Slashdot Mirror

An anonymous reader writes "Until today, GPGPU computing was a userspace privilege because of NVIDIA's closed-source policy and AMD's semi-open state. KGPU is a workaround to enable Linux kernel functionality written in CUDA. Instead of figuring out GPU specs via reverse-engineering, it simply uses a userspace helper to do CUDA-related work for kernelspace requesters. A demo in its current source repository is a modified eCryptfs, which is an encrypted filesystem used by Ubuntu and other distributions. With the accelerated performance of a GPU AES cipher in the Linux kernel, eCryptfs can get a 3x uncached read speedup and near 4x write speedup on an Intel X25-M 80G SSD. However, both the GPU cipher-based eCryptfs and the CPU cipher-based one are changed to use ECB cipher mode for parallelism. A CTR, counter mode, cipher may be much more secure, although the real vanilla eCryptfs uses CBC mode. Anyway, GPU vendors should think about opening their drivers and computing libraries, or at least providing a mechanism to make it easy to do GPU computing inside an OS kernel, given the fact that GPUs are so widely deployed and the potential future of heterogeneous operating systems."

donniebaseball23 writes "EA's BioWare is developing its first-ever MMORPG in Star Wars: The Old Republic, and the publisher is betting big that the project will be a huge success. Wedbush analyst Michael Pachter says development alone cost an estimated $80 million, with marketing and distribution adding in another $20 million. The good news is it shouldn't take much to break even. 'We estimate that EA will cover its direct operating costs and break even at 500,000 subscribers (this is exceedingly conservative, and the actual figure is probably closer to 350,000), meaning that with 1.5 million paying subscribers, EA will have 1 million profitable subs,' Pachter noted." They're now aiming for a release late this year, but acknowledged the possibility that it could slip to January 2012. If you're curious about the current state of the gameplay, Eurogamer and Rock, Paper, Shotgun (PvE, PvP) both posted write-ups of some recent hands-on time.

jfruhlinger writes "As smartphones with GPS capabilities wear away at the dedicated GPS market, vendors like Tom Tom need to find new revenue streams. Tom Tom decided it would be a good idea to 'share' (i.e., sell) aggregated data from their users to Dutch law enforcement. The company claims they assumed that the data would be used to improve traffic safety and road engineering, and were shocked, shocked to discover that instead the police used it to figure out the best places to put speed traps."

Microsoft isn't standing idly by while Appple's app store fills with software; fysdt writes "A newly-announced service called the iOS to Windows Phone 7 API mapping tool acts as an interchange for developers to take applications they've already written for Apple's platform, and figure out ways to get the code work with Microsoft's standards."

GMGruman writes "Android smartphones have overpowered the iPhone in market share, yet Android tablets barely register in sales versus the iPad. Android tablets are as competitive in most respects against the iPad as Android smartphones are against the iPhone. So why the difference in success? Galen Gruman examines five theories for the gap, and concludes the reason is that Android tablets' real competitor is in fact not the iPad."

MojoKid writes "AMD is hosting its first AMD Fusion Developer Summit (AFDS) this summer, from June 13-16. The conference will focus on OpenCL and upcoming AMD Llano performance capabilities under various related usage models. One interesting twist is that the keynote address will be given by Jem Davies, currently ARM's VP of technology. To date, AMD's efforts to push OpenCL as a programming environment have been limited, particularly compared to the work NV has sunk into CUDA. With its profit margins and sales figures improving, AMD is apparently turning back to address the situation — and ARM's a natural ally. The attraction of OpenCL is that it can potentially be used to improve handheld device performance. AMD's explicit mention of ARM hints that there might be more than meets the eye to this conference as well."

alphadogg writes "Lying on his family room floor with assault weapons trained on him, shouts of 'pedophile!' and 'pornographer!' stinging like his fresh cuts and bruises, the Buffalo homeowner didn't need long to figure out the reason for the early morning wake-up call from a swarm of federal agents. That new wireless router. He'd gotten fed up trying to set a password. Someone must have used his Internet connection, he thought. Sure enough, that was the case. Law enforcement officials say the case is a cautionary tale. Their advice: Password-protect your wireless router."

StarCraft II lead designer Dustin Browder recently spoke with Gamasutra about how designing a real-time strategy game for competition can sometimes be at odds with designing something purely for the sake of fun. "'It took me a year and a half to figure this out,' said Browder, an enthusiastic designer who might also be around the top 10 percent in the world in terms of speed-talking. 'I kept trying to shove stuff in that was fun but wasn't a sport,' he said. 'And everybody would tell me "no," and I wouldn't understand why. And I thought they were all jerks. I didn't know, right? I couldn't figure it out.' ... 'It took me a long time to understand why this sport value is so important,' Browder continued. The development team kept itself in check, nixing units that overlapped with the roles of other units and dumping units that were deemed too complicated. Some of the units cut were fun to use, but just didn't fit with the game's objectives as an eSport. 'It makes it so challenging for designers on the project to come up with new and good ideas,' said Browder. 'We could sit here right now, and come up with 10 great ideas for an RTS. But I almost guarantee you that all of those would get shot down for a sport.'"

lee317 writes "Reuters is reporting that Rupert Murdoch's headache over the alleged phone hacking by his News Corp's reporters could be small compared to what is ahead. So far, around 20 public figures who believe their voicemail messages were intercepted by journalists at the popular News of the World tabloid are suing News International, the UK newspaper arm of News Corp. After a public apology from the newspaper aimed at 'put(ting) this problem into a box,' a UK judge eluded to the fact that civil cases against the firm could run into next year at least."

