Apple Admits to Child Labor in Supplier Factories
Those of you familiar with offshore sourcing and manufacturing will know that maintaining compliance with child labor laws can be challenging. Apple is dealing with this first-hand as the Telegraph reports Apple supplier factories in China are under fire for child labor and other infractions. Apple said the child workers are now no longer being used, or are no longer underage. "In each of the three facilities, we required a review of all employment records for the year as well as a complete analysis of the hiring process to clarify how underage people had been able to gain employment," Apple said, in an annual report on its suppliers. Comments
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New Javascript Engine in Firefox Speeds Browser Up 40%
Firefox coders hungry to squeeze every bit of speed out of the browser will be happy to hear that Mozilla's new Javascript engine, JägerMonkey, is netting performance gains of 30-40%. I'm not a coder so I'm not sure what all the hubbub is about but fast equals good, right? Mozilla's Dave Mandelin like what he sees so far, reporting the "JägerMonkey implements enough JavaScript to run all of SunSpider in "Jäger mode" and is 18% faster than the interpreter." He adds, "And we haven't done that many optimizations yet–there are many more things we will do."
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Assassin's Creed II DRM Requires Full-Time Internet Connection
This blogger vents about the harsh DRM that Ubisoft is requiring for the upcoming PC release of Assassin's Creed II. The game will require a constant connection to an Ubisoft server and if it loses the connection for any reason, it will pause the game until it can reconnect. If it cannot reconnect after a certain amount of time, the game is terminated without saving. Whoa. Also, you don't hold onto your saved games anymore. They do. This part is really significant. That's why the game needs the net connection all the time. It's not just for their amusement. The constant contact is necessary because your game is saved on their machine. Not yours. They are claiming that this is for your convenience, because then you can get at your saved games from any computer anywhere, but nobody is fooled. Comments
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Gigabyte Launches First AMD 6 Core-ready Motherboard
GIGABYTE TECHNOLOGY Co. proudly launched their latest AMD AM3 Socket GA-890GPA-UD3H motherboard, delivering loads of performance enhancing bandwidth for applications such as high end gaming and high speed data transfer on systems featuring new AMD 6 core CPUs. The first motherboard featuring the AMD 890GX chipset paired with the all new SB850 South Bridge, the GIGABYTE GA-890GPA-UD3H offers the industry's first native support for Serial ATA 6Gbps for up to 6 devices. The AMD SB850 also offers the industry's first Serial ATA 6 Gbps RAID support, allowing users to configure RAID 0,1,5 and 10 for maximum data performance or enhanced data backup. Comments
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Class Action Suit Filed for ODD Price Fixing
Tech giants Sony, Samsung, Toshiba, LG, Hitachi, and several subsidiaries were hit with a class action lawsuit alleging price fixing in the optical disc drive market. The suit was filed in CA by Prisco Electric Co., a retailer located in Connecticut. Ruh-roh! The lawsuit, filed Wednesday, also claims the disc drive manufacturers used trade organization forums to meet and discuss agreements to keep prices of CD, DVD and Blu-ray drives in products like the Sony PlayStation 3 and PCs artificially high. "When the price of ODD began to dip, the Defendants entered into an illegal agreement to prevent competitors from entering into the market and to keep prices at a supracompetitive level," the lawsuit states. Comments
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Rumor: Is Steam Coming to Mac?
Neowin takes a look at the rumor of a release of Valve's Steam client for the Mac. Apparently, there is some OSX stuff buried in a recent PC release for Steam. Yay or who cares? Steam recently moved from Microsoft's Trident web rendering engine to Webkit, an engine used by Apple's Safari and Google Chrome. Valve's Chris Green has also posted on his Linkedin profile that Valve are interested in Mac and Linux engineers. Historically Valve have given very little support to the Mac, but the debut of Steam on the platform could signal a change of attitude. Comments
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US Dept of Defense OKs Social Media Access
The Pentagon gave the green light to DOD employees that are in nonclassified networks to use social media sites like Twitter or Facebook. I wonder how long it will take before this order is rescinded because some dimwit posted pics of the latest UAV in their Facebook. The Pentagon says it recognizes that social networks, among other Web capabilities, are useful tools for interaction both within the Defense Department and between the agency and the general public. It is also satisfied with the balance it has struck between network security and use of Internet-based tools. And it also acknowledges that an either/or decision between security and information sharing is impractical. Comments
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Scientists Figure Out How to Harvest Body Kinetic Energy
Someday, scratching yourself might power your BlueTooth headset. Well, maybe not but the idea of using body movements to power items has been something many researchers have pondered but few have solved. Some brains at Princeton University have figured out a way to do it via printable piezoelectric crystals. Cool beans! A first application might be in shoes, to produce enough power to keep a music player or phone charged. But the eventual goal would be to make a flexible power generator that could be implanted in the chest or elsewhere. Comments
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Google Considering Gigabit Broadband Service
Google is considering the construction of a fiber-optic network that delivers gigabit Internet speeds so they can show the potential of high-speed Internet service. I'd welcome a problem where the bottleneck is my LAN switch instead of my WAN connection. The cost of the test project, announced this month, isn't known and will depend on demographics, the lay of the land and the number of households that use it, said Richard Whitt, Google's Washington counsel on telecommunications and media issues. The company hasn't determined the location or size of the network, which could serve 50,000 to 500,000 customers. Comments
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Iris Scanners to Help Prevent Mistaken Inmate Releases
The Associated Press reports that dozens of jails nationwide are getting iris scanners installed as part of a system to thwart mistakes such as this: an inmate in a Baltimore, MD jail impersonated his roommate and fooled jailers into releasing him. I wonder if the scanners talk and make cool sounds like the ones in Black Mesa. The sheriff's association teamed with Plymouth, Mass.-based scanner company Biometric Intelligence and Identification Technologies and picked the agencies from more than 400 that were interested in installing scanners. In picking jails, officials looked to spread machines across the country and place them in spots with the technological know-how to use them. Comments
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Celsius Phone Turns Digital into Mechanical
If you've got $300K burning a hole in your Swiss bank account and already own a Girard-Perregaux watch, then the LeDIX phone by Celsius might belong on your short list. The premise behind the phone seemingly embraces the steampunk mindset by converting digital displays into mechanical functionality. LeDIX is a watch/phone with some unusual new aspects, but their ultimate goal is to physicalize the digital. Caller ID could be a flipping board of shifting letters, quietly clattering, like the destination sign in a railway station. A phone could indicate waiting messages by shifting small, silvery balls, or ticking a tiny watch hand. You could dial with a dial. Pretty much only the radio needs to remain digital. Comments
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Prices for DDR2 to Rise, DDR3 Steady
DigiTimes reports that DRAM prices will remain steady in the case of DDR3 and will actually climb for DDR2 parts as manufacturers switch to DDR3. Remember those good ol' days of $40 for 4GB DDR2? Looks like those will remain in our dusty memories. In the third quarter, growing demand for DDR3 chips may push up the chip's average price above US$3, according to Lu. She also warned that chipmakers' aggressive ramp-ups of DDR3 memory may put them under risk of excessive supply and price erosion in the fourth quarter. Comments
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Turning Math Into Cash
Technology Review has an article about how IBM is leveraging applied mathematics and turning it into cold, hard cash. While the article focuses on Big Blue, rest assured that companies around the world see the value of switching from a "gut feeling" to mathematical formulae. If you're trying to figure out what to do with your skillz at math, give the article a read. It's long but quite detailed, as you can expect from an MIT source. For example, stochastic optimization algorithms, which incorporate random elements rather than assuming that all values are exact, have been used for decades to help manufacturers and financial markets adjust to changing conditions. But IBM's mathematicians are applying the techniques to problems in human resources and marketing. They are using mathematical models to help the company find new customers and figure out the right mix of veteran and junior programmers to assign to a big software project. Comments
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Next-Gen Mobile Chipsets from MW Congress 2010
SlashGear has an article that previews the most impressive chipsets that they saw at Mobile World 2010 in Barcelona earlier his month. What's the common thread through these? Convergence, baby. This year, while there was no shortage of impressive hardware imminent to the market, the real promise for me was in next-gen chipsets. Texas Instruments, NVIDIA, Freescale, Marvell, Qualcomm and others had all brought their wares along to demo, and the promises – not to mention the step up from existing platforms – were flowing thick and fast. So, what sort of devices can we expect using these new chipsets? Comments
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MSI Unveils R5870 Lightning Video Card
MSI has officially launched a new generation of the Lightning series, the R5870 Lightning. Not only are top-quality components used in the design, but the following features are also included: exclusive all Hi-c CAP for GPU power, 15-phase power design, two 8-pin external power connectors, special PCB design called LPL (Lightning Power Layer), Twin Frozr II Thermal design with 8mm SuperPipe technologyÂ…etc. These outstanding features boost overall performance and reliability to a whole new level. This can be described as a top-performing product specifically designed for the extreme gamers and built to be perfect. Comments
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