NEW NET Issues List for 21 Oct 2008

Below is the final list of issues for the TUESDAY, 21 October 2008, NEW NET (Northeast Wisconsin Network for Economy and Technology) 7:00 - 9:00 pm weekly gathering. This week we're upstairs at Tom's Drive In, 501 N Westhill Blvd, Appleton, Wisconsin, USA

The ‘net

1. Team Cowboy: free sports team calendar and management tool http://www.teamcowboy.com “…FREE tool that allows players of organized sports teams to communicate and collaborate easier than ever before. Whether your team is organized around a community or school…Team Cowboy will make your life easier…As a manager of a team, you can keep track of members on your team's roster, setup your team's game schedule, record game scores, track payments, and much more. As a player of a team, you can keep your other teammates informed with whether or not you'll be attending games, view your team's game schedule, and easily communicate with other players. Team Cowboy even automatically sends e-mail announcements and reminders of upcoming events so you can say goodbye to paper schedules forever…”
2. Poptub: best-of-YouTube TV show http://newteevee.com/2008/10/15/googles-big-new-content-push-poptub/ “…new video series Poptub, a sort of Entertainment Tonight for YouTube. Google’s direct involvement with the creation of the show…was revealed in a story in the Hollywood Reporter today. Poptub is actually a recreation of Yahoo’s cancelled The 9, with the same perky host, Maria Sansone, the same sponsor, Pepsi, and the same production company…comes out about three times a day, with short interview segments, hosted video roundups, most-viewed countdowns, and straight-up video compilations…”
3. Twitter, Flickr, Facebook Make Blogs Look So 2004 http://www.wired.com/entertainment/theweb/magazine/16-11/st_essay “…Thinking about launching your own blog? Here's some friendly advice: Don't. And if you've already got one, pull the plug…The time it takes to craft sharp, witty blog prose is better spent expressing yourself on Flickr, Facebook, or Twitter…Scroll down Technorati's list of the top 100 blogs and you'll find personal sites have been shoved aside by professional ones. Most are essentially online magazines: The Huffington Post. Engadget. TreeHugger. A stand-alone commentator can't keep up with a team of pro writers cranking out up to 30 posts a day.…”

Security, Privacy & Digital Controls

4. Employer: I do not approve of this text message http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/technology/2008/10/now-your-employ.html “…Most people know it's probably not a good idea to use your corporate e-mail account to write about how you skipped out on work and had too many beers at the Dodgers game. But you may want to think twice about doing the same via text message on your work-issued phone. New guidelines for financial firms that were issued in December…mean that companies are responsible for any secure information employees send over their mobile phones, in addition to e-mail. Hospitals and other organizations that work with personal information are also cracking down on employees who send messages over phones…Onset Technology has come up with Big Brother software that enables employers to monitor employees' texts, as well as control who they're writing texts to and what they're writing…”
5. Passports will be needed to buy mobile phones http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/politics/article4969312.ece “…Everyone who buys a mobile telephone will be forced to register their identity on a national database under government plans to extend massively the powers of state surveillance. Phone buyers would have to present a passport or other official form of identification at the point of purchase…A compulsory national register for the owners of all 72m mobile phones in Britain would be part of a much bigger database to combat terrorism and crime…”
6. Smile! you're on Internet cafe camera http://tinyurl.com/5ount6 (Ars technica) “…by the beginning of 2009, Internet cafes in Beijing, China will take a photo of every person who passes through the doors, then enter the picture and the person's identifying information into a city-wide government database. The measures are part of China's overall plan to monitor use of Internet cafes to ensure inappropriate material isn't reaching children and, of course, to make Internet use a little less anonymous…”

Mobile Computing & Communicating

7. G1, a hands-on look at the first Android phone http://lifehacker.com/5064117/a-hands+on-first-look-at-google-android “…I've spent the last four days using an HTC G1 phone running the first release of Android, and while it is not an iPhone-killer, it is a killer device for heavy Google users…Android's huge advantage is its tight integration with the Google services you use most—Gmail, GCal, Google Talk, Maps, and YouTube right now, though it's still missing Google Reader, Docs, Bookmarks, and very many other GOOG apps that could come in quite handy on your phone. One can only assume as the software matures those will show up eventually. Assuming you're already an established Google user, you pop in your Google Account username and password (Google Apps domain accounts work to), and as Steve Jobs would say, BOOM!—you've got your email, contacts list, calendar events, the whole shebang on your phone, over the air, synced with the cloud, no contact with your computer necessary. This wasn't even close to the experience I had with my iPhone, which has required several email account setups and re-setups, and not a small amount of tinkering with my address book and syncing to my computer to get everything as it should be. In the course of four days, I still haven't connected the G1 to my computer—everything I need is in the cloud at Google and on the phone, period. This is why heavy Google apps users will want Android…Never have I had a better experience reading email—specifically Gmail—on a mobile device as I have with Android…” http://www.jkontherun.com/2008/10/t-mobile-g1-han.html “…the true story is the Android platform and more importantly, what will developers bring to the table…as good as the base functionality is in the phone, it's the third party applications that will truly set the device apart…Bluetooth pairing and usage works well, both on the voice calls I tested and also a Skype call over iSkoot. Pressing the Menu button lets you switch audio sources, merge calls, add a caller, and put someone on hold. I was very impressed with the speakerphone volume; it's extremely loud and clear…everything is tied to Google services and the Android platform integration is outstanding…” http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/technology/2008/10/google-phone-re.html “…the iPhone is an iPod with other cool features that can make phone calls. The G1 is a search tool that plays music and makes phone calls…instant messaging services such as Yahoo Messenger and AIM can run in the background, as on the BlackBerry, without having to reconnect every time you leave the app to do something else like check e-mail or answer a call. And G1 lets users send multimedia messages via MMS. Any basic cellphone these days can do that, but not the iPhone…The ease of setting ringtones on the G1 is almost enough to make an iPhone owner throw up her hands and think about converting. Pick a song, any song on your phone, and make it your ringtone. Yeah, it should be that easy -- and it is on the G1…Here was something that drove me a little nuts. I want to look at the screen the way I want to look at the screen -- not the way the device insists I do. The G1 won't let you flip back and forth unless you open and close the keyboard…” http://gigaom.com/2008/10/15/google-phone-review-the-good-the-bad-ugly-about-tmobile-g1/ “…This isn’t an iPhone competitor. If you look at it, you can very quickly see that G-1 is a Honda to iPhone’s BMW. After a few days of usage I have become increasingly convinced that for people who like the Apple iPhone, will find Google-based G-1 aesthetically lacking…The device is very easy to use. It took me less than an hour to figure out how to use the phone, most of its features including touch-screen abilities, surfing and setting up the network, without as much as referring to the accompanying handbook even once. Most people who use Windows XP or Vista for their daily computing will find Google Android user interface remarkably familiar and find comfort using this device. In other words, it will sell a lot of units. And yes it is going to become a thorn in Windows Mobile’s side…This has to be the best Mobile IM client on the planet…”
8. Android's biggest impact may be smart-phone price cuts http://www.mercurynews.com/business/ci_10740847 “…the new T-Mobile G1…doesn't quite measure up to the iPhone. But after using the G1 and several smart-phones with other operating systems, I'm convinced that it will make an impact not so much because of how good it is but because it might help further slash prices and improve the functionality of other smart-phones…”
9. Motorola Readies Its Own Android Social Smartphone http://tinyurl.com/6qq4l2 “…engineers at Motorola (MOT) are hard at work on their own Android handset. Motorola's version will boast an iPhone-like touch screen, a slide-out qwerty keyboard, and a host of social-network-friendly features, BusinessWeek.com has learned. Motorola…is likely to introduce the handset in the U.S. sometime in the second quarter of 2009…a phone based on the highly anticipated Android operating system is part of Motorola's effort to revive a loss-making handset division that has forfeited market share amid a drought of bestselling phones…The phone will appear among a new class of social smartphones designed to make it easy for users to connect quickly and easily to mobile social networks such as Facebook and News Corp.'s (NWS) MySpace…The Android phone…is the brainchild of people who joined Motorola via its 2006 acquisition of Good Technology. Good specialized in enterprise wireless messaging, data access, and security software…”
10. Call it a 'sub-subnotebook http://blogs.computerworld.com/call_it_a_sub_subnotebook_new_pc_is_small_as_a_cell_phone “…The new iKIT is about the size of a PDA from ten years ago, but has a QWERTY keyboard and connects to the Internet at 3G speeds via your cell phone or Wi-Fi. The $175 Linux-based system has a Webcam built in, as well as a range of applications, including Web browsing, e-mail and IM…”

Open Source

11. Microsoft not distributing FLOSS Drupal http://weblog.infoworld.com/openresource/archives/2008/10/microsoft_is_no.html “…I was shocked when reading the following on Matt Asay's blog: “As I discovered from Dries Buytaert's blog yesterday, Microsoft's Web Application Installer comes with out-of-the-box support for Drupal, OScommerce, and other popular open-source web applications.” Matt suggests that Microsoft's Web Application Installer "arguably puts Microsoft on the legal hook for this open-source code." I found this clause in the license agreement for Microsoft's Web Application Installer: THIRD PARTY SOFTWARE…Microsoft is not distributing those applications to you, but instead, as a convenience, enables you to use this software to obtain those applications directly from the application providers. By using the software, you acknowledge and agree that you are obtaining the applications directly from the third party providers and under separate license terms, and that it is your responsibility to locate, understand and comply with those license terms….the license agreement seems to exclude Microsoft liability. So, in the eyes of Microsoft's lawyers, Microsoft is not distributing open source (at least not with Microsoft's Web Application Installer)…”
12. The five best things in Linux 2.6.27 http://blogs.computerworld.com/the_five_best_things_in_linux_2_6_27 “…Linux 2.6.27 was released on October 9th. It's a good, but not ground-breaking, kernel. Still, it has at least five significant improvements. The first of these, in my opinion, is a new way of handling device firmware…this translates into making it easier to use this kind of devices…Number two on my list is that Linux 2.6.27 took another big step in supporting Webcams…Next up, and in the long-run this will probably be the most important change, Linux now supports direct access to flash-memory based storage devices, such as USB drives and the increasingly popular SSDs (Solid State Drives)…A storage improvement that will matter sooner to users is that the new mainstream ext4 Linux file system now includes delayed allocation, aka allocate-on-flush…Ext4 can also handle extremely large drives…1024 petabytes per volume. Today's top supercomputers typically only access a few dozen petabytes at most...Number five on my list is more of a collection of changes rather than a particular improvement. With this version, Linux has added native and improved support to many network devices including ones from Atheros, Intel and Renesas. In addition, netfilter, the foundation software for Linux's firewall now has greatly improved IPv6 support…”
13. Samba co-founder touts "La Vida Linux" “…Samba developer Jeremy Allison issued an impassioned endorsement for Linux in an opinion piece written for ZDNet. In "Livin’ La Vida Linux," he describes the many Linux devices that have entered his life, and explains why Linux "is going to take over the appliance world."…He is now working on Samba full time as an employee of Google…Allison mentions a number of Linux devices that have crept into his life in recent years, including the Nokia 770 Internet Tablet and later N800, the Sonos multi-room music system (pictured at right), his unnamed Samba-based file server, Sony TVs released since 2003, the Neuros OSD DVR device, and a Garmin GPS device…his recent completion of a project to digitize his CD collection. Instead of using the lossy and Digital Restrictions Management (DRM)-restricted MP3, he instead chose the open-source FLAC (Free Lossless Audio Codec) format. FLAC is "a software patent-free, lossless way of encoding music" that is supported by "most devices," writes Allison. He adds, "It is free, so there's no danger of a company turning off a remote server and finding myself in the unpleasant situation of all the music I bought being orphaned and unplayable…”
14. Animating slide shows in OpenOffice.org http://www.linuxjournal.com/content/animating-slide-shows-openofficeorg-impress “…Animation is one of the less-known features in OpenOffice.org Impress. Its most obvious uses are for transitions for individual objects on a slide (rather than for the entire slide)…But it can also be used for more serious purposes, such as illustrating a procedure that is clearer if you can see it in motion -- for instance, one of the most effective animations I saw showed was on a Society for Creative Anachronism site that explained how the links in chain mail fitted together…”
15. Where Will Android Go Next? http://gigaom.com/2008/10/21/where-will-android-go-next/ “…Google today announced that the open-source version of its mobile OS is now available for anyone to download and use for their devices… Over the last few weeks I have learned that numerous companies are tinkering with Android in an attempt to get the OS to power a whole slew of gadgets — everything from set-top boxes to navigation systems to mobile Internet devices to smart picture frames. For instance, Motorola, a big player in the set-top box business, has designs on building an Android-based set-top box…It’s not just an operating system, but comes with middleware and key applications, making it a complete environment that can be modified for other users. It has a robust web browser (based on WebKit), the ability to handle 2D and 3D graphics, and is able to read all sorts of audio, video and image files…Google is taking Android very seriously, and is working on getting a groundswell built for it. For instance, it has started talking with leading universities – MIT, UC Berkeley, Stanford, Harvard and Carnegie Mellon – to develop teaching programs around the OS, ones in which students would be given lessons in Android UI, for example, or taught about the uses of Android as an embedded environment…”

SkyNet

16. iGoogle: Better Integration with Google Reader, Gmail, and Google Finance http://tinyurl.com/3ndazz (ReadWriteWeb) “…Google today updated its iGoogle homepage by improving its integration Google Reader, Gmail, and Google Finance. These gadgets can now make use of iGoogle's canvas feature, which allows a gadget to take up the whole screen. This is especially useful for the Google Reader and Gmail gadgets, which now bring almost all of the features of the actual services to iGoogle…The Gmail gadget now allows you to perform some of the most common email tasks, including actions like send or reply to messages without having to leave the iGoogle page…”
17. Extended Gmail outage hits Apps admins http://tinyurl.com/3zg745 (ComputerWorld) “… A prolonged, ongoing Gmail outage has some Google Apps administrators pulling their hair out as their end users, including high-ranking executives, complain loudly while they wait for service to be restored. At around 5 p.m. EST on Wednesday, Google Inc. announced in the official Google Apps discussion forum that the company was aware of a problem preventing Gmail users from logging into their accounts and that it expected a solution by 9 p.m. on Thursday…An administrator identified as Bill W. posted a desperate message on the forum Thursday morning, saying his company's CEO is steaming about being locked out of his e-mail account since around 4 p.m. on Wednesday. "Support keeps telling me it is affecting a small number of users…It is frustrating to not be able to expedite these issues. I have to speak with the boss again and he's po'd. This is considered a mission-critical issue here. We may have to make other arrangements. Apparently, Google mail is not very reliable. I think I would have pushed for something else before we switched if I had known the level of unreliability," he wrote. Another administrator identified as Techlinks wrote: "This outage has hit us pretty hard and we've been out of e-mail for 24 hours and now business is suffering…”
18. Google hurdles over profit estimate http://news.cnet.com/8301-1023_3-10068142-93.html “…Google easily cleared analysts' profit expectations for the third quarter of the year, patting itself on the back for the results but offering a cautious qualifier about current economic conditions…Revenue was $4.04 billion…net income increased from $1.07 billion in the year-earlier quarter and $1.25 billion in the second quarter to $1.35 billion in the third…Google's stock closed at $353.02 a share on Thursday, and Collins Stewart analyst Sandeep Aggarwal pointed out that a full third of Google's employees have nothing but valueless "underwater" stock options that have greatly diminished incentive value. After-hours trading sent the stock up 10 percent to $389…”
19. Google: Raise Your Data Center Temperature http://tinyurl.com/4mukva (DataCenterKnowledge) “…The latest company to focus attention on temperature in the data center is Google. “The guidance we give to data center operators is to raise the thermostat,” said Erik Teetzel, an Energy Program Manager at Google…We’d recommend looking at going to 80 degrees.” Most data centers operate in a temperature range between 68 and 72 degrees, and some are as cold as 55 degrees…Data center managers can save 4 percent in energy costs for every degree of upward change in the set point, according to Mark Monroe of Sun Microsystems… “There’s diminishing returns when you (raise the temperature) beyond a certain amount, because now your cooling systems are working harder to keep up with the increased fan speed on the server,” said Dean Nelson, Sun’s Senior Director of Global Lab and Data Center Design…“You’ve got to find that sweet spot…I think it’s probably around 80 to 85…”

General Technology

20. Hazy Computing http://www.linux-mag.com/id/7157 “…The interesting thing is that these types of algorithms produce results (in a sense “optimizations”) that people don’t really understand. In the past, I recall reading about an antenna designed using a GA. The result worked great, the design however was weird and in a sense ugly. The engineers did not have a full understanding of how it worked…Futurist Ray Kurzweil proposes..the human race might easily permit itself to drift into a position of such dependence on the machines that it would have no practical choice but to accept all of the machines’ decisions…At that stage the machines will be in effective control. People won’t be able to just turn the machines off, because they will be so dependent on them that turning them off would amount to suicide…I believe we already in this era…”
21. Mini E Electric Vehicle http://www.automobilemag.com/green/news/0810_2009_mini_e_electric_vehicle/index.html “…Each Mini E (there will be 500 in all) begins life on the same Oxford, England, assembly line as its Mini One, Cooper, and Clubman cousins…Mini E models roll off the line without any form of motive power whatsoever. For that, they're then shipped to Munich, Germany…In place of the I-4 lies a 150 kW (204 hp) direct-current electric motor, mounted transversely in the Mini's engine bay, and powering the front…The Mini's diminutive rear seats are then replaced with a giant wall of lithium-ion batteries. The three battery packs, rated at 35 kilowatt-hours, send a collective 380 volts to the DC motor in front. All three can be charged via 120 or 220-volt outlets, or with a specially-designed charger - aka the "WallBox" - which comes with each vehicle. Using the WallBox, a full-charge is accomplished in two-and-a-half hours, pulling as little as 28 kilowatt-hours …”
22. Acer gains on netbooks, HP keeps global PC lead http://tech.yahoo.com/news/nm/20081015/tc_nm/us_gartner_pc_sales “…Taiwan's Acer Inc surged past global champion Hewlett-Packard Co in European personal computer sales in the third quarter, in the clearest sign of the move toward cheap, small mini-notebook computers, research firm Gartner Inc said on Tuesday…Acer's market share gains in the quarter were driven by surging sales of its mini-notebooks, a segment in which HP and Dell do not have a strong presence, she said. Mini-notebooks, also known a netbooks, refer to PCs with screen sizes of five to 10 inches…HP shipped 14.8 million units in the quarter, for a market share of 18.4 percent, barely changed from a year ago. Dell was in second place with a share of 13.6 percent, down 0.5 percent from last year, while Acer's piece of the market jumped to 12.5 percent from 9.7 percent…”

Leisure & Entertainment

23. Amie Street gets more social, releases web player http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20081015-amie-street-gets-more-social-releases-web-player.html (Ars technica) “…Amie Street, the independent music store with a very unique business model, has redesigned its site with an emphasis on better music discovery and more social interaction…The most noticeable overall change with the new Amie Street site (in beta, naturally) is that it packs more information into a thinner space…Amie Street's new main page is now a mix of personalized recommendations based on your purchases, friend recommendations, albums that you mark as favorites, and editor picks…Everything that makes Amie Street interesting is still here: independent music with a catalog from indie publishers like Orchard and Red Eye nearing 1.5 million tracks, a business model where tracks debut for free and increase in price as popularity grows, and a recommendation system that rewards users with cash for participating in the community…”
24. Money in casual web game development http://gigaom.com/2008/10/18/wheres-the-money-in-casual-web-game-development/ “…For years, developing web-based casual games was little more than a hobby, a means of creative expression for game enthusiasts. Then advertising revenue started to reshape the casual gaming landscape — now, multimillion-dollar deals, flourishing startups like Mochi Media and Kongregate, and the attention of media giants Google, Yahoo and Microsoft are the name of the game…But just how much money can these new revenue streams bring to casual game developers’ pockets?…”
25. "Max Payne" shoots to top of box office http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20081019/en_nm/us_boxoffice “…Action-packed "Max Payne" shot its way to the top of the North American box office, grossing $18 million during the video game adaptation's first weekend in theaters, according to studio estimates on Sunday. The dark, atmospheric film, which stars Mark Wahlberg as a cop in search of the men who killed his wife and child, outshone Oliver Stone's much-talked-about "W.," which debuted at No. 4 with a take of $10.6 million…"Max Payne" follows in the footsteps of games turned into films including the "Tomb Raider" movies starring Angelina Jolie, which were commercial hits but critically clobbered by gamers…”

Economy and Technology

26. As Fuel Prices Fall, Will Push For Alternatives Lose Steam? http://tinyurl.com/5rg9az (WashingtonPost) “…One type of oil shock has given way to another. Even more swiftly than the price of oil rose, it has tumbled to the range that seemed far-fetched when Reinert spoke and oil was more than $130 a barrel. Now that drop threatens a wide variety of game-changing plans to find alternatives to oil or ways to drastically reduce U.S. consumption…Doing something about the amount of gasoline Americans use is essential to defusing future oil shocks…More than one out of every nine barrels of oil produced worldwide ends up in the gas tanks of cars in the United States. The amount of petroleum burned by U.S. motorists exceeds the entire crude oil output of Saudi Arabia, and that has propped up demand -- and prices…”
27. GreenFuel CEO Gives Glimpse Into $92M Farm http://news.cnet.com/8301-11128_3-10070678-54.html “…The Cambridge, Mass.-based company detailed a multi-year deal worth $92 million to build greenhouses that grow algae, which can be harvested for vegetable oil to make biodiesel or to make animal feed…Its greenhouse design--which the company will not discuss in detail--grows algae without tubes and uses an automated harvesting system, according to CEO Simon Upfill-Brown. The water in which the algae grows is recycled. GreenFuel and Aurantia now have a 100 square-meter prototype operating…It hopes that by 2011, it will have a full-scale operation, which will take up 100 hectares, or about 250 acres, Upfill-Brown said. A 100-hectare algae farm would consume about 50,000 metric tons of carbon dioxide per year--about 10 percent of its the cement factory's annual emissions--and grow about 25,000 tones of algae biomass…”

Civilian Aerospace

28. Elon Musk's vision: to change the course of humanity http://www.siliconvalley.com/thevalley/ci_10749864 “…Space Exploration Technologies, known as SpaceX, plans to launch a far more powerful booster by mid-2009. By designing the new Falcon 9 to be reusable, Musk hopes to make space travel far cheaper, and secure a permanent gig taxiing supplies to the International Space Station….By 2011, Musk hopes to have his own astronauts flying SpaceX's Dragon capsule into orbit, transforming the macho test-pilot astronaut into a geek-friendly corps selected for technical ability, rather than their facility with a joystick…If SpaceX can achieve its ambitions of slashing the cost to reach space by a factor of 10, "it would be recognized as one of the pivotal events in human history…”
29. Quasonix lands space flight contract http://tinyurl.com/6zqaj6 (MarketWatch) “…Quasonix, LLC, developer of high performance aeronautical telemetry systems, announced today that the company has been awarded a fixed price contract from Space Exploration Technologies Corporation ("SpaceX") of Hawthorne, California to provide telemetry transmitters and receivers in support of SpaceX's Falcon 9 launch vehicle and Dragon spacecraft programs. "We're pleased to play a role in SpaceX's drive to increase the reliability and reduce the cost of space transportation by a factor of ten…”
30. Northrop Grumman Lunar Lander Challenge http://space.xprize.org/lunar-lander-challenge “…The Northrop Grumman Lunar Lander Challenge will be held October 24-25 at the Las Cruces International Airport in Las Cruces, New Mexico. Two teams are expected to fly during the competition: Armadillo Aerospace and TrueZer0. Although the competition is not open to the public, the event will be webcast live at http://space.xprize.org/webcast. 9 teams have registered for the competition: 5 veteran teams from last year whom you already know, and 4 brand new teams…”
31. X Prize Cup '08 shrinks http://www.lcsun-news.com/ci_10741760 “…X Prize Cup, an event that in past years has drawn thousands to Las Cruces and Alamogordo, will be scaled down significantly with no public access to the one competitive event this year. Officials hope a full-blown Space Week will be back next year…"The Cup as it has traditionally been held is not (going to happen this year) because of funding levels it takes to run a massive public event," New Mexico Spaceport Authority Executive Director Steve Landeene said…The X Prize Cup, which seeks to foster innovation in space technology through competition, was held in Las Cruces in 2005 and 2006 before being moved to Alamogordo in 2007 when the cup lost title sponsor Wirefly…Instead of the full-blown event, the education days for area school children that have been part of the Cup will be held next Wednesday through Friday at the New Mexico Space Museum in Alamogordo…”

Supercomputing & GPUs

32. Multicore programming explained http://tinyurl.com/69muqo (ElectronicsWeekly) “…Professor David May FRS…is professor of Computer Science at Bristol University and the architect of the Inmos multi-core Transputer…Current attempts to use multi-cores in the mainstream computing world, like the efforts made by Intel and Microsoft with a bunch of US universities, may be doomed. “I think they (Intel and Microsoft) are trying to solve a different problem," said May, “they’re taking all the PC applications and putting them on multi-cores. That’s a very different problem and, in my view, they won’t be very successful. Taking sequential programmes and trying to make them run in parallel is virtually impossible…For the future, computers will have to change. “The emphasis on process structures will replace emphasis on data structures”, said May, “with von Neumann, the idea is that what you scale up is the memory. People are still hanging onto that model. The emphasis should now be on how data is moved around in the memory…A universal computer is an infinite array of finite processors, not a finite array of infinite processors,” said May…”
33. Nvidia Unveils Graphics Accelerator For Adobe Creative Suite http://tinyurl.com/5yzygc (InformationWeek) “…Nvidia on Thursday launched a graphics accelerator for Adobe Creative Suite 4, giving professionals the option of higher performance when adding graphics and visual effects to video…The Quadro CX GPU, which plugs into a PC's PCIe slot, is specifically designed to enhance the performance of Adobe's Creative Suite, which includes Photoshop, After Effects, and Premiere Pro…In releasing the new product, Nvidia is taking advantage of software Adobe has added to its suite, which profits from GPU technology, such as the parallel processing capability in Quadro CX…”
34. NVIDIA to Host Full-Day CUDA Tutorial at SC08 http://www.gpgpu.org/cgi-bin/blosxom.cgi/2008/10/16 “…The tutorial is designed to give attendees a thorough introduction to the CUDA programming model. NVIDIA engineers will partner with academic and industrial researchers to present CUDA and discuss its advanced use for science and engineering applications. The morning session will introduce CUDA programming and the CUDA execution and memory models, and explore the uses of CUDA with many brief examples from diverse HPC domains. The afternoon session will cover more advanced topics and include real-world case studies from domain scientists using CUDA for computational biology, computational fluid dynamics and seismic imaging…” More parallel GPU computing news items are on this webpage

*****