Each of the 48 cores are fully programmable and are connected via a “2-D mesh” that is capable of speeds up to 256Gb/s. It is this “mesh” that allows Intel to compare the chip to so-called “Cloud Servers” which use hardwired networks to share a workload.

One of the most important aspects of this experimental chip is the concept of “islands” that was introduced. While things get a little complicated here, let’s just point out that Intel has introduced a new concept of how power and frequency is modulated. The end result is that this chip can function on as little as 25 watts and a maximum of 125 watts at full power.

This can be compared to today’s dual and quad-core processors, which run at around the same wattage. That is a serious decrease in wattage compared to the increase in computing power!

You may be asking as to why this prototype is more important than the 80-core test chip known as the Terra Core unveiled three years ago. Well, the answer is that this “prototype” can actually be used, while the Terra Core was more a proof-of-concept.

The 48-Core example contains fully-functional x86 IA cores that are actually programmable. Yes, for you Linux aficionados out there, you CAN use this prototype to boot a kernel!

Intel is planning to release a six-core processor next year (codenamed Gulftown), the 48-core prototype is still too expensive to manufacture commercially as yet.

To my friends at Intel: When you guys are done playing with your new toy, can I borrow it for a couple of years? You know, just until I can get my Mom to buy me one?

The truth is, I’m a bit of an anarchist, I always have been. I visit Piratebay on a regular basis, and I don’t pay a monthly Usenet fee for the news articles. However, when it comes to the case of Psystar vs Apple, I’m all about the big guy: Apple.

For those of you who have been living on a deserted island for the past couple of years; Psystar is a so-called ‘Mac-Clone’ retailer. They sell computers that run the latest Macintosh software.

It all started back in 2005 when Apple decided to start using Intel brand processors. Before this, they had pretty much locked their OS to their hardware and it was next to impossible to get it running on any other machine.

After the Intel switch, downloads for the Mac OS from Apple’s own download page pretty much went hysterical for a while. With a little tweaking, anyone could have a Mac on the cheap.

At average prices somewhere between 2 to 3 times higher than PCs, Macs have always been one of the most expensive personal and business computing solutions available. After the switch, Apple was able to offer cheaper hardware, but the catch was that their proprietary system was now open for pirating.

Then came Psystar, they started selling Mac clones straight from their website, believing that they had found a flaw in Apple’s Terms of Use for the operating system.

It turns out, they really just thought that Apple’s terms were unenforceable. Their whole legal position was based on the fact that they never thought a judge would side with Apple, based soley on the grammar they used when writing their TOU.

Now, we hear that Psystar settled with Apple for the princely sum of $2.7 million (US). If, as they reported, they have to date sold 768 clones, this means that Psystar has promised to pay a little over $3,000 (US) for each unit sold.

Okay, so maybe I don’t understand the math that Psystar is using to justify themselves to their stockholders, but it looks to me as if they are in serious trouble, financially.

Legally, the settlement came with a clause that says Psystar won’t be paying anything until all appeals are finished. Which could take several years. In this way, they were able to stop Apple’s Cease-And-Desist request to the judge and continue to sell their products.

Psystar is now claiming to be selling Mac-Ready PCs, without the OS. Purchasers will be able to download their own copies of the Operating System and install it manually. This of course could never catch on, but then only selling 768 units to begin with is not exactly stellar either.

The good news is that Apple finally seems to be making progress with protecting their property. Technically a hardware company since its inception, Apple has constantly worked to produce an operating system that will take full advantage of the latest hardware available.

To take their work, which is basically offered for free to Macintosh owners, and try to make a profit from it is just this side of sleazy. Psystar can tell their shareholders whatever they want, but as of now, they don’t have a chance in hell of pulling a profit.

In 2006, the electronics world was rocked when US regulators announced a probe into possible price fixing by the world’s leading LCD manufacturers, a probe that eventually lead to convictions against the companies, who eventually paid large fines for their actions. Several of the companies plead guilty to the crime of price fixing, though Samsung was never charged and cooperated with investigators.

Mark Durrant, a spokesman for Nokia, has stated that the company filed the suits here in the US and in the UK, against both LCD and CRT manufacturers. He noted that Nokia hoped to avoid a years-long battle and would settle out of court.

