ThunderNews Blog
Intel’s New Processor, Ivy Bridge, Offer Greater Speed, Efficiency
May 15th, 2012
Intel’s new Ivy Bridge line of processors is the first to include features at 22 nanometers. Other chips offer feature as small as 32 nanometers, and Intel’s new processors allow transistors on the chips to be more densely arranged. The new chips, while smaller, provide greater speed and efficiency than previous chips, marking a new advance in the technology.
With more space for transistors, Moore’s Law, which dictates that the number of transistors used on a chip doubles every two years, will continue. The new chips feature 1.4 billion densely packed transistors on the 160 square millimeter die. To accommodate the added transistors, a redesign of the transistor was necessary.
The new design was described in an article on MIT’s Technology Review. One more dimension was added to the transistor. While in the past the transistor was made of several flat layers. In Intel’s new design, channel layer of the transistor sticks into the gate layer above it. The new design was dubbed the ‘tri-gate’ design by the company.
This allowed the company to create the chip with more transistors to continue Moore’s Law, and new developments at Intel promise to keep the law going into the future. According to the article, which quotes Intel’s Mark Bohr, the company is exploring manufacture of another version of the three-dimensional transistor using features of only 14 nanometers. The new technology is expected to go to production in 2014.
As new technology emerges promising faster, more efficient chips, users in Usenet newsgroups will continue to break it down and review it. The forum has been a hotbed for technology discussion since its inception before the World Wide Web, and continues to serve as a meeting place for technology enthusiasts and professionals around the globe.
Disney Researching Screen-Less Touch Technology
May 9th, 2012
Science fiction movies are becoming closer to reality; or rather reality is catching up with science fiction.
Disney Research is developing a new technology called Touché that uses your body and other objects as
in place of a touch screen.
The technology is still in the development phase, but a video demonstrates its ability to sense different
degrees of touch and different body movements to allow the user to interact with various devices and
objects.
For instance, an MP3 player could conceivably come with no buttons or controls. Instead, the user may
wear a device around the wrist or other part of their body and move their hands in a certain manner to
control the MP3 player. Put your finger up to your mouth in a shushing motion to mute it, or tap your
finger on your palm to move to the next song.
But the technology is not limited to such devices. The video demonstrates how the touch technology
could be used to display different message on one’s office door based on how they touch or grip the
doorknob. Lightly close the door with one finger on the doorknob, and a message saying ‘Back in 5′
displays. Grip the doorknob when closing it, and a message saying ‘Gone for the Day’ is displayed. Lightly
tap the doorknob from inside the office, and a ‘Do Not Disturb’ message displays.
The video displayed other potential uses including an interactive couch that turns on the TV when sitting
down, dims the lights when lying back, and eventually shuts off the lights and TV if the user falls asleep.
Food training is also demonstrated to teach children the correct utensil for eating cereal (i.e. a spoon vs.
their hands).
The technology is sure to create significant buzz in technology circles and among enthusiasts.
Technology newsgroups on Usenet will surely see a discussion of the new touch capability spark given
the history of the Usenet as prime grounds for discussing and announcing new technologies.
Newsgroups Report That More Than 20K HTTPS Sites Insecure
April 27th, 2012
According to a newsgroup posting, Ninety percent of the Internet’s top 200,000 HTTPS-enabled websites are vulnerable to known types of SSL (Secure Sockets Layer) attack, according to a report released Thursday by the Trustworthy Internet Movement (TIM), a nonprofit organization dedicated to solving Internet security, privacy and reliability problems.
The survey is the first in what will be an on-going project for the recently formed Trustworthy Internet Movement (TIM). The group are expected to eventually “name and shame” websites that do nothing to address the issue, forcing sites to ensure that their security is tight and up-to-date.
The grim figure was generated by SSL Pulse, a website that monitors the effectiveness of the 200,000 most popular websites that use SSL, also known as Transport Layer Security, to protect e-mail and other sensitive data from being snooped on while in transit. The product of a group of SSL experts from Google, Twitter, PayPal,
Although the Internet Engineering Task Force signed off on a fix in early 2010 and major SSL packages have been updated to include it, only 72 percent of the sites examined by SSL Pulse were found to be safe from renegotiation exploits. Of the remainder, 13 percent were classified as “insecure renegotiation,” one percent was classified as offering both secure and insecure renegotiation, and 14 percent offered no renegotiation at all.
