News

Microsoft has just done another PR blunder. Some 1400 people fired were payed too much severance and Microsoft is asking for it back. Something tells me that Microsoft will drop the notices soon after this makes the rounds on the internet.

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Talk about adding insult to injury. Apparently Microsoft has inadvertently overpaid severance to some of its recently laid off employees, and is now asking for some of the money back. It’s unclear how many of the 1,400 employees laid off last month were affected, but we’ve confirmed that it wasn’t a single isolated incident (we’ve contacted Microsoft for a response). We’re also hearing that some employees may have been underpaid as well.

They must be using Microsoft Money or Excel for payroll!

DDR3 has been out for a pretty long time already and even though a majority of enthusiasts currently run systems that utilize DDR3, the majority of systems are still running on DDR2. DDR2 is the mainstream technology and has a price point to match. The KHX8500D2T1K2/4G kit comes with brand new heat-spreaders and good performance for a 4GB DDR2 kit.Next Page »

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Vuzix Corporation is excited to announce the widespread retail availability of the iWear AV310 Widescreen. The AV310 projects a virtual 52' screen from 9-feet and will run for five full hours on a single AA battery. Additionally, the AV310 offers independent focus adjustment and an adjustable nose piece and earphones for unmatched long term comfort. Users can also expect improved compatibility, as the AV310 is compatible with all NTSC or PAL devices with a video output.

For specific product information, please visit http://www.vuzix.com/iwear/. ASE Labs will be reviewing Vuzix's products soon.

Phoenix may have spotted liquid water on Mars. It might be highly salty liquid water, but it is liquid. It isn't confirmed just yet.

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The controversial observation could be explained by the mission's previous discovery of perchlorate salts in the soil, since the salts can keep water liquid at sub-zero temperatures. Researchers say this antifreeze effect makes it possible for liquid water to be widespread just below the surface of Mars, but point out that even if it is there, it may be too salty to support life as we know it.

A few days after Phoenix landed on 25 May 2008, it sent back an image showing mysterious splotches of material attached to one of its legs. Strangely, the splotches grew in size over the next few weeks, and Phoenix scientists have been debating the origin of the objects ever since.

The elusive theoretical particle may be the prize of America's Fermilab instead of European's CERN. A good old-fashioned race is on to find the particle. Or not, if it doesn't exist.

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The particle, whose existence has been predicted by theoreticians, would help to explain why matter has mass. Finding the Higgs is a major goal of Cern's Large Hadron Collider (LHC). But the US Fermilab says the odds of its Tevatron accelerator detecting the famed particle first are now 50-50 at worst, and up to 96% at best. Both machines hope to see evidence of the Higgs by colliding sub-atomic matter at very high speeds. If it exists, the Higgs should emerge from the debris. The LHC has been out of action since last September when an accident damaged some of the magnets that make up its giant colliding ring. Project leader Lyn Evans conceded the enforced downtime might cost the European lab one of the biggest prizes in physics. Cern and Fermilab officials squared up at the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) annual meeting in Chicago.

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Now with more and more advanced relative technologies, the performance of video cards is getting stronger and stronger, there will be more heat generated by video cards, which significantly impairs the life expectancy of GPU and video memory chips on video cards. Video card companies have a lot of programs come and go to solve the problem of heat dissipation. The most commonly seen in general is the use of fans with cooling fins to do additional cooling. in the early days, the cooling job can be done simply with a fan or cooling fins, but in today's graphics cards with more intense heat than before, the cooling job must be done on the technologies not the same as before, not just rely on the fan and cooling fins. Video card companies must go to find some relatively new method to solve the problem of heat dissipation.

Link: http://www.sparkle.com.tw/News/SP_DLC/news_SP_DLC_en.html

The new version of Debian has been released. It uses KDE 3.5 if you are interested. The release contains numerous packages.