For the hardware manufacturers, this is a turning point in their recovery from the turndown in profits they have suffered since the initial investigation in 2006. Weathering this battle with Nokia is crucial to their continued operations.

Since Nokia is the undisputed champion when it comes to cell phones, this could very well be the worst thing that could happen to these companies for a long time. Even should they manage to settle this battle outside of a courtroom, they have already lost the battle with the guilty pleas in 2006, opening them up for even more lawsuits from other manufacturers in the near future.

Watch for Nokia’s stock to rise for a few days as copies of the lawsuits finally make it to the desks of the LCD manufacturers, but I predict a major problem for Nokia in the near future. Everyone knows they have been losing market share since the iPhone arrived to blazing angelic trumpets, but this is not the way to regain it.

It is a well-known ploy in the business world: If you can’t make money from sales, find someone to sue. Unfortunately, companies who sue their own suppliers soon find themselves having a hard time finding contracts with them after the smoke clears. Maybe this is just the first of the death knells from the Finnish giant.

In Michael’s own words, “I want a dead simple and dirt cheap touch screen web tablet to surf the web.” And he was prepared to unveil the end-product on November 20th in San Fransisco when he got a “bad news” email from the hardware manufacturer he had partnered with.

I encourage you to read the whole post before continuing, but for those who don’t wanna, I’m gonna summarize it all and then bitch about it for a while…

Hopefully, you read the post already. If not, here’s a rundown:
Michael, represented by TechCrunch, had been working with Chandra Rathakrishnan, the CEO of a partner company called Fusion Garage. Despite shared working conditions, including using space in TechCrunch’s very own offices and actually sharing some employees, Fusion Garage was considered a separate entity.

Then came along a mysterious third-party company who wanted to buy out TechCrunch and Fusion Garage. That’s when things get really confusing from Michael’s perspective. Suddenly, Fusion’s shareholders didn’t see the value in continuing to work with TechCrunch, since they already had the working physical models and all of the blueprints to them.

In on quoted email, a shareholder wrote: “We still acknowledge that Arrington and TechCrunch bring some value to your business endeavor…If he agrees to our terms, we would have Arrington assume the role of visionary/evangelist/marketing head and Fusion Garage would acquire the rights to use the Crunchpad brand and name. Personally, I don’t think the name is all that important but you seem to be somewhat attached to the name.”

In other words, “Hey, thanks for the idea and all the hard work you put in, but we can take it from here and really don’t need any more assistance from you. Bye-bye!”

This is a nightmare scenario for startup firms everywhere. You spend months, even years, getting your initial capital secured, work 16 to 18 hours a day meeting personally with the heads of companies who like your ideas and finally settle down to business with a group that you feel has the same goals and vision as yourself. Then, overnight, they take your product and run.

The saddest part of the whole story is that no one owns the IP for the product outright, both firms share the copyright. Without patents or patent application receipts, Michael has nothing to show that the whole project was his idea from the start.

So Fusion Garage is free to take their part of the project, which is pretty much the whole damned thing, and run. And it is all perfectly legal, as far as copyright laws are concerned.

In the end, Michael and TechCrunch could have saved themselves a whole ton of grief with the proper contracts, but instead it appears as if they relied on a gentleman’s agreement.

I imagine that if Fusion Garage moves ahead with the release of the gadget, TechCrunch has at least a civil case they can pursue, but is it really worth the money it will cost to get the lawyers involved? In his own words, Michael stated that he never expected the device to be a huge money-maker, so a lawsuit may just be too futile to pursue.

It looks like TechCrunch has wasted their time and money and Fusion Garage has taken advantage of a fat little sheep.

Take this as a lesson learned from the mistakes of others: No “partnership” is equal on both sides. In today’s business world, you can’t trust even your own brother to stand with you when the stakes get high enough. Copyright your work, patent your hardware, and for God’s sake, require contracts with your partners and employees.

