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Submission Summary: 0 pending, 302 declined, 47 accepted (349 total, 13.47% accepted)

DRM

Submission + - DRM applied to furniture manufacture: Chair self-destructs after 8 uses (hexus.net)

Submitted by
unts
unts writes: "Taking DRM further than it's gone before, a group of designers have built a DRM'd chair that will melt its own joints and destroy itself after 8 uses. The chair uses an Arduino and sensors to monitor the number of uses, then triggers the melting of a set of joints that hold it together, making the product unusable without some carpentry skills. The video of device at work is both amusing and a little disconcerting... could a company decide that this is a genuinely good idea? Maybe some more spectacular pryo effects would make sure nobody tries to circumvent the DRM measures."
Linux

Submission + - MythTV 0.25 released, new HW acceleration and audio standards support (mythtv.org)

Submitted by
unts
unts writes: "The highly configurable Linux PVR, MythTV, has reached the 0.25 release, over 500 days after the previous full release. New features include VAAPI support, E-AC3, TrueHD, and DTS-HD audio, the ability to control other home entertainment devices via HDMI CEC and additions to the API to allow HTTP live streaming. The release notes for 0.25 don't reflect the release status at the time of writing, but should contain most of the relevant changes.

MythTV can be used as a backend (recorder) and frontend (viewer), but can also feed other frontends such as appropriate versions of XBMC. Hopefully the new HTTP streaming API will lead to even more ways to get your video fix from MythTV."

Submission + - ARM unveils next gen processor, claims 5x speedup (hexus.net)

Submitted by unts
unts writes: UK chip designer ARM today released the first details of its latest project, codenamed "Eagle". It has branded the new design Coretex-A15, which ARM reckons demonstrates the jump in performance from its predecessors, the A8 and A9. ARM's new chip design can scale to 16 cores, clock up to 2.5GHz, and, the company claims, deliver a 5x performance increase over the A8.

"It's like taking a desktop and putting it in your pocket," said [VP of processor marketing — Eric Schorn], and it was clear that he considers this new design to be a pretty major shot across the bows of Intel and AMD. In case we were in any doubt, he turned the knife further: "The exciting place for for software developer graduates to go and hunt for work is no longer the desktop."


Microsoft

Submission + - ARM hopes to lure Microsoft away from Intel (hexus.net)

Submitted by
Steve Kerrison
Steve Kerrison writes: "With the explosion of netbooks now available, the line between PC and mobile phone is becoming much less distinct. ARM, one of the biggest companies behind CPU architectures for mobile phones (and other embedded systems), sees now as an opportunity to break out of mobiles and give Intel a run for its money. HEXUS.channel quizzes Bob Morris, ARM's director of mobile computing on how it plans to achieve such a herculean task. Right now, ARM's pushing Android as the OS that's synonymous with the mobile Internet. But it's not simply going to ignore Microsoft:

What if Microsoft offered a full version of Windows (as opposed to Windows Mobile or Windows CE) that used the ARM, rather than X86 (Intel and AMD) instruction set? Then it would be a straight hardware fight with Intel, in which ARM hopes its low power, low price processors will have an advantage.

Morris wouldn't be drawn on whether this will ever happen, but he seemed quietly confident it would, pointing out that Microsoft will be missing out on an increasingly large market if it doesn't. "The pieces for fundamental change are already within the industry," he said.

"
Businesses

Submission + - Abit to bow out of mainboard market (hexus.net) 1

Submitted by
Steve Kerrison
Steve Kerrison writes: "Taiwanese technology firm Abit will be pulling out of the mainboard market at the end of this year. HEXUS.channel, citing sources close to South East Asian distributors, reports that the company will continue to deliver mainboard products until the end of 2008 and will still honour all warranties in subsequent years. Rumours of this decision circulated in May but were dismissed. Apparently the decision was made in the last couple of weeks. Abit is a popular brand amongst PC hardware enthusiasts, many of who will be disappointed to see it leave the market."
Supercomputing

Submission + - Concept: A New Generation of Supercomputers (hexus.net)

Submitted by
Steve Kerrison
Steve Kerrison writes: "With the power of CPUs ever-increasing and the number of cores in a system increasing too, having a supercomputer sat under your desk is no longer a pipe dream. But generally speaking, the extreme high end of modern computing consists of a big ugly box housing that generates a lot of noise. A UK system integrator has developed a concept PC that blows that all away. The eXtreme Concept PC (XCP) has quite a romantic design story, with inspiration coming from concept cars and the sarcophagus-like Cray T90. The end result is a system that resembles a Cylon — computing power never looked so ominous. Although just a concept, the company behind the design reckons there could be a (small) market for the systems, with varying levels of compute power accompanied by appropriate (say, LN2) cooling."
Intel

