News

Quote

"Here it is: gravity does move at the same speed as light. Our actual figure was 1.06 times the speed of light, but we have an error of plus or minus 0.21. (...) This vindicates Einstein's instinct when formulating his general theory of relativity."

Quote

Dozens of massive stars in the Carina Nebula fry protoplanetary disks around presumed newborn stars with massive doses of ultraviolet radiation. The UV rays cook the dust by a process called photoevaporation.

Quote

The asteroid, known as 2002 AA29, will pass within 5.9 million kilometres (3.7 million miles) of the planet. This is the closest it has come for almost a century but is no near miss in astronomical terms.

Quote

The jet of material, stretching across many thousands of light-years, has been known to radio astronomers for many years. Only now, however, have they learned that the galaxy, called 0313-192, has a spiral shape like our own Milky Way.

Quote

Instead of moving to 802.11a from 802.11b Wi-Fi, many manufacturers are producing gear that uses the 802.11g, analysts say. An 802.11g network is as fast as an 802.11a, and it can be used by anyone with an 802.11b modem in a laptop or personal digital assistant.

Quote

The standard design for the Mini-PC calls for a folding 5.8-inch screen with 800-by-480 resolution, a 20GB hard drive, built-in wireless networking and batteries capable of running three to four hours on a single charge. The devices will run the Windows XP operating system and standard PC applications such as Microsoft Office. All of this will be crammed into a case about the size of a paperback novel, a little more than an inch thick and weighing about a pound.

Quote

"We are at a juncture now where Microsoft and other providers are trying to convince businesses that their services are suitable for mission-

critical communications. It's a time when people are coming back to work. When systems fail, it's a double insult. This was the worst time for something like

this to happen."

Quote

Indeed, evidence for such events, which astronomers are viewing 26,000 years later due to the time it takes light to travel to Earth from the center of the galaxy, can be found in the image. A faint streak of X-rays about one light-year long has been discovered 1.5 light-years from Sgr A*. The streak points at Sgr A*, suggesting the streak may be a jet of particles expelled at nearly the speed of light from just outside the event horizon of the black hole. The intensity and size of this jet indicate the flaring activity has been occurring for many years.

On a much larger scale, huge lobes of 20-million-degree- Centigrade gas, extending over dozens of light-years on either side of the black hole, have also been discovered. "These lobes show that enormous explosions have occurred several times over the last 10,000 years," said Mark Morris of UCLA, lead author of a second paper on Sgr A*, who also participated in the press conference.

Quote

The planet, dubbed OGLE-TR-56b, is about the size of Jupiter. It is extremely hot and whips around its star in the constellation Sagittarius every 29 hours, compared with Earth's 365-day orbit round the sun.

"The new planet is in the strangest-ever orbit," Sasselov said. "It's so hot there, it rains iron."

Quote

It is also unclear how such a structure might have formed. One possibility is that the stars originated within our galaxy but were flung out over time. Another is that the gravity of the Milky Way tore a smaller satellite galaxy to pieces leaving this outer debris.

If confirmed, the existence of a ring of stars encircling the Milky Way would not be a complete surprise, says Michael Merrifield, at Nottingham University, UK. "There are quite a number of other spiral galaxies similar to the Milky Way that have been observed to be surrounded by faint rings of stars," he says.

Quote

"Nothing based on water can flow at these temperatures, so the culprit must be avalanches of gaseous carbon dioxide and rocky debris."

This is because carbon dioxide does not melt on Mars: it boils directly from the solid - a process called sublimation.

"The boiling dry ice acts like a armada of miniature hovercraft carrying a shower of sand, dust, and tumbling rocks down the slope, carving out the gullies as it goes," Dr Hoffman says.

Quote

No decision has yet been publicly announced, although FCC officials have said they hope to complete the process by late February. Meanwhile, companies whose plans rely on access to local phone networks are bracing for a sea change that they say could have sweeping effects on competition and customers' Internet choices. Small companies are worried about being driven out of business, companies as large as AT&T are concerned about losing access to local phone networks, and the big local phone companies scent a policy victory they've sought for years.
...
In that country and others, network companies are investing billions or trillions of dollars for higher-speed connections than are typically seen in the United States, as well. Korean officials said that by 2005, 13 million South Koreans would subscribe to broadband services that averaged 20mbps, or 10 to 20 times faster than the average U.S. connection.

