Intel marks 40 years of chip making

By Maggie Shiels
Technology reporter, BBC News, Silicon Valley

Moore's Law is all about smaller, faster and cheaper chips every two years

Intel, already the world's biggest semiconductor company, has big plans for the future as it celebrates 40 years in the chip making business.

The company hopes to see Intel chips being built into virtually every segment of computing.

Paul Otellini, Intel's chief executive and president said the next four decades would be about ubiquitous computing encompassing every aspect of daily life.

"We're now focusing on how to take [Intel's] architecture into new areas, bringing the benefits of that architecture we have built into new markets," he said. "Bringing the benefits of the internet into devices that don't have it today. Bringing the benefits of computing and communications to billions of people that have no access to it today.

The company's past success gave it a "unique opportunity," he said.

Quad cores are still considered the bleeding edge of technology today

It might be a great opportunity, but some warn that diversifying into products like smart phones and MP3 players won't be easy for Intel.

"It's a huge challenge for them," said Dan Hutcheson an analyst at VLSI Research.

"They are trying to get into a market where there are really strong existing suppliers like ARM in the UK and Freescale in the US.

"Intel presently sells products in the $45-$300 (£22-£150) range and now they want to move into the $5-$12 market. That's a significant shift to take a company like Intel from high end to medium to low end."

BY-BBC NEWS

MoD admits loss of secret files

More than 100 USB memory sticks, some containing secret information, have been lost or stolen from the Ministry of Defence since 2004, it has emerged.

The department also admitted that more than 650 laptops had been stolen over the past four years - nearly double the figure previously claimed.

The Liberal Democrats condemned the latest security breaches as evidence of "shocking incompetence".

But the MoD insisted that its policies were "generally fit for purpose".

Previously the MoD had confirmed that 347 laptops were stolen between 2004 and 2007.

Defence Secretary Des Browne issued revised figures after "anomalies in the reporting process" were discovered.

The official total is now 658 laptops stolen, with another 89 lost. Just 32 have been recovered.

In a separate response, ministers said that 121 of the department's USB memory sticks had been taken or misplaced since 2004.

BY-BBC NEWS

NASA Study Says Water Flowed Freely On Mars

By K.C. Jones
InformationWeek
July 18, 2008 11:56 AM

Scientists have studied data from NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter and they believe Mars once had large lakes, flowing rivers, and other wet environments that could have supported life.

A study published in the July 17 issue of Nature shows that large ancient highlands of Mars contain clay minerals, which needed water to form. Volcanic lava buried the highlands, which cover about half of Mars' surface, but craters later exposed them in thousands of locations, NASA said.

NASA said the minerals record the interaction between water and rocks about 4.6 billion to 3.8 billion years ago, soon after scientists believe the solar system formed. Scientists based their findings on information from the Compact Reconnaissance Imaging Spectrometer for Mars (CRISM) on the Reconnaissance Orbiter.

"The big surprise from these new results is how pervasive and long-lasting Mars' water was, and how diverse the wet environments were," Scott Murchie, CRISM's principal investigator at Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory, said in an announcement.

John Mustard, a member of the CRISM team from Brown University, and lead author of the Nature study, said many rocks were slightly altered by water, "but in a few locations they have been so altered that a great deal of water must have flushed though the rocks and soil.

"This is really exciting because we're finding dozens of sites where future missions can land to understand if Mars was ever habitable and if so, to look for signs of past life," he said.

An earlier study, published in the June 2 issue of Nature Geosciences, concluded wet conditions existed on Mars thousands to millions of years after the clays formed. Scientists believe that rivers flowed through the highlands and through a delta into a crater lake a little larger Lake Tahoe in California.

"The distribution of clays inside the ancient lakebed shows that standing water must have persisted for thousands of years," Bethany Ehlmann, CRISM's team member and lead author of the study of an ancient lake on Mars, said. "Clays are wonderful at trapping and preserving organic matter, so if life ever existed in this region, there's a chance of its chemistry being preserved in the delta."

Murchie said his team will use the findings to create a list of sites to explore and search for organic chemistry and "perhaps determine whether life ever existed on Mars."

The iPhone: Second Time's a Charm

By ANITA HAMILTON

The original iPhone was a high-tech indulgence. From its gorgeous touchscreen to its classy Web browser, it set a new bar for the look and feel of mobile phones. Naysayers nitpicked about its technical shortcomings — and its top-shelf price — but its breakthrough design won it millions of fans nonetheless.

The new iPhone 3G should please everyone. Its look and feel are only slightly improved, but a faster network loads Web pages more quickly, true GPS functionality allows it to easily find places nearby, and the new $199 price (down from $400) makes it an affordable luxury.

