AMD to Release New CPU for Laptops Wed, 4 June 2008
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| source: New York Times | thanks: 15% market share! Woo!!
Nobody needs a decent product like AMD...
 Oooooh...shiny....
AMD have announced a new line of notebook CPU chips, designed to help gain a foothold in the Intel-dominated market.
The new line of CPUs, named 'Puma', sport decent video processing capabilities, as well as power-conserving features, allowing Puma laptops to function as reasonable mobile game and media platforms.
“Our execution troubles of 2007 have been well documented,” [the computing solutions Senior Vice President Randy] Allen said. “These new products are central to our return to sustained profitability, and central to our restoring confidence.” Hewlett-Packard and Toshiba planned to announce that they would be among the first makers of computers to sell systems using Puma chips.
- New York Times
The launch follows AMD's recent announcement that it had just suffered its sixth consecutive quarterly loss, likely at the hands of Intel's market stranglehold. Intel currently holds an 85% share of the laptop CPU market.
The timing of this launch may prove advantageous for AMD, with Intel's 'Montevina' Centrino updates delayed until mid July.
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Computers Can Read Minds! Mon, 2 June 2008
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| source: SMH | thanks: Computers that really WILL eat your brain!
The first step towards a time when we'll be enslaved by robots
 If any computer could read your mind, it would be this one.
Scientists have taught a computer to 'read minds', by comparing scans of a person's brain as they think about specific words.
The study, conducted at the Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, was done to help gain a greater understanding of how and where the brain stores different kinds of information.
They imaged each of the nine people thinking about the 58 different words, to create a kind of "average" image of a word.
"If I show you the brain images for two words, the main thing you notice is that they look pretty much alike. If you look at them for a while you might see subtle differences," [study leader Tom] Mitchell said.
"We have the program calculate the mean brain activity over all of the words that somebody has looked at. That gives us the average when somebody thinks about a word, and then we subtract that average out from all those images," Mitchell added.
- SMH
The computer was then given a test, and was correctly able to identify a brain image taken when a person though 'celery', and another of when someone thought 'airplane'.
The next step in the study is to teach the computer to distinguish between different phrases and strings of words.
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First Look: Beyond Good & Evil 2 Sat, 31 May 2008
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| source: GameSpot | thanks: Pigs and girls in green lippy
Who says cult games don't get sequels
 This is one little piggy who ain't gonna go whee all the way home...
Publisher Ubisoft has revealed a teaser trailer for the sequel to critically acclaimed title Beyond Good & Evil.
The trailer, shown at the Ubidays press event, confirmed earlier reports that Beyond Good & Evil creator, Michel Ancel, had been looking to begin work on a sequel.
In the teaser, a camera swoops down across a desert wasteland until it focuses in on a broken-down hovercar. A woman sits atop the car (presumably Jade, the first game's protagonist), her face obscured by an umbrella. On the other side of the machine, Pey'j rests until he is disturbed by a fly.
- GameSpot
Howeever, as is almost always the case with trailers, no details were given regarding release date or release platforms.
The original, launched in 2003, was well received critically, but remains something of a cult classic, making only modest sales.
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Google Backup Fri, 30 May 2008
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| source: News.com.au | thanks: bloggers and their ‘sources’
TBA...
 Redundant?
To compete with online backup and storage services, Google is rumoured to be launching its own service. The move is part of a shift towards ‘cloud computing’, where data is stored online so it can be accessed wherever the internet can be accessed.
At the moment, there are online backup and storage services available, but they are typically only provided to subscribers.
"The applications Australians use every day, such as email, photo sharing, and word processing, are moving to the web because it's easier to share and access your data from anywhere when it's online, in one place," said a Google Australia spokesperson.
- News.com.au
Google intend to make their service free, according to these rumours. They have not announced any release dates for Google Backup as yet.
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Monkeys, mind power and robots
Fri, 23 May 2008
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| source: News.com.au | thanks: Weird Science
Oh my!
 "I don't think we're in Kansas any more, Toto"
Scientists from the University of Pittsburgh have trained monkeys to manipulate robotic arms solely with the power of their minds.
"Immobilised monkeys with electrode filaments inserted into their cerebral cortex learned in only days to reach out with the free-standing prosthesis, pluck a tasty morsel with a pincer-like claw, and pop it in their mouths.
When the path of the arm — positioned next to the shoulder — was deliberately blocked, the animals simply willed it around the obstacle with their minds, says the study, published in Nature.
"The entire task is now performed with brain control," said Andrew Schwartz, the lead researcher and a professor at the University of Pittsburgh."
- News.com.au
This is certainly freaky. Professor Schwartz hopes to be fitting humans with the same device within the next two years to assist amputees and those who have suffered from paralyzing strokes.
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