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This release includes numerous updated software packages, such as the K Desktop Environment 3.5.10 (KDE), an updated version of the GNOME desktop environment 2.22.2, the Xfce 4.4.2 desktop environment, LXDE 0.3.2.1, the GNUstep desktop 7.3, X.Org 7.3, OpenOffice.org 2.4.1, GIMP 2.4.7, Iceweasel 3.0.6 (an unbranded version of Mozilla Firefox), Icedove 2.0.0.19 (an unbranded version of Mozilla Thunderbird), PostgreSQL 8.3.6, MySQL 5.0.51a, GNU Compiler Collection 4.3.2, Linux kernel version 2.6.26, Apache 2.2.9, Samba 3.2.5, Python 2.5.2 and 2.4.6, Perl 5.10.0, PHP 5.2.6, Asterisk 1.4.21.2, Emacs 22, Inkscape 0.46, Nagios 3.06, Xen Hypervisor 3.2.1 (dom0 as well as domU support), OpenJDK 6b11, and more than 23,000 other ready-to-use software packages (built from over 12,000 source packages).

Ubuntu is a derivative of Debian. Though, if you want to use a really good server OS, Debian is really a winner.

The market for graphics cards centers around price to performance. While high-end cards capture the eye of the press, it is the job of the mainstream graphics card to capture the entire market. The 4600 series from ATI is targeted to the mainstream crowd and the Sapphire Radeon HD 4670 has just been refreshed with GDDR4 and a faster memory speed. The time to buy may be now.Next Page »

Apparently Intel isn't hurting too bad in this economy. They are seizing an opportunity by investing money while the economy is down. Smart move if you have liquid assets.

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For Intel, that means a $7 billion, two-year investment in existing factories in New Mexico, Arizona, and Oregon to manufacture silicon wafers with 32nm process technology. The investment is expected to support 7,000 high-wage jobs at those factories and support thousands of contract jobs for technicians and construction workers. The investment is Intel's largest ever in a single process technology. "As a global company, we have made a conscious decision to expand these factories here because we believe that investing in the future of American discovery isn't just the right thing to do," Otellini said, "it is an essential business decision if we want the United States to continue to be the engine of new ideas and technical leadership."

Intel isn't above the economic turn down. It has canceled its Taiwan event and is cutting down the one in China.

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The Intel Developer Forum in Taiwan typically takes place in October, while China IDF is in April. The IDF in the United States in September will not be affected, Intel said Monday. The Beijing IDF will be shortened to a one-day event. It is typically two days. Intel uses IDF to launch many of its products and technologies. For example, the new Core i7 chip was launched at the U.S. IDF last year. "It's the economy," said David Dickstein, an Intel spokesman. "The reaction we've gotten from exhibitors and sponsors when we told them about the scale-back in Beijing and cancellation of Taiwan, actually was overwhelmingly positive. They're saying it helps with their bottom line."

It's the economy? Really, we couldn't have guessed...

The legal battle between the Mac clone maker and Apple continues. Psystay has some legal means to continue the fight. Apple has deeper pockets, so they'll win based on passed performance of the American legal system.

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Psystar, in its amended complaint, accuses Apple of copyright misuse, as well as unfair competition violations based on its alleged copyright misuse. Judge Alsup, in citing a previous case--Practice Management Information Corp v. American Medical Association--notes in his order:
Copyright misuse does not invalidate a copyright, but precludes its enforcement during the period of misuse." Practice Management, 121 F.3d at 520 n.9. Moreover, "a defendant in a copyright infringement suit need not prove an antitrust violation to prevail on a copyright misuse defense." Id. at 521.
While Judge Alsup found in Psystar's favor by allowing the company to continue its counterclaim with a misuse of copyright argument, the Mac clone maker failed to win on all of its arguments. He denied Psystar's motion to amend its claim that Apple's conduct with respect to its intellectual property is "unfair," threatening or harming competition.

ASE sites will move to having ThePlanet host the DNS instead of using its own servers. This allows us to free up resources and to relieve a burden of supporting DNS. The switch should be without issue.

It turns out that everyone's fears about the RFID passport (the card, not the book) are true. A person can sit back with a cheap RFID reader and get enough info to clone your passport from far enough away. The US government does a good job of keeping Americans in check. That means that any person with a RFID reader can determine who is an American citizen. Do you feel safe now?