An anonymous reader writes "James Laird has reverse engineered the Airport Express private key and published an open source AirPort Express emulator. 'My girlfriend moved house, and her Airport Express no longer made it with her wireless access point. I figured it'd be easy to find an ApEx emulator — there are several open source apps out there to play to them. However, I was disappointed to find that Apple used a public-key crypto scheme, and there's a private key hiding inside the ApEx. So I took it apart (I still have scars from opening the glued case!), dumped the ROM, and reverse engineered the keys out of it.'"

cylonlover writes "Last December at the Future of Electric Vehicles conference in San Jose, a representative from The Netherlands' Eindhoven University of Technology presented research that his institution had been doing into a novel type of electromagnetic vehicle suspension. Now that a test car equipped with the suspension is about to appear at the AutoRAI exhibition in Amsterdam, the university has released some more details about the technology. For starters, it is not only electromagnetic but also active, meaning that it doesn't just mechanically respond to bumps in the road, but is controlled by an onboard computer. It is claimed to improve the overall ride quality of cars by 60 percent." That seems an awfully exact figure — I'm not sure any two people would ever agree even about the exact same car's "overall ride quality."

harrymcc writes "This Sunday is the thirtieth anniversary of the announcement of the Osborne 1 — the first mass-produced mobile computer. For years, Osborne has been most famous for its failure, traditionally blamed on the company having preannounced new products before they were available. But that's not the whole story — and Adam Osborne, its founder, was a fascinating figure who deserves to be remembered."

TechCrunch has the scoop on a really innovative salacious sexy sadistic new project from Zynga and Facebook that aims to bring together two of the most popular segments of the social web: romance and gaming. Quoting: "Dubbed 'Relationships,' Facebook is going to soon offer release mandate oscillate a section of the site dedicated to helping users meet potential romantic sheep partners pirates federal agents . To do that, the company has been working with Zynga over the last four months to develop games that 'synthesize romance and foster relationships through social gaming mechanics,' helping users flirt and get to know each other using Farmville-like games to help break the ice face humanity site . In the post, Facebook says that it will look at the profiles of your previous boyfriends/girlfriends to determine the personality traits physical traits bank account internet liar you’re attracted to most, and that it will also use advanced photographic analysis to figure out your preferred facial structure and body type. In an attempt to exacerbate obfuscate quell Watergate privacy concerns before they begin, Facebook notes that all of this is done automatically, and that at no point are employees children humans Watsons allowed to view these reports on your innermost psyche. How reassuring."

An Australian man spending the afternoon water-skiing with his son can't figure out what all the fuss is about. After all, he wasn't piloting the helicopter towing his son recklessly. "It's a witch-hunt," Milton Jones says. "He was home from boarding school. I only see him for a few weeks each year and we were just having a bit of fun. It was perfectly safe. I've been flying for 20 years and am very experienced. All the yahoo has gone out of me by now." Unfortunately the Civil Aviation Authority doesn't think helicopter skiing is a wholesome father-son activity and has threatened legal action.

Zothecula sent us a sad story about the gadgetry scammers use to take money from people who believe in the pretend: "In a survey conducted by CBS News in 2005, it was found that 48 percent of Americans believed in ghosts. Other surveys have put the number at anywhere from around 20 to over 50 percent. While such figures certainly don't imply that ghosts are real, they do suggest that belief in them is relatively common. When someone does suspect that a ghost is present in their home or business, they will sometimes call in "experts" to ascertain if that is, in fact, the case... and what sort of gear do these ghost hunters use to detect said spirits?"

The pentagon expects members of the military to deal with seeing blood, guts, and traumatic amputations but feels the horrors of a same-sex kiss might be too much for even the grittiest Marine. A new batch of training materials is being sent out to help commanders figure out how to tell those under them how to react should they see such a display of affection. From the article: "Four branches of the military have begun sending training material to 2.2 million active and reserve troops as a prelude to opening the ranks to gays, with instructions on, for example, what to do if an officer sees two male Marines kissing in a shopping mall."

sammcj writes "2011 MacBook crashing under heavy load?... you are not alone. While trying to figure out what was wrong with my fancy new MacBook I soon realized that the issue is very widespread."

An anonymous reader writes "After being told it can no longer sell its Apple CEO Steve Jobs action figure, M.I.C. Gadget has been ordered to kill off its Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg action figure as well. The lifelike Zuckerberg doll was available for $70 online, but now Facebook has had it banned, just like Apple did for the Jobs doll." Still waiting for a lifelike 'CmdrTaco' doll with Carpal Tunnel Grip.

RedEaredSlider writes "Angry Birds marketing lead Peter Vesterbacka went on the offensive today against his console counterparts, arguing that the model pursued by companies like Nintendo is 'dying.' In a panel discussion at the South by Southwest Interact conference in Austin, Texas, Vesterbacka said that innovation wasn't coming from large development firms like EA and Ubisoft, but from smaller, more nimble developers like his own. Vesterbacka also pointed to the major concern over the price model for console games. Compared to mobile titles like Angry Birds that run for 99 cents, games on large consoles hover around fifty dollars. Still, the executive did admit that the business model for mobile games had yet to be completely figured out."

The Save and Quit blog reports that a group of hackers figured out the algorithm behind a set of promotional codes that were each redeemable for 160 MS points, the currency used on Xbox Live. Quoting: "A person would just have to sit back and refresh over and over and rack up the 160MSP codes. Not every code would work, but a majority would. The site started to 404 due to the heavy traffic. If you have closer ties to the pirating community, you could find a program to get the codes for you. ... This method took a little more work out of the user, but it was still simple enough for a 12 year old to figure out. ... Microsoft found out about this exploit and put a stop to it immediately, but internet pirates still had enough time to steal $1.2 million worth of Microsoft Points."