Intel demonstrates 80-core processor

Now that the Megahertz race has faded into the distance (we hear it was a myth), Intel is well and truly kicking off the start of a multi-core war with the demonstration of an 80-core research processor in San Francisco last week. It's not the first multi-core processor to reach double figures -- a company called ClearSpeed put 96 cores onto one of its CPUs -- but it's the first to be accompanied by the aim of making it generally available; an aim that Intel hopes to realize within a five year timeframe. The long time frame is required because current operating systems and software don't take full advantage of the benefits of multi-core processors. In order for Intel to successfully market processors with CPUs that have more than say, 4 cores, there needs to be an equal effort from software programmers, which is why producing an 80-core processor is only half the battle. On paper, 80-cores sounds impressive, but when the software isn't doing anything imaginative with them it's actually rather disappointing: during a demonstration, Intel could only manage to get 1 Teraflop out of the chip, a figure which many medium- to high-end graphics cards are easily capable of. The multi-core war may have begun, but the battle will be fought with software, although that's not to say that the hardware side has already been won: apparently the test chip is much larger than equivalent chips -- 275 mm squared, versus a typical Core 2 Duo's 143 mm squared -- and Intel currently has no way to hook up memory to the chip. Hopefully half a decade should be long enough to sort out these "issues."

[Thanks, Michael]

U.S. cyber counterattack: Bomb 'em one way or the other

National Cyber Response Coordination Group establishing proper response to cyberattacks

By Ellen Messmer, Network World, 02/08/07

San Francisco — If the United States found itself under a major cyberattack aimed at undermining the nation’s critical information infrastructure, the Department of Defense is prepared, based on the authority of the president, to launch a cyber counterattack or an actual bombing of an attack source.

The primary group responsible for analyzing the need for any cyber counterstrike is the National Cyber Response Coordination Group (NCRCG). The three key members of the NCRCG, who hail from the US-CERT computer-readiness team, the Department of Justice and the Defense Department, this week described how they would seek to coordinate a national response in the event of a major cyber-event from a known attacker.

This week’s massive but unsuccessful denial-of-service (DoS) attack on the Internet’s root DNS, which targeted military and other networks, did not rise to the level of requiring response, but made the possibility of a massive Internet collapse more real than theoretical. Had the attack been successful there may have been a cyber counterstrike from the United States, said Mark Hall, director of the international information assurance program for the Defense Department and the Defense Department co-chair to the NCRCG, who spoke on the topic of cyber-response during the RSA Conference here.

“We have to be able to respond,” Hall said. “We need to be in a coordinated response.”

He noted that the Defense Department networks, subject to millions of probes each day, has “the biggest target on its back.”

But a smooth cyber-response remains a work in progress. The NCRCG’s three co-chairs acknowledge it’s not simple coordinating communications and information-gathering across government and industry even in the best of circumstances, much less if a significant portion of the Internet or traditional voice communications were suddenly struck down. But they asserted the NCRCG is “ready to stand up” to confront a catastrophic cyber-event to defend the country.

“We’re working with key vendors to bring the right talent together for a mitigation strategy,” said Jerry Dixon, deputy director for operations for the National Cyber Security Division at US-CERT. “We recognize much infrastructure is operated by the private sector.” The U.S. government has conducted cyber war games in its CyberStorm exercise last year and is planning a second one.

NTT DoCoMo Achieves Data Transmission of Almost 5Gbps

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Japan's leading mobile operator, NTT DoCoMo came close to hitting another data transmission milestone while researching the next-generation cellular phone systems during an experiment conducted last year, on December

the 25th in Yokosuka, Kanagawa Prefecture, Japan.

The company managed to transmit data at almost 5GBps to a receiver that was moving at 10km per hour, according to Yoshiki Kakuda, a spokesman for the Tokyo Company.

He also said that the company's public relations department didn't know the exact speed that was achieved, but that it was quite close to 5GBps. NTT DoCoMO has been working on the 4G technology for almost 10 years but they've still got a long way to go before it is launched.

The company is currently planning to launch 4G in Japan by 2010 but also indicated that it first plans to speed-up its WCDMA 3G network before switching to a new technology.

Approximately a year ago, NTT DoCoMo managed to transmit data at 2.5GBps, and this time they managed to double that by increasing the number of MIMO transmitting and receiving antennas from six to twelve and using better signal processing in the receiver.

As compared to the test in December 2005, the frequency spectrum efficiency was also doubled from 25bps/Hz to 50bps/Hz.The mobile operator also plans to launch a 'Super 3G' service by 2010 that will offer data transmission at approximately 100Mbps. NTT DoCoMO will present all the details on this recent experiment next week at the 3GSM World Congress in Barcelona.

The company has also announced that it is looking forward to contributing to the global standardization of 4G through its ongoing research and development.

