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AMD

CPU competition heating up in 2012?->

Submitted by
jd
jd writes "2012 promises to be a fun year for hardware geeks, with three new "Aptiv-class" MIPS64 cores being circulated in soft form, a quad-core ARM A15, a Samsung ARM A9 variant, a seriously beefed-up 8-core Intel Itanium and AMD's mobile processors. There's a mix here of chips actually out, ready to be put on silicon, and in last stages of development. Obviously these are for different users (mobile CPUs don't generally fight for marketshare with Itanium dragsters) but it is still fascinating to see the differences in approach and the different visions of what is important in a modern CPU.

Combine this with the news reported earlier on the DDR4, and this promises to be a fun year with many new machines likely to appear that are radically different from the last generation.

Which leaves just one question — which Linux architecture will be fully updated first?"
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Digital

Photographers, you're being replaced by software->

Submitted by Mrs. Grundy
Mrs. Grundy writes "CGI software, even open-source software like Blender, continues to improve in quality, speed and easy-of-use. Photographer Mark Meyer wonders how long it will be before large segments of the photography industry are replaced by software and become the latest casualty to fall to outsourcing. Some imagery once the domain of photographers has already moved to CGI. Is any segment of the photography market safe? Will we soon accept digital renderings in places where we used to expect photographs?"
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Comment: Re:Laugh (Score 1) 399

by Unknown Lamer (#39950785) Attached to: Dell Designing Developer Oriented Laptop

I think you're underestimating how pleasant it is to kick back on a deck chair and churn out some code for a few hours. I have one of those old core2 whatever low voltage laptops with a 13" screen (eh, every 15" had the same resolution... and I made the mistake of buying a 17" monstrosity before), and it really is nice not being tethered to a desk (for 6+ hours of heavy use even).

Of course, in small screen editing mode I'll have a full screen Emacs frame (~270x96 characters isn't too shabby and can house 3 or 4 windows comfortably) with a tiny font and spread things out onto more desktops so it's only a bit less convenient.

But then I have a 24" monitor, clickety keyboard, and trackball sitting on my desk.

Space

ESA Declares End of Mission for Envisat->

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes "Just weeks after celebrating its tenth year in orbit, communication with the Envisat satellite was suddenly lost on 8 April. Following rigorous attempts to re-establish contact and the investigation of failure scenarios, the end of the mission is being declared."
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Communications

Queen's Speech 2012 at-a-glance: Bill-by-bill->

Submitted by
TheGift73
TheGift73 writes "By far the most controversial bill discussed in The Queens speech today has to be the 'Draft Communications Bill' which will allow the police and intelligence agencies to collect data on communications, like texts and emails, flexible to changes in technology, such as the internet. This will apply UK wide.

The Queen's Speech has set out the government's legislative plans for the next year. Here are details of what is in it:"
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Space

White House Threatens Veto Over NASA Commercial Crew Funding->

Submitted by FleaPlus
FleaPlus writes "This week the White House issued a veto threat over the Commerce/Justice/Science spending bill currently being debated by the House of Representatives, in large part due to its cut to commercial crew funding. The current House bill decreases NASA's overall budget and commercial crew spending while increasing spending on the shuttle-legacy SLS rocket. Language in the House bill also tells NASA to end the ongoing milestone-based competitive development in the commercial crew program, and to instead switch to a single provider using 'traditional government procurement methods.'"
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Ask Slashdot: Beyond Climate-Change or Who Is Looking At The Big Picture? 1

Submitted by Crypto Gnome
Crypto Gnome writes "While everyone is whining about GreenHouse Gasses the actual problem is an excess of heat. Constant bitching about cee owe too and cowfarts is just talking up (presumed/apparent) Causes. Ever since our good friend Einstein proved that e=mcc we've known that matter is essentially fossilised energy. (to put it in a similar descriptive paradigm) So once we get fusion based power plants we'll be releasing into our biosphere excess energy which was previously locked up nicely in matter. Bugger the greenhouse gasses as an intermediary we've gone DIRECTLY from root-cause to OH ZOD WE'RE ALL GONNA DIE. What are we gonna do then? Of course the problem is even WORSE once we crack the problem of Zero Point Energy, now we're sucking energy into The UNIVERSE which effectively didn't exist at all. And it's the same problem if we ever work out how to suck energy out of "neighbouring universes" (yes people say I read too much SF)..... Or maybe they're the same problem and Zero Point is actually just the effect we see of energy cycling between adjacent universes and statistically there's no *net change* until we started fudging with things and trying to keep it on our side of the fence."
Science

The Great Outdoors Is Good for Allergies->

Submitted by sciencehabit
sciencehabit writes "A new study reveals that people who grow up in more rural environments are less likely to develop allergies. The reason may be that environments rich with species harbor more friendly microbes, which colonize our bodies and protect against inflammatory disorders."
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Operating Systems

Samsung Tizen Reference Design Spotted!->

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes "Finally we've got some Tizen Hardware! Samsung is showing off a smartphone reference design at the Tizen Conference 2012 in San Francisco. Details on the device are pretty slim but we do know that it is sporting a 1.2 GHz Dual Core ARM based processor (presumably from Samsung). From the looks of it, it is got a 3.5 inch display and we can see that it does have a micro USB connector and a physical home button on the front.
Samsung has the closing keynote tomorrow so news on what their plans are for the open source OS are still to come, for now we have a Tizen smartphone!"
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SCCS, the source motel! Programs check in and never check out! -- Ken Thompson