Quote

The new SGI system can use a stock version of Linux from Red Hat, said Greg Estes, the company's vice president of corporate marketing. But SGI recommends using a modified version that includes improvements such as SGI's XFS file system and software that takes advantage of specific features in the SGI systems. SGI also has contributed to work such as the Linux Scalability Effort to improve the operating system on high-end machines.

There are two configurations of the Altix system: the 3300, with as many as 12 processors, and the 3700, with as many as 64. Each system will accept sequels to the current Itanium 2 product, including models code-named Madison and Montecito, due for release this year and next.

A 16-processor 3700 with 16GB of memory costs $305,000, and a 64-processor system with 64MB of memory costs $1 million, according to SGI.

Quote

By adding a license for the audio and video compression software, or codecs, of Windows Media 9, Microsoft is extending the technology beyond its Windows operating system, where the software is available for free. Microsoft hopes that cell phone makers or Web publishers running Linux operating systems, for example, will be more willing to license Microsoft’s proprietary media technology, since they will no longer be required to also adopt the Windows operating system.

Quote

Rambus has developed two technologies for memory and system bus interfaces. The memory interface, known as "Yellowstone," allows data rates of up to 3.2GHz, which is much faster than conventional DDR (dual data rate) memory technology, according to Rambus. Rambus' forthcoming processor bus, known as "Redwood," is a high-speed parallel interface that delivers data to various integrated circuits on a processor.

Quote

U.S. shoppers spent more than $13 billion online in the 2002 holiday season, according to new reports from Jupiter Research and Nielsen/NetRatings. The figures come at a time when retailers are reporting dismal numbers and analysts are pegging the season as one of the worst in years. Chains including Federated Department Stores, Wal-Mart and Target all reported weak sales coming off the Christmas rush.

Quote

Hitachi expects an increase in demand for HDD, not just for use in personal computers and servers, but also for consumer electronics such as car audio and set-top boxes. The company's rivals include Seagate Technology, Maxtor Corp. and Western Digital Corp.

New in Hitachi's product range is a drive specifically for automotive applications: the Travelstar A4K20. This 2.5-inch hard disk drive offers 20G bytes of storage for car navigation and car audio applications and will be available in the second quarter.

Quote

What exactly do you mean when you say it's all going to be there?

You take all the various information media that you have--for example, your correspondence, all the e-mail or letters that you write and print. All the papers that you wrote or read. One of the capabilities we have in MyLifeBits now is that you turn on the browser or the explorer and capture every page you looked at. The system now captures everything that you see that comes to you electronically.

Quote

As you know that Radeon 9500 differs from Radeon 9700 series due to reduced number of pipelines to 4. However, it is now possible that you can transform it into a Radeon 9700 and overclockability can be improved by much. When you remove the cooler, you can see some resistors on the GPU package. Just re-solder resistor at position 2-3 to 1-2 and your Radeon 9500 will be modded into Radeon 9700. Flash the Radeon 9500 BIOS using the modified BIOS to unlock the core/mem frequency default locked by the ATi to prevent overclocking. The core clock can be pushed as much as to 370Mhz and as a result, it runs faster than the Radeon 9700 Pro.

Quote

GeForce FX
Quake3 Demo001, 1600x1200 2xAA: 209fps
UT 2003 Asbestos, 1600x1200 2xAA: 140fps
3DMark Game4, 1600x1200 2xAA: 41fps

Radeon 9700 Pro
Quake3 Demo001, 1600x1200 2xAA: 147fps
UT 2003 Asbestos, 1600x1200 2xAA: 119fps
3DMark Game4, 1600x1200 2xAA: 45fps

Quote

"The combined gravitational effects of the Earth and sun will nudge the asteroid onto a slightly faster track just inside Earth's, and it will begin to pull ahead," he said.

In 95 years, the asteroid will have advanced all the way around to where it is catching up to the Earth from behind. A similar interaction with gravity from both the Earth and sun will then push the asteroid back onto a slower outside track, and the pattern will repeat.

Quote

The crush of spam has cost companies enormously as well. A new study expected Monday estimates that the annual cost of spam to U.S. corporations is $8.9 billion and $2.5 billion for European businesses. U.S. and European service providers shoulder another $500 million in costs, according to market researcher Ferris Research. The figures were reported by the Associated Press.