AMD Unveils Dual-Core Chips for Desktops

AMD Unveils Dual-Core Chips for Desktops - Yahoo! News: "Advanced Micro Devices Inc. is launching its first PC microprocessors with two computing engines on a single chip Tuesday, further expanding its product line with a technology that's expected to be a major driver of PC performance for years to come.
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The four chips to be announced Tuesday at the Computex trade show in Taiwan are targeted at high-end personal computers used for advanced tasks such as creating or editing digital media. In April, AMD introduced dual-core chips for servers and workstations. [more]"

11 steps to a better brain

New Scientist 11 steps to a better brain - Features: "It doesn't matter how brainy you are or how much education you've had - you can still improve and expand your mind. Boosting your mental faculties doesn't have to mean studying hard or becoming a reclusive book worm. There are lots of tricks, techniques and habits, as well as changes to your lifestyle, diet and behaviour that can help you flex your grey matter and get the best out of your brain cells. And here are 11 of them. [more]"

Nostalgia

I resurrected my old case mod/overclocking web pages I did up years ago... ahh, the memories...

http://lev10s.phpwebhosting.com/oc/casemod.html

Web Designer's Reference

Slashdot | Web Designer's Reference: "It seems as if everyone and his brother is writing books supporting standards-compliant Web design with XHTML and CSS. I have read and reviewed a half dozen this year alone. People are obviously trying to tell us something - plain HTML has to go! Web Designers' Reference: An Integrated Approach to Web Design with XHTML and CSS, by Craig Grannell, is the latest of these pronouncements.' Read on for the rest of Suda's review. [more]"

German Spam, Nasty

My work email addy got hit bad with this spam - and annoyingly it wasn't caught by our spam blockers. Bah!

Bradenton Herald | 05/17/2005 | New spam clogging computer emails: "A flood of German-language spam, with links to a far-right German political party, is clogging e-mail in-boxes, the South Florida Sun-Sentinel reported today.

A virus known as Sober.p, which attacked computers earlier this month, created the new spam, or unsolicited e-mails. The virus turned affected machines into the tech equivalent of a carrier that unwittingly spreads a disease. However, the spam itself is not a virus and doesn't infect machines, the newspaper reported.

Thousands of computers disseminated the spam Monday and over the weekend, even though the owners of most of those computers had no idea their machines had been hijacked.

It has not been determined who is responsible for the virus.

The e-mails coincide with the 60th anniversary of the end of World War II. Though the contents vary, most of the e-mails contain war-related political messages, such as 'Dresden 1945,' referring to the Allied bombing of the German city.

Most of the spam included links to German Web sites, including the site for the far-right National Democratic Party, the Sun-Sentinel said.

The site could not be accessed late Monday.

Protection against computer virus attacks is acquired by employing anti-virus software that is up to date."

WGN Weather Weblog: Lightning stikes the Sears Tower

Freakin' cool!

WGN Weather Weblog: Lightning stikes the Sears Tower: "Christopher Gazdic, a Columbia College student, captured these images of a Sears Tower lightning strike on video this past Wednesday morning, May 11 from his dormitory room. His video of the lightning strike is available at: http://www.fyrestudios.com/lightning/index.html"

Exploding iPod?

[H]ard|OCP - Exploding iPod: "If you read this exploding iPod story it seems more like of a series of unfortunate events lead up to the iPod going *pop* than an actual real “issue” but you just can’t pass up an exploding iPod story.

Don't put your iPod through the washing machine. And if for some reason you do, don't try to fix it with a screwdriver. That's the advice of fire investigators probing a small explosion that burned a hole in the bed of a Melbourne teenager who tried to perform emergency surgery on his ailing mp3 player.

"

IBM: \'Firefox is in da house\'

IBM: \'Firefox is in da house\' - silicon.com: "IBM is encouraging its employees to use Firefox, aiding the open source web browser's quest to chip away at Microsoft's Internet Explorer.

