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[highlight]AMD Launches Four-Core '4x4' Motherboard[/highlight]
AMD's Quad FX Platform aimed at gamers, multitaskers -- and Intel's quad-core designs.
Ben Ames, IDG News Service
Wednesday, November 29, 2006 09:00 PM PST
Advanced Micro Devices today launched a motherboard with four cores, targeting gaming enthusiasts in an effort to keep pace with the release of quad-core chips by RIVAL Intel.

AMD's Quad FX Platform includes two dual-core Athlon 64 FX-70 series chips and uses Nvidia's 680a chip set. AMD's choice of components shows it is willing to follow open standards even though the company acquired Nvidia's rival ATI Technologies earlier this month, said Ian McNaughton, product manager for Athlon 64 FX products.

AMD will sell the Quad FX Platform with three types of chips built with a 90-nanometer process, charging $599 for a pair of 2.6 GHz FX-70 chips, $799 for a pair of 2.8 GHz FX-72 chips, and $999 for a pair of 3.0 GHz FX-74 chips, if purchased in lots of 1,000 units. (Read what PC World's benchmark tests showed for the new motherboard.)
[highlight]
What's a True Quad Core?[/highlight]
The AMD launch highlights a debate in the industry about the definition of quad-core processors. Intel has claimed it won the quad-core race on NOV. 14 by packaging two dual-core chips together in the Xeon 5300 for servers and Core 2 Extreme QX6700 for gamers.

But AMD calls its Quad FX Platform a "4x4," and says it won't release a true "quad-core" processor until 2007, when it combines four cores on a single piece of silicon called "Barcelona." Analysts say they won't be able to judge the winner of the debate until they can test comparable products.

In the meantime, one thing is certain: a PC with four computing cores can run a lot of applications at once. PC vendors who use the Quad FX will attract more than just hard-core gamers, McNaughton said. A desktop with four computing cores can be a workstation for "megataskers," those users who watch high-definition video while burning a DVD, downloading a BitTorrent file, and chatting on a TeamSpeak connection, even as their PC runs antivirus software, Skype, and instant messaging applications in the background.

"The PC usage model has CHANGED. It's EVOLVING, it's getting crazy and we love it," he said. "People are doing four, five, six things at the same time."

[highlight]Gamers Love Quad Core[/highlight]
Of course, gamers are still a core audience for this product. The extra cores will allow fans of multiplayer online games to play two instances of the game simultaneously, controlling two characters in a single episode of EverQuest, World of Warcraft, or Lineage, according to AMD.

Many of these gamers have been using AMD's Opteron server chip to manage their heavy computing loads, McNaughton said. The Quad FX Platform will be a more efficient tool for the job and will allow them to upgrade to a pair of quad-core Barcelona chips in the middle of 2007.

As the hardware industry relies increasingly on multicore designs, chip power is measured by scalability and efficiency, not just frequency, said AMD spokesman Bubba Wolford. That development is pushing chip vendors to grow from being simple component suppliers to selling entire platforms. AMD has followed that trend to produce its AMD Live product for media center PCs and now the Quad FX.
WOW! with two of these babies I won't need my furnace any more. And they'd be a lot more fun to play with. How pricy do you think there going to be? Jeez I was just getting used to the fact of Dual Core Processors.I can still only type so fast.

You can only have the latest and greatest technology for a while. Luckily, outside of games and what the next version of WINDOWS will require, there is little need for this technology.Quote

I can still only type so fast.

You can only have the latest and greatest technology for a while. Luckily, outside of games and what the next version of Windows will require, there is little need for this technology.

How[highlight] pricy [/highlight]do you think there going to be? Jeez I was just getting used to the fact of Dual Core Processors.

How pricy do you think there going to be? Jeez I was just getting used to the fact of Dual Core Processors.

AMD and IBM have unveiled details about their up-coming processors based on the 45 nm technology, which will provide better performance at a lower cost.

Both companies have disclosed information about their fruitful joint venture, meant at tackling Intel’s supremacy in the processor area. AMD and IBM are saying that the breakthroughs they’ve registered in this key domain (the 45 nm technology) will put them ahead of any competitor in the race for mass production.

The two hardware giants revealed the fact that up-coming chips will use technologies LIKE the immersion lithography and ultra-low-k interconnect dielectrics. Immersion lithography is a resolution enhancement technique that interposes a liquid medium between the optics and the wafer surface, replacing the usual air gap. A DIELECTRIC, or electrical insulator, is a substance that is highly resistant to electric current. A low-k dielectric is one with a small dielectric constant. In digital circuits, insulating dielectrics separate the conducting parts (wire interconnects and transistors) from one another. To make higher-speed chips, the transistors must be placed closer and closer together, and thus the insulating LAYER becomes thinner. This leads to charge build up and crosstalk, adversely affecting the maximum operating speed and performance of the chip.

Low-K dielectrics have very low dielectric constants, reducing parasitic capacitance and enabling faster switching speeds and lower heat dissipation.

"Immersion lithography will allow us to deliver enhanced microprocessor design definition and manufacturing consistency," AMD VICE president of logic technology development Nick Kepler said.

“The introduction of immersion lithography and ultra-low-K interconnect dielectrics at 45nm is an early example of the successful transfer of technology from our ground-breaking research work at the Albany Nanotech Center to IBM’s state-of-the-art 300mm manufacturing and development line at East Fishkill, New York, as well as AMD’s state-of-the-art 300mm manufacturing line in Dresden, Germany,” said Gary Patton, vice president, technology development at IBM’s Semiconductor Research and Development Center. “The successful integration of leadership technologies with AMD and our partners demonstrates the strength of our collaborative innovation model.”

The companies also added that they will use a series of enhanced transistor strain techniques to simplify the production of 45 nanometer processors. The 45 nm technology node should have significantly tighter specs than the current 65 nm node. '45 nm' itself should refer to the average half-pitch of a memory cell manufactured at that technology level.

The 45 nm process is the next milestone (to be commercially viable in mid 2007 to early 2008) in semiconductor manufacturing and fabrication. AMD has only just started creating 65 nanometer based CPUs at its Dresden plant, long after its competitor Intel rolled out the process at its factories.I understood this from the get-go...

The AMD and IBM discussion SEEMS odd because we don't see IBM in the PC market, and that's what most of us think of when we think of AMD since AMD and Intel are the major players in the PC market. IBM's processors, as far as I know, are used for everything from handheld devices to mainframe computers. This would include servers used for various purposes, with a heavy presence in the Internet arena. But, again, they are basically not present in the PC market.

Free? There's gotta be a catch. producing a distro is one thing. Burning them and giving them away is another.

Really cool, very intresting, it took me a while to get it to WORK......what?Yeah . . . :-?
Edit: supposed to be a reply to the "magic" thread?
You have a similar POST there.
Or MAYBE I'm barking up the wrong tree as usual.Where are we RE: at Calum? I am losted? :-?It may have been some Proph crappola that got DELETED. No BIG loss.Quote

It may have been some Proph crappola that got deleted. No big loss.

You KNOW what else is really popular at myspace...HEHE. Okay people at my school THINK it is a joke to USE someone ELSES name on a made up myspace account and post baaaaaad things about them it.

That's awesome, where did you find that Javascript?

CES 2007: [highlight]Eat this, Quad FX: Here's an 8-core desktop![/highlight]
Las Vegas (NV) - You didn't think that Intel would leave all that dual-socket fame for itself, did you? At CES, Intel SHOWED off an 8-core desktop system build on a 2P workstation board with two quad-core processors. Intel claims that the system trumps AMD's fastest Quad-FX by 61% in one key benchmark. And yes, we do have pictures of this beast.

The PC uses a 2-processor workstation board with an Intel 5000-series (Blackford) and CHIPSET supporting FSB1333. The board carries two Xeon 5300 series (Clovertown) processors. Intel also built four 120 mm side panel-mounted fans, which we heard were just for drama and not really necessary to cool the system. 4 GB of FB memory and an Nvidia GeForce 8800 card complement the computer.

The system was the brainchild of Francois Piednoel, an engineer with Intel's benchmarking team. He wanted to show how simple it was to make an 8-core workstation with regular parts. "We're not marketing it, but if you want it and need it, it's available."

Piednoel added that the parts weren't "crazy expensive" and could easily be purchased through online retailers like NEWEGG or Gamepc.com.

Before we mention the performance, let us drop a word on power consumption. AMD's Quad FX system was heavily criticized for its shameless hunger for power. While we did not hear anything from Intel about the power consumption of this 8-core monster, we do know that the two Clovertown processors are rated at a maximum power consumption of just 80 watts - compared to the 125 watts of each FX processor in the dual socket AMD system.

Performance-wise, Intel ran the 3DMark 2006, along with some other tests, on its system and the CPU portion of the benchmark was said to have achieved 6089 points in a test run and came in at 6065 when we pushed the button. The 3.0 GHz dual-socket dual-core system from AMD (FX-74) came in at 3764 points in Tom's Hardware's benchmarks, which gives the Intel system at least theoretically a lead of 61%.

([highlight]picture link[/highlight]) http://www.tgdaily.com/picturegalleries/gallery-200701087.html
**4# 120 mm fans together !!! lolThat may indeed be a bit much.
I'd love to have one though.That is insane what would you do with all that power ? Nonetheless that is freakin' awesome.Quote

That is insane what would you do with all that power ?

[highlight]Jesus Christ![/highlight] I think that machine is vista capable...