This means that a paltry 9.59% of all websites are genuinely secure, a statistic that TIM consider worrying as the “problem needs to be addressed in configuration and that requires awareness, time and knowledge.
On an Internet where packets often pass over open networks that can be passively monitored, SSL is frequently the only protection preventing passwords and other sensitive data from being intercepted by online criminals and state-sponsored spies. Last year, Google warned Gmail users in Iran to change their passwords after someone used fraudulently issued SSL certificates to impersonate the popular e-mail service. The attack, which stemmed from the breach of the now-defunct DigiNotar certificate authority in the Netherlands, was used to snoop on 300,000 Gmail users, mostly in Iran.
Inaugural Internet Hall Of Fame Inductees Announced
April 23rd, 2012
The names of the inaugural Internet Hall of Fame inductees were announced today at the Internet Society’s Global INET 2012 conference in Geneva, Switzerland. Internet pioneers and luminaries from around the world gathered at the conference to mark the Internet Society’s 20th anniversary, and attend an Awards Gala to honor the following 2012 inductees:
Pioneers Circle
Recognizing individuals who were instrumental in the early design and development of the Internet: Paul Baran, Vint Cerf, Danny Cohen, Steve Crocker, Donald Davies, Elizabeth Feinler, Charles Herzfeld, Robert Kahn, Peter Kirstein, Leonard Kleinrock, John Klensin, Jon Postel, Louis Pouzin, and Lawrence Roberts.
Innovators
Recognizing individuals who made outstanding technological, commercial, or policy advances and helped to expand the Internet’s reach: Mitchell Baker, Tim Berners-Lee, Robert Cailliau, Van Jacobson, Lawrence Landweber, Paul Mockapetris, Craig Newmark, Raymond Tomlinson, Linus Torvalds, and Philip Zimmermann.
Global Connectors
Recognizing individuals from around the world who have made significant contributions to the global growth and use of the Internet: Randy Bush, Kilnam Chon, Al Gore, Nancy Hafkin, Geoff Huston, Brewster Kahle, Daniel Karrenberg, Toru Takahashi, and Tan Tin Wee.
Commenting on the 2012 Internet Hall of Fame inductees, Internet Society President and CEO Lynn St.Amour stated, “This historic assembly of Internet visionaries, innovators, and leaders represents an extraordinary breadth of vision and work. While the inductees have extremely diverse backgrounds and represent many different countries, each individual has an incredible passion for their work. We all benefit from their outstanding contributions to a global Internet, making it one of the greatest catalysts of economic and societal development of all time.”
Raul Echeberria, Chairman of the Internet Society’s Board of Trustees, noted, “The Internet, which connects more than two billion people around the world today, is the result of many important contributions from creative and visionary individuals over the past several decades. The 2012 Internet Hall of Fame celebrates the advancements of 33 talented people who have made significant contributions to the design, development, and expansion of the Internet.”
In conjunction with the announcement, the Internet Society has launched a website at www.internethalloffame.org that will showcase the inductees and their contributions on an ongoing basis. The website, which includes inductee photographs and biographies, will feature an exclusive interview series authored by Wired. Highlighting multiple inductees each month in Q&A interviews, the first interview will feature Internet Hall of Fame Pioneer Vint Cerf.
About the Internet Hall of Fame
The Internet Hall of Fame is an annual awards program that has been established by the Internet Society to publicly recognize a distinguished and select group of leaders and luminaries who have made significant contributions to the development and advancement of the global Internet. More information on the program can be found at www.internethalloffame.org .
About the Internet Society
The Internet Society is the trusted independent source for Internet information and thought leadership from around the world. With its principled vision and substantial technological foundation, the Internet Society promotes open dialogue on Internet policy, technology, and future development among users, companies, governments, and other organizations. Working with its members and Chapters around the world, the Internet Society enables the continued evolution and growth of the Internet for everyone. For more information, see: http://www.internetsociety.org
USENET Discuss Ancient Texts Going Online
April 16th, 2012
More world literature just got its door kicked open digitally. For the first time scholars will be able to compare material kept in the separate collections for centuries, according to USENET newsgroups.
The Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana and the Bodleian Libraries of the University of Oxford have announced a 4-year project to convert some of their important holdings into digital form for all to see — even if readers can’t understand the Medieval Latin, ancient Greek or Hebrew the documents are written in.
The documents include Greek manuscripts, 15th century printed books and Hebrew texts and early printed books, and feature two famous tomes: De Europa, by Pope Pius II Piccolomini, and Johannes Gutenberg’s 42-Line Bible, considered to be the first book produced by a printing press.
The process of working through the catalogs at two different libraries, handling ancient texts and manuscripts, scanning them, and organizing them online isn’t an easy proposition; the project is made possible by a £2 million (about $3.17 million) donation from the Polonsky Foundation, and is expected to take four years. Even for all of that time and money, nowhere near all of the libraries’ collections will be include
With approximately two-thirds of the material coming from the Vatican and the remainder from Oxford University’s Bodleian libraries, the digitisation effort will also benefit scholars by uniting materials that have been dispersed between the collections for centuries.
Other texts to be digitised include early printed books, known as incunabula, from Rome and the surrounding area; Greek manuscripts including early church texts and works by Homer, Sophocles, Plato, Hippocrates; and Hebrew manuscripts from the Middle Ages and the Renaissance.
The digitization effort is especially significant because it has been nearly impossible to access these ancient texts even if you were to travel to Oxford or the Vatican — the originals cannot be handled for fear of damaging the one-of-a-kind documents.
Tablets May Bring USENET To More Of The Masses
April 3rd, 2012
USENET may be coming to more than a million children across 42 countries.
One Laptop Per Child (OLPC) is going to debut a $100 tablet at CES, which is a follow-up product to their low-cost laptop according to technology USENET newsgroups. Their laptop has been distributed to about 2 million children across the globe. OLPC’s goal is to provide one laptop or tablet to children that have little or no access to education due to a lack of resources.
The newsgroup posted a message stating “We’re proud to introduce the XO 3.0 tablet, showcasing the design, durability and performance features that make it a natural successor for our current laptops, which have been distributed to more than 2.4 million children in 42 countries and in 25 languages,” from One Laptop Per Child CTO Edward McNierney.
The tablet will feature an 8-inch screen and the price will be at under $100. The XO 3.0 tablet will have a 1GHz Marvell Armada PXA618 system-on-a-chip. Other features include a Pixel Qi sunlight-readable display, 8-10 hours of battery life, circuitry that allows the device to be charged by solar panels, and Android or Linux operating system.
Virgin Media Begins To Throttle USENET Newsgroups
April 3rd, 2012
Virgin Media has introduced new throttling “trigger levels” for customers who make heavy use of its network.
The updated policy was brought into place yesterday and will throttle both download and upload speeds if users go beyond a usage allowance. If the cap is broken then a speed reduction will take place for five hours.
As part of an upgrade that saw some speeds doubled for some users, the company said it needed to impose restrictions on its 50Mbits/sec and 100Mbits/sec services.
The internet service provider said that its move to “moderate” the speeds of heavy users is designed to give all of its customers the best broadband service and not “just a few”. The firm justified its policy by saying that, when someone is downloading or uploading a particularly large amount of information over a long period of time, it will slow down the broadband speeds for other users in their area who might just be checking their email or browsing the web.
It added that at peak times it will also slow down the speed of filesharing traffic, including services like Limewire, Gnutella, Bittorrent and Usenet Newsgroup traffic. Customers will, of course, still be able to use these services, but downloads and uploads “will take longer during these peak periods”, it said.
According to Virgin, the policy is necessary to prevent networks being overloaded and would affect fewer than 5% of customers, but that hasn’t stopped complaints from customers.
Meanwhile, complaints about over-utilisation have begun to pile up on Virgin Media’s customer forums as well as those on ISP related newsgroups.
