes "Government researchers have created the fastest, purest X-ray laser pulses ever achieved, and have fulfilled a 1967 prediction that an atomic scale X-ray laser could be made in the same manner as visible-light lasers, according to a statement released Wednesday. Researchers at the SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory used the Linac Coherent Light Source to aim a powerful X-ray source beam, a billion times brighter than any previous source, at a capsule of neon gas and triggered an 'avalanche' of X-ray emissions to become the world's first 'atomic X-ray laser.'"

An anonymous reader writes "A guy who goes by the online handle DDRBoxman decided it would be fun to blow up his Samsung Galaxy Nexus display onto the wall by connecting his phone to a projector. He then connected the whole thing to a PC and, thanks to Microsoft's open-source Kinect platform for Windows, he was able to create a custom ROM that mapped out the phone interface to the Kinect sensors. Pretty neat!"

First time accepted submitter Virtucon writes "German physicists say they've built a heat engine measuring only a few micrometers across which works as well as a normal-sized version — although it sputters, they admit. Researchers at the University of Stuttgart and the Max Planck Institute for Intelligent Systems say that the engine does basically work, meaning there's nothing, in principle, to prevent the construction of highly efficient, small heat engines."

First time accepted submitter Sanoj writes "Strange patterns of ichthyosaur bones have been found on an ancient deep-water seabed. One paleontologist has put forward the theory that these could have been the work of giant cephalopods who were eating the swimming dinosaurs and then arranging the vertebrae to resemble their own tentacles. Sound far-fetched? Apparently, the modern octopus also does this."

Sooner Boomer writes "The Cassini space probe has been monitoring an enormous storm on Saturn since it was detected last December. The storm, dubbed 'The Great White Spot', now 500 times larger than any previously seen by Cassini at Saturn, is 8 times the surface area of Earth. Observers on Earth have been able to see a bright white 'smudge' in the northern half of the planet." NASA released a recording of the electrical noise generated by the lightning.

An anonymous reader writes "Gitbrew has proudly released otherOS++ Linux Dual Boot v1.0b1, enabling PS3 users to install an alternative OS to their console with full access to all system hardware, including all 8 CELL cores (making the PS3 the world's most affordable supercomputer). For more information check out the installation instructions and source code."

An anonymous reader writes "A Remote Access Trojan (RAT) for Windows, known as darkComet, has been ported to Mac OS X. The new backdoor Trojan is not yet finished, but it could be indicative of more underground programmers attempting to take advantage of Apple's growing market share."

Hugh Pickens writes "Sharon Chan reports in the Seattle Times that at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, Microsoft showed the next generation of Windows running natively on an ARM chip design, commonly used in the mobile computing world, indicating a schism with Intel, the chip maker Microsoft has worked with closely with throughout the history of Windows and the PC. The Microsoft demonstration showed Word, PowerPoint and high definition video running on a prototype ARM chipset made by Texas Instruments, Nvidia. 'It's part of our plans for the next generation of Windows,' says Steve Sinofsky, president of Windows division. 'That's all under the hood.' According to a report in the WSJ, the long-running alliance between Microsoft and Intel is coming to a day of reckoning as sales of tablets, smartphones and televisions using rival technologies take off, pushing the two technology giants to go their separate ways. The rise of smartphones and more recently, tablets, has strained the relationship as Intel's chips haven't been able to match the low power consumption of chips based on designs licensed from ARM. Intel has also thumbed its nose at Microsoft by collaborating with Microsoft archrival Google on the Chrome OS, Google's operating system that will compete with Windows in the netbook computer market. 'I think it's a deep fracture,' says venture capitalist Jean-Louis Gassee regarding relations between Microsoft and Intel."

burnin1965 writes in to let us know that the looming crisis in rare-earth materials (which we have discussed recently) has prompted Molycorp, the erstwhile operator of a California mine closed in 2002, to announce plans to reopen it. "With increasing prices on rare earth ore, tariffs raised by the Chinese government, and the threat of embargoes that would damage United States high-tech manufacturing Molycorp now has the needed incentive to reopen the California Mountain Pass mine. They will spend the capital needed to implement badly needed updates to environmental controls that will mitigate the radioactive waste water releases that plagued the mine in the past. Chinese imports in the 90s nearly halved ore prices and the California mine experienced multiple failures in environmental controls that resulted in the release of huge volumes of radioactive waste water. Updating the mine to address the environmental issues was not financially viable due to the cheap Chinese imports so it was closed in 2002." Within two years the mine could be producing 20% of the amount of rare earths we import from China.