Their processors/graphics card scores a 6065?? I'm downloading 3DMark now, I wonder how I'll score?

EDIT: 3992. My specs:

AMD Athlon 64 3700+ (only 1 )
nVidia GeForce 6600
1 GB RAM
Sound Blaster Live! 24-Bit 7.1 Surround

So... I score about a D- in comparison with the 8-core machine. But that is an accomplishment in itself; most PC's would fail outright in comparison. I can do 60% of what that thing can do, and I've got 1/8 the processors. Take that, Intel!

And what would that SOMETHING be?Quote

And what would that something be?

Tricky little things those pointers, they're hard to catch.

Dell is once again heading back to court over defective notebooks

A group of Canadian Dell customers is taking the company to court alleging the Dell Inspiron notebooks they purchased are defective. Specifically, the lawsuit [highlight]applies to the 1100, 1150, 5100, 5150 or 5160 Inspiron notebook [/highlight]models. The lawsuit CLAIMS the computers are susceptible to overheating and possible motherboard failure, but Dell decided to offer the notebooks even after knowing of the issues, according to the plaintiffs. Also, the plaintiffs further claimed that the problems often occur following the expiration of the one-year Dell warranty.

Dell hasn't publicly responded to the pending litigation or the accusations, DUE to corporate policy. The Ontario Superior Court, which is where the class-action lawsuit was filed, will most likely take several months to determine if the litigation QUALIFIES for class-action status.

"We've been working on the case for the last few months, pulling together the statement of claim and investigating the problems and lining up experts and that kind of thing," said Joel Rochon, partner at Rochon Genova LLP. There have not been any REPORTS of fires or any type of personal injuries from the notebooks, Rochon said.
Dell most likely does not manufacture these items themselves. I still have perfect confidence in the Latitude models personally.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Lobby group tells ISPs to cut off customers

Thursday January 18, 2007

As illegal file-sharing eats into its battered revenues, the music INDUSTRY is taking its anti-piracy fight to the world's major internet service providers.
Big names such as BT, Tiscali and NTL will be in the sights of global lobby group IFPI as it [highlight]URGES them to disconnect customers[/highlight] who share music illegally or else face government rules.

Armed with the recent Gowers Review, an intellectual property report commissioned by the government, IFPI is hoping Britain can lead the way in cutting off music pirates in 2007.

Andrew Gowers recommended ISPs should either come to a voluntary deal with the industry or face government intervention. Noises from the music side suggest record labels are on a collision course with the broadband providers and no easy solution will be found.

IFPI chairman, John Kennedy, claimed INITIAL WORDS of support were not followed by any action. "Some are now prepared to cooperate and some are being stubborn," he said yesterday.

ISPs, meanwhile, stress they will need reasonable proof before taking up time to disconnect paying customers.

Illegal file-sharing has spawned a generation of young music consumers who expect to get most tracks for free. Powered largely by people who see themselves in a fight against an overcharging music industry, the online sources of free music have so far been tackled with litigation from groups such as IFPI. It admits piracy can never be eradicated but that it is being contained. In 2006, 14% of internet users were regularly file-sharing, down from 18% in 2002, according to research group Jupiter.

Now the industry wants a more efficient system in partnership with the ISPs, who would send warning letters to uploaders before cutting them off. Campaigners would not set any targets for results via the ISP route, but said they expected better results than through the courts.
Well, it's one way of cutting down piracy.
Also a way of cutting down customers.
Some ISPs also limit or BLOCK Bitttorrent traffic, supposedly to stop illegal sharing.
It doesn't really work though.
Not that I share anything illegal, just legal things.

[highlight]**Don't get me wrong, I am sure these things rock but; who wants to pay $ 600.00 bucks for the good ones and see an upgraded better system in 1 to 2 years[/highlight] ! **

LOS ANGELES — More than half of a group of surveyed stores had Sony Corp.'s (SNE) PlayStation 3 in stock, while Nintendo Co. Ltd.'s new Wii was sold out, an analyst said on Tuesday in a report signaling demand for the market leader's new console may be soft.

"Our channel checks yesterday of 52 retail stores, from BOUTIQUES to big-box retailers, showed that 28 of the 52 stores had PS3 consoles in stock, while none had Wii consoles in stock," American Technology Research analyst Paul-Jon McNealy said in the research note.

He added that those stores with PS3s in stock typically had units numbering in the low single digits, with only one major retailer having 60-plus machines in stock.

• Click here to visit FOXNews.com's VIDEO Gaming Center.

McNealy said availability in stores of PS3s, which are more expensive than Wiis, does not necessarily indicate slack demand and that he would continue to monitor PS3 inventories closely.

Sony spokesman Dave Karraker said the company is airlifting more than 100,000 systems into the United States every week, which is why units can be found at retail.

"It isn't because demand has weakened, it is because we have kept the supply pipeline moving," Karraker said.

New video game consoles tend to be in very short supply for months after their RELEASE as demand for the latest new machines outweigh manufacturers' ability to turn them out.

Supplies of Sony Corp.'s PS3 have been limited in the weeks since its mid-November launch and units sitting on store shelves could indicate WEAK demand for the powerful new machine, which boasts cutting-edge graphics and the company's Blu-ray Disc high-definition DVD player.

By comparison, shortages of Microsoft Corp.'s (MSFT) Xbox 360, released in mid-November 2005, lasted well into early 2006.

Nintendo Co. Ltd. sold 604,200 Wiis in the United States in December, topping Sony's PS3 sales of 490,700. Sales of the Xbox 360, which has been available for a year longer than the PS3 and Wii, hit 1.1 million in December, retail market research firm NPD said last week.

Sony last week said it shipped 1 million PS3s to North America by the end of 2006, hitting its target by diverting some units from Japan. The high-end version of the console retails for $600 in the United States.

The Japanese company, which saw its PlayStation 2 dominate the last console cycle, said on Tuesday it had shipped 1 million PS3s to Japan and that GLOBAL shipments reached 2 million in about two months after the launch, compared with its original target of hitting the figure by the end of December.

The PS3 launch was beset by manufacturing delays and speculation is rising the company will fall far short of its 6 million global shipment target by March.

Engineers and smarties only > LOL :-/

Palo Alto (CA) - Hewlett-Packard (HP) today released first details about a "hybrid" nano-CMOS chips that COULD lead the way not only to much smaller chip structures and extend the physical limits of Moore's law, but also continue the trend to a substantial decrease of power consumption in semiconductors.

The company said that its research results could lead to a new type of field programmable gate arrays (FPGAs) that are up to eight times denser that today's devices. The foundation of the technology is a crossbar switch structure, called "field programmable nanowire interconnect (FPNI)," that is placed on TOP of conventional CMOS (complementary metal oxide silicon).

"As conventional chip electronics continue to shrink, Moore's Law is on a collision course with the laws of physics," said Stan Williams, an HP senior fellow at the Quantum Science Research division of HP Labs. "Excessive heating and defective device operation arise at the nanoscale. What we've been able to do is combine conventional CMOS technology with nanoscale switching devices in a hybrid circuit to increase effective transistor density, reduce power dissipation, and dramatically improve tolerance to defective devices."
Interesting they can do this but can't build a decent PC. Chortles.
What have you got against HP?Years of experience plus what I've seen here.

There old Vectras and some of the professional models are OK, but the consumer models rival e-Machine for bottom place.Lol.
Fair enough.
I've heard both very good and very bad things about HP.Quote

Years of experience plus what I've seen here.

There old Vectras and some of the professional models are OK, but the consumer models rival e-Machine for bottom place.

Good news I guess...................

On the eve of the consumer launch of its new Windows Vista OPERATING system, Microsoft Corp. is extending the period in which it will offer support for the previous version, Windows XP.

Consumers who own Windows XP machines already were entitled to get customer service on the software up until April 2009. That date reflects Microsoft's policy of curtailing its support for an edition of Windows two years after a new version hits the market.

On Wednesday, however, Microsoft said consumers who still have Windows XP running [HIGHLIGHT]after April 2009 will be entitled to five more years [/highlight]of "extended support." In the extended plan, consumers will still get security fixes, but instead of free service from the Microsoft help desk, they will have to PAY for most assistance.

Microsoft said the move was meant to bring the support policies for consumers in line with what businesses already have.
honvetops, can you cite the source of that info or post a link to it?The associated press is reporting this, I guess Microsoft released the info from their headquarters on todays [highlight]Vista release to the public[/highlight] ?

Msnbc had it *

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/16805062/

I'm amazed to see them extend it for such a long TIME. Think of it, that five year extension beyond April 2009 means XP will get "extended" support until April 2014. So, XP owners who bought XP right after it's release in October 2001 could use XP, continuing to get updates, for 12 1/2 years. I believe that's unprecedented in the PC software industry.That's a long time.
Good for people planning to stay with XP though, like me.If the people who say they won't adopt VISTA STICK to their guns, then VISTA will go over about like a fart in church. Haha.
Quite right too.
Although I suspect most of the people who say they won't go with Vista will convert at some point.
I don't see myself going over, but I suppose I wouldn't.
I may do, but I don't want to at this point.
I may change my mind, I may not . . . depends if I can see a point to "upgrade".

I bought an mp3 player and it utilizes this tech, it's amazing how dependable and small out tech is becoming!

