Computer Hardware News Slashdot: Hardware Video Appliance For a Large Library On a Network? devjj writes "For the past year or so I have been trying (and failing) to figure out a reasonable solution for bringing my large media library to my living room. All of my media lives on an Ubuntu server that sits on my network. It's been very reliable and it's fast enough for streaming purposes. My content is exposed via SMB. It's the living room side where I keep running into problems. I am currently using Windows 7 and XBMC, but the case is too big and noisy, I don't particularly care for Windows, and the whole thing just seems overkill. What I want is a device that can present a decent UI that the non-Slashdot crowd would be able to use, but that is still powerful enough to stream full-fidelity 1080p. I dream of a small box that can transcode video over a network, but that's probably a pipe dream. The new Apple TV would be great if it could connect to network shares. What say you, Slashdot? Is what I'm looking for possible, or should I just give in to the iTunes/Amazon/whatever juggernauts?" Read more of this story at Slashdot. http://rss.slashdot.org/~r/Slashdot/slashdotHardware/~3/oSf6Q1kWG_w/Video-Appliance-For-a-Large-Library-On-a-Network Canon Develops 8 X 8 Inch Digital CMOS Sensor dh003i writes "Canon has developed a 8 x 8 inch CMOS digital sensor. It will be able to capture an image with 1/100th the light intensity required by a DSLR and will be able to record video at 60 fps in lighting half the intensity of moonlight. There are already many excellent quality lenses designed to cover 8 x 10 inches, although Canon may develop some of their own designed specifically for their requirements." Read more of this story at Slashdot. http://rss.slashdot.org/~r/Slashdot/slashdotHardware/~3/8qTW5yWAnU8/Canon-Develops-8-X-8-Inch-Digital-CMOS-Sensor IBM Unveils Fastest Microprocessor Ever adeelarshad82 writes "IBM revealed details of its 5.2-GHz chip, the fastest microprocessor ever announced. Costing hundreds of thousands of dollars, IBM described the z196, which will power its Z-series of mainframes. The z196 contains 1.4 billion transistors on a chip measuring 512 square millimeters fabricated on 45-nm PD SOI technology. It contains a 64KB L1 instruction cache, a 128KB L1 data cache, a 1.5MB private L2 cache per core, plus a pair of co-processors used for cryptographic operations. IBM is set to ship the chip in September." Read more of this story at Slashdot. http://rss.slashdot.org/~r/Slashdot/slashdotHardware/~3/nEXCFN_WB6E/IBM-Unveils-Fastest-Microprocessor-Ever Australian Crackdown On Console Modchips Likely To Continue angry tapir writes "Late last week an Australian court issued an injunction against a handful of retailers selling or importing hardware — commonly known as 'mod chips' — that allows unauthorized software to run on Sony's PlayStation 3. The court also required that the four parties that were the subject of the injunction actually hand over to Sony any PlayStation modchips they have. Sony's PlayStation 3 mod chip lawsuit could be just the first of many such cases in Australia, according to a lawyer who defended a client against Nintendo in a similar case earlier this year." Read more of this story at Slashdot. http://rss.slashdot.org/~r/Slashdot/slashdotHardware/~3/iTbT2mP4GGc/Australian-Crackdown-On-Console-Modchips-Likely-To-Continue Li-Ion Batteries Get Green Seal of Approval thecarchik writes "It is not an easy task to compare the environmental effects of battery powered cars to those caused by conventionally fueled automobiles. The degree to which manufacture, usage and disposal of the batteries used to store the necessary electrical energy are detrimental to the environment is not exactly known. Now, for the first time, a team of Empa scientists have made a detailed life cycle assessment (LCA) or ecobalance of lithium-ion (Li-ion) batteries, in particular the chemically improved (i.e. more environmentally friendly) version of the ones most frequently used in electric vehicles. Researchers decided to find out for sure. They calculated the ecological footprints of electric cars fitted with Li-ion batteries, taking into account all possible relevant factors, from those associated with the production of individual parts all the way through to the scrapping of the vehicle and the disposal of the remains, including the operation of the vehicle during its lifetime." Read more of this story at Slashdot. http://rss.slashdot.org/~r/Slashdot/slashdotHardware/~3/ZvV_Hk1I2Q4/Li-Ion-Batteries-Get-Green-Seal-of-Approval