Firefox is already used by about 10 per cent of IBM's staff, or about 30,000 people. Starting today, IBM workers can download the browser from internal servers and get support from the company's helpdesk staff. [more]"

Internet Explorer has become the hare OR IE loses more market share

Is Firefox perfect? Nope. Is it a better browser than IE? Absolutely!!!

(IMHO)

M-Dollar: Internet Explorer has become the hare OR IE loses more market share: "Internet Explorer's market share has slipped below 90% for the first time in a very long time. According to independent tracking by WebSideStory Internet Explorer has dropped from 95% to 89% in just under a year, and Firefox has gone from 3% to 6.8% since last October. [more]"

Firefox Updated to 1.0.4

Mozilla has released a software update for Firefox, mainly to fix some JavaScript security vulnerabilities that had been found but not known to be exploited.

Go get you some!

AMD dual-core Opterons to go Socket 939?

AMD dual-core 1xx Opterons 'to go Socket 939' | The Register: "AMD's upcoming dual-core Opteron 1xx chips for one-way servers and workstations will use the chip maker's Socket 939 interconnect rather than the more usual Socket 940 system.

So claim Taiwanese motherboard vendors sources cited by DigiTimes.

Dual-core Opteron 165, 170 and 175 processors are expected to ship in Q3 after being formally introduced later this quarter. They will use Socket 939 to give server and workstation vendors access to cheaper motherboards and less expensive unbuffered memory modules in place of the ECC DIMMs used in Socket 940 mobos.

In essence, this is all about bring down the cost of dual-core one-way Opteron servers and workstations - if it's going to happen. AMD has said nothing so far about the dual-core 1xx Opterons to suggest that it has anything other than Socket 940 in mind. With Socket 939, the only feature that will differentiate the 1xx series from the upcoming dual-core Athlon 64 X2 is its three HyperTransport links to the Athlon 64's single link."

Gates on Google

Slashdot | Gates on Google: "' A long and interesting article in Fortune on the battle between Gates and Google. 'Forced to watch Google's stock soar the way Microsoft's used to, and Brin and Page enjoy their roles as tech's new rock stars, Gates brings to the fight a ferocity that nobody has seen since the Netscape war a decade ago. Their popularity gets under his skin. 'There's companies that are just so cool that you just can't even deal with it,' he says sarcastically, suggesting that Google is nothing more than the latest fad, adding, 'At least they know to wear black.'...Trying to build a Google killer, however, has turned out to be truly humbling for Microsoft.''"

Firefox and Thunderbird Garage

I'd love to pick up this book - particularly for the Thunderbird part. I've been experimenting with Gmail-like archiving and searching instead of organizing my email in hierarchy. I wonder if you can create custom labels in Thunderbird... hmmm... maybe I need to buy this book!

Slashdot | Firefox and Thunderbird Garage: "'Firefox and Thunderbird Garage, written by Chris Hofmann, Director of Engineering at the Mozilla Foundation; Marcia Knous, Mozilla Foundation Project Manager; and John Hedtke, president of JVH Communications (and an accomplished technical writer) is published by Prentice Hall PTR. This is the most recent addition to their Garage Series of books, which aims to bring the newest topics in technology to print in an engaging and readable manner. Firefox and Thunderbird Garage does not disappoint: the authors have covered all the bases on these two popular apps with a combined writing style that keeps the subject matter alive and interesting.' Read on for the rest of Norbury-Glaser's review."

Firefox Tweak Guide

I'm tweaking as we speak!!

TweakGuides.com: "Whether you're a first-time user or a veteran, this Firefox Tweak Guide brings together all the major tips, tricks and tweaks for Firefox. From the basic to the advanced, the following 11 pages of information are sure to enhance your Firefox experience."

Build Your Own DVR

Slashdot | Build Your Own DVR: "'If you have an old computer that had been laying around for a while and are ready to spend a bit on hardware to make into a Digital Video Recorder, this article from Make magazine contains a step-by-step guide on building one. The author spent $150 on TV card and $70 on BeyondTV PVR software.' (And with a Linux-friendly capture card, MythTV would save the builder $70.)"