snydeq writes "Security professionals are tapping Trojan horse access points cloaked in printers and other office equipment to infiltrate clients who want their defenses tested, InfoWorld reports. Attackers dressed in IT supplier uniforms drop off printers to a company for a test-drive. Once the device is connected to the network, the penetration testers have a platform behind any perimeter defenses from which to attack. 'You can put your box inside a printer tray and glue it shut, and who will notice if there are one or two or three power cables coming out?' one security researcher says of the method. A variant of the attack, presented by Errata Security at the Defcon hacking convention, uses an attack-tool-laden iPhone mailed to a target company to get inside the firm's network defenses."

An anonymous reader writes "Bruce Schneier has posted a huge recap of the controversy over TSA body scanners, including more information about the lawsuit he joined to ban them. There's too much news to summarize, but it covers everything from Penn Jillette's and Dave Barry's grope stories, to Israeli experts who say this isn't needed and hasn't ever stopped a bomb, to the three-year-old girl who was traumatized by being groped and much, much more." Another reader passed along a related article, which says, "Congressman Ron Paul lashed out at the TSA yesterday and introduced a bill aimed at stopping federal abuse of passengers. Paul’s proposed legislation would pave the way for TSA employees to be sued for feeling up Americans and putting them through unsafe naked body scanners."

timothy writes "I'd like to see computing devices with no need for an external power supply — an e-book reader, a general knock-about PDA, a phone — all kinds of things. But there's a certain heart-strings appeal to such a computer intended as an educational tool for precisely those kind of places where basic infrastructure (like the provision of electricity) is a stumbling block. Perhaps built-in solar makes more sense, in more places, than the hand-cranked power the OLPC project ended up dropping from their laptops-for-kids program."

Taco Cowboy writes "The Australian founder of the whistleblower website Wikileaks had his passport confiscated by police when he arrived in Melbourne last week. While Assange has made himself particularly unpopular with the US military by publishing video of attacks on civilians in Iraq, he's been something of a thorn in the side for the Australian government too. Last year, Wikileaks published a list of websites which were to be banned under the government's proposed Internet filter. While the aim of the filter is to block extreme pornography and the like, the blacklist included a number of more prosaic sites such as those of a travel company and a dentist.

mbone writes "Jupiter just went through Superior Conjunction (i.e., went behind the Sun as seen from the Earth), so it has been out of view for a while. Now that it has returned, it is different — the South Equatorial Belt (SEB) is missing. The SEB has about 10 times the surface area of the Earth, so this is not a small change. Here are a series of photos of Jupiter's new look. The Great Red Spot typically inhabits the southern border of the SEB, but it doesn't seem to be affected by the change. It's a pity that this happened at Superior Conjunction, and that there is no satellite in Jupiter orbit, so details of the change are largely missing. The SEB has previously gone missing in 1973 and 1990. Since no one really knows what makes the Jovian belts, no one knows why they disappear either. If the belts are really just material from deeper layers coming to the surface, it is possible that the convection has stopped for some reason, or that high-altitude clouds have covered it over."

miller60 writes "In 2010 the volume of digital information created and duplicated in a year will reach 1.2 zettabytes, according to new data from IDC and EMC. The annual Digital Universe report is an effort to visualize the enormous amount of data being generated by our increasingly digital lives. The report's big numbers — a zettabyte is roughly a million petabytes — pose interesting questions about how the IT community will store and manage this firehose of data. Perhaps the biggest challenge isn't how much data we're creating — it's all the copies of it. Seventy-five percent of all the data in the Digital Universe is a copy, according to IDC. See additional analysis from TG Daily, The Guardian, and Search Storage."

An anonymous reader writes with this excerpt from TGDaily: "Researchers from Harvard and MIT have demonstrated a way to build better artificial visual systems with the help of low-cost, high-performance gaming hardware. [A video describing their research is available.] 'Reverse engineering a biological visual system — a system with hundreds of millions of processing units — and building an artificial system that works the same way is a daunting task,' says David Cox, Principal Investigator of the Visual Neuroscience Group at the Rowland Institute at Harvard. 'It is not enough to simply assemble together a huge amount of computing power. We have to figure out how to put all the parts together so that they can do what our brains can do.' The team drew inspiration from screening techniques in molecular biology, where a multitude of candidate organisms or compounds are screened in parallel to find those that have a particular property of interest. Rather than building a single model and seeing how well it could recognize visual objects, the team constructed thousands of candidate models, and screened for those that performed best on an object recognition task. The resulting models outperformed a crop of state-of-the-art computer vision systems across a range of test sets, more accurately identifying a range of objects on random natural backgrounds with variation in position, scale, and rotation. Using ordinary CPUs, the effort would have required either years or millions of dollars of computing hardware. Instead, by harnessing modern graphics hardware, the analysis was done in just one week, and at a small fraction of the cost."

eldavojohn writes "A patent issued in 2003 called 'Method and system for demultiplexing a first sequence of packet components to identify specific components wherein subsequent components are processed without re-identifying components' is now owned by Implicit Networks, who has recently claimed Windows 7 infringes upon it with its Filtering Platform. This is used in Vista, Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008. Implicit is seeking a jury trial and damages. A shocking turn of events; you actually want to cheer for Microsoft this time as Implicit is nothing more than a patent licensing company (troll) and has done battle with Sun, AMD, Intel and NVIDIA."

sv_libertarian writes "Mozilla recently updated its product roadmap through 2010. According to the first draft, the current browser will see a minor update in Q4 2009 and another in Q2 2010. Version 4.0 is headed for an October or November 2010 release and will bring a new user interface and browser sync integration. 'There is not much information on [what] this new user interface will look like, but the first mockups that have been posted on Mozilla's website suggest that the Mozilla team favors a Google Chrome-like design that integrates Windows 7 graphics features. Overall, window elements seem to be floating over the background.' The mockup page emphatically notes that the design is not final."

Gianna Borgnine writes "NVIDIA is predicting that GPU performance is going to increase a whopping 570-fold in the next six years. According to TG Daily, NVIDIA CEO Jen-Hsun Huang made the prediction at this year's Hot Chips symposium. Huang claimed that while the performance of GPU silicon is heading for a monumental increase in the next six years — making it 570 times faster than the products available today — CPU technology will find itself lagging behind, increasing to a mere 3 times current performance levels. 'Huang also discussed a number of "real-world" GPU applications, including energy exploration, interactive ray tracing and CGI simulations.'"

eldavojohn writes "A new study has found that game characters tend not to reflect cultural diversity. According to the paper from researchers across four universities (PDF): 'A large-scale content analysis of characters in video games was employed to answer questions about their representations of gender, race and age in comparison to the US population. The sample included 150 games from a year across nine platforms, with the results weighted according to game sales. ... The results show a systematic over-representation of males, white and adults and a systematic under-representation of females, Hispanics, Native Americans, children and the elderly.' The researchers also note that games 'function as crucial gatekeepers for interest in science, technology, engineering and math,' and that without these groups represented properly, 'it may place underrepresented groups behind the curve.'"

Mike writes "Microsoft's market share in the browser dropped below 70% for the first time in eight years, while Mozilla broke the 20% barrier for the first time in its history. It's too early to tell for sure, but if Net Applications' numbers are correct, then Microsoft's Internet Explorer will end 2008 with a historic market share loss in a software segment Microsoft believes is key to its business."

Kelly writes "Google is now urging Gmail users to drop Internet Explorer 6 (IE6) in favor of Firefox or Chrome. Google recently removed Firefox from the Google Pack bundle, replaced it with Chrome, then added a direct download link for Chrome on Google and YouTube. Google's decision to list IE6 as an unsupported Gmail browser does not affect just consumers: Tens of thousands of small- and mid-sized businesses that run Google Apps hosted services may dump IE6 as well. What's especially interesting is the fact that Mozilla is picking up two out of three browser users that Microsoft surrenders."

Kelly writes "Google is now urging Gmail users to drop Internet Explorer 6 (IE6) in favor of Firefox or Chrome. Google recently removed Firefox from the Google Pack bundle, replaced it with Chrome, then added a direct download link for Chrome on Google and YouTube. Google's decision to list IE6 as an unsupported Gmail browser does not affect just consumers: Tens of thousands of small- and mid-sized businesses that run Google Apps hosted services may dump IE6 as well. What's especially interesting is the fact that Mozilla is picking up two out of three browser users that Microsoft surrenders."

bogaboga writes "TG Daily reports that Microsoft quietly released the first update to its IE8 beta 2 to its closest partners last week. This new version only scores a dismal 12/100 on the Acid 3 test, though the score improves significantly if one leaves the [browser] window open for at least a minute. It is marked as 'Release Candidate 1.'"

An anonymous reader writes "According to a research report out of UCLA, released this morning, NVidia's high-lead bump packaging could last anywhere from 1/10th to 1/100th as long as AMD's advanced eutectic bump approach. (TG Daily has picked up the claim.) NVidia is currently in the midst of a $200M recall of bad GPUs, and the report suggests that the issue could be much deeper than NVidia's PR department would have us believe." The report lends credence to the strident claims of the Inquirer's Charlie Demerjian, which we discussed a month back.

mortonda writes to tell us that the person responsible for breaching Sarah Palin's private email account has been found. We discussed the breach last Wednesday, shortly before the hacker, a University of Tennessee-Knoxville student, posted a message detailing his methods. Wired has a story examining the potential legal consequences for the hacker.

Continuing our coverage of Google Chrome, snydeq points out an Infoworld story about looking at the new browser from a developer's perspective, and another about how WebKit should be the focus of development efforts, rather than the browsers that use it. TGdaily notes that Chrome's search box will fetch all types of data, and can be made to display banking information with little effort. ABC and coderrr have slightly more paranoid articles questioning Google's commitment to privacy. NetworkWorld suggests that Chrome's unique process model (explained here) will require the development of new measurement standards.

negRo_slim writes "AMD has pushed Fusion as one of the main reasons to justify its acquisition of ATI. Since then, AMD's finances have changed colors and are now deep in the red, the top management has changed, and Fusion still isn't anything AMD wants to discuss in detail. But there are always 'industry sources' and these sources have told us that Fusion is likely to be introduced as a half-node chip."

stress_life writes "Following controversial allegations that Nvidia is cheating in 3DMark Vantage and Unreal Tournament 3 benchmarks, executives from Futuremark and Epic moved forward to clean any confusion. However, the game was not over — enthusiasts from Israel ported PhysX middleware to run on ATI Radeon cards, achieving remarkable performance. Owners of ATI Radeon cards will be able to play PhysX games as well, such as Ghost Recon 2 and already mentioned Unreal Tournament 3."

the brown guy writes "An 18-year-old high school student named Omar Kahn is charged with 69 felonies for hacking into a school computer and modifying his grades, among other things. He changed his C, D and F grades to As, and changed 12 other students grades as well. By installing a remote access program on the school's server, Kahn was able to also change his AP scores and distribute test answer keys, and could be looking at a lengthy prison term. Not surprisingly, his parents (who have only recently immigrated to America) have decided not to post the $50,000 bail and Kahn is in jail awaiting trial."

An anonymous reader writes "At the Research@Intel Day 2008, Intel showed a ray-traced version of Enemy Territory: Quake Wars. Compared to the original game, a water with reflections and refractions and a physically correct glass shader were added. Also, a camera portal with up to 200 recursions to itself has been demonstrated. To show off this ongoing research in the topic of real-time ray tracing, a four-socket system with quad cores has been used that allowed rendering the enhanced visual effects in 1280x720 at 14-29 fps. Just two years before, early versions of Quake 4: Ray Traced ran only at 256x256 with 17 fps. Even though Intel's upcoming Larrabee will be primarily a rasterizer, the capabilities for also doing ray tracing on it should deliver interesting opportunities."

An anonymous reader writes "Intel convinced Cray to collaborate on what many believe will be the next generation of supercomputers — CPUs complemented by floating-point acceleration units. NVIDIA successfully placed its Tesla cards in an upcoming Bull supercomputer, and today we learn that Cray will be using Intel's x86 Larrabee accelerators in a supercomputer that is expected to be unveiled by 2011. It's a new chapter in the Intel-NVIDIA battle and a glimpse at the future of supercomputers operating in the petaflop range. The deal has also got to be a blow to AMD, which has been Cray's main chip supplier."

Vigile writes "Tom Forsyth, a well respected developer inside Intel's Larrabee project, has spoken to dispel rumors that the Larrabee architecture is ignoring rasterization, and in fact claims that the new GPU will perform very well with current DirectX and OpenGL titles. The recent debate between rasterization and ray tracing in the world of PC games has really been culminating around the pending arrival of Intel's discrete Larrabee GPU technology. Game industry luminaries like John Carmack, Tim Sweeney and Cevat Yerli have chimed in on the discussion saying that ray tracing being accepted as the primary rendering method for games is unlikely in the next five years."