Linux to power super-router

By Matthew Broersma, Techworld

A group of networking experts has launched a project designed to give Cisco's routers some open source competition.

The project, called the Open Linux Router, joins some other efforts at bringing open source into the world of routers, notably the Extensible Open Router Platform (XORP) sponsored by Vyatta, but aims to add features such as a file-sharing server and a firewall.

It is the brainchild of four Michigan university students, who acknowledged Vyatta as an inspiration but saw the need for a more expandable, easier-to-use system. The system, like XORP, is intended to run on off-the-shelf hardware, with enough modularity to allow it to run on anything from an embedded device to an enterprise server.

"These tools are wrapped up in such a way that the user does not need to know or fully understand their inner workings, only how to implement them," the developers said on the project's site.

Core to the project, announced late last month, is a simple interface that allows users to configure the device and add new features without extensive technical knowledge. One criticism of devices like the XORP or Asterisk's open source PBX is that the companies buying them don't necessarily have the technical knowledge to deal with maintenance.

While the Open Linux Router project is at an early stage, it is part of a growing interest in using open source to compete with companies such as Cisco in the realms of routers and PBXs.

For now, the movement is largely limited to small and midsize organizations and is focused around the Asterisk open-source private branch exchange and Vyatta open-source routers. Cisco and other old-time networking vendors certainly aren't yet shaking in their boots over it. But it's a growing movement that they ignore at their own peril; lower-cost, higher-function technologies have a way of replacing existing architecture far faster than vendors realize, open-source vendors say.

A tentative feature list for the Linux router includes SSL web interface, serial console, wireless support, VLAN support, packet filtering and other features. It is based on the Webmin configuration tool and initial code is available via Google Code.

The first substantial release of the project is scheduled for May or June, developers said.

Other Linux-based projects targeting firewall and network server include ClarkConnect, IPCop, m0n0wall, and Smoothwall.

Computerworld's Phillip Britt contributed to this report.

Launch of open source stack for mobile phones

Linux Mobile Phone Guy writes "Members of the open source GPE project (GPE Palmtop Environment) today announced a new offspring project to create a fully open source software stack for mobile phones, GPE Phone Edition. GPE Phone Edition is a fully open source project based on developments from the GPE project adding necessary components for mobile phone usage. Based on standards defined by the LiPS Forum a complete application software stack is built. The current implementation is based on code contributed to the LiPS Forum by Orange/France Telecom's research and development lab located in Beijing China in collaboration with GPE project members. The result is now an open sourced software stack which can handle a GSM compliant mobile modem for making voice calls, handling the SIM address book and sending and receiving SMS. Also some additional application exists e.g. for media playback, instant messaging and email. They have some screenshots there and even a downloadable VMware image using which you can try the whole thing in a virtual phone on your PC — if you connect a GSM Modem (like an existing phone) to /dev/GSM-Modem you should probably even be able to use the full phone functionality (access SIM card, send/receive SMS, make a call!)."

Black and White Twins

Meet my twin sister

A double take in black & white

A mixed-race British mom gave birth to twins recently - one of each. No, not a boy and a girl. Two girls - one black, the other white.

The odds of such a birth are about a million to one, experts said.

"It was a shock when I realized that my twins were two different colors," Kylie Hodgson, 19, told London's Daily Mail. "But it doesn't matter to us - they are just our two gorgeous little girls."

Hodgson and her partner, Remi Horder, 17, were both born to mixed-race parents.

Little Kian and Remee share a love of apples and the Teletubbies, their proud mom says.

Fertility experts speculate that a sperm containing all-white genes fused with an egg with all-white genes, and a sperm with all-black genes fused with an all-black gene egg to produce the fraternal twins.

Jose Martinez

(Photo credit: Gary Roberts)

Linux Kernel 2.6.20 Released

"After two months of development, Linux 2.6.20 has been released. This release includes two different virtualization implementations: KVM: full-virtualization capabilities using Intel/AMD virtualization extensions and a paravirtualization implementation usable by different hypervisors. Additionally, 2.6.20 includes PS3 support, a fault injection debugging feature, UDP-lite support, better per-process IO accounting, relative atime, relocatable x86 kernel, some x86 microoptimizations, lockless radix-tree readside, shared pagetables for hugetbl, and many other things. Read the list of changes for more details."

In a widely anticipated move, Linux "headcase" Torvalds today announced
the immediate availability of the most advanced Linux kernel to date,
version 2.6.20.

Before downloading the actual new kernel, most avid kernel hackers have
been involved in a 2-hour pre-kernel-compilation count-down, with some
even spending the preceding week doing typing exercises and reciting PI
to a thousand decimal places.

The half-time entertainment is provided by randomly inserted trivial
syntax errors that nerds are expected to fix at home before completing
the compile, but most people actually seem to mostly enjoy watching the
compile warnings, sponsored by Anheuser-Busch, scroll past. 

As ICD head analyst Walter Dickweed put it: "Releasing a new kernel on
Superbowl Sunday means that the important 'pasty white nerd'
constituency finally has something to do while the rest of the country
sits comatose in front of their 65" plasma screens". 

Walter was immediately attacked for his racist and insensitive remarks
by Geeks without Borders representative Marilyn vos Savant, who pointed
out that not all of their members are either pasty nor white.  "Some of
them even shower!" she added, claiming that the constant stereotyping
hurts nerds' standing in society. 

Geeks outside the US were just confused about the whole issue, and were
heard wondering what the big hoopla was all about. Some of the more
culturally aware of them were heard snickering about balls that weren't
even round.

                      Linus

---
Shortlog since 2.6.20-rc7. Fixes, fixes.

There's a full ChangeLog together with the tar-ball and patches, but let 
me just summarize it as: "A lot of stuff. All over. And KVM."

I tried rather hard to make 2.6.20 largely a "stabilization release". 
Unlike a lot of kernels lately, there aren't really any big fundamental 
changes to some core infrastructure area, and while we always have bugs, I 
really am hoping that we fixed many more than we introduced. 

Have fun. And remember: the thousandth decimal is, of course, 9. There 
*will* be a test on this afterwards.

Adrian Bunk (1):
      [NETFILTER]: nf_conntrack_h323: fix compile error with CONFIG_IPV6=m, CONFIG_NF_CONNTRACK_H323=y

Al Viro (12):
      netxen patches
      fix frv headers_check
      mca_nmi_hook() can be called at any point
      ide section fixes
      endianness bug: ntohl() misspelled as >> 24 in fh_verify().
      fork_idle() should be __cpuinit, not __devinit
      __crc_... is intended to be absolute
      efi_set_rtc_mmss() is not __init
      sanitize sections for sparc32 smp
      radio modems sitting on serial port are not for s390
      uml-i386: fix build breakage with CONFIG_HIGHMEM
      fix rtl8150

Alan (3):
      pata_atiixp: propogate cable detection hack from drivers/ide to the new driver
      pata_via: Correct missing comments
      libata: Fix ata_busy_wait() kernel docs

Andrew Morton (2):
      pci: remove warning messages
      revert blockdev direct io back to 2.6.19 version

Auke Kok (1):
      e100: fix napi ifdefs removing needed code

Avi Kivity (1):
      KVM: fix lockup on 32-bit intel hosts with nx disabled in the bios

Bartlomiej Zolnierkiewicz (1):
      via82cxxx: fix typo ("cx7000" should be corrected to "cx700")

Bob Breuer (1):
      [SPARC32]: Fix over-optimization by GCC near ip_fast_csum.

Brian King (1):
      libata: Initialize nbytes for internal sg commands

David C Somayajulu (1):
      [SCSI] qla4xxx: bug fixes

Evgeniy Dushistov (1):
      MAINTAINERS: ufs entry

Frédéric Riss (1):
      EFI x86: pass firmware call parameters on the stack

Guillaume Chazarain (1):
      procfs: Fix listing of /proc/NOT_A_TGID/task

Haavard Skinnemoen (1):
      Remove avr32@atmel.com from MAINTAINERS

Jean Delvare (1):
      via quirk update

Jeff Garzik (1):
      x86-64: define dma noncoherent API functions

Jens Osterkamp (1):
      spidernet : fix memory leak in spider_net_stop

John Keller (1):
      Altix: more ACPI PRT support

Kai Makisara (1):
      [SCSI] st: A MTIOCTOP/MTWEOF within the early warning will cause the file number to be incorrect

Ken Chen (1):
      aio: fix buggy put_ioctx call in aio_complete - v2

Lars Immisch (1):
      [NETFILTER]: SIP conntrack: fix skipping over user info in SIP headers

Li Yewang (1):
      [IPV6]: fix BUG of ndisc_send_redirect()

Linus Torvalds (3):
      Revert "[PATCH] mm: micro optimise zone_watermark_ok"
      Revert "[PATCH] fix typo in geode_configre()@cyrix.c"
      Linux 2.6.20

Magnus Damm (1):
      kexec: Avoid migration of already disabled irqs (ia64)

Matthew Wilcox (1):
      [SCSI] Fix scsi_add_device() for async scanning

Michael Chan (1):
      [BNX2]: PHY workaround for 5709 A0.

Mike Frysinger (1):
      alpha: fix epoll syscall enumerations

Nagendra Singh Tomar (1):
      [SCSI] sd: udev accessing an uninitialized scsi_disk field results in a crash

Neil Horman (1):
      [IPV6]: Fix up some CONFIG typos

Patrick McHardy (5):
      [NETFILTER]: xt_connbytes: fix division by zero
      [NETFILTER]: SIP conntrack: fix out of bounds memory access
      [NETFILTER]: xt_hashlimit: fix ip6tables dependency
      [NET_SCHED]: act_ipt: fix regression in ipt action
      [NETFILTER]: ctnetlink: fix compile failure with NF_CONNTRACK_MARK=n

Peter Korsgaard (1):
      net/smc911x: match up spin lock/unlock

Randy Dunlap (2):
      [MAINTAINERS]: netfilter@ is subscribers-only
      sysrq: showBlockedTasks is sysrq-W

Tejun Heo (1):
      ahci/pata_jmicron: fix JMicron quirk

Vlad Yasevich (1):
      [SCTP]: Force update of the rto when processing HB-ACK

Open Source Advocacy Group Quiet About Launch

"Yet another open source advocacy group is in the offing, but trying to keep the lid on until its official launch at LinuxWorld OpenSolutions Summit. Robin 'Roblimo' Miller ferrets out a few details of the nascent Open Solutions Alliance on Linux.com: 'Our anonymous interviewee says 'at least 10' companies have signed up, and that they are 'talking to dozens more.' While he refused to name any participants, Linux.com has confirmed that SpikeSource and JasperSoft are both involved.'" Linux.com and Slashdot are both owned by OSTG.

Vagina, Not so Well Protected by Its Shield

Gels containing microbicides have been praised as the miracle weapon against catching HIV infection, as they could have been used by the women in the third world by themselves, without the man's agreement, to protect themselves against infection during the sexual act.

The gels are applied intravaginally.

Now, trials of a new type of gel developed to help women protect themselves from HIV were stopped on Wednesday after women employing it got infected by HIV at a higher level than women not using it, as investigators discovered.

The experiments were made on 1333 women in South Africa, Benin, Uganda and India.

“The microbicide gel apparently made the women more vulnerable to the virus, not less vulnerable as intended,” said its makers Polydex Pharmaceuticals, based in Toronto, Canada.

The microbicide gel was

branded with the name Ushercell, and is a cotton-based product that had been checked in more than 500 women without any adverse effect about the risk of HIV infection.

A second testing experiment for the same product has also ceased its checks in 1700 women in Nigeria, out of concern for the women's life, even if in this case, the analyses did not point a higher-than-expected virus infection.

Women who got infected during the trials will receive anti HIV medication, as announced by the researchers.

"While the findings are unexpected and disappointing, we will learn scientifically important information from this trial that will inform future HIV prevention research," said Lut Van Damme, who was leading the trial of the Polydex product.

This is the second time when trials with a microbicide anti HIV vaginal gel or cream suffer spectacular failure.

The other failed product is spermicide nonoxynol-9, although it is still unclear why the product did not work and moreover, increased the risk of infection.

There are other three products in advanced trials, the last one being based on a seaweed chemical called carrageenan.

10 Years of Pushing For Linux — and Giving Up

boyko.at.netqos writes "Jim Sampson at Network Performance Daily writes about his attempts over a decade to get Linux working in a business/enterprise environment, but each time, he says, something critical just didn't work, and eventually, he just gave up. The article caps with his attempts to use Ubuntu Edgy Eft — only to find a bug that still prevented him from doing work." Quoting: "For the next ten years, I would go off and on back to this thought: I wanted to support the Open Source community, and to use Linux, but every time, the reality was that Linux just was not ready... Over the last six years, I've tried periodically to get Linux working in the enterprise, thinking, logically, that things must have improved. But every time, something — sometimes something very basic — prevented me from doing what I needed to do in Linux."

That Hot 'Terminator' Chick Would Like Some Sperm, Please!

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Some may not know who Kristanna is by name, but seeing her face certainly brings up memories of how she totally kicked Arnold Schwarzenegger's ass in 'Terminator 3: Rise of

the Machines', she playing the bad guy. Sure, the part didn't require that much acting skills on her behalf, seeing that most of the time she was chasing Arnie and beating the crap out of him.

She might not have had too many lines, but her 'performance' was more than mind-blowing, especially in that naked scene. In fact, Kristanna's case is just another one of model-turned-actress for the sake of saying that she has something new to dedicate herself to. The perfect example in this sense is none other than the horror/thriller 'Bloodrayne', a movie one would go and see only out of sheer boredom.

Anyway, Kristanna is also the one who outed 'Lost' and 'The Fast and The Furious' star Michelle Rodriguez, in a November interview with 'Advocate' magazine. At the time, the gorgeous model spoke for the first time about romancing Michelle, hinting that what began as a flirt on the movie set soon became a serious relationship.

In a more recent interview, Loken said that she plans to start a family really soon, which means becoming a mom and committing herself to someone she loves, be it a man or a woman. Seeing that she's a bisexual who's dating a lesbian, that means she would have to find the perfect donor. And that she did! 'I would definitely like to have a family, and whether that's with a man or a woman doesn't really matter to me. I've already got my friend who's going to be the donor, so that's taken care of. Just give me a few years and we'll go from there', Kristanna explained.

However, her current life partner may not be aware of her intentions. Various media outlets inform that Michelle was partying in Hollywood these past days... with another woman! Eyewitnesses say that the actress was at a nightclub, where she treated the guests with a pole dance (like a professional, they say), after which she began kissing one of the women from her entourage.

'She took lemon wedges and greased the pole so she could slide better. She didn't get naked, but she was hanging upside down and twirling around. It was wild. She then made out with this woman who she came in with.', the source says, adding that the woman in question was definitely not Kristanna.

7 Ways to Be Mistaken for a Spammer

"The "This is Spam" button popping up on many service providers' email services can be empowering for a user, but it can also be the kiss of death for a legitimate business that gets canned with a click of that button. Dark Reading has a story on seven common missteps that can lead to a case of mistaken spammmer identity for a legit business trying to send its marketing email, newsletters or other correspondence."

Why "Yahoo" Is The #1 Search Term On Google

"Google Trends indicates that over the course of the past year the search term "Yahoo" became more popular than "sex", making it the #1 query on Google. Yahoo apparently faces a similar dilemma with roles reversed: When you search for "Google" on Yahoo, Yahoo thoughtfully displays a second search box as if to tell you, "Hey cutie, you have a search engine right in front of you!" A puzzling phenomenon? An strange aberration?"

The Road to KDE 4: Kalzium and KmPlot

Since not all of the development for KDE 4 is in base technologies, this week features two of applications from the KDE-Edu team: Kalzium, a feature-filled chemistry reference tool, and KmPlot, a powerful equation graphing and visualization program. Read on for the details.
These educational tools have received a lot of work for KDE 4. In particular, Kalzium and KmPlot developments are happening at an amazing rate.
Kalzium (the German word for Calcium) has been a part of KDE since version 3.1 and is now one of the most useful applications developed by the KDE-Edu team. Initially it was just a program that displayed the periodic table, alongside some useful numbers like atomic weights, boiling points, etc. It was later extended to include a lot of background information on the elements, and more detailed chemistry information (such as emission spectra) which made it a very useful chemistry reference.

In KDE 3.5.5 (which I used for these screenshots, even though 3.5.6 was released last week), Kalzium looks something like this when first loaded:

Click for fullsize.

You can see that the interface is pretty simple, and presents a lot of information. If you click on an element it brings up even more information on its properties.

The main user interface in KDE 4 does not look that different, except for the fact that Qt 4 introduces some appearance changes, and there are some more icons (some that haven't been drawn yet) in the toolbar. Here's a peek at Kalzium in the KDE 4 development series:

Click for fullsize.

So Kalzium is visually quite similar between versions at this point. However, the important thing to note in the KDE 4 screenshot is the tools menu. In KDE 3.5.5, this menu contains only Plot Data and Glossary.

Plot Data shows the elements plotted in a variety of useful ways, such as mass, radius, electronegativity, etc. while the Glossary shows definitions for many of the more common chemical terms. It is apparently missing the above mentioned electronegativity, so evidently there is still room for improvement here. Making improvements to the Glossary would be a great opportunity for a chemistry-inclined person to contribute to Kalzium in KDE 4 without having to be a programmer.

Anyway, back to the new tools. I'll focus on a few of the newly developed tools that will make Kalzium even more useful in KDE 4:

The isotope table will display a list of isotopes and their decay methods - as a geologist for example, it is important for me to know that Potassium-40 usually decays by electron capture.

The new equation solver is also quite useful, as seen in the following screenshot provided by Kalzium lead developer Carsten Niehaus:

You basically just punch in a chemical equation leaving letters in place of the numbers you are looking for, and it spits out a response. In high school chemistry, students are expected to be able to solve these sorts of equations manually, but like most equations, once you solve enough of them, it simply becomes tedious. This equation solver can save a lot of time for complex equations.

And finally, the most visible change to Kalzium is the inclusion of the Kalzium 3D work, which turns the program into a 3D molecule viewer. Initially, it was developed by the Kalzium developers for use in this application only, but some collaboration has since happened and it will now be using libavogadro a library jointly developed by the Kalzium and Avogadro developers.

According to the Kalzium developers work is progressing on porting the 3D modeller to use libavagadro, an effort led by Donald Curtis, providing a more general/powerful framework for rendering/manipulating molecules with Qt and OpenGL library. It is shared between Kalzium and Avogadro (and more). Avogadro is a much more advanced molecular modelling programs, useful for creating the actual molecule files, and doing quantum chemistry. Kalzium 3D will simply act as a viewer for files constructed using these programs.

Kalzium developer Benoît Jacob submits the following screenshot showing the 3D molecule viewer in action using the new Kalzium 3D functionality. This functionality is already SVN as this article goes to press, however work continues with libavogadro integration.

Click for fullsize.

Kalzium will likely ship with a library of common molecules ready to view provided by the BlueObelisk project. Thanks to the OpenBabel library, it should also be able to open molecule files in a huge variety of formats (I counted 62 file formats that it already supports).
On to our next KDE-Edu feature: KmPlot. For a while already, this application has had the ability to plot regular functions, parametric functions, and polar functions, as well as show derivatives (or regular functions) and a few other goodies. It has been useful as an equation visualization tool, but the interface has been awkward, with many little cluttered dialogs to fight with.

Below is KmPlot in KDE 3.5.5 with it's default settings, and three functions plotted, one of each type:

The dialogs used to plot these equations look something like this, except there is one unique dialog for each type of plot:

Here's a quick look of the new KmPlot interface with the same three functions plotted. No more dialogs to mess with, and the plots can be in shapes other than square! Plus Qt 4 gives everything a nice anti-aliased touch.

Click for fullsize.

KmPlot has received a huge amount of work, and should be one of the KDE 4's killer apps for students, engineers, and more. It plots differential equations now, has a new equation editor, and (as seen in the above screenshot) gives tips as to how to correct your equations.

The new equation editor is shown below with a differential equation being edited:

As you can see, it's much easier to enter an equation when you can design the functions in a nice syntax checking editor like this one. There is a lot more work going into KmPlot than I can describe in just this article, so if you are interested in more information, check out its development status page.
KDE-Edu is a growing project, with many great applications being developed for a wide variety of age groups. They will have support for Windows and Mac as well, thanks to the improved QT 4 and KDE 4 libraries, and should become more popular programs as a result. Since there is so much great work happening here, expect some other KDE-Edu applications to show up in future articles.

iPod Shuffle colors released!

In five brilliant colors and just $79, the 1GB iPod shuffle lets you wear up to 240 songs¹ on your sleeve. Or your lapel. Or your belt. Clip on iPod shuffle and wear it as a badge of musical devotion.

One size fits all

You know what they say about good things and small packages. But when something 1.62 inches long and about half an ounce holds up to 240 songs, “good” and “small” don’t cut it. Especially when you can listen to your music for up to 12 continuous hours.² In fact, iPod shuffle just may be the biggest thing in small.

Ready to wear

Clip it to your coin pocket. Clip it to your bag. No matter where you clip your skip-free iPod shuffle, you’ll have instant access to music. In silver, pink, green, blue, and orange, iPod shuffle goes with everything. Put it on, turn it up, and turn some heads.

Remix and match

The first step to wearing 240 songs is downloading iTunes — free. Then drop your iPod shuffle into the included dock, plug the dock into your Mac or PC’s USB port, and sync in minutes. Got more than 240 songs? No problem. Let iTunes autofill your iPod shuffle and get a new musical experience every time.

1. 1GB = 1 billion bytes; actual formatted capacity less. Song capacity is based on 4 minutes per song and 128-Kbps AAC encoding; actual capacity varies by content.


2. Rechargeable batteries have a limited number of charge cycles and may eventually need to be replaced. Battery life and number of charge cycles vary by use and settings. See www.apple.com/batteries for more information.

Frank Taira Supit hanged himself?

The Jakarta Post quoted family members that lawyer turned airline businessman and key supporter of Amien Rais in 2004 election Frank Taira Supit had committed suicide, hanged himself in his Rempoa residence, South Jakarta.

Mr Supit is the co-founder of corporate law firm Makarim & Taira Supit, National Mandate Party (PAN), and airline company PT Efata Papua Airlines. Police is investigating the case and awaiting the autopsy result to confirm whether it was really suicide.
Mr Supit, Graduated from Harvard Law School (summa cum laude, the first Indonesian to get that), married to a Filipino. He also established PT Sigma Batara.
At Air Efata, Supit owns 8% directly and indirectly through PT Taira Markas (90%). Papua governor Barnabas Suebu reportedly owns 2%.
"Looks like he had huge professional and personal problems recently. But I'm shocked to hear the sad news," one of his friends said.
"He's a perfectionist, smart, and low profile. But I never imagine his life ended like that," another friend said.
Evening paper Sinar Harapan reported in its headline that Supit's wife Marylou reported the tragedy on Monday. Marylou declined to comment on speculations about Mr Supit's death.
The paper quoted several sources that Air Efata has been in trouble with liabilities to Angkasa Pura I, II, Pertamina, and other companies of more than Rp100 billion. The airline has reportedly invested Rp180 billion. Supit tried to restructure the company's debt with new loans from Bank Lippo, but the bank pulled out in the last minutes. Air Efata also got loans from Oentoro Surya (owner of PT APOL) and overseas institutions thanks to his reputation as respected lawyer.
He survived Marylou, and three children (Harumi Supit from his first wife, and two kids of 8 and 7 years old). He paid higher salary for pilots, co-pilots, air crews and land staffs than any airline in the country.

The Future Microchips Will Be Smaller, Faster and Will Lose Much Less Energy

One of the most important findings in transistors in the last four decades enhances the much desired development of smaller and more powerful microchips.

Intel Corp. and IBM made the technological breakthrough by using an exotic new material: tiny switches that are the building blocks of microchips. "At the transistor level, we haven't changed the basic materials since the 1960s. So it's a real big breakthrough," said Dan Hutcheson, head of VLSI Research, an industry consultant. "Moore's Law was coming to a grinding halt," an allusion to the industry maxim formulated by Intel co-founder Gordon Moore, who said that the number of transistors on a chip doubles roughly every two years. As a result of this principle, the chips have been smaller and faster, in an industry of $250 billion in annual sales.

The new technology, based on the metal named hafnium, helps the development of circuitry as small as 45 nanometers (1:2000 of the width

of a human hair). "We do expect that those products will deliver higher performance levels than existing products," said Steve Smith, vice president of Intel's digital enterprise group operations. "What we're seeing is excellent double-digit performance gains on media applications."

The new technology could last at least two technology generations, when circuitry will get 22 nm dimensions. "We've been doing this for 40 years and we've got to the point where some of these layers you have to make smaller wouldn't scale anymore," said IBM Chief Technologist Bernie Meyerson. "We are getting down to a stage of technology where people have wondered if you could really ever go there, and we have definitely shown a roadmap down to these unbelievably tiny dimensions," said Meyerson.

The current technology has a 5 atoms thick layer of silicon-based material, thus a lot of electricity leaks out, causing wasted power and shorter battery life. "It's like running two faucets when you only need one. You're actually wasting more water than you're actually using," said Jim McGregor, an analyst at the technology market research firm In-Stat.

These are the benefits of the new technology: smaller transistors, potentially doubling their total number in a given area, and also faster ones, with a speed increase of over 20 %, and a decrease in power leakage by over 80 %. "Consumers are going towards mobility and power-sensitive solutions. We need to not only make things smaller and more efficient but also use less power," McGregor said.

But there are many obstacles in continuing the development of new chip generations: it is increasingly difficult to create light beams narrow enough to etch circuitry on chips. "But this takes out what has been considered the biggest number one roadblock," VLSI's Hutcheson said.

Who Killed the Webmaster?

Back in the frontier days of the web–when flaming skulls, scrolling marquees, and rainbow divider lines dominated the landscape–”Webmaster” was a vaunted, almost mythical, title. The Webmaster was a techno-shaman versed the black arts needed to make words and images appear on this new-fangled Information Superhighway. With the rise of the Webmaster coinciding with the explosive growth of the web, everyone predicted the birth of a new, well paying, and in-demand profession. Yet in 2007, this person has somehow vanished; even the term is scarcely mentioned. What happened? A decade later I’m left wondering “Who killed the Webmaster?”

Suspect #1: The march of technology

By 2000, I think every person in the developed world had a brother-in-law who created websites on the side. Armed with Frontpage and a pirated copy of Photoshop, he’d charge a reasonable fee per page (though posting more than three images cost extra.)

Eventually the web hit equilibrium and just having a website didn’t make a company hip and cutting-edge. Now management demanded that their website look better than the site immediately ranked above in search results. And as expensive as the sites were, ought they not “do something” too? Companies increasingly wanted an exceptional website requiring a sophisticated combination of talent to pull off. HTML and FTP skills, as useful as they had been, were no longer a sharp enough tool in the Webmaster’s toolbox. Technologies such as CSS and multi-tier web application development rapidly made WYSIWYG editors useless for all but ordinary websites. And with the explosion of competition and possibilities on the Internet few businesses were willing to pay for “ordinary”.

In 1995, the “professional web design firm” was single, talented person working from home. Today it’s a diverse team of back-end developers, front-end developers, graphic artists, UI designers, database and systems administrators, search engine marketing experts, analytics specialists, copywriters, editors, and project managers. The industry has simply grown so specialized, so quickly, for one person to hardly be a master of anything more than a single strand in the web.

Suspect #2: Is it the economy, stupid?

Then again, perhaps the disappearance of the Webmaster can better be explained by an underwhelming economy rather than overwhelming technology. Riding high on the bull market of the late 90’s, companies were increasingly willing to assume more risk to reach potential customers. This was especially true of small businesses, which traditionally have miniscule advertising and marketing budgets. Everyone wanted a piece of the Internet pie and each turned to the Webmaster to deliver. More than just a few Webmasters made a respectable living by cranking out a couple $500 websites every week.

Once the bubble burst in early 2000, the dot-com hangover left many small businesses clutching their heads and checking their wallets. As companies braced to solely maintain what they already had, the first cut inevitably was to marketing and advertising. In-house Webmasters were summarily let go, their duties hastily transferred to an already overworked office manager. Freelance Webmasters were hit even harder as business owners struggled to first take care of their own. The gold rush had crumbled to fools’ gold even faster than it had started.

While a few Webmaster were able to weather the storm—mostly those with either extraordinary skills or a gainfully employed spouse—the majority were forced to abandon their budding profession and return to the world of the mundane.

Suspect #3: The rise of Web 2.0

Another strong possibility is that the Internet has simply evolved beyond the Webmaster. “Web 2.0″ is the naked emperor of technological neologisms; we all nod our head at the term but then stammer when pressed for a definition. As far as I can tell, Web 2.0 is mostly about rounded corners, low-contrast pastel colors, and domain names with missing vowels. But it also seems to be about an emphasis on social collaboration. This may seem like a no-brainer given the connectedness of the Internet itself; however, thinking back to Web 1.0 there was a distinct lack of this philosophy. Web 1.0 was more an arms race to build “mindshare” and “eyeballs” in order to make it to the top of the hill with the most venture capital. Even the Web 1.0 term of “portal” conjures up an image of Lewis Carroll’s Alice tumbling down a hole and into an experience wholly managed by the resident experts–the Webmasters. Despite the power and promises to be so much more, the web wasn’t much different than network television or print. Even the most interesting and successful business models of the Web 1.0 era could have been accomplished years prior with an automated telephone system.

It wasn’t until after the failure of the initial experiment did people begin to rethink the entire concept of the Internet. Was the Webmaster as gatekeeper really necessary? If we all have a story to share, why can’t everyone contribute to the collective experience? Perhaps it was the overabundance Herman Miller chairs, but Web 1.0 was inarguably about style over substance. Yet, as anyone who’s ever visited MySpace can attest, today content is king. With all of us simultaneously contributing and consuming on blogs, MySpace, YouTube, Flickr, Digg, and SecondLife, who needs a Webmaster anymore?

Sing and Search the Internet

The search engines are more and more powerful, allowing you to search for all kinds of information including jobs, blog posts, videos, news and even products to buy. At this time, Google is the most known search engine on the internet, being continuously challenged by Yahoo, Ask or Live Search. From time to time, other companies are trying to design innovative services meant to compete with the ones provided by the giant firms.

Midomi is one of the interesting services that were designed to represent a new search technology on the internet that is currently unavailable on the most

known search engines.

“midomi is the ultimate music search tool because it is powered by your voice. Sing, hum, or whistle to instantly find your favorite music and connect with a community that shares your musical interests. Give it a try. It's truly amazing! Our mission is to build the most comprehensive database of searchable music. You can contribute to the database by singing in midomi's online recording studio in any language or genre. The next time anyone searches for a song, your performance might be the top result,” it is mentioned in the description of the search technology.

The idea presented by the midomi is simple: all you need to do is go to the official website of the service, press on the Start Voice Search button and then sing your song. The solution will record your voice and then look for a song that matches your query and return certain results. Midomi is not only a search technology, but it also represents a large community of users that are continuously posting new recordings for songs from all around the world, offering you the possibility to search using predefined or prerecorded sounds.

If you want to test this exciting search engine, you should follow this link and try to avoid blaming your singing talent if the service doesn’t return any relevant result.

Inside the Lucasfilm datacenter

"Where can you find a (rhetorical) 11.38 petabits per second bandwidth? It appears to be inside the Lucasfilm Datacenter. At least, that is the headline figure mentioned in this report on a tour of the datacenter. The story is a bit light on the down-and-dirty details, but mentions a 10 gig ethernet backbone (adding up the bandwidth of a load of network connections seems to be how they derived the 11.38 petabits p/s figure. In that case, I have a 45 gig network at home.) Power utilization is a key differentiator when buying hardware, a "legacy" cycle of a couple of months, and 300TB of storage in a 10.000 square foot datacenter. To me, the story comes across as somewhat hyped up — "look at us, we have a large datacenter" kind of thing, "look how cool we are". Over the last couple of years, I have been in many datacenters, for banks, pharma and large enterprise to name a few, that have somewhat larger and more complex setups."