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archive: Sep-Oct 2005
Tech-news archive: September-October 2005
Supercomputer doubles own record
(Oct 29, 2005)
The Blue Gene/L supercomputer has broken its own record to achieve
more than double the number of calculations it can do a second. It
reached 280.6 teraflops – that is 280.6 trillion calculations
a second. The IBM machine, at the US Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory,
officially became the most powerful computer on the planet in June.
The fastest supercomputers in the world are ranked by experts every
six months in the Top 500 list. Blue Gene's performance, while it
has been under construction, has quadrupled in just 12 months.
Read
more. Source: BBC |
Picturing online gaming's value
(Oct 27, 2005)
For some time, online gamers have been treating their virtual lives
as just another part of their offline lives. Millions around the world
play, meet up, battