Apple to acquire chip designer P.A. Semi
In a move that may help differentiate future iPods and iPhones, Apple has agreed to acquire chip designer P.A. Semi of Santa Clara.
The deal, worth $278 million, gives Apple a PowerPC-based chip that is known for high performance and low energy needs. That will prove helpful in bulking up its iPod and iPhone lineup, giving it some differentiation from competitors. But it may also help power new devices from Apple.
Apple has not said what it plans to do with P.A. Semi, which has about 150 employees. P.A. Semi designs processors using the PowerPC architecture, which Apple abandoned for its computers in favor of Intel chips.
Hackers Have Attacked Foreign Utilities, CIA Analyst Says
In a rare public warning to the power and utility industry, a CIA analyst this week said cyber attackers have hacked into the computer systems of utility companies outside the United States and made demands, in at least one case causing a power outage that affected multiple cities.
“We do not know who executed these attacks or why, but all involved intrusions through the Internet,” Tom Donahue, the CIA’s top cybersecurity analyst, said Wednesday at a trade conference in New Orleans.
Apple goes into thin ‘Air’
Apple CEO Steve Jobs wowed the crowd during his Macworld keynote address by introducing an ultrathin laptop called the MacBook Air, which the company touts as the world’s thinnest notebook.
The MacBook Air features a 13.3-inch LED-backlit screen and a full-size keyboard, and measures 0.76 inch at its thickest and 0.16 inch at its thinnest.
The MacBook Air weighs about 3 pounds, comes with 2GB of standard memory, an 80GB standard hard drive, and 802.11n wireless connectivity. It will cost $1,799 in that configuration, and shipments are expected to start in two weeks.
gOS: A lot of Buzz with no Substance
I had the privilege of buying one of the Everex gOS PC’s from Wal-Mart.com before they sold out. I bought it and had it shipped to one of their stores to where I picked it up. Whats the verdict. Im using the gPC right now to write this review and I loaded it up with PCLOS 2007.
gOS: The beginning
After I got the PC and set the thing up I actually liked the hardware. Its great hardware, very stylish and looks very functional. I booted it up and I saw green. I like green, along with black and purple its my favorite color. I actually liked the gOS for 48 hrs. So what happened? lets cut through the hype and just say if this is the Linux communities hopes to take down Microsoft, go back to the drawing board.
Google, Bidding For Phone Ads, Lures Partners
Google Inc. is trying to shake up the wireless industry by helping to create cheaper phones that can access advanced Internet services — and carry its lucrative advertising. Now that the Internet giant has cemented an alliance with 33 partners, the question is whether they will follow through on its attempt to change the rules of the game.
After months of anticipation, a group including Google and a number of mobile-handset makers, cellular carriers and other technology companies plans to make new software available — free of charge — to power mobile phones that will start hitting the market in the second half of 2008. The move paves the way for mass-market cellphones that will bring consumers’ experience on the mobile Web closer to that of personal computers. And Google is betting that its ad revenue will surge as a result.
Apple Releases Leopard Source Code
Apple has released the Darwin source code behind its Leopard operating system to developers.
Darwin 9.0 forms the backbone of the UNIX-based operating system and is being made available to developers in the open source community, as it has been since Mac OS X 10, the first version of the OS.
FreeBSD, What’s on your plate?
This report covers FreeBSD related projects between April and June 2007. Again an exciting quarter for FreeBSD. In May we saw one of the biggest developers summits to date at BSDCan , our 25 Google Summer of Code students started working on their projects - progress reports are available below, and finally the 7.0 release cycle was started three weeks ago.
If your are curious about what’s new in FreeBSD 7.0 we suggest reading Ivan Voras’ excellent summary at: http://ivoras.sharanet.org/freebsd/freebsd7.html.
The next gathering of the BSD community will be at EuroBSDCon in Copenhagen , September 14-15. More details about the conference and the developer summit are available in the respective reports below.
See the post here
Google Linux Software Repositories
Google’s Linux software repositories make it easier to download and stay up-to-date with current releases of Google Linux applications. Please choose one of the guides below to help configure your system to use these repositories.
Check it out!
Intel Core 2 CPU buggy?
From Theo de Raadt’s recent post on misc@:
Various developers are busy implementing workarounds for serious bugs
in Intel’s Core 2 cpu.
These processors are buggy as hell, and some of these bugs don’t just
cause development/debugging problems, but will *ASSUREDLY* be
exploitable from userland code.
As is typical, BIOS vendors will be very late providing workarounds /
fixes for these processors bugs. Some bugs are unfixable and cannot
be worked around. Intel only provides detailed fixes to BIOS vendors
and large operating system groups. Open Source operating systems are
largely left in the cold.
Full (current) errata from Intel:
http://download.intel.com/design/processor/specupdt/31327914.pdf
New Wi-Fi distance record: 382 kilometers
Researcher Ermanno Pietrosemoli has set what appears to be a new record for the longest communication link with Wi-Fi.
Pietrosemoli, president of the Escuela Latinoamerica de Redes (which means networking school of Latin America) established a Wi-Fi link between two computers located in El Aguila and Platillon Mountain, Venezuela. That’s a distance of 382 kilometers, or 238 miles. He used technology from Intel, which is concocting its own long-range Wi-Fi equipment, and some off-the-shelf parts. Pietrosemoli gets about 3 megabits per second in each direction on his long-range connections.
Most Wi-Fi signals only go only a few meters before petering out. Conventional Wi-Fi transmitters, however, send signals in all directions. By directing the signal to a specific point, range can be increased.
Honing the signal, however, means that the receiver and transmitter have to be aligned. Trees, buildings and other objects that get between them can sever the link. The curvature of Earth, misalignment between the transmitter and receiver, as well as shaking and any sort of movement at the transmitting or receiving end can also impair the signal. (To ameliorate some of these factors, Intel has created a way to electrically steer the signal, which in turn increases bandwidth.)