The Nuclear Bunker Where Wikileaks Will Be Located An anonymous reader writes "Engadget has photos of 'Pionen White Mountains, the nuclear bunker in which Wikileaks will locate some of its servers. It was excavated 98 feet underground, in a rock hill in the center of Stockholm, Sweden, during the Cold War.' It looks like they hired the same interior designer who decorated Batman's lair." Read more of this story at Slashdot. http://rss.slashdot.org/~r/Slashdot/slashdotHardware/~3/WBqm__X3Oyw/The-Nuclear-Bunker-Where-Wikileaks-Will-Be-Located Flight Data Recorders, Decades Out of Date Tisha_AH writes "For the past fifty years the technology behind aircraft flight data recorders has remained stagnant. Some of the advances of cloud computing, mesh radio networks, real-time position reporting and satellite communications are held back by a combination of aircraft manufacturers, pilots unions and the slow gears of government bureaucracy. Many recent aircraft loss incidents remain unexplained, with black boxes lost on the bottom of the Atlantic Ocean, buried under the wreckage of the World Trade Centers or with critical information suppressed by government secrecy or aircraft manufacturers. Many devices still rely upon tape recorders for voice and data that only record a very small sampling of aircraft dynamics, flight and engine systems or crew behaviors. Technologically simple solutions like battery backup, continual telemetry feeds by satellite and hundreds of I/O points, monitoring many systems should be within easy reach. Pilot unions have objected to the collection and sharing of detailed accident data, citing privacy concerns of the flight crew. Accidents may be due to human error, process problems or design flaws. Unless we can fully evaluate all factors involved in transportation accidents, it will be difficult to improve the safety record. Recommendations by the NTSB to the FAA have gone unheeded for many years. With all of the technological advancements that we work with in the IT field, what sort of best practices could be brought forward in transit safety?" Read more of this story at Slashdot. http://rss.slashdot.org/~r/Slashdot/slashdotHardware/~3/mjoZ6FsHBO0/Flight-Data-Recorders-Decades-Out-of-Date iFixit Moves Into Console Repair sk8pmp writes with news that iFixit, a website known for Apple gadget teardowns and repair guides, is expanding into the game console market, launching a series of troubleshooting and repair guides to help gamers fix their own machines. They're also starting to sell replacement parts and the tools necessary to work on them. "Right now there are repair guides for 24 gaming consoles, including 206 repairs and upgrades. Some of these fixes deal with major issues, such as the infamous Red Ring of Death from the Xbox 360, but others are simpler. For instance, right now there is no easy way to clean out the fans inside your console. 'I think this is probably the number one cause of overheating these days now that manufacturers have mostly gotten their act together,' Wiens said. 'This is routine maintenance, and it's mind-boggling that the manufacturers don't provide people with an easy way to open the case up and blow it out.' You'll also learn how to replace broken LCD screens on your portables, replace the motherboard on your PlayStation 3, and do just about anything else you might want to do to these systems, from the simple to the harrowing." Read more of this story at Slashdot. http://rss.slashdot.org/~r/Slashdot/slashdotHardware/~3/hgdFrwv_Uks/iFixit-Moves-Into-Console-Repair HP Snaps Up 3PAR For $2 Billion adeelarshad82 writes "The bidding war between HP and Dell has reached a swift and dramatic conclusion. One could even say HP sniped the auction at the last minute — to the tune of $2 billion for the acquisition of data storage provider 3PAR. HP's not-so-subtle efforts to pull the company away from a preliminary merger agreement with Dell — a $1.15-billion arrangement announced August 16 — took three successive bids to reach an ultimate conclusion. The final acquisition cost of $2 billion, confirmed by 3PAR late Friday, represents a price of $30 per share of 3PAR stock. That's triple the closing price of the company's stock before Dell's initial offer was made public, and more than double after." Read more of this story at Slashdot. http://rss.slashdot.org/~r/Slashdot/slashdotHardware/~3/_qSjANI8m3Y/HP-Snaps-Up-3PAR-For-2-Billion Apertus, the Open Source HD Movie Camera osliving writes "This article takes a tour of the hardware and software behind the innovative Apertus, a real world open source project. Led by Oscar Spierenburg and a team of international developers, the project aims to produce 'an affordable community driven free software and open hardware cinematic HD camera for a professional production environment'." Read more of this story at Slashdot. http://rss.slashdot.org/~r/Slashdot/slashdotHardware/~3/X6QEzQAN8Ew/Apertus-the-Open-Source-HD-Movie-Camera Sorting Algorithm Breaks Giga-Sort Barrier, With GPUs An anonymous reader writes "Researchers at the University of Virginia have recently open sourced an algorithm capable of sorting at a rate of one billion (integer) keys per second using a GPU. Although GPUs are often assumed to be poorly suited for algorithms like sorting, their results are several times faster than the best known CPU-based sorting implementations." Read more of this story at Slashdot. http://rss.slashdot.org/~r/Slashdot/slashdotHardware/~3/EZw_x17-Ets/Sorting-Algorithm-Breaks-Giga-Sort-Barrier-With-GPUs Intel To Buy Smartphone Chipmaker Infineon For $2B sylverboss writes "Intel Corp., the world's largest chipmaker, is close to an agreement to buy Infineon Technologies AG's wireless business, three people with direct knowledge of the discussions said. When it comes to desktop, laptop and server chips, Intel's pretty much got a lock on the market but everyone can see the writing on the wall: mobile chips and architectures are the future of computing thanks to the popularity of smartphones, but Intel doesn't have anything to offer in that regard. Don't know Infineon? You should: they are the guys who have supplied Apple with their iPhone baseband chips since 2007." Read more of this story at Slashdot. http://rss.slashdot.org/~r/Slashdot/slashdotHardware/~3/Tz6mLjWUzFY/Intel-To-Buy-Smartphone-Chipmaker-Infineon-For-2B Brazil Using Smartphones For Planning the Future shafiur writes "Brazil has bought 150,000 LG smartphones and has embarked on the world's first fully digital national census. Can they succeed when the US recently failed to go digital? The Brazilians say that the digital census has several advantages over paper and pen methods. They say that the data is more accurate since GPS data will pinpoint the exact location of a household. The GPS data is cross-referenced with satellite images to ensure that responses are correctly geo-tagged. The recently begun census will underpin future publicy-making decisions." Read more of this story at Slashdot. http://rss.slashdot.org/~r/Slashdot/slashdotHardware/~3/n3gIeEW_VK0/Brazil-Using-Smartphones-For-Planning-the-Future The iPad As a Shape-Recognition System An anonymous reader writes with an interesting use for the iPad: "The guys over at the Volumique blog have a different idea as to how to tackle apps for Apple's devices. They aren't just thinking about a digital activity on such devices, they are experimenting with using physical objects through Apple's multi-touch screens. Imagine being able to buy the playing pieces for a board game, but then loading up an app on your iPad for the actual board. The pieces would be recognized when placed on the iPad's screen, it would even recognize which direction they were facing. This may sound like an impossible feat unless you use a much more expensive device like Microsoft Surface, but Bertrand Duplat and Etienne Mineur at Volumique already have it working." Read more of this story at Slashdot. http://rss.slashdot.org/~r/Slashdot/slashdotHardware/~3/f7RQhZ6eTbc/The-iPad-As-a-Shape-Recognition-System China Plans To Mine the Yellow Sea Floor eldavojohn writes "Details are limited but state media is reporting on $75 million being put into a new research facility in Qingdao, Shandong Province that will conduct research into mining the sea floor. From the article: 'Scientists believe sea beds at a depth of 4,000 to 6,000 meters hold abundant deposits of rare metals and methane hydrate, a solidified form of natural gas bound into ice that can serve as a new energy source.' The research center's first goal is to do surveying and exploration with a new submersible named 'Jiaolong' (a mythical aquatic Chinese dragon). Hopefully these quests yield energy resources to meet growing demand for resources like liquefied coal in China." Read more of this story at Slashdot. http://rss.slashdot.org/~r/Slashdot/slashdotHardware/~3/FjJB5RHiick/China-Plans-To-Mine-the-Yellow-Sea-Floor

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