[highlight]Your hard drive is now obsolete[/highlight]
SanDisk's [highlight]flash-based[/highlight] feat, plus CES's coolest gadgetry, big and small
By Gary Krakow
Columnist

Twenty years ago I got my first home computer. It was an Apple Macintosh that someone had modified. They had installed a third-party device called a hard drive, which meant that the computer didn’t need floppy disks to boot up. Those early hard drives were large in size, wildly expensive and had storage capacities in megabytes — not gigabytes.
The rest, as they say is history. Over the years, hard drives have gotten smaller in size, bigger in capacity and a whole lot cheaper. A one-terabyte (1,000 gigabyte) drive was announced here at CES this week.
But mechanically, hard drives haven’t changed much over the years. They still have a lot of moving parts. And, as I can report from personal experience, at some point, all hard drives fail. These are not pleasant memories.
So, when I saw one PARTICULAR ANNOUNCEMENT at a show filled with press releases, I got very, very excited: SanDisk Corporation has introduced a 32GB, 1.8-inch solid-state drive (SSD) which is built to be a drop-in replacement for standard mechanical hard disk drives. This means the device has no moving parts.
Large capacity flash-based drives had been used primarily in the military, aerospace and telecom industries which demanded high performance, reliable storage under demanding conditions. But these drives were very expensive. Now, with flash-memory costs dropping, solid-state drives are becoming ECONOMICALLY and commercially viable.
In addition to being reliable, these drives are fast. SanDisk claims a sustained read rate of 62 megabytes per SECOND and a random read rate of 7,000 inputs/outputs per second. In plain English, that means it’s more than 100 times faster than most current hard disk drives.
I can’t begin to tell you what this ultimately means for the computer, PDA, cell phone and portable music device industries. The only thing that might slow down SSD acceptability is the price. Currently, SanDisk’s 32GB SSD will sell for $600. But, I would expect that price will drop as more and more companies choose solid-state drives. A number of electronics manufacturers are currently in talks with SanDisk — although they wouldn’t yet disclose which ones.

**[highlight]these things look just like a ram-stick[/highlight]**
link: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/16545386/

These things in laptops and you would have a fairly rugged piece of kit! Just the price holding us back at the moment. Plus you won't have that noise in the background when a program is ripping you HDD to pieces.

It's like MP3 players, I advise most people to go for a flash based one over a hard disk one. Try telling somebody that an iPod is a very brittle piece of kit in comparison to a cheaper model. They think you've gone nuts.Steelegbr &LT;<< right on. I bought my kids one of the 30 gig ipods 4-xmas.
I decided to get one myself but didn't want to spend that much. I bought the sansa e260 (4 gigs is plenty for me). This thing is awesome. It does more than I could imagine and so far* the quality is excellent. highly recommended...Heard about this.
It's supposed to mean less power-hungry and faster storage.
They're also talking about hybrid drives for laptops, with normal HDD used for storage and flash memory used for a cache.
Good advances anyway.A Bit more mind-boggling...Quote

A Bit more mind-boggling...

could you take your optical harddrive out and use it as a flash light?

01/27/2007
[highlight]Intel Says Chips Will Run Faster, Using Less Power[/highlight]
By JOHN MARKOFF

Intel, the world’s largest chip maker, has overhauled the basic building block of the information age, paving the way for a new generation of faster and more energy-efficient processors.

Company researchers said the advance represented the most significant change in the materials used to manufacture silicon chips since Intel pioneered the modern integrated-circuit transistor more than four decades ago.

The microprocessor chips, which Intel plans to begin making in the second half of this year, are designed for computers but they could also have applications in consumer devices. Their combination of processing power and energy efficiency could make it possible, for example, for cellphones to play video at length — a demanding digital task — with less battery drain.

The work by Intel overcomes a potentially crippling technical obstacle that has arisen as a transistor’s tiny switches are made ever smaller: their tendency to leak current as the insulating material gets thinner. The Intel advance uses new metallic alloys in the insulation itself and in adjacent components.

Word of the announcement, which is planned for Monday, touched off a war of dueling statements as I.B.M. rushed to announce that it was on the verge of a similar advance.

I.B.M. executives said their company was planning to introduce a comparable type of transistor in the first QUARTER of 2008.

Many industry analysts say that Intel retains a six-month to nine-month lead over the rest of the industry, but I.B.M. executives disputed the claim and said the two companies were focused on different markets in the computing industry.

The I.B.M. technology has been DEVELOPED in partnership with Advanced Micro Devices, Intel’s main rival. Modern microprocessor and memory chips are created from an interconnected fabric of hundreds of millions and even billions of the tiny switches that process the ones and zeros that are the foundation of digital computing.

They are made using a manufacturing process that has been constantly improving for more than four decades. Today transistors, for example, are made with systems that can create wires and other features that are finer than the resolving power of a single wavelength of light.

The Intel announcement is new evidence that the chip maker is maintaining the pace of Moore’s Law, the technology axiom that states that the number of transistors on a chip doubles roughly every two years, giving rise to a constant escalation of computing power at lower costs.

“This is evolutionary as opposed to revolutionary, but it will generate a big sigh of relief,” said Vivek Subramanian, associate professor of electrical engineering and computer sciences at the University of California, Berkeley.

For several decades there have been repeated warnings about the impending end of the Moore’s Law pace for chip makers. In response the semiconductor industry has repeatedly found its way around fundamental technical obstacles, inventing techniques that at times seem to defy basic laws of physics.

The chip industry measures its progress by manufacturing standards defined by a width of one of the smallest features of a transistor for each generation. Currently much of the industry is building chips in what is known as 90-nanometer technology. At that scale, about 1,000 transistors would fit in the width of a human hair. Intel began making chips at 65 nanometers in 2005, about nine months before its closest competitors.

Now the company is moving on to the next stage of refinement, defined by a minimum feature size of [highlight]45 nanometers[/highlight]. Other researchers have recently reported progress on molecular computing technologies that could reduce the scale even further by the end of the decade.

Intel’s imminent advance to 45 nanometers will have a [highlight]huge impact[/highlight] on the industry, Mr. Subramanian said. “People have been working on it for over a decade, and this is tremendously significant that Intel has made it work,” he said.

Intel’s advance was in part in finding a new insulator composed of an alloy of hafnium, a metallic element that has previously been used in filaments and electrodes and as a neutron absorber in nuclear power PLANTS. They will replace the use of silicon dioxide — essentially the material that window glass is made of, but only several atoms thick.

Intel is also shifting to new metallic alloy materials — it is not IDENTIFYING them specifically — in transistor components known as gates, which sit directly on top of the insulator. These are ordinarily made from a PARTICULAR form of silicon called polysilicon.

The new approach to insulation appears at least temporarily to conquer one of the most significant obstacles confronting the semiconductor industry: the tendency of tiny switches to leak electricity as they are reduced in size. The leakage makes chips run hotter and consume more power.

Many executives in the industry say that Intel is still recovering from a strategic wrong turn it made when the company pushed its chips to extremely high clock speeds — the ability of a processor to calculate more quickly. That obsession with speed at any cost left the company behind its competitors in shifting to low-power alternatives.

Now Intel is coming back. Although the chip maker led in the speed race for many years.Good stuff.
They started to move in this direction with the mobile based Core 2 Duo chip.
Moving to 45nm would reduce heat and power consumption greatly.
Just hope we don't end up with another Northwood.

I wonder if this is related to your (link) on the hardrives ?
This is unbelievable*

[highlight]Scientists unveil most dense memory circuit ever made[/highlight] Wed JAN 24, 2:45 PM ET



The most dense computer memory circuit ever fabricated -- capable of storing around [highlight]2,000 words in a unit the size of a white blood cell[/highlight] -- was unveiled by scientists in California.

The team of experts at the California Institute of Technology (Caltech) and the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) who developed the 160-kilobit memory cell say it has a bit density of 100 gigabits per square centimeter, a new record.

The cell is capable of storing a file the size of the United States' Declaration of Independence with room left over, Caltech said in a statement.

But the chances of the unit being used in a laptop any time soon is remote, said Caltech chemistry professor James Heath, who LED the research.

"It's the sort of device that Intel would contemplate MAKING in the year 2020," Heath said. "But at the moment, it furthers our goal of learning how to manufacture functional ELECTRONIC circuitry at molecular dimensions."

Whether the 2020 date is viable depends on the validity of Moore's law, which states that the complexity of an integrated circuit TYPICALLY will double every year, he said.

However, manufacturers currently can see no clear way of extending the miniaturization beyond the year 2013, the Caltech-UCLA team writes in an article that will appear in the journal Nature on Thursday.

"Whether it's possible to get this new memory circuit into a laptop, I don't know," said Heath. "But we have time."
Time, and way too much money on their hands. Quote

Time, and way too much money on their hands.

[highlight]This is from PCMagazine ( one guys opinion ) thought you might find this interesting, especially older types & programmers[/highlight]*

Since the early days of DOS (and even with the Mac OS), there has been a slow shift within the operating-system concept from increased functionality to increased featurism, neither of which are needed.

This has resulted in a strange situation where the monoculture of Microsoft Windows and the subcultures of Linux and Mac OS X have made the computing scene both stagnant and dangerous.

Unless the computer is re-architected from scratch, which will not happen in the next 100 years, we are set on a path of never-ending misery. Windows Vista proves it.

• Click here for FOXNews.com's Personal Technology Center.

Let's BEGIN with the way things should have gone.

It BEGAN with DOS, which was a clone of CP/M before that. Each time a new version came out, it was for one reason only: to add the functionality of newer peripherals, disk drives, ports and more.

