The "Big Bang" experiment at CERN near Geneva scored a world record on Monday by accelerating beams to the highest energy ever achieved in a particle collider, the research center announced. Scientists at CERN, the European Organization for Nuclear Research, said the achievement marked a major milestone on the way to tests next year which they hope will unlock secrets of the origins and make-up of the universe. The energy of the twin beams circulated around 27-km tunnels deep underground. [Source: abcnews.go.com]
Is it a step towards a free OS? That may or may not be the case with a decision by Microsoft to sell desktop real estate in Windows 7. The advertisements, announced over the weekend, will come in the form of sponsored desktop themes from the likes of Twentieth Century Fox, Porsche, Coca-Cola, Infinity, and more. Currently the upcoming program is in beta, with plans to roll out the official version in October 2010.
[Source: itpro.co.uk]
The New York Times reports on an Apple patent that was disclosed last month (the same day as the Windows 7 launch, incidentally) that would embed ads within the Apple OS, possibly as a way of subsidizing its hardware. "In return for paying attention to the advertisements, the user can receive a product or service for free or at reduced cost, or otherwise receive a benefit," the patent notes. [Source: NY Times]
Working on your typing skills or even learning Dvorak or Colemak to make you a more efficient worker? That may be all for nothing as Intel believes that we'll be able to control our computers with our brains by 2020. Intel and its research partners are studying how brain acts when it thinks. For example, scientists have found that people's brains react in a similar manner when asked to think of a bear. [Source: tomshardware.com]
Cyber war has moved from fiction to fact, says a report. Compiled by security firm McAfee, it bases its conclusion on analysis of recent net-based attacks. Analysis of the motives of the actors behind many attacks carried out via the internet showed that many were mounted with a explicitly political aim. It said that many nations were now arming to defend themselves in a cyber war and readying forces to conduct their own attacks. [Source: news.bbc.co.uk]
Earlier this week we learned that the National Security Agency (NSA) has been working with Microsoft to improve the security measures of Windows 7. This cooperation by the two bodies led some to theorize that the NSA and Microsoft may have somehow built a backdoor into Windows 7. Microsoft quickly responded to such concerns. "Microsoft has not and will not put 'backdoors' into Windows," a company spokeswoman said to Computerworld. [Source: computerworld.com]
Chip giant Intel has shown-off a device designed to give vision-impaired and dyslexic people access to printed text. The device, known as the Reader, captures text and then reads it aloud and displays it on its built-in screen. The development is unusual because so-called "assistive technologies" are normally manufactured by specialist companies rather than global giants.[Source: news.bbc.co.uk]
The old Parisian fashion house Hermès has teamed up with the German Leica brand to produce a very special collaboration: the Leica Hermès M7 digital camera. It's essentially the same M7 rangefinder camera we all know and love, but splashed in Hermès' trademark orange and is the second product to be born from the relationship between these two fashion-forward companies.
[Source: t3.com]
Fifty thousand feet over the California desert, the world is a vast expanse of blue with a drab carpet of khaki far, far below. Pilot Peter Siebold sets the craft’s trim to 18 degrees, pushes the stick forward, and counts down: “Three. Two. One. Release.” The mother ship rises above us as we drift downward for a few seconds. Siebold pulls the yoke back and flips a toggle on the center console. Then: Bang! The hybrid rocket motor ignites and we’re a missile shooting toward the stars. [Source: wired.com]
The space shuttle Atlantis roared to life and raced into orbit Monday on a critical mission to deliver 15 tons of equipment and spare parts to the International Space Station, gear needed to protect against failures after the shuttle fleet is retired next year. The shuttle's three hydrogen-fueled main engines fired up at 120-millisecond intervals and six seconds later, after computers verified the powerplants were operating normally, Atlantis' twin solid-fuel boosters ignited with a flash at 2:28pm
[Source: news.cnet.com]
Sony has put up a pre-registration page for its forthcoming Android Smartphone, the Xperia X10, which it says will be available for sale from the 10th of February 2010. The device, which will be the first Sony Ericsson Smartphone to be powered by an Android platform, has popped up on the official SE-Store. The X10, formerly known as Rachael, comes with a 1GHz Qualcomm Snapdragon processor, 1GB of Internal memory, a "rich user interface" and a 8-megapixel camera with autofocus and a 16x zoom.
[Source: itproportal.com]
We often hear lots about the latest desktop and notebook processors, but rarely do we go into detail about the chips that power the smaller devices in our cars, set top boxes, routers, etc. Yesterday MIPS Technologies introduced a new core family comprised of the MIPS32 M14K and M14Kc cores, which are the first MIPS32-compatible cores that also execute the new microMIPS instruction set architecture (ISA), enabling performance of 1.5 DMIPS/MHz with an advanced level of code compression.
[Source: mips.com]
People who download music illegally also spend an average of £77 a year buying it legitimately, a survey has found. Those who claimed not to use peer-to-peer file sharing sites such as The Pirate Bay spent a yearly average of just £44. Almost one in 10 of those questioned aged between 16 and 50 said they downloaded music illegally. However, eight out of 10 of that group also bought CDs, vinyl and as MP3s.
[Source: news.bbc.co.uk]
Powermat manufactures a wireless device which uses magnetic induction to charge various devices like mobile phones, game consoles and other portable gadgets. You will need one receiver for each device and Powermat provides with a number of models to suit the various gadgets that are on the market. There's an Apple iPod docking station, a replacement cover that will fit some RIM Blackberry smartphone and a small charging block called the Powercube. [Source: itproportal.com]
A new mobile phone charger that will work with any handset has been approved by the International Telecommunication Union (ITU), a United Nations body. Industry body the GSMA says that 51,000 tonnes of redundant chargers are generated each year. Currently most chargers are product or brand specific, so people tend to change them when they upgrade to a new phone. However, the new energy-efficient chargers can be kept for much longer.
[Source: news.bbc.co.uk]