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Chris Paget, director of research and development at Seattle-based IOActive, used a US$250 Motorola RFID reader and an antenna mounted in a car’s side window and drove for 20 minutes around San Francisco, with a colleague videoing the demonstration. During the demonstration he picked up the details of two US passport cards, which are fitted with RFID chips and can be used instead of traditional passports for travel to Canada, Mexico and the Caribbean. “I personally believe that RFID is very unsuitable for tagging people,” he said. “I don’t believe we should have any kind of identity document with RFID tags in them. My ultimate goal here would be, my dream for this research, would be to see the entire Western Hemisphere Travel Initiative be scrapped.”

Many new security additions only serve to limit our rights. Stop allowing the government to take away our rights and privacy!

Antec is one of the most respected and well known case manufactures in the computer industry. They make a variety of cases that satisfy the OEM crowd as well as the enthusiast niche. The Skeleton is a completely unique design and the term "case" really doesn't describe the enclosure that well. This case is made to really show off your components.Next Page »

Intel would like nothing more than for people to use the CPU over the GPU for doing effects. Intel is making all sorts of demos to hammer this into people. I'm sure this has nothing to do with their x86 based GPU coming out this year.

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In another GDC session, Intel is also pushing the CPU for physics and AI: "How can your game have more accurate physics, smarter AI, more particles, and/or a faster frame-rate? By threading your game's engine to take advantage of multi-core processors. Intel has built a threaded game engine and demo called 'Smoke' that shows one way of achieving this goal," the abstract states.

It continues: "This presentation examines the Smoke architecture and how it is designed to take advantage of all CPU cores available within a system. It does this by executing different functional and data blocks in parallel to utilize all available cores."

Software really needs to start taking advantage of the multi-core CPUs in today's systems. Hardware is actually leaving software (consumer grade) in the dust.

Kingston manufacturers a number of consumer electronic devices that have to do with memory. The main business of Kingston is memory and every enthusiast knows that Kingston makes enthusiast RAM for overclocking. That market segment is quite small compared to consumer electronics in general and the Kingston 19-in-1 USB card reader really shines with good features you don't see elsewhere.Next Page »

Said By Blorge

Microsoft recently announced that the company would be laying-off 5,000 employees due to a drop in profits. This is the first mass layoff in the history of Microsoft. However, news has trickled out that the Xbox division will be suffering the brunt of the job cuts.

Word has been trickling out that the Entertainment and Devices Division (EDD) will receive the brunt of the mass layoff. The EDD division consists of the Zune, PC gaming and the massive Xbox division. The EDD is headed up by the well known faces: Shane Kim, Don Matttrick, Phil Spencer and the friendly Aaron Greenberg.

Linky.

I think this may have two possible ramifications:

• Its getting rather close to time to start developing a 360 successor. What are the odds the Microsoft delay it for a while?
• After the partial failure of Vista (as well as the total failure of unifying PC gaming with the Games for Windows Program and XBox Live on PC), will we see Microsoft start to ignore the gaming division entirely to instead worry about making Windows 7 a success (remember, that is the part of Microsoft that actually makes money)?

While I doubt that the second will actually occur, one musn't forget the mess that Microsoft shareholders started making around August last year surrounding the gaming division's money making potential. And that was when Microsoft wasn't particularly woried about its finances despite losing billions of dollars on the XBox.

Overall, I think it will be an interesting year for the 360; especially when you look at Microsoft's approach compared to Sony's. I'm curious to see what approach pans out.

WD's Eco-friendly, Cool and Quiet, WD Caviar Green Drive Marks the Largest Capacity Hard Drive in the Industry

LAKE FOREST, Calif. -- Jan. 27, 2009 -- WD (NYSE: WDC) today announced the first 2 terabyte (TB) hard drive - the world's highest capacity drive and the latest addition to WD's popular, environmentally friendly, cool and quiet, WD Caviar Green hard drive family. This new 3.5-inch platform is based on WD's industry-leading 500 GB/platter technology (with 400 Gb/in2 areal density) with 32 MB cache, producing drives with capacities of up to 2 TB.

