Can Newegg Survive the Post-PC Future?

September 27th, 2011

jfruhlinger writes “Upgrading your desktop PC’s video card was once a rite of passage for many Slashdot readers — and could also be a gateway to building your own computer from the motherboard up. And more often than not, you bought the components from Newegg. But the tablets and ultrathin laptops that are today’s hot sellers don’t let you so much as swap in more RAM. What’s a component retailer to do in world without user-serviceable components?”

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Spotify Defends Facebook Sign-Up Requirement

September 27th, 2011

An anonymous reader writes “Music service Spotify has got music lovers’ tutus in a twist by insisting that new users have a Facebook account in order to sign up. The company has now defended the policy, stating, oddly, that the Facebook obligation would make sign-up easier.”

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Ask Slashdot: Successful Software From Academia?

September 27th, 2011

An anonymous reader writes “A lot of masters and PhD theses are about development of software targeting the solution or the automation of a specific problem. Bioinformatics, for example, has a lot of journals about software tools that are coded in academic environments; some of this software is the final result of a four-year PhD. But my question is, how much of this software will see the light outside the universities? I know of some examples, like BSD, but they are an exception, right? Is there any list of successful software created entirely inside universities’ labs that became widely used?”

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Purdue Researchers Demonstrate Low-Power, Fast FeTRAM Memory

September 27th, 2011

eldavojohn writes “Researchers at Purdue University’s Birck Nanotechnology Center have released news of a proof of concept new ferroelectric transistor random access memory or ‘FeTRAM.’ This new technology is nonvolatile and the researchers claim it could use up to 99% less energy than current flash memory. Unlike most FeRAM technology that uses a capacitor, FeTRAM provides nondestructive readout by storing information using a ferroelectric transistor instead. From the article: ‘The new technology also is compatible with industry manufacturing processes for complementary metal oxide semiconductors, or CMOS, used to produce computer chips. It has the potential to replace conventional memory systems.’ So if they get this into production, you might not have to worry about your laptop cooking your genitals. They’ve been published in ACS (paywalled) and the professor leading the research has many patents filed relating to transistor nanotechnology.”

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NASA Warns of Magnetic Storm After Huge Solar Flare

September 27th, 2011

coondoggie writes “NASA today said a strong-to-severe geomagnetic storm is in progress following a massive solar flare and coronal mass ejection (CME). CMEs are a solar phenomenon that can send solar particles into space and affect electronic systems in satellites and on Earth. Simulations indicate that solar wind plasma has penetrated close to geosynchronous orbit starting at 9am today. Geosynchronous satellites could therefore be directly exposed to solar wind plasma and magnetic fields. High-latitude sky watchers should be alert for auroras after nightfall, NASA stated.”

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Returning Power From Electric Cars To the Grid

September 27th, 2011

First time accepted submitter icensnow writes “NRG is patenting a means of returning electric power from charged but inactive electric cars to the grid, essentially turning parked electric cars into an energy storage system for the grid. I’m having a hard time deciding if this is genius or silly.”

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The NSA Wants Its Own Smartphone

September 27th, 2011

Art Vanderlay writes “Troy Lange might work for one of the more secretive spy agencies in the United States, but he is happy to talk about his work. He is the NSA’s mobility mission manager and he has been tasked with creating a smartphone that is secure enough to allow government personnel who deal with highly sensitive information to take their work on the road. At present, the U.S. Government has secure cellphones, they use the government’s Secret Internet Protocol Router Network. The problem is that they can only communicate with other devices that are plugged into the network and their use is restricted to top-secret level communications. Lange wants a smartphone that is inter-operable and presumably trusted to deal with even more sensitive information. Lange said that he wanted to see his secure smartphone reach beyond the NSA – ultimately to reach every ‘every employee in the Defense Department, intelligence community and across government.’”

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Will Google TV Owe Royalties For Universal Search?

September 27th, 2011

An anonymous reader writes “Google TV, TiVo, iTunes and virtually every big consumer electronics maker have promised ‘universal search’ engines that enable users to quickly find and play movies, music and other content, no matter where it is stored. But Crestron Electronics, a developer of home automation systems, just filed a patent for ‘Searching Two or More Media Sources for Media.’ In other words, universal search, specifically for both local and cloud-based content.”

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Oracle Demos New SPARC T4 Processor

September 27th, 2011

MojoKid writes “Oracle is publicly demonstrating its new T4 processor today and is shipping beta test systems to selected partners. The new T4 chip is a major departure from previous designs. The T4 offers a maximum of eight cores per physical chip and keeps the T3’s eight-threads-per-core limitation. The T4 compensates for its lower maximum theoretical throughput in several ways. First, the T4 is an out-of-order processor with an enhanced branch predictor. Its maximum speed is said to be at least 3GHz, nearly double that of the 1.67GHz T3. Oracle claims the chip’s single-threaded performance has been significantly boosted, and expects T4 to deliver a 2x-7x speed increase in single-threaded workloads compared to T3.”

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Oracle May ‘Fork Itself’ With MySQL Moves

September 27th, 2011

New submitter packetrat writes “Ars Technica analyzes the recent commercial additions by Oracle to MySQL Enterprise and the additional unrest it’s added to the community. Oracle may be throwing itself out of the community as it pushes more customers to look at fully open-source alternatives.”

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