An anonymous reader writes "This may be an interesting take on creating long-term storage technologies. A team of researchers at UCSC claims to have come up with a power-efficient, scalable way to reliably store data for a theoretical 1,400 years with regular hard drives. TG Daily has an article describing this technology and it sounds intriguing as it uses self-contained but networked storage units. It looks like a complicated solution, but the approach is manageable and may be an effective solution to preserve your data for decades and possibly centuries." Nice to see research on this using the kinds of real-world figures for disk lifetimes that recent studies have been turning up.

stress_life writes "Recent rumors about AMD firing 5% of its workforce proved to be understated. AMD just announced that the company is going to deliver pink slips to 1600-1700 workers, or around 10% of its employees. AMD needs revenue of $2 billion per quarter, but Q1'08 is expected to come in around $1.5 billion. These firings have to be complete by Q3'08, the quarter by which Hector Ruiz promised to be profitable." We most recently discussed AMD's struggles in February.

stress_life writes "Recent rumors about AMD firing 5% of its workforce proved to be understated. AMD just announced that the company is going to deliver pink slips to 1600-1700 workers, or around 10% of its employees. AMD needs revenue of $2 billion per quarter, but Q1'08 is expected to come in around $1.5 billion. These firings have to be complete by Q3'08, the quarter by which Hector Ruiz promised to be profitable." We most recently discussed AMD's struggles in February.

An anonymous reader writes "You may have heard about Intel's and Microsoft's efforts to finally get multi-core programming into gear so that there actually will be a developer who can program all those fancy new multicore processors, which may have dozens of core on one chip within a few years. TG Daily has an interesting article about the project, written by one of the researchers. It looks like there is a lot of excitement around the opportunity to create a new generation of development tools. Let's hope that we will soon see software that can exploit those 16+core babies. 'The problem of multi-core programming is staring at us right now. I am not sure what Intel's and Microsoft's expectations are, but it is quite possible that they are in fact looking at fundamental results from the academic centers to leverage their large work force to polish and realize the ideas that come forth. It calls for a much closer collaboration between the centers and the companies than it appears at first sight.'"

An anonymous reader sends the story of the rediscovery of an original painting of Ada Byron at about age 4, the girl who was to become Countess Lovelace and the world's first computer programmer. A US Army sergeant in Tajikistan caught wind of an eBay auction of a 180-year-old painting of Ada Byron, with provenance; he notified a programmer buddy in Texas, who won the auction.

An anonymous reader writes "HD DVD is almost gone and Blu-ray prices are already on their way up. TG Daily went through average retail prices of some of the popular Blu-ray players and found that you should expect to pay at least $400 for an entry-level Blu-ray player, while you could get a player for less than $330 in February. It really should not be a surprise for all of us, but it is interesting to see how quickly retail adjusted to the new situation and increased prices."

An anonymous reader writes "TG Daily is running an interesting interview with EPIC founder and Unreal creator Tim Sweeney. Sweeney is anyway very clear about his views on the gaming industry, but it is surprising how sharply he criticizes the PC industry for transforming the PC into a useless gaming machine. He's especially unhappy with Intel, which he says has integrated graphics chipsets that 'just don't work'."

Multiple readers have written to tell us of the latest developments out of Intel. Earlier this week, Intel announced the Atom brand of low cost, low power consumption processors. The CPUs, measuring only 25 square millimeters, are the result of the Silverthorne and Diamondville projects. The announcement has caused this CNet columnist to question whether Intel can "spur innovation in ultrasmall devices the way it has in the PC and server industry." Concurrently, Intel has increased its production of 45nm processors to a rate of roughly 100,000 chips per day. As TG Daily notes, the massive investments Intel has made into chip production will make it difficult for AMD to catch up.

An anonymous reader writes "It looks like SCO will be emerging from the almost dead soon, with new owners and $100 million on board. SNCP is adjusting the business strategy, according to this report on TG Daily, SCO is saying goodbye to CEO Darl McBride and is also preparing to appeal the summary judgments in the cases against Novell and IBM. If you have thought the chapter was closed, think again. Those $100 million can go a long way (even if SCO has to pay 17% interest on it)."