ExaFLOP Computers May Make USENET Even Faster, Richer
March 29th, 2012
A new era in computing that will see machines perform at least 1,000 times faster than today’s most powerful supercomputers is almost upon us.
By the end of the decade, exaFLOP computers are predicted to go online heralding a new chapter in scientific discovery.
The United States, China, Japan, the European Union and Russia are all investing millions of dollars in supercomputer research. In February, the EU announced it was doubling investment in research to ?1.2 billion ($1.6 billion). What is an exaFLOP? Computer scientists measure a supercomputer’s performance in FLOPS, an acronym for FLoating Operations per Second, while “exa” is a metric prefix which stands for quintillion (or a billion billion). An exascale computer could perform approximately as many operations per second as 50 million laptops.
The first computer to break through the petaFLOP barrier was IBM’s Roadrunner in 2008. But its reign as the fastest computer in the world didn’t last long, with the Cray Jaguar installed at Oak Ridge National Laboratory in the United States becoming the quickest with a performance of 1.75 petaFLOPS in 2009.
Today, the crown is held by is Japan’s K Computer developed by Fujitsu, according to TOP500 — a project that tracks trends in high-performance computing.
The machine, installed at the RIKEN Advanced Institute for Computational Science, in Kobe, Japan, currently operates at over 10 petaFLOPS. It is more than three times faster than its nearest rival, China’s NUDT YH MPP computer (2.57 petaflops). How big are they? The kind of space that you need is similar to that of a football field. You’re talking about many, many lanes of computer racks and thousands of processors.
One Minute In The Online World
March 26th, 2012
Few things in technology have been as transformative as the Internet. It has reshaped business and in some cases, made industries redundant. Don’t believe it? Think about what’s happened to neighborhood video rental stores now that we have Netflix and Amazon.
These Internet-based companies deliver streaming content immediately to devices or send DVDs by mail for purchase or rental, to be returned at the viewer’s leisure. The immediacy that these services provide has successfully made the idea of getting into a car and driving to a brick and mortar store to pick up a piece of plastic that you then have to drive back to at a later date to return your rented items seem…well, kind of inconvenient.
Streaming video aside, the Internet has grown massive in the past two decades, now boasting about 2 billion users according to recent estimates. But to get a better understanding of just how big the Internet has become, Intel put together an infographic detailing the amount of data transferred in a minute on the web.
Here are a few highlights from the infographic. In one minute on the Internet:
- 639,800 gigabytes of global IP data is transferred
- 135 botnet infections take hold
- 1,300 new mobile users are added
- 204 million e-mails are sent
- 2-plus million searches on Google are conducted
- 30 hours of video are uploaded on YouTube
- 227,000 users log in to Facebook
Although no concrete data is given to how many users post to and access newsgroups, numbers are thought to also be in the millions.
USENET Reports An End To The Encyclopedia Britannica
March 14th, 2012
Encyclopedia Britannica will switch to an all-digital format, bringing its 244-year printing history to a close, as reported on USENET newsgroups.
It’s time to concentrate on expanding coverage for digital consumers rather than continuing to print the heavy, relatively expensive volumes, said the Chicago-based company that makes the reference books.
Founded in Edinburgh in 1768, the Encyclopaedia Britannica has since published some 3.7 trillion words en route to becoming the gold standard of reference works anywhere English is spoken. Sales peaked at 120,000 sets in 1990, but the onset of the internet – and a little thing called Wikipedia – led to a protracted decline in sales, which bottomed out at 8,000 copies of the 2010 edition, the last to be printed. Part of the problem was the cost – at $1,400 a series, cheaper alternatives stole some of the encyclopedia’s market. As such, for $70, anyone can purchase access to the encyclopedia’s full online edition.
The final print edition is the 2010 volume. The 32-volume set weighs 129 pounds and goes for $1,395.
Encyclopedia Britannica has been dealing with a decline in revenue from its published volumes and now relies mostly on its educational line of products. It also earns on its website subscribers, which pay each $70 per year for total access to its database and mobile apps.
With so much content available for free online, mainly from its encyclopedic rival Wikipedia, Encyclopedia Britannica has to persuade its customers that its information is error-free and more trustworthy.
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