Transparency. Openness. International cooperation. These are some of the principles the United States should embrace in order to “safeguard U.S. satellites and protect space,” according to a new report from the Union of Concerned Scientists. Problem is, one of America’s latest and greatest space gizmos runs afoul of those noble ideas. With its secretive X-37B “space plane,” the United States has been anything but transparent, open and cooperative.
Remember when Spanish super-brain Hector Martin hacked Kinect, got open source drivers running on PC and scooped up a cash prize for his efforts? Well, the fruits of his labors are already showing, as creators, hackers and developers begin using Kinect for interesting new projects.
If the June edition of the bi-annual ranking of the Top 500 supercomputers in the world represented the dawning of the GPU co-processor as a key component in high performance computing, then the November list is breakfast time. The super centers of the world are smacking their lips for some flop-jacks with OpenCL syrup and some x64 bacon on the side.
Tony Cass, the leader of the European Organization for Nuclear Research's (CERN's) database services group, outlined some of the challenges the organization's computer system faces during his keynote speech Wednesday at LISA, the 24th Large Installation System Administration Conference, being held in San Jose, Calif., through Friday.
Marvell, a leading developer of various chips based on ARM architecture, on Monday unveiled its new system-on-chip (SoC) product – called Armada XP (extreme performance) – that features four ARM cores and is aimed at “enterprise-class cloud computing applications”. The Armada XP is the first actual ARM-based solution that is designed for servers.
Apple’s new MacBook Air borrows a lot of things from the iPad, including hyperportability and instant-on flash storage. But the Air won’t use an iPad-like touchscreen. Neither will any of Apple’s laptops. That’s because of what designers call “gorilla arm.”
When asked how relevant virtualisation was to them, more than 32 per cent of IT managers in Australia and New Zealand said it was a top interest, the highest by far of any key IT strategies. Yet only 9 per cent of senior managers saw virtualisation as that important, ranking it well behind security enhancements, mobile working solutions, integrated enterprise-wide information and localised software or service support. It's a trend echoed in Europe, although in Asia, where practically everything seems to be given as a top priority, senior managers seem to be more across the technology.
It’s a bird! It’s a plane! No, it’s an anarchic, copyright infringing peer-to-peer filesharing site hosted from a high-altitude balloon.
Physicists at the University of California, Riverside have made a breakthrough in developing a "spin computer," which would combine logic with nonvolatile memory, bypassing the need for computers to boot up.
How fast will PCs boot up in the future? I asked industry experts to explain what's involved and what could lead to PCs that boot up in seconds.
One of the key components in getting a PC to start quickly is the BIOS, or basic input/output system. The BIOS, which is present in every Windows PC and Apple computer, is the first piece of code run when the computer starts up, also referred to as firmware. The BIOS serves to initialize and identify system devices such as the hard-disk drive, DVD/CD drive, networking components, USB ports, the video card, keyboard, and mouse.