A new device WOULD emerge from the labs, and it would be accommodated by an OS upgrade. At first the device would be accommodated by clever patches, and then the patch would be incorporated into a release of the OS.

If you were interested in weird new features, such as a GUI [graphical user interface], these would be separate programs that ran under the OS (not on top of the OS).

Until Windows came along, the OS — whether CP/M, MS-DOS, or anything else, for that matter — was constantly criticized by the big-iron mainframe builders (IBM et al.) as not being a true operating system.

This critique was the beginning of the end, and a key to understanding what went wrong.

Nobody running small desktop machines from 1975 to 1990 knew or CARED that the OS was merely a file loader. In fact, nobody actually knew what that meant.

Why did you need a complex OS on a microprocessor-based machine running Lotus 1-2-3 anyway? You didn't, but that "it's just a file loader" complaint never ended.

So, IBM — which had been in bed for years with Microsoft's file loader — took a dislike to the situation and convinced Microsoft and itself that something more substantial should be developed.

This happened just as various iterations of Unix began to crop up on small machines. Unix was a real operating system, and, golly, it was neat to use. Instead of running practical programs and actually getting jobs done, you could toy with the innards of the machine with the OS. What fun!

Anyway, IBM began to develop OS/2, and Microsoft figured it had a better idea with Windows, both of which were more than file loaders (although not much more).

Over time, the features of these new OSs became more important than the system's performance or anything else. They would have glowing icons, transparent pop-ups, smooth scrolling and all the things that used to be utilities sold by third parties.

Within no time, Microsoft decided that everything should be part of the OS, although these features had nothing to do with the OS.

The company went to court to argue that the browser was part of the OS. Media players were part of the OS.

One assumes that Microsoft would have argued that the word processor was part of the OS if it didn't have a near-monopoly on word processing already.

In ways nobody could have predicted, what was once an efficient file loader evolved into a clumsy monstrosity that required massive amounts of memory just to run. But did it ever become a genuine OS, or just a file loader with benefits?

It became a clunker, in fact, with a pretty face and a high price tag like a Park Avenue hooker using too much makeup to hide the fact that she's old.

Now we have Vista. It turns out to be nothing like what was promised. What a shock. It has a few new features, but I'd question if it's actually more functional than what we've had before.

As an aside, I'm fascinated by the fact that Mac users all think Vista is great. These are folks who have long since bought into the STEVE Jobs notion that the sizzle is more important than the steak.

PC users have traditionally preferred the steak over the sizzle. So what happens now?

We start by playing with Vista and listening to the inevitable complaints and praises. But this OS is not designed to be a good candidate for upgrading older systems. This is something of a new phenomenon.

Thus, people about to phase out old machines might be a little more experimental. And that means trying Linux.

This transition period will not be like all the others. There will be more orphan machines than ever before. It might take years before Vista can achieve even 50 percent market share.

Anything can happen. I'll be watching. Now, let the reviews begin!
An interesting view I'd never considered before on the role of the OS. Good article

Quote

lol... pirated software? not sayin that i do, but doesnt everyone have at least 23408309324 pirated PROGRAMS that uses a computer frequently? 1/2 ppl i know have pirated versions of windows... i MEAN come on, bill gates already has enough money, so he expects those people who are workin low income jobs to spend their WHOLE paycheck to make their computer work, and then have to spend half their time maintaining it and fixing the f'in BSOD's and error messages? lol... i think not. so yes, vista is goin to be a pain in the a** for most people, and im really likin that pic a couple comments above mine with the windows xp key/shoe size/mother's maiden name lol

It doesn't matter how much money Bill Gates has. For a start, he is a person not the company. Secondly the company has a right to expect payment for its goods and services. If you don't like them, don't use them.

BSOD's and etc? Usually this is the fault or poorly written programs and drivers and not an inherent fault of Windows itself.

Please don't make up statistics to justify your arguement.

Quote

It doesn't matter how much money Bill Gates has. For a start, he is a person not the company. Secondly the company has a right to expect payment for its goods and services. If you don't like them, don't use them.

BSOD's and etc? Usually this is the fault or poorly written programs and drivers and not an inherent fault of Windows itself.

Please don't make up statistics to justify your arguement.

There is also the [highlight]PEBKAC[/highlight] variable to account for some of this...and i agree with you.

[highlight]Apple: Record Labels Should Drop DRM [/highlight]

Tuesday February 6, 9:19 PM EST

SAN FRANCISCO (AP) — Apple Inc. indicated it would open its iTunes store to other portable players besides its ubiquitous iPod if the world's major record labels abandoned the anti-piracy technology that serves as the industry's security blanket.

Steve Jobs, Apple's chief executive, MADE the case for abolishing the protections known as "Digital Rights Management," or DRM, in an open letter posted Tuesday on the Cupertino-based company's Web site. He also explained why Apple had decided against licensing its own DRM technology, known as "FairPlay," as an alternative method for making iTunes accessible to all portable players.

Like many things the trendsetting Jobs does, his call for change created an almost immediate buzz.

Supporters hailed Jobs for leveraging Apple's growing clout as one of the world's largest music sellers in an attempt to remove restrictions that annoy many consumers. Critics, though, derided the message as a disingenuous maneuver designed to soften a recent backlash in Europe, where iTunes' incompatibility with other portable music devices besides the iPod has been branded has anticompetitive.



Jobs' essay, dubbed "Thoughts on Music," cited the recording labels' anti-piracy technology as the main reason music sold through iTunes can't be transferred to other portable players besides the iPod.

Those same DRM protections also prevent the iPod from playing music bought from many other competing online stores.

If not for the DRM safeguards, Jobs asserted that Apple would be able to create a more flexible system that would allow iTunes music to work on other devices, such as Microsoft Corp.'s recently introduced Zune.

Jobs suggested that consumers unhappy with the status quo should urge the world's four largest labels — Universal Music Group, EMI, Sony BMG Music Entertainment and Warner Music Group — to sell their online catalogs without the DRM restrictions. Those four labels distribute more than 70 percent of the world's music.

"Convincing them to license their music to Apple and others DRM-free will create a truly interoperable music marketplace," Jobs wrote. "Apple will embrace this wholeheartedly."

EMI began selling a handful of songs in an MP3-file format that isn't shielded and has been encouraged by the consumer response to the experiment, spokeswoman Jeanne Murphy said. She declined to comment on Jobs' call to end all DRM protections.

"I think Steve is finally saying something he has wanted to say for a long time," said Forrester Research analyst James McQuivey. "He is not saying this just to grandstand. He really thinks this could open up the market."

The tremendous reach of the iTunes store makes it difficult for the music industry to ignore or ridicule Jobs.

Since its debut nearly four years ago, iTunes has sold more than 2 billion songs, mostly for 99 cents apiece. With sales of about 5 million songs per day, Apple now rank ranks behind only Wal-Mart Stores Inc., BEST Buy Co. and Target Inc. as a music retailer.

Apple's music sales have flowed largely from iTunes' compatibility with the iPod, whose immense popularity prompted the company to recently drop "computer" from its name. With about 90 million iPods sold so far, Apple accounts for about 70 percent of the portable players on the U.S. market.

That dominance has convinced some observers that Apple won't mind at all if the iPod remains the only DEVICE designed to play songs bought at iTunes.

Jobs "could open that platform up tomorrow if he really wanted to," insisted Mike Bebel, chief executive of Ruckus Networks, a Herndon, Va., service that offers more than 2.5 million DRM-protected song titles to college students. "It's great PR (for Jobs) and a nice way to turn the tables, but it's not really working toward a solution."

In his Tuesday posting, Jobs said Apple can't risk opening up the iTunes store to other portable players as long as DRM technology remains in place.

Going down that road would require licensing its FairPlay technology, requiring sensitive secrets to be shared, Jobs wrote. "And history tells us those secrets will leak. The Internet has made such leaks far more damaging, since a single leak can spread worldwide in less than a minute."

ITunes' incompatibility with other music players has drawn fire in Europe. Over the past eight months, consumer rights and protection groups in Germany, France, Norway and the Netherlands have lodged complaints against Apple.

The attacks have to be especially painful for Jobs, who has long positioned Apple's Macintosh computers as a more consumer-friendly alternative to the personal computers that depend on Microsoft's dominant Windows operating system, said Chris Castle, a music rights lawyer.

Europeans are "painting (Jobs) out to be as bad as Bill Gates and that is not exactly what he wants," Castle said. "Steve is used to being seen as a the cool guy."

Raising a bit of irony in his dissertation, Jobs noted that three of the four largest music labels are owned by European interests.

Even if iTunes remains incompatible with other players, Jobs argued that most consumers can still easily load virtually all of their digital music on just about any computing device that they desire.

That's because most consumers already own a library of CDs unencumbered by DRM restrictions or acquire other music filI believe he is on the right track...if this fear of DRM and all the litigation that is surely to come everyone could go back to making the greedy sums they have become used to over the years...

p.s. Links to your current event stories would be appreciated.Quote

I believe he is on the right track...if this fear of DRM and all the litigation that is surely to come everyone could go back to making the greedy sums they have become used to over the years...

p.s. Links to your current event stories would be appreciated.

Intel Details Teraflops-Capable Chip

Sunday February 11, 6:11 PM EST

SAN JOSE, Calif. Intel CORP. has designed a computer chip that promises to perform calculations as quickly an entire data center — while consuming as much energy as a light bulb.