"While some in the industry wondered if the end consumer would buy a 1 TB drive, already some 10 percent of 3.5-inch hard drive sales are at the 1 TB level or higher, serving demand from video applications and expanding consumer media libraries," said Mark Geenen, President of Trend Focus. "The 2 TB hard drives will continue to satisfy end user's insatiable desire to store more data on ever larger hard drives."

WD Caviar Green is one of the most successful product lines in the company's recent history with its third-generation GreenPower technology, now providing 2 TB of proven reliable storage for today's high-resolution files and graphics. WD Caviar Green drives are designed for use in USB/FireWire/eSATA external hard drives, desktop computers, workstations, and desktop RAID environments.

"Saving power without sacrificing storage capacity is what consumers want, and what many businesses are requiring today. With the launch of the new WD Caviar Green 2 TB hard drive, customers receive the additional capacities needed to operate today's highly advanced programs and high-resolution digital files while using less power than typical drives with similar performance and capacities," said Jim Morris, WD senior vice president and general manager of client systems.

http://www.wdc.com

One of the many benefits that KDE 4 brings is the ability to run as the window manager for Windows. Not only that, but building Qt apps allows true cross platform integration. Qt is really gunning to be THE cross platform development library with the switch to the LGPL.

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The KDE port for Windows is still a work in progress and some aspects are still highly experimental, but it shows an enormous amount of potential and it has improved significantly over the past year. The port impressively demonstrates the growing platform-neutrality of the KDE desktop environment. As we have seen in the past, bringing open source software to alternate platforms can attract new contributors, accelerate development, and spread the use of open source development frameworks.

I would also add that if you are running any build of KDE previous to 4.2 (even though 4.2 is in the RC stage), upgrade to 4.2 now. It absolutely is what KDE 4 should be to start.

The Intel Core i7 CPU promises new performance levels with increased memory utilization and other new features. The benefits of an on die memory controller really made AMD systems shine when it was first released. While memory speeds have been increasing, it really doesn't matter if the system isn't running at the highest memory speed possible. Yes, it is better, but not by much.Next Page »

Dell and HP will start using the new quad core Opteron CPUs that are more efficient that the normal CPUs. AMD needs some slam-dunks to get back in step with Intel. These moves help, but it needs to get off a shaky image of poor quality that it recently had.

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Low-power HE processors, with speeds ranging from 2.1GHz to 2.3GHz, are designed to address a segment of the server market "that must maximize performance during peak hours while managing the energy costs during idle and low-utilization hours," AMD said. High-performance SE processors, which run at 2.8GHz, are targeted at customers with "the most performance-intensive data center workloads," AMD said.

There will be a planned downtime for not too long on every site in the ASE Content Network (Adnet isn't included in that). The only site that will not be affected is ASEville since there is no Version 4 for that site just yet.

I plan on shutting down the sites in about 10 minutes. The upgrade shouldn't take too long.

This is the first time Microsoft is slashing its workforce in such numbers. The economy is really screwing up some companies.

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The software maker said it will cut 5,000 jobs, or 5 percent of its workforce, over the next 18 months. About 1,400 jobs were eliminated immediately. The software maker is also paring other expenses, such as delaying salary increases and cutting back on vendors and contractors.

Amid slow PC sales, revenue for the quarter came in at $16.63 billion for its fiscal second quarter that ended December 31, up just 2 percent from a year ago and roughly $900 million less than the company previously projected. Per-share earnings came in at 47 cents, also below forecasts.

CES 2009 may have come and gone, but there was a few items in the last day of the show that caught our interest at ASE Labs. While the entire show was very light, there were some spotlights.Next Page »

Solid state disk technology is one of the best things to happen to computers and Intel hits a home run with the X25-M SSD. Next Page »

In more signs of the time, Logitech will cut 600 jobs. The economy probably won't turn for at least a year so try to hang in there.