For those of you who have never heard of Google OS, you can watch this video:

Think for a moment about bumper cars. Just about anyone can drive a bumper car. They are limited in speed, but you can have a ton of fun playing with them. The only downside to bumper cars is that they have to be inside the special electrified cage in order to work. Take them out, and they simply won’t work. That’s what an operating system is: It’s a cage that allows all of your programs to work. In the past, taking programs outside an operating system made about as much sense as taking bumper cars out of the cage.

Today, we are being slowly introduced to so-called “Cloud Computing” which allows programs to be taken out of the computer as we know it and ran in the “cloud” over the Internet. Every day you access programs that run in the cloud without even thinking about it. If you use gmail or yahoo mail, you have accessed a program that runs in the cloud. Anyone who has ever used a Google doc or played a browser-based game has used cloud computing without even knowing it. This isn’t new technology, but the scope thus far has been limited.

Google wants to fix that. They plan to release an operating system based on Linux and designed to run on netbook computers. Netbooks, as you may know, are similar to laptops at first glance, but have very limited systems. They typically run on flash memory and with very low graphic capabilities compared to today’s newer computers. Google plans to provide Netbook manufacturers with copies of Google Chrome OS to put on these Netbooks and then the users will connect to the Internet to access their data, including all programs they wish to run.

There are several reasons all of this is a bad idea for Google:

(1) “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it!” When a new product is released, it usually fills a market bracket called a “need”. When cotton pickers of old could not keep up with the demands of the day, someone invented to combine tractor and fulfilled the need for faster harvesting. Google has thus far been unable to actually find a need for yet another operating system, despite their own ideas of creating one for the Netbook group.

(2) “Momma said knock you out!” Google is by far the biggest name in Internet search and advertising. They set the bar when it comes to how any given website is located and ranked anywhere in the world. The problem is, that’s pretty much all they are really good at and when Microsoft came along and tried to pull and inside run on them with their own search engine, Google got mad. Then they tried to get even. So far, pretty much everything they have tried has failed. Google Maps and Google Earth is the best thing since sliced bread, in my book. Gmail is my primary email access, however it has had some serious ups and downs in the past. Then Google goes after Microsoft with the gloves off. Google Docs is awesome, but with Google’s issues over privacy and the major corporations’ concern over security, it will never compete seriously with Microsoft Office. By the way, OpenOffice is actually starting to kick Microsoft’s ass in a way that Google Docs never has. Then they introduced Knol, which is pretty much a flop. They also tried their hand against Second Life with Lively, which is now kaput. Should we even discuss Orkut? My point being: You shouldn’t toss your cash out the window in the hopes of distracting the other drivers in a race. It rarely works and the money could have gone to making what does work, work better.

(3) “Don’t be evil” Yes, that’s actually part of Google’s own credo. I am very proud of Google’s Open Source initiative. With their backing, the Open Source community has grown by leaps and bounds. As a result, Google has proven that you can give away your source code and still make money. Companies like SuSE(Novell) and RedHat make millions of dollars a year from Open Source software. Chromium OS is now available as an Open Source download right now, however the operating system itself will not be available to download. Unlike Open Source versions of Linux, Chromium OS will only provided to machine manufacturers for distribution only to people who buy the Netbooks. So if you have a Netbook right now and you are biting your nails in anticipation, I hate to disappoint you, but it’ll nevah happen. To me, that’s evil. You release your code to the wild, hoping to get feedback and free bug fixes by the programming community, but the only way you are going to release the results is when people pay you for it?

So go ahead and write this down for me, kay? If Google doesn’t change their mind about a few of the plans they have for Chromium, it will be appearing on shelves at your local Wal-Mart in about a year. Two years after that, after you’ve thrown out your “Chromium OS Rocks!” T-shirts and torn off your “I heart Chromium” bumper stickers, you can slap yourself in the head for that very large carbon footprint you just stomped into the local dump when you tossed the POS Netbook that booted in 7 seconds and pretty much nothing else worthwhile, and say to yourself, “I should have listened to Shane and just spent my money on that stripper instead!”

Before I move on the the heart of the matter, I want to clarify a few things. First and foremost, I am a bit old school in that I believe a “hacker” is someone who hacks programs in order to make them better.