The world's biggest chipmaker said Sunday [highlight]it developed a programmable processor that can perform about a trillion calculations per second, or deliver a performance of 1.01 teraflops. It accomplishes this feat while consuming 62 watts of power when the chip is running at a frequency of 3.16 gigahertz.[/highlight]

A similarly powerful supercomputer in 1996 at Sandia National Laboratories took up more than 2,000 square feet, used nearly 10,000 Pentium Pro processors, and consumed more than 500 kilowatts of electricity.

Intel's latest chip is still in the research phase, but it marks an important breakthrough for an industry obsessed with obtaining the highest amount of performance for the lowest energy consumption.

Semiconductor companies used to focus overwhelmingly on generating FASTER and faster processing cycles, known as clock speed, and engineers didn't worry EXCESSIVELY about overheating chips. Now the balance between performance and efficiency is considered a quintessential part of Moore's LAW, the 1965 prediction by Intel co-founder Gordon Moore that the number of transistors on a chip should double about every two years.

Just last month, Intel and International Business Machines Corp. separately announced they had devised ways to replace problematic but vital materials in the transistors of computer chips that have begun leaking too much electric current as the circuitry on those chips gets smaller.

The breakthrough ratcheted up the competition between Intel and rival chipmaker Advanced Micro Devices Inc., which helped IBM develop the technology along with electronics makers Sony Corp. and Toshiba Corp.

Executives at Santa Clara-based Intel, who will provide details of the chip this week, acknowledge that it might never make it to market in its current incarnation. Building the chip would be a manufacturing marvel, and it's unclear whether there's an operating system intelligent enough to control it.

"What we're trying to do is take microprocessor performance to the next level — that's what's motivating us," said Justin Rattner, Intel's chief technology officer.

Technology experts praised Intel for devising a clever way to get 80 core calculating engines onto a single slice of silicon. The cores used on the research chip are much smaller and simpler than those used in Intel's latest line of chips, which have two or four cores. The research chip has 100 million transistors on it, about one-third the number on Intel's current line of chips.

The first uses for the chips would likely be in corporate data centers, supercomputers, communications infrastructures and for heavy-duty financial and scientific research.

Intel suggested one possible consumer use: a program that intelligently monitors a televised sporting event and automatically identifies and compiles key highlights like a slam dunk or a home run by a favorite player based on the spectator's preferences.

Other uses could be artificial intelligence, realistic 3-D computer modeling and real-time speech recognition.

"This is significant," said Jim McGregor of market research firm In-Stat. "If you can get that much power out of a chip, even if it's not something you use today, it's still a critical proof point. And it's not just for Intel, it's for the entire industry."

http://finance.myway.com/jsp/nw/nwdt_rt.jsp?section=news&feed=ap&src=601&news_id=ap-d8n7q5ig0&date=20070211...wow. Just... wow.Maybe that darn thing will run Vista. Quote

...wow. Just... wow.

Maybe that darn thing will run Vista.

Amazing.
Quote

Maybe that darn thing will run Vista.

It may even run [highlight]Aero[/highlight] . .. with 2 8800GTXs in SLI . . .

[highlight]Intel Builds the Fastest Chip Ever[/highlight]
Capable of processing 1 trillion calculations a second, Intel's latest test chip, when used commercially, will revolutionize computing

by Cliff Edwards

Computing took a leap forward when chipmakers started putting more than one core—or central brain—on a single chip. It was a way to make machines work harder even as they CONSUMED less power. Just wait until a single chip can sport 80 cores.

The wait won't be long. Chipmaking giant Intel (INTC) on Feb. 11 said it has successfully produced just such a chip, the size of a fingernail, capable of processing a mind-boggling 1 trillion calculations a second. The chip, which Intel claims is the fastest ever made, could start being used commercially in "in five years, if not sooner," Intel Chief Technology Officer Justin Rattner says.
Warp Speed

Rattner has reason to crow. The massive processing power each chip would provide will dramatically change the way consumers and businesses work and play. Financial analysis that takes days to perform in back offices could be done in seconds at a trader's terminal on Wall Street. Real-time physics calculations could let consumers create on-the-fly games that make even the cutting-edge motion-control techniques in Nintendo's Wii game console seem like child's play.

The test chip also demonstrates chipmakers' ability to continue to increase dramatically the number of processors placed on a tiny sliver of silicon. Just 10 years ago, a cluster of supercomputers capable of processing the same amount of calculations took up more than 2,000 square feet and consumed a half-megawatt of electricity.

The new Intel chip, which does not yet use the standard x86 architecture common to most PCs and servers, consumes an average 62 watts of energy—less than some chips on the market today. It also takes a novel approach of stacking memory in three dimensions directly on top of the chip, creating an architecture that would transfer information at lightning speed.
Parallel Computing

Other chipmakers also are hard at work pursuing ways to make chips work harder while sipping power. Rivals, including AMD (AMD) and IBM (IBM), have been pursuing so-called parallel computing, which breaks up huge tasks into pieces, enabling them to be MANAGED by different parts of a chip. With one such chip, MULTIPLE streams of high-definition video could zip around the home, while a beleaguered business could assemble Sarbanes-Oxley paperwork in minutes.

AMD in 2006 purchased graphics chipmaker ATI. The company says a new platform, code-named "Fusion," combines a central processor with graphics processors to either lower the cost of buying such items separately or increase floating-point calculations dramatically.

Analysts say the Intel announcement signals chipmakers are on the RIGHT track. "This is putting the proof-point out there that their road maps are on the right track," says Jim McGregor, principal analyst at researcher In-Stat.
Software Lags Behind

The main stumbling block to widespread acceptance of such chips, however, is the difficulty in writing software to take advantage of multiple cores. Even as Intel and AMD race to deliver quad-core chips in the next few months, software developers continue to STRUGGLE to write threaded applications to take advantage of just two cores. Intel's Rattner suggests the chipmaker made the announcement of the new chip early to get software developers thinking about massively multicore chips. "If we just go two, four, eight cores, we'll never get there [with software]," he says.

Even so, the jump in processing power could tax the resources even of Microsoft (MSFT), Apple (AAPL), and other operating system providers, analysts say. Current operating systems are designed for more linear tasks, and are less efficient at allocating resources and power requirements.

Still, the new chips would require working much more closely with the hardware makers, which could give Intel or another first mover a massive advantage. And as much as anything, the announcement demonstrates that the processor race has plenty of room to run.
*link*

http://www.businessweek.com/print/technology/content/feb2007/tc20070211_730122.htm
Intel Builds the Fastest Chip Ever

This is getting kinda ridiculous !! :-?

Quantum Leap: Computer to 'MAKE Computer History'
Canadian Firm Promises Computer [highlight]Based on Quantum PHYSICS[/highlight], Many Times Faster Than World's Best
By NED POTTER
Feb. 12, 2007 — - "Quantum Computing." It's one of those things that bring a sparkle to the eyes of propellerheads -- and make the rest of us just scratch our heads.

But it's been a holy grail in the arcane world of supercomputers -- and a Canadian firm claims it will be unveiling one on Tuesday. Nevermind that most engineers thought quantum computers were decades away.

D-Wave Systems, Inc., based near Vancouver, is the company that's been working on the project. Its machine is described as a computer that can perform 64,000 calculations at once.

Following the odd laws of quantum mechanics, the digital "bits" that race through its circuits will be able to stand for 0 or 1 at the same time, allowing the machine, eventually, to do work that is orders of magnitude more complex than what today's computers can do.

"There are certain classes of problems that can't be solved with digital computers," said Herb Martin, the firm's CEO, over a decidedly-noisy digital cell phone. "Digital computers are good at running programs; quantum computers are good at handling massive sets of variables."
Coming Soon to a Store Near You?

So will you or I be able to have one soon? Will it come as a LAPTOP?
The answers, for now, are no, and no. The current prototype, says Martin, is as big as a good-sized freezer, and a lot colder. It uses superconducting circuits that have to be refrigerated, close to absolute zero. That's the kind of temperature at which electrical resistance fades nearly to nothing (THINK of the heat generated by a conventional laptop), so that massive calculations can be done.
What sorts? Martin says, for instance, that a quantum computer could be used to design genetically based drugs (remember that the DNA in every human cell has 3 billion "base pairs," or "rungs" on that famous helical ladder).
Or it could be used by companies to manage their supply chains. "Think," says Martin, "of a company that has 40 factories and makes a million different parts. That's a lot to keep track of."
Quantum computers could also have major uses in the security world. Since 9/11, governments and companies have gotten heavily into biometrics, building massive databases of pictures, fingerprints, and other complex measures of people they want to track. If someone on a terrorism watch list passes a security checkpoint at an airport, a quantum computer could presumably be very fast at comparing his or her picture to the massive databases of pictures stored by security agencies.

Reality Check
Will this actually happen any time soon? Much of the computing world is skeptical. Major companies, such as IBM and NEC, have done years of research without results so far.
Even Seth Lloyd of MIT, a computer scientist whose research is cited as a major source of D-Wave's work, has been QUOTED as saying that while he's happy they're trying, he'll wait to see what they've done.
So don't go online in search of a quantum machine any time soon. But don't be surprised if, at some time in the future, you can go online to a search engine which just happens to be powered by this very strange technology.