Before deciding whether to buy, however, make sure you can actually take advantage of the iPhone 3G's high-speed data network. 3G stands for third-generation, which in non-geek speak translates to Web pages and mail messages that, ideally, load about three times faster than on the original iPhone. Even better, 3G coverage enables you to make a phone call and surf the Web at the same time. That's great, if you live or work in a place where the 3G network of AT&T (the sole wireless carrier of the iPhone) is active. (To find out, check AT&T's virtual map.) That's not so great in cities like New York where AT&T's cellular coverage is awful. As one of my colleagues in New York City, who bought the original iPhone, commented, "It's just a toy. You can't make phone calls on it, so I carry my Verizon phone with me all the time."

The real fun begins when you tap on the icon called "App Store" and start browsing the hundreds of add-on applications that have been developed just for the iPhone. You'll find tons of games (I like JirboBreak, a free game inspired by the Atari classic Breakout) and mobile versions of popular websites like Pandora, Facebook, MySpace and the New York Times. Most apps will cost you, but the vast majority are $9.99 or less. The apps work on the old iPhones too, but you'll enjoy them a lot more on the iPhone 3G because many of the programs, including Yelp (local business reviews), Whrrl (mobile social networking) and UrbanSpoon (restaurant reviews), use your exact location — provided by the iPhone 3G's GPS chip — to make recommendations. The apps also load much faster over the 3G network.

I was disappointed to learn, however, that 3G, while an improvement over AT&T's creaky Edge network, is still not fast enough to allow wireless downloads of either iTunes music or some of the larger applications. Instead, I had to either log onto a wi-fi network or physically plug my phone into my PC. And it still feels pokey compared to my cable broadband connection at home. At times, downloads took so long that I gave up on checking for new messages and waiting for mobile websites to load. Even the prettiest browser can't make up for that.

The virtual keyboard, perhaps the iPhone's most unloved feature, remains unchanged. I like it, but some people find it so torturous to type with that they refrain from sending e-mails or typing Web addresses altogether. Fortunately, the new apps in many ways serve as shortcuts to popular websites, reducing the need to do much typing. So, instead of launching the built-in Safari browser and typing a URL, you can just tap on, say, the free WeatherBug app to check the forecast or the iScopes button to get your daily horoscope.

Here's my top gripe: the iPhone 3G does not let you record video or watch live TV, features that are standard (and free) on less expensive rivals like the Samsung Instinct and Verizon Voyager. There is no excuse for leaving out these functions. Otherwise, I can live with the unremovable battery and accept the skimpy battery life (about 5 hours with heavy usage in my tests) as the price for the iPhone's big, bright screen. Since I don't have a huge media collection, the unexpandable memory (8 GB comes standard; for 16 GB, you'll pay an extra $100) doesn't faze me either. If you've got lots of songs, photos or other files, however, this is a real drawback.

Still, it's hard not to have a soft spot for the iPhone. The problematic launch of the iPhone 3G on July 11 was unfortunate. But once you've tapped around the browser for even a few minutes or played with the slider that lets you fast-forward or rewind voice messages in the phone's visual voicemail, it's easy to see why millions of people are sold. The iPhone has the most elegant user interface of any phone I've seen, and its add-on apps make it more than just a toy you'll soon outgrow. What's more, the iPhone's GPS chip and 3G network bring it closer in line with other smartphones' data capabilities.

So, if you can live with the $70-per-month fee for all-inclusive data and voice calling — and can get decent coverage with AT&T where you live — it's certainly worth considering. If you're on a budget (and who isn't?), though, you'll find more useful features on less pricey rivals.

Personally, I'm holding out for the new handsets that will run on Google's Android operating system due out later this year. Android phones will be carrier agnostic, so I won't be shackled to the AT&T network, and the phone's add-on apps are likely to be less expensive (and possibly even free). That's the promise, anyway. I'll know for sure once I get my hands on one.

BY-TIME in patrnership with CNN

Futuristic windshield aims to help older drivers

WARREN, Michigan (AP) -- When Coke bottle glasses just won't cut it for safe driving, a futuristic windshield might do the trick.

Researchers are working on a windshield so aging drivers with vision problems are able to see more clearly.

General Motors Corp. researchers are working on a windshield that combines lasers, infrared sensors and a camera to take what's happening on the road and enhance it, so aging drivers with vision problems are able to see a little more clearly.

Though it's only in the research stage now, the technology soon will be more useful than ever.

The 65 and older population in the U.S. will nearly double in about 20 years, meaning more people will be struggling to see the road like they used to.

GM's new windshield won't improve their vision, but it will make objects stand out that could otherwise go unnoticed by an aged eye.

At the same time, the developers say the technology won't cause drivers to plow into trees. It is enhancing just a few objects that are already in a driver's view, not splashing distracting information onto the glass.

For example, during a foggy drive, a laser projects a blue line onto the windshield that follows the edge of the road. Or if infrared sensors detect a person or animal in the driver's path during a night drive, its outline is projected on the windshield to highlight its location.