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The company expects to make the bulk of its job cuts in the fiscal fourth quarter and take a charge between $16 million to $18 million during the quarter. Overall, Logitech expects to take a $20 million to $24 million charge over the next 12 months. Logitech, a peripherals giant, sells to both retail stores and computer manufacturers and is facing a challenging time as its customers struggle, as well. Retail store Circuit City, for example, filed for a Chapter 11 reorganization bankruptcy in November but last week said it would have to liquidate after failing to find a buyer.

Intel has cut prices across the board of their lines except the new Core i7 CPUs. The price cuts may be in response to the Phenom 2 from AMD, but probably not.

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Intel cuts were concentrated on quad-core chips like the Q9650 (3.00GHz), reduced 40 percent, to $316 from $530, to counter AMD's Phenom II. But Celeron processors received some of the largest reductions. The mobile Celeron 570 (2.00GHz), was slashed 48 percent, to $70 from $134, for example. Some Xeon processors also received hefty cuts. The price on the X3370 (3.00GHz), for instance, was cut 40 percent to $316 from $530.

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Multiple sources close to Nintendo tell IGN that the company is gearing up to debut the anticipated successor to its DS Lite handheld during the first half of this year in America. More specifically, the company has allegedly relayed to its partners that DSi will ship stateside in early April, most likely on April 4. Insiders assert that they have been told the system will retail for $179.99 when it launches domestically.

Linky.

Lets hope people aren't catatonic this time around so this fails hard and fast so Nintendo can pull their head out of the asses. $180? For what? At least Sony's slow-but steady updates to the PSP (which, it should be mentioned, will cost $10 less) have never removed any core features or slashed battery life. Even the otherwise-awful Game Boy Micro wasn't ballsy enough to actually be more expensive than the GBA it was replacing.

I also think it would be a truly epic sign of douchebaggery if Nintendo starts trying to do a VC-style thing on the DSi with GBA games.

That's it. Pack it up. Pull out the tarp. Circuit City has moved into liquidation and will sell all inventory as well as close every store. Stores will close on March 31st. We passed comments around about why the chain failed it mostly came to the conclusion that it was the rapid expansion without building cash reserves. There are two stores within 8 miles of each other (a new one was being built) in my area alone.

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"This company made massive mistakes," he said, citing a decision to get rid of sales people and other mismanagement. What's more, given the credit market freeze, Whalin added that no manufacturer wants to sell to any retailer who doesn't have money to pay for the merchandise. At the same time, Whalin said there's still a very slim chance that one or more firms that have expressed an interest in buying Circuit City could still buy it out of bankruptcy over the next few days. "I wouldn't say it's completely over yet for Circuit City, but it's almost over," Whalin said.

I love when people blame the "credit freeze" for failed business practices.

The new economic stimulus (which is a terrible idea by SPENDING instead of CUTTING to get out of a hole) will have loads of pork attached to it. Net neutrality makes a comeback. Government needs to step out of private matters. Do not give government control of internet use. Mark my words, too many people trust the government. I've ALWAYS said that we need smaller government and it looks like the next few years are going to make the government bigger than Bush did.

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The Bush administration has taken a dim view of Internet regulations in the form of Net neutrality rules, warning last year that they could "inefficiently skew investment, delay innovation, and diminish consumer welfare, and there is reason to believe that the kinds of broad marketplace restrictions proposed in the name of 'neutrality' would do just that, with respect to the Internet." A report from the Federal Trade Commission reached the same conclusion in 2007. In addition, a recent study from the U.S. Chamber of Commerce says that the absence of Net neutrality laws or similar federally mandated regulations has spurred telecommunications companies to invest heavily in infrastructure, and changing the rules "would have a devastating effect on the U.S. economy, investment, and innovation." Now, perhaps extensive Net neutrality regulations are wise. But enough people seem to have honest, deep-seated reservations about them to justify a sincere discussion of costs and benefits--rather than having the requirements stealthily injected into what supposed to be an emergency save-the-economy bill scheduled for a floor vote within a week or so.

Stop giving the government more control over private business. The other problem is the riders that keep getting attached to bills. This should be illegal to do since it has nothing to do with the initial bill. There's a reason it is called pork. It is legal spam.