Copyright © 2007 ABC News Internet Ventures

http://abcnews.go.com/Technology/story?id=2864363&page=1

Holy *censored*! That's amazing! Quantum computing has been in the works for a while now.
The fact that one is so close to being finalised is truly amazing, considering that most people thought they were about 50 years away.Just wait until Scott Bakula hears about this one...Meh, just like fusion power. It's been "round the corner" for years now. They even designed fusion power trains and things about 50 years ago, in preperation for the technology.

February 13, 2007 8-)
MySpace experiments with video censoring software

* Education TECHNOLOGY
* Social networking

Bowing to pressure from media conglomerates and copyright holders to stop the posting of copyrighted material, MySpace has announced it will experiment with a new video-filtering system reports the Washington Post.

MySpace is joining forces with software company Audible Magic Corp., which owns the rights to a system that scans video clips and looks for signature VECTORS - such as a unique digital fingerprint - to compare with vectors stored in a database. Once a signature is found, the video can be blocked.

The policy on most social networking sites that post videos is to only remove videos if there is a complaint from the copyright holder. Often users quickly repost the same clip to the sites under a different, free account.

Using the new signature-identifying software, Vivendi and its artists would still be able to circulate authorized PROMOTIONAL audio and video, however, MySpace said it would block unauthorized music videos and other clips containing Universal Music Group's music.

"MySpace is dedicated to ensuring that content owners, whether large or small, can both promote and protect their content in our community," Chris DeWolfe, MySpace's co-founder and chief executive, said in a statement. "For MySpace, video filtering is about protecting artists and the work they create."Good idea.
I saw a lot of copyrighted material on My space, in the brief time I used it (long story, I didn't want to, I used it to get away from my friends nagging me to join).EHHH.. myspace does this, myspace does that, its never gonna be perfect. no matter who does what to it. heck, they wont even COUGH up money for paid chatrooms, all the ones they use are free. which, seems pointless to me.

Interesting ARTICLE about nanotechnology

An ANT carries a one millimetre square microchip in its MANDIBLES, illustrating the work that is being done in nanotechnology.

http://www.theage.com.au/articles/2004/12/08/1102182359368.htmlI think you'll find that's an AntBot, with a mandible-processor interface.Thats the new "brain" carrying the goods.. look for him in the new episode of Star Ship Troopers...
Denise Richards not included* Jason X ANYONE? thats what this REMINDS me of >.>

Dell DECIDES to sell NOTEBOOKS without operating systems by [highlight]customer request[/highlight]

On the Direct2Dell company blog, Matt Domsch, Linux Software Architect for Dell, announced that Dell has added its Latitude LINE of notebooks PCs to its n-Series lineup of products. n-Series are Dell products that ship with no operating system pre-installed. The Latitude notebooks will join Dell's Dimension and OptiPlex desktop computers, both of which are already being sold under the n-Series.

According to Domsch, the decision to sell Latitude notebooks PCs without any operating system pre-installed is a direct result of Dell IdeaStorm. IdeaStorm, which was launched by Dell little more than a week ago, is an interactive website which allows users to post ideas they would like to see Dell work on. The ideas are then then voted on, and the most popular ONES make it to the IdeaStorm front page. [highlight]Apparently, three of the top four spots on the website all deal with Linux.[/highlight] The third topic, which is the one Dell is trying to address by ADDING its Latitude notebooks to the n-Series lineup, is about shipping notebook PCs with Linux pre-installed on them. According to Domsch, the move brings Dell "a bit closer" to Linux laptops.

"As with other n-Series products, Dell hasn't tested any particular Linux distribution and doesn't offer software support for running Linux on these, so we encourage you to join our Linux mailing lists and to use the one of your chosen distribution for community-based support," said Domsch on his blog.

"is this a good idea" ? >>

http://www.dailytech.com/article.aspx?newsid=6247no OS pre-installed = cheaper computer. plus, you are free to do with it as you wish, not quite like you built it yourself, but, heh, its a step closer to making name brands what people want them to be..The other issue has always been the negligible (if any) price reduction for not having to pay for Windows.

[highlight]Samsung Electronics [/highlight]has developed the fastest graphics memory chip in the world. Samsung announced Monday that it has built a new 512Mb GDDR4 (Graphics Double Data Rate version4) memory chip that is 65 percent faster in TRANSFERRING data than the next fastest chip.

The new chips WORK at 4Gb/s (gigabits per second) while currently available GDDR4 chips operate at 2.4Gb/s. Samsung used 80-nanometer production technology to make the new chips. Sample chips have been delivered to Samsung's major customers such as Nvidia, and mass production will reportedly begin during the second half of this year.

“Our new GDDR4 memory will add even more zip in video applications, making gaming, computer-aided design and video EDITING faster than ever before,” said Mueez Deen, marketing director for graphics memory at Samsung Semiconductor.

Samsung EXPECTS the new chip will create a new market for high-speed graphic chips for game units and graphic cards that deal with huge volumes of images.

Samsung leads the graphics memory industry, having first developing GDDR in 2000, GDDR2 in 2002, GDDR3 in 2003, and 256Mb GDDR4 in October of 2005 and mass producing GDDR4 2.4Gb/s in the middle of last year. (no link to this article)

[highlight] this is the entire story right now*... Hopefully.... this might mean the 8800GTX's prices will be coming down !! Cross your fingers ~[/highlight]Ooh, nice.
Another reason I wish I had a desktop . . .Quote

Ooh, nice.
Another reason I wish I had a desktop . . .

Could be LOW settings.
But lots of PEOPLE get very high FPS on CounterStrike, it's one of those GAMES with a very optimized engine so runs well on most PCs.
It's not clocked much higher than a STANDARD 7600GT.

Advanced Micro Devices (AMD) today announced the availability of its 690 chipset, the company's first integrated chipset for AMD processors that INCLUDES the ATI Radeon X1250 graphics processor.

*[highlight]Since chipset integrates Radeon X1250, PCs won't need an add-in graphics card.*[/highlight]

Integrating the Radeon X1250 graphics processor into the 690 chipset means PCs based on the chipset will not require an add-in graphics card. And by building the chipset itself instead of relying on partner companies, AMD will GAIN competitive leverage against Intel Corp., said Chris Evenden, director of public relations for visual and media business at AMD.

PC VENDORS such as Dell or Hewlett-Packard want chipsets MADE by a single company so they can offer more stable platforms to their enterprise customers. That is one reason that Intel makes its own chipsets. AMD has been at a disadvantage because it once built a chipset model, but in recent years has relied on chipsets made by ATI and Nvidia Corp., Evenden said.

AMD acquired ATI Technologies last year and has worked quickly to harness the company's graphics expertise with its own processor lineup, including chipsets -- the PC component that connects a processor with other components, including memory and peripherals.

The 690 chipset is compatible with AMD's desktop processor lineup and offers several high-end features, including integrated DVI (digital visual interface) and HDMI (high-definition multimedia interface) outputs for high-definition video. The chipset also includes hardware decoding for MPEG2, the video compression technology used with DVDs -- which means less CPU power is required when playing DVDs on a computer.

Together, that makes the 690 chipset powerful enough to support PCs running Microsoft Corp.'s new Windows Vista OS, as well as home computers DESIGNED as media center PCs, he said.

The new chipset is available on motherboards from more than 10 companies, including Asustek Computer and Elitegroup Computer Systems, AMD said.

http://www.pcworld.com/article/id,129466-c,graphicschips/article.html

Vista redux: A second chance
After BETA nightmare, trying to re-install Windows Vista Ultimate
By Gary Krakow
Columnist
Updated: 3:33 p.m. ET March 8, 2007

A few months ago, I had a terrible time trying to install Vista Beta 2 on a brand new Lenovo ThinkPad X60. I had originally installed Vista as an update to Windows XP — but after four hours of churning away the laptop shut down and wouldn’t reboot.
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/17467934/
I also tried installing Beta 2 by wiping out everything on the hard drive and starting from scratch. That took about an hour to complete but removed every device driver that I needed to run the laptop. What I was left with was a computer that barely booted. I was forced to watch as error message after error message popped up on the screen — and when that was through, the computer just froze.

Even after locating and downloading the needed drivers from the Lenovo Web site, the X60 worked poorly for maybe 10 minutes at a stretch before it needed to be rebooted. This was not a great computing experience. I gave up after spending a long time trying to get the two to work together.

The people at Lenovo were kind enough to allow me to hold onto the X60 so that I could install the final version of Vista that shipped to customers. It sat on my desk waiting for a second chance at the operating system.

When I got my hands on a copy of Vista Ultimate, I wiped the X60's hard drive clean and did a complete install. The new Ultimate edition comes on a DVD and allowed me to do a total wipe of the hard drive again before doing a clean, full install of Vista. The entire episode took nearly two hours.

Once the install sequence completed, my ThinkPad rebooted normally. Windows Vista started up without even a hint of an error message. Unlike my experience with Vista Beta 2, the final release of Vista Ultimate actually seemed to work — until I tried playing a music file.

It was then that I realized there were a number of features not working on the X60. There was no audio output, limited video resolution choices and the Wi-Fi connection was not running as quickly as I would have liked. I WONDERED whether it was a problem with the computer's drivers again.

I knew that after my first Vista experience with the ThinkPad, Lenovo sent engineers to Microsoft’s labs in Redmond, Wash., to make sure the transition to the new operating system would be as smooth as possible — or at least smoother than my original nightmare. That’s why I was so surprised that all the proper drivers had not been included in the final release of Vista.

A thorough search of Lenovo’s Web site helped me find the latest upgraded drivers. I downloaded everything I could find — then found where they were downloaded to (watch when Vista informs you where it will store downloaded files) and did all the installs. Time for the fixes was another hour or so.

Once I hunted down all the new drivers and add-ons, everything went smoothly. But you shouldn't have to search for extra software to install after you finish upgrading your operating system.

If you install the $399 Vista on an up-to-date PC (that means fast processor, lots of memory and a modern video card) you shouldn't have to spend more time finding ways to get all of your computer's features to work — especially if they worked before the upgrade.

There was a fair amount of luck involved with finding all the items needed to get the X60 to run Vista properly. No one should ever have to endure that.

There's a good chance that if you install Vista, you also may encounter driver issues, which could disable audio, video, wireless or other functions on your computer. Microsoft offers free technical help via phone (866-234-6020), e-mail or online chat for 90 days. After that it will cost you $59 per request unless you've purchased a "Software Assurance Agreement" or you're covered by a "Professional Contract." BOTTOM line: Don't wait.

Unfortunately, you can't predict how your hardware will work with the new operating system until you boot Vista for the first time. The only way to tell if Vista will be both user-friendly and hardware-compatible is to try it for yourself. You might be luckier than I was.

Or you can play it safe. It may be a whole lot easier to wait until you buy a new computer with Vista already installed than to upgrade your old device. You'll save lots of time and effort, plus you'll be sure that your hardware is up to the task of running the new operating system.

It's been a long haul, but now that everything is running correctly, I'm happy with the way Vista operates. My largest adjustment has been finding where everything is located in the new OS. After five years of using Windows XP on DOZENS of different computers I’ve tested, I knew where all the adjustment menus were hidden. I have to deal with a new learning CURVE when it comes to Vista.

You’ve read what I have to say. Now, I’d like to hear about your experiences with Vista. Did you try upgrading? Have you purchased a new computer with Vista already installed? Any problems? How do you like running the new OS?

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/17467934/

Just now heard on the NEWS that this bug could MESS up all the airplane schedules at airports all around the country.Quote

That's right I am a final fantasy freak.

Man !! My puter says 8:52 am but I swear my body is saying 7:52 am, anyone know how [highlight]to fix it[/highlight]?

McAfee unveiled the results of a McAfee SiteAdvisor research report that creates a global road map of the riskiest, and the safest, places to surf and search on the World Wide Web. McAfee analyzed and ranked 265 top-level domains like Japan (.jp), France (.fr) and Commercial (.com) based on McAfee's Web safety tests for spyware, spam, exploits and scams. The report, "Mapping the Mal Web," revealed surprisingly large differences in safety from one domain to another. This global portrait estimates that each month, Internet users make more than 550 million clicks to risky Web sites and that even relatively SAFE domains like Germany (.de) or the United Kingdom (.uk) account for millions of risky clicks.

McAfee SiteAdvisor adds intuitive red, yellow, or green ratings to sites and search results based on proprietary tests of millions of Web sites representing more than 95% of the trafficked Web. Red ratings are given to risky sites that fail one or more of McAfee's tests for adware, spyware, viruses, exploits, spammy e-mail, excessive pop-ups or strong affiliations with other red-rated sites. Green- rated sites passed each of these tests. Yellow ratings are given to sites which pass McAfee's safety tests but which still have nuisances, such as excessive pop-ups, warranting a user advisory. Businesses and consumers may use McAfee SiteAdvisor to complement their existing McAfee products or to enhance security products made by other manufacturers.
Among the key findings of the study are:

- The incidence of red and yellow sites varies dramatically across top- level domains, ranging from a low of 0.1% for Finland (.fi) to a high of 10.1% for the tiny island of Tokelau (.tk). Overall, 4.1% of all sites tested by SiteAdvisor are rated red or yellow.

- Some Web activities, like registering at a site or downloading a file, are significantly more risky when done at certain domains. For example, giving an e-mail address to a random .info domain results in a stunning 73.2% chance of receiving spammy e-mail.

- The most risky large country domains are Romania (.ro, 5.6% risky sites) and Russia *Blocked Russian URL*, 4.5% risky sites). These country domains are also the most likely to host EXPLOIT or "drive-by-download" sites.

-.info is the riskiest generic domain, with 7.5% of its sites rated as risky. .com is the second most risky generic domain, with 5.5% of sites rated as risky.

- Three of the five least risky country domains are Nordic COUNTRIES -- Finland (0.10%), Norway (.no, 0.16%) and Sweden (.se, 0.21%). Iceland (.is, 0.19%) and Ireland (.ie, 0.11%) round out the top five least risky country domains.

- .gov is the only frequently tested domain for which SiteAdvisor has found no risky sites. .gov is only available to United States government agencies.

- Even though the .com domain is only the 5TH most risky domain by rank, its huge popularity magnifies its impact on search and browsing risk dramatically. 86.6% of clicks to red and yellow rated sites go to .com sites.

- Even though the Netherlands (.nl), Germany (.de) and the United Kingdom (.uk) are all relatively safe country domains, ranking 31st, 33rd and 51st most risky respectively, each of their country domains account for more than 2 million clicks to red and yellow sites every month. Likewise Japan (.jp) is ranked 57th most risky and yet red and yellow rated .jp sites receive an estimated 1.6 million clicks each month.

Low or no cost domain registration and minimal domain oversight appear to drive at least some of the higher levels of risk found at some top-level domains. For example, one reason the .biz domain may be preferred by spammers is because .biz domains are available for immediate use, rather than after a typical 24 hour WAITING period - a critical advantage in beating anti-spam services and blacklists.

full article above ^ but;

http://www.playfuls.com/news_06505_McAfee_Reveals_List_of_Riskiest_Country_Web_Sites.html


To be honest, I see no real surprises in the results.

how do u not get it??

Google announced it plans to PURGE it's tracking info after 2 years in their database...

Full StoryWell, that COULD be good or bad news depending how you look at it.
It's definitely news, lol.
It's sort of SCARY how much info some companies, especially search engines like Google, can build up about you without your knowledge.bleh. mabey i should just set the DATE on my computer to 2038 to SEE if i can fool google?

Either it will be the coolest prank in the history of [highlight]April fool’s day[/highlight] on the internet, or MySpace and its users might be in trouble. MOMBY (Month of MySpace Bugs Yuss!) is the official project name. There is humor all over the LiveJournal announcement, but some serious tones as well. The funny parts are standout to anyone, even those who are new to the trend of Month of exploit and bug releases.

This time around the new Month of target, MySpace is singled out because “MySpace is important, in that there are a bazillion users and a kajillion dollars involved,” said Mondo, one of the project creators, on the Full Disclosure mailing list, “Months of Bugs are whiny, attention-seeking ploys for acceptance. MySpace’s design use is to enable whiny, attention-seeking ploys for acceptance.”

The types of bugs allowed will be serious. However according to the announcement, most of the items planned for posting are, “silly XSS/misleading CSS style bugs that MySpace users may actually be able to use,” the creators said. The bugs disclosed will affect MySpace in one way or another. “But in the end, the only requirement is that all bugs posted as part of MOMBY MUST have an attached PoC (Proof of Concept) that touches Myspace.com, somewhere.” This means that known and unknown bugs are FAIR game and that almost anything could qualify as long as it is attached in one form or another to MySpace.

The creators of the project are quick to insist this is not a JOKE; the humor is that the “Month of” releases are a joke in their opinions, and are quickly loosing the value they should have. “Months of Bugs are annoying, so rather than suffering through another, we figured it'd be better to just create our own where we could at least direct the CONTENT a little.”

MySpace has had its share of known exploits and bugs in the past year. Some were fixed and there are rumors of more of them that were never fixed. You might recall the release of a text file with several thousand usernames and account passwords because of a Phishing attack, which targeted users of MySpace. There was also the WMF bug that allowed spyware to be installed on computers using Internet Explorer.

The bugs disclosed, if legit, will shine the security spotlight on the social network portal once again, and they will either have to react and patch them, or ignore them and hope they go away. News Corp does not need negative press, so if the bugs released are serious, or just pranks, they should move quickly to patch them. If that happens, maybe there will be a collective “Yuss!” from its users.

http://tech.monstersandcritics.com/news/article_1279518.php/MySpace_gets_its_own_Month_of_BugsWhen I see it I'll believe it. Never had much belief in people that tout their horns before actually doing or demonstrating anything.I suggest having a "close down Myspace.com 24/7" day.

Pretty crazy story...

http://consumerist.com/consumer/best-buy/geek-squad-charges-415-dollars-to-replace-a-hard-drive-makes-customer-retrieve-data-files-himself-240116.phpI have to admit, I really do not like the geek squad. Neither do I look the futureshop employees who also have geek squad. I've seen them convince a lady to buy a wireless ROUTER and use it as a wired router. All they really CARE about is money.Wow.
That's insane.
Companies like that deserve all the bad publicity they get, we have several local companies similar to that near me.Great info - "again"

People have to make $$$, don't trust no one...

This is why I learn about computers -- so I don't need a suit to tell me what happened to my machine. bleh. if best buy sucks, then why dont people realize that the so called computer repairmen inside also suck?I still shop there. They may be idiots, but they don't make the stuff. Yeah, I can get better prices at Frys, but these days the gas cost isn't worth it. Quote

but these days the gas cost isn't worth it.

I sort of know the feeling.
But I've never done anything as bad as that.
That guy must be feeling pretty bad right now.

Quote

I sort of know the feeling.
But I've never done anything as bad as that.
That guy must be feeling pretty bad right now.

Where ever he works..

Don't MISS out on your CHANCE to participate in the YouTube AWARDS. Great WAY to see some of the BEST videos on YouTube as well.

http://www.youtube.com/ytawards

Google is about to embark on a huge file-transfer project...the ENTIRE image database of the Hubble telescope.

StoryWow, that's quite a project.and quite a headache..Wow that would be quite the challenge thanks for sharing the link. Only bad thing about that story is that picture of Chris DiBona, SERIOUSLY they should of used a different picture of him.. looks like some type of glamor SHOT (and not in the good way)..Quote

Wow that would be quite the challenge thanks for sharing the link. Only bad thing about that story is that picture of Chris DiBona, seriously they should of used a different picture of him.. looks like some type of glamor shot ([HIGHLIGHT]and not in the good way[/highlight])..

Mozilla patches Firefox, but leaves some flaws unfixed
Although 14 vulnerabilities were fixed, several more remain....

February 23, 2007 (Computerworld) -- Mozilla Corp. updated Firefox Friday to patch 14 vulnerabilities, three of them critical, but pushed out the new versions without fixing several flaws.

Firefox 2.0.0.2 and Firefox 1.5.0.10, which originally were to release on Wednesday, were delayed to patch a series of bugs, including some disclosed this month by Polish researcher Michal Zelewski. Two others forwarded to Mozilla developers by Zelewski, however, didn't make it into today's updates.

"Neither of those will make this release," said Daniel Veditz, of the Mozilla security in an e-mail. "It is important that we get the security fixes we have into the HANDS of our users."

Of the bugs filed by Zelewski but not fixed in the updates, the most serious is a memory corruption flaw that could let attackers inject code remotely into Firefox-equipped machines simply by duping users into visiting a malicious Web page. "Firefox is susceptible to a seemingly pretty nasty, and apparently easily exploitable, memory corruption vulnerability," wrote Zelewski in the Bugzilla database.

Security vendor Symantec Corp. agreed. "Successfully exploiting this issue may allow remote attackers to execute arbitrary machine code in the context of the affected application. This could facilitate the remote compromise of affected COMPUTERS," it reported in an alert sent to subscribers to its DeepSight threat system. US-CERT, the federally funded vulnerability monitoring center, also issued a warning today, and recommended that Firefox users disable JavaScript.

Also unrepaired in the latest browser versions is a third Zelewski-discovered bug that could give cybercriminals a LEG up when running phishing attacks.

Mozilla spelled out the security fixes in Firefox 2.0.0.2 and 1.5.0.10 here.

Firefox 1.5.0.10 is nearly at the end of its supported lifespan. After April 24, Mozilla will stop issuing security and stability updates to that edition.

Firefox 2.0.0.2 can be downloaded from the Mozilla Web site in versions for Windows, Mac OS X and Linux in 36 languages. Users can also update current editions with the Check for Updates command in the Help menu. (personal note*) [highlight]Having SWITCHED over to Firefox approx: 5 months ago,> the virus / trojan attacts on my puter have dropped off VERY- significantly!! Almost non anymore.
I love this browser*[/highlight]
http://www.computerworld.com/action/article.do?command=viewArticleBasic&taxonomyName=software&articleId=9011721&taxonomyId=18&intsrc=kc_topThanks for that, I really didn't know about 2.0.0.2.
Upgrading now, thanks.well.. some of the forum functions do not work due to the fact i no longer have java enabled.. but.. bleh, who needs java..?I need Java, I write programs in that LANGUAGE every day.Quote

I need Java, I write programs in that language every day.

Quote

I need Java, I write programs in that language every day.

well.. java would be nice.. although not the program.. i need me some caffene..

At the 2007 Optical Fiber Conference, IBM scientists will reveal a prototype optical transceiver chipset capable of reaching speeds at least [highlight]eight times faster than optical components available today[/highlight].

The breakthrough could transform how data is accessed, shared and used across the Web for corporate and consumer networks. The transceiver is fast enough to reduce the [highlight]download time for a typical high definition feature-length film to a single second compared to 30 minutes or more.[/highlight]

The ability to move information at blazing speeds of 160 Gigabits -- or 160 billion bits of information in a single second -- provides a glimpse of a new era of high-speed connectivity that will transform communications, computing and entertainment. Optical networking offers the potential to dramatically improve data transfer rates by speeding the flow of data using light pulses, instead of sending electrons over wires.

"The explosion in the amount of data being transferred, when downloading movies, TV shows, music or photos, is creating demand for greater bandwidth and HIGHER speeds in connectivity," SAID Dr. T.C. Chen, vice president, Science & Technology, IBM Research. "Greater use of optical communications is needed to address this issue. We believe our optical transceiver technology may provide the answer."

As the amount of data transmitted over networks continues to grow, researchers have been looking for ways to make the use of optical signals more practical. The ability to use these signals could offer previously unheard of amounts of bandwidth and enhanced signal fidelity compared to current electrical data links. By shrinking and integrating the components into one PACKAGE, and building them with standard low-cost, high-volume chip manufacturing techniques, IBM is making optical connectivity viable for widespread use.

For example, the technology could be integrated ONTO printed circuit boards to allow the components within an electronic system – such as a PC or set top box -- to communicate much faster, dramatically enhancing the performance of the system itself.

To achieve this new level of integration in the chipset, IBM researchers built an optical transceiver with driver and receiver integrated circuits in current CMOS technology, the same standard, high-volume, low-cost technology used for most chips today. They then coupled it with other necessary optical components made in more exotic materials, such as indium phosphide (InP) and gallium arsenide (GaAs), into one, integrated package only 3.25 by 5.25 millimeters in size.

This compact design provides both a high number of communications channels as well as very high speeds per channel, resulting in an amount of information transmitted per unit area of card space taken up by the chipset (the ultimate measure of viability for practical use) that is the highest ever. This transceiver chipset is designed to enable low cost optics by attaching to an optical printed circuit board employing densely spaced polymer WAVEGUIDE channels using mass assembly processes.

http://www.playfuls.com/news_06709_IBM_Researchers_Demonstrate_Worlds_Fastest_Optical_Chipset.html

Not a good DAY to work for Circuit City, looks like they're going to cut 3,400 employees. Not only that, but they are also outsourcing the internal IT department to IBM.

Sandisk announced a 4GB version of its microSDHC card. Look for it at Verizon Wireless in may for $129.99.

Dell, Sony, & Apple have been added to a lawsuit filed by Washington Research Foundation. The lawsuit is claiming that they infringed on four different patents dealing with wireless data between computers and other devices.

Web advertising company DOUBLE Click is talking with potential suiters about a possible sale, one of which is Microsoft. Double Click is reportedly LOOKING for a sale price of $2 billion. – BEN Longo

Pretty awesome, a COMPANY in ISRAEL has developed and demonstrated a 1TB optical disc.

http://news.digitaltrends.com/article12559.html Nice.
I don't see a price MENTIONED though, I bet it'll be expensive.That's rather sic. I've only used about 40 GB out of the 250GB I have.

I WONDER what a burner for that would cost? Blu-Ray burners are around 300 USD still, and those are no where near 1TB.

Santa Clara (CA) – Just a few weeks ahead of its developer forum in Beijing, Intel has provided an UPDATE on the 45 nm Penryn processor family as well as the successor of the first generation Core architecture, which goes by the code-name “Nehalem.” The big news is the Intel will depart from the traditional front side bus and integrate the memory controller into the CPU.

If that sounds like a familiar concept to you, then your instincts are right: AMD has been using an integrated memory controller for some time now in its Athlon 64/Opteron processors. And even for Intel this move has been more a matter of “when”, rather than “if”: Intel executives were routinely asked by journalists at briefings if an integrated memory controller (IMC) makes sense for Intel – a question which Intel routinely answered with the phrase the options are evaluated and that such a solutions would be introduced when it makes sense.

Apparently, it makes sense to introduce an IMC with the Nehalem core, which will replace Core-based products starting in the second half of 2008. 45 nm Nehalem processors will arrive with up to EIGHT cores and will include a “highly integrated” memory controller, REFERRED to as “Nehalem system interconnect,” that aims to “deliver industry leading performance and capability for its targeted market segments,” Intel said. Basically, the technology (previously also known as Common System Interface or short “CSI”) represents a point-to-point serial bus, which removes a bandwidth bottleneck that has been building up in the front side bus over the past years.

As reported by TG Daily in February, Nehalem will also bring back Hyperthreading that was originally introduced with the Pentium 4 series of processors and separated the processor in one physical and one virtual core. With Nehalem, Hyperthreading will be NAMED “simultaneous multi-threading” and offer a maximum of 16 threads (with 8 physical cores). An interesting move is also the announcement that Nehalem processors will be available with integrated graphics, which is very reminiscent of AMD’s Fusion processor, which is believed to debut at the end of 2009 or early 2010. Intel calls Nehalem the first “truly dynamic and scalable microarchitecture” and said that it would provide more details further about it down the road.

full story

www.tgdaily.com/content/view/31408/135/

Over-compensation much?

Eh, I wouldn't mind having one though.

According to him, MAC OS X's FILESYSTEM is UTTER crap.
http://www.smh.com.au/news/technology/torvalds-pans-apples-os-x/2008/02/05/1202090393959.html