Displaying items by tag: Tony Austin

COMMENT My faith in the AMD processor range has been reinforced by the impressive new Ryzen series.

IBM scientists have come up with a prototype optical chipset, dubbed 'Holey Optochip', that is the first parallel optical transceiver able to transfer one trillion bits per second - one terabit - equivalent to downloading 500 high definition movies per second.

The Association for Computing Machinery has named Leslie G. Valiant of Harvard University as winner of its 2010 ACM A.M. Turing Award for his fundamental contributions to the development of computational learning theory and to the broader theory of computer science.

Eternal vigilance and remorseless focus on testing are required for any software development, and unfortunately the Mozilla team let a significant Java applet problem slip into Firefox Browser 3.6.14, but have already released a fix in version 3.6.15.

Dr. Vint Cerf - often called the 'Father of the Internet' (along with Dr. Bob Kahn, and others), now chief Internet evangelist at Google - gave a fascinating recent lecture at Stanford University about the Internet's development, its successes, surprises along the way,  areas where it hasn't succeeded, and ways that it should be improved.

IBM has announced that the U.S. Department of Energy's (DOE) Argonne National Laboratory will use IBM's next-generation Blue Gene supercomputer to enable significant advances in areas such as designing ultra-efficient electric car batteries, understanding global climate change and exploring the evolution of the universe.

IBM has announced that the Australian Synchrotron and Monash University, in collaboration with CSIRO and the Victorian Partnership for Advanced Computing (VPAC), have selected IBM's iDataPlex dx360 M3 integrated server solutions to support the creation of a Multi-modal Australian Sciences Imaging and Visualisation Environment (MASSIVE) facility.

Engineers at the University of California, Berkeley, have found a way to grow nanolasers directly onto a silicon surface, which could lead to a new class of faster, more efficient microprocessors, as well as to powerful biochemical sensors that use optoelectronic chips.

Some things are more relative than others, they say, and some are more incomprehensible too. Every now and then It pays to review our position in the scale of things, helping us to renew our wonderment about the cosmos and understand better the relative import of daily dramas and events.

If you're disappointed or angry about treatment by a guru, then take a look at the new report from Unguru.me and you'll see that you're far from alone. And what the report says about gurus largely applies for many others, such as IT consultants, stockbrokers, real estate agents, and mobile phone salespeople.

A new IBM U.S. survey of consumer attitudes and a recent study of auto industry executives show that the latter will first have to address stringent consumer requirements about EV performance, recharging, and convenience before achieving high adoption this decade.

An extremely versatile notebook PC with all sorts of extra functionality seems to have escaped the notice of IT industry watchers. I hope that it soon sees the light of day, 'cos I want one!

An extremely versatile notebook PC with all sorts of extra functionality seems to have escaped the notice of IT industry watchers. I hope that it soon sees the light of day, 'cos I want one!

My mind must be playing tricks on me. That file seemed to download faster than I expected. Did it really?

Computer hardware continues to get smaller, faster and cheaper. opening up new usage scenarios as it does so. Near year's end 2010 Hitachi unveiled their  second generation of 7mm thick single-platter 2.5-inch hard drive range, while for comparison Intel announced their SSD 310 series of solid-state drives that are only 5mm thick.

Poor old Microsoft, damned of they do and damned if they don't. With US or EU competition regulators ever ready to pounce on them if they add a new feature that somebody claims is anti-competitive. The Sticky Notes feature in Windows 7 offers only minimal functionality, and there's a far better freeware alternative.

There's a lot of inadequate software around, always has been and always will be. It's vital to budget resources for adequate software testing, not only to check that the required functionality is there but also to ensure that the applications are secure.

Microsoft giveth and Microsoft taketh away. After handing out the pre-Christmas 2010 gift of Microsoft Security Essentials 2.0 they're doing the exactly opposite with Windows SteadyState which will not be available for download after 31 December this year. This puts Windows XP and Windows Vista users of this handy management tool for shared computers into a bind '” but it doesn't affect Windows 7 users because they can't use it anyway!

Microsoft Security Essentials (MSE) version 2.0 was released without fanfare on 16 December, making an already very well-regarded security suite into quite a formidable opponent for the other free security suites and especially for the paid ones.

Microsoft Security Essentials (MSE) version 2.0 was released without fanfare on 16 December, making an already very well-regarded security suite into quite a formidable opponent for the other free security suites and especially for the paid ones.