Submission + - Intel Harpertown (Penryn) quad CPUs benchmarked (hexus.net)

Submitted by unts
unts writes: The Intel Developer Forum is currently running in San Francisco, and Intel is showing off the up-coming Harpertown processors based on the Penryn core. HEXUS got hands on with a test system and ran some performance tests: 'Harpertown is a better quad-core processor than Clovertown: it's as simple as that. More L2 cache will gobble-up larger application data-sets and a higher FSB, on select models, will ensure that per-CPU bandwidth is less of a concern.'
AMD

Submission + - AMD finally launches its low-price DX10 cards

Submitted by
Steve Kerrison
Steve Kerrison writes: "The Radeon 'R600' HD 2900 XT was late coming, and so by extension are the lower cost parts derived from it. But the Radeon HD 2400 and 2600s are launched today, with pricing aimed at knocking mid-range GeForce 8 series cards off people's shopping lists. But there's more to a graphics card than price, performance and driver functionality are key too. HEXUS had some fun and games testing the new Radeons: 'The hardware designers may now be sitting back, content that their DX10-supporting midrange SKUs are at least as compelling as the competition's. But, and it's a big, big but, the current drivers aren't realising the kind of performance we'd expect from a knowledge of the Radeon HD 2600 XT's setup.'"
Intel

Submission + - Intel's Penryn Benchmarked

Submitted by
Steve Kerrison
Steve Kerrison writes: "Intel's keen to show off its up-coming 45nm Penryn Core 2 CPU. HEXUS had some hands on time with the new processor to get an idea of how well it will perform once its released: 'Intel's new 45nm Penryn core adds more than just a clock and FSB hike, so much so that even a dual-core Penryn is able to beat out a quad-core QX6800 under certain circumstances.'"
Intel

Submission + - Intel Spills Beans On Santa Rosa Notebook Platform

Submitted by
Steve Kerrison
Steve Kerrison writes: "From the Intel Developer Forum in Beijing comes news of the successor to the Napa notebook platform. Santa Rosa, which will head up Intel's notebook technology line-up until 2H 2008, beefs up almost everything seen in Napa, from graphics to WiFi.

Santa Rosa carries Robson Technology, now known as Intel Turbo Memory, the flash-based disc-caching system that speeds up loading times of frequently-used data. Santa Rosa is an obvious continuation of the Centrino series. There will also be another Santa Rosa Centrino variant — Pro — that covers the business features found on Intel's Q-series chipsets, namely vPro.
Intel's Core2 mobile processors remain a key part of the platform, as you'd expect, with 45nm 'Penryn' CPUs making their way into the Santa Rosa refresh in 2008."
Privacy

Submission + - Social network users have ruined their privacy

Submitted by
Steve Kerrison
Steve Kerrison writes: "'There's little point in worrying about ID cards, RFID tags and spyware when more and more people are throwing away their privacy anyway. And the potential consequences are dire.' I've written an article on the dangers of social networks and how many users seem to forget just how public the information they post can be. This follows a warning sent out by the CS department of Bristol University, advising students that they risk lost job opportunities, getting in trouble with their parents and more, if they don't take care. The warning, however, really applies to all social network users."
AMD

Submission + - Why AMD is still in the race

Submitted by
Steve Kerrison
Steve Kerrison writes: "Despite a woeful inability to provide some of its loyalest customers with stock, and a range of CPUs that, currently, lose out to Intel's Core 2 processors in both price and performance (and who would I be not the mention the diminishing AMD fanboy numbers?), AMD's still got enough tricks up its sleeve to retaliate against Intel in due course. HEXUS.net has an opinion piece on why AMD isn't up the creek. From the article:
AMD has been showing off its 65nm wafers for a few months now, which means the Rev G core is on its way. Even if the DDR2 memory controller which arrived with the Rev F only had a small performance benefit, Rev G has a few more improvements than just the die shrink. The latter will enable higher clock speeds and a lower price, plus allow AMD to compete on an equal playing field to Intel, which has been manufacturing 65nm processors since the Pentium XE 955 at the end of 2005.
"
PC Games (Games)

Submission + - New Alienware PC an Overpriced Underperformer

Submitted by
unts writes: Alienware has jumped on board the Core 2 bandwagon and rightfully so, but their new Area-51 7500 loses out to cheaper and faster solutions from other companies. From HEXUS.net's review:

No matter which way we dress up the Alienware's performance and feature-set, it's relatively poor in comparison to SKUs that we've reviewed recently. Value for money may not be the greatest concern in this sector of the pre-built market but when you can get substantially more for less, it becomes impossible to recommend this particular Area-51 7500.
Is this thanks to Dell, or can Alienware simply charge more for its brand?

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