This hearkens back to the old days where programs were designed on paper and then punched out on cards before being physically placed into the computer for processing. In those days, virtual memory was a scarcity that would be laughable by today’s standards and as such, programmers would often “hack away” at their programs and the programs of others in order to reduce the amount of code it took for them to run.

One example of this might be the MIT efforts to hack Conway’s Game Of Life in order to make the program small enough to run in the limited time available to the students. In this sense, the Hacker is a person who is interested in the underlying world of computers, the part that is hidden from the eyes of the End User and controls the outcome of various scenarios.

It is the curiosity and desire for control of this underlying, hidden world that causes honest men and women to “hack” the systems available to them. Second, and nearly as important, is the definition that has taken over the old school meaning of “hacker”, one that Richard Stallman and his fellow classmates would have called a “thief”, not a “hacker”.

These people are less interested in pursuing the goal of learning for learning’s sake than they are in learning for the sake of self-empowerment. As the old saying goes, “Just because you CAN do something doesn’t mean that you SHOULD.” If I might call back to the old MIT days; this is similar to Mr. Stallman’s work to undermine the early days of computer security, when the powers that be began locking away key components of the computer systems behind actual doors.

Back then, the students of MIT worked hard to get through those doors to the components, even to the point of making copies of the keys and in one instance, they actually entered one locked room by removing ceiling tiles in an adjacent bathroom and climbing over the wall. As justified as the students thought they were in their actions, today they would be called “hackers” and carted off to jail to await trial.

As the Secret Service can attest, you can not prevent someone from committing an illegal act if they are determined enough to do so. Someone who is willing to throw their life away in an attempt to get what they want can rarely be stopped, and if the individual is part of a larger group of similarly determined individuals, the chances get exponentially harder as the numbers increase.

Let’s for a moment look at passwords. If I wanted, I could quickly gain access to anyone’s password-protected system anywhere in the world as long as that system is connected to (1) the Internet or (2) a phone line. I’m not talking about the old “brute force” hacks where you have a program running away in the background using sophisticated algorithms to randomly try series of characters and words until the “aha!” moment hits. These attacks are very old and easy enough to foil by locking out a user’s account if multiple failed password attempts are created. Instead, I would socially engineer my way in.

Here’s a scenario for you: Let’s say that I wanted to gain access to a computer system from a fictional company called “Allied Divestments” that is connected to the Internet and allows users to log in from home. Most user accounts only allow limited access, for instance some systems may only allow company email to be accessed if your IP or MAC address does not come from inside the company.

Even though IP and MAC are easily hackable, I don’t worry about that right now since the account I am really after has root permissions. Since the company I am looking at would be a publicly traded corporation, the names of the key personnel would be a matter of public record and thus I would know that “Steve Ally” is the chief security officer.

A bit of digging around on MySpace, Facebook and Twitter could easily net me (1) Steve’s favorite user name or (2) the names of the people closest to him in the company. From there, I would look for and find the public email addresses of the highest possible security member on Steve’s staff. I really don’t want Steve’s information so much as that of someone right below him.

See, Steve may be head of security, but he may not even know how the system works, since most bosses don’t. Now, once I have the name of the underling in question, I buy a new pre-paid cell from a retailer, preferably a large store a few towns away. A bit of advance planning might have seen me purchase the phone and activated it months before. By securing the phone away from my residence, I am able to cover my tracks since I know that the FBI or police could trace my movements by looking at what towers the cell’s signal was bouncing off of.

Since the phone is pre-paid, I don’t even have to use a credit card or show any form of ID, thus the phone can not be traced back to me personally. Using this “black” phone, I can now locate an office where “Allied Divestments” houses accountants and make my call, impersonating the underling I had located earlier. I simply ask to speak to the branch manager, telling the switch operator my “name”, the full name that is of the underling, and tell them that it is an urgent matter of security.

Once on the phone with the manager, I tell him or her that a hacker is on the system and we are attempting to track them down. I give them my cell phone number, explaining that the hacker is causing disruptions all over and we believe them to be a minor employee, thus we do not want to use the internal lines for this. Speaking quickly and with confidence, I could have the branch manager reboot their computer into “safe mode” and read me the data from the command “ipconfig” from the command line in Windows.

This, I would explain, will tell me if the manager’s own computer were “infected” since only his IP address should be showing up. Within no time at all, this branch manager would give me his or her username and password and any other information I wanted. If “Allied Divestments” had stringent security measures in place, I might have to use an accomplice or two to help solidify the whole mess by asking the manager to call “Security Headquarters” from his or her cell phone and give them a 1-800 number that had already been set up to ring to an accomplice’s cell phone. This accomplice would back up my story and verify my credentials as needed. Now that I have the branch manager’s username and password, I have access to the system. I would ask the manager to wait about five minutes before changing their password for security reasons. I would not ask for the new password, because at this point I am already logged in from a remote location and any changes would not affect my connection.

Working quickly, I could have the data that I wanted, whether it be the name and company phone number of a higher individual with more access, or with luck the branch manager might have the access I need. With a high-speed Internet connection, I could download the payroll, expenditures, email and even the employee file records that I wanted before anyone could step in and sever my connection. With any luck, the branch manager would continue to call the 1-800 number I provided for any inquiries into the steps we were taking to located the “hacker” I mentioned earlier. Of course, even if the manager caught on to the deception, I would have covered my tracks enough to back out of the system and possibly even upload the data to a public server where anyone could read it at will. Of course, that is just one of countless scenarios available.

Even with my tracks covered as best as I could, there are countless ways for the FBI to track me down, since there are countless clues I might have dropped on my way through, such as the security camera footage at the retail location where I bought the black phone or the machine address of the laptop I used for connecting to the server. Even if I managed to cover every angle, the FBI has access to technology that can still track me down, technology that I have no idea even exists, for instance they might have a program that can detect the speed of which I hit certain keys when typing at my normal speed, given enough characters typed, this could be just as individual as a fingerprint or drop of blood.

The point is not whether or not I get caught, which is very likely, but whether or not I was able to access the data I wanted, which I did. In the end, I might be facing criminal and civil charges, but I accomplished what I wanted; much like an assassin might be caught but their victim is still dead. In the end, the results are that Allied Divestments lost, the hackers won.

The most damning information any company can lose are inter-office memos in the form of email. Much of the time, emails coming for “Headquarters” are worded in a way that is appropriate to politicians and lawyers. These emails do not generally contain sensitive information, such as upcoming fiscal reports or pending lawsuits. Instead, a hacker could find these things in the inter-office communication.

Many times in the corporate world, people begin to lose sight of the fact that their every keystroke could be recorded. Since Bob’s best friend Max works just down the hall, Bob feels safe enough to send Max the latest joke, rumor or fact that is circulating, with no thought to how the email might be intercepted. Some companies use large off-site servers to store emails and such, servers that are physically managed by other companies.

These off-site servers are easy enough to hack with the right credentials, which may in turn be easily enough hacked from the individual users. Once the server is located and opened, the attacker can use the information contained therein to literally bring a company to its knees.

For an example of this just look at how the so-called “Big Tobacco” companies were humbled by inter-office memos detailing the desire of some key employees to alter the chemical makeup of their product to make it more addicting. Those documents were not hacked out, but actually obtained via a court order. Imagine the damage that the companies might have suffered had a hacker located and publicly distributed this information before the court was able to seal the records from the jury’s eyes pending investigation.

So, now that we’ve outlined the dangers of security breaches, let’s talk about how you can protect yourself against hackers with 100% efficiency. What we are talking about is not how to keep hackers out of your system, no amount of security can protect you there. Even locked doors and the latest password encryption systems can not foil a determined attacker, since those can be broken down by attackers on the inside; the door could be bypassed by an attacker who managed to get a job on the cleaning crew and the encrypted passwords might be given away by trusted but naive employees. If you can think of a security measure, a desperate enough individual can think of a way to bypass it. Even Fort Knox can be broken into if the attackers had the resources and will to do so.

The answer is obvious and simple: Stop worrying about the hackers and start focusing on the data. If you can’t keep flies out of the syrup, throw out the syrup. If you have employees who are sending damning information to one another via email, fire them. That’s not a joke, no single individual is worth the trouble they can cause with a few poorly worded sentences. Track them down and purge them from the system.

Much as a chain is only as strong as its weakest link, a company’s sensitive information is only as secure as it’s most disgruntled employee. The same guy down the hall that just sent everyone the video of the humping elephants could very well be the same guy who is about to send a colleague a copy of the transcript of the conversation he just had with a company lawyer concerning an upcoming lawsuit.

It’s called “Insider Trading” for a reason, insiders discover sensitive information and leak it to their “friends” or family members, or even capitalize on it themselves. In the end, it’s not the kid with the new laptop and a beef with your company’s carbon footprint that you have to worry about, it’s the data itself that is going to get you in trouble. You don’t go to jail because you got caught; you go to jail because you committed a crime.

In the end, you can protect yourself and your company from any hacker, no matter how determined by taking away the fuel they need to start the fire that will devastate your company. Monitor emails, record phone calls, and most importantly, fire anyone who acts in an unethical or immoral way whether it be immediately damaging or not. You can’t stop the hackers, but you can protect yourself. It’s hard and some might say impossible, but without fuel there is no fire and without damning data, the hackers can’t hurt you. Stop them? Can’t be done. Protect yourself from them? It’s hard, but it’s possible.

As explained on their blog, Google claims to have invented a new, mo’ betta way of handling the whole mess. As a matter of fact, they actually claim that their way is actually 55% faster than the current method of loading the top 25 websites, in “simulated” home networks.

First, how in the hell do you “simulate” a home network? Are they realistically throttling themselves by downloading the first three seasons of Smallville via bittorrent, or are they just turning a knob and setting their router to “home network”?

Now, I have a lot of respect (snicker) for the folks over at Google. I mean, these are the people who brought us the awe-inspiring Chrome browser that I can’t even use, cause I actually run an operating system (Linux) and not a commercial for expensive anti-virus (Windows). But is this really a problem for most folks with broadband connections?

It’s been something like five years or so since I last noticed myself biting my fingernails as eBay slowly rendered itself on my screen. I really haven’t had much problems with latency since I gave up command-line ftp’ing my pr0n from badly-configured websites.

I think these guys should focus on getting us past Dec 12, 2012 and forget about making the internets faster. Unless of course they really wanted to make it so that I could watch four simultaneous episodes of Heroes while Googling for nude pictures of Ali Larter… In which case, I applaud their efforts and hope to see a prototype out soon!

Movies and TV Shows Portray Unrealistic Computer Capabilities

I was watching the second episode of the new show Fringe on fox, and a scene came on where they were in a time critical situation and were trying to track down a killer.  The conversation between one of the main characters and the person on the computer goes something like this:

Take this photo and check the angle of the bridge against the FBI database. (5 seconds) Ok it’s on the 1600 block of road A.

Can you get a satellite image of that area for the last 24 hours? (5 seconds go by) ok got it… now zoom in on that area..ok.  Now fast foward… (5 seconds more) there that car.  It leaves 8 hours later at the same time.

Get Real.  I can’t imagine how long it would take to do something like this… but comparing the angles in a photo against a database to triangulate position? In 5 seconds? Maybe in 5 weeks.. by hand… and I doubt that they could get the area within a few miles at best.  Satellite video for a 24 hour period for a specific area zoomed in enough to make out a specific make/model of car? I’m not even sure they can do that unless they know ahead of time they need to survey that area.  I don’t think that they can do it after the fact.

These scenarios make for exciting TV, but they give people unrealistic expectations of computers and technology.

For a company that began in 1995, they may have been off to a good start with their RealAudio compression, but their software package haunts my nightmares. They produced some of the hardest to remove bloatware on the market for their time.

I feel like one digg user described my feelings the best with his/her comment:

• Laminarcissus
  5 hr 43 min ago

  And, because it’s RealNetworks, it will also install fifteen other programs that stay resident via a special rootkit, back up your registry to their servers, reassign all your file association to their software, and make you whisper “I am Real’s bitch” into your microphone every time you start Windows.

This is how people still view RealNetworks years later. So I think it is important for software companies to not forget this lesson, because the users out there sure won’t.

http://members.iinet.net.au/~brettdj/

The website seems to be down atm so if you can’t get the plug in from there, send me a message and I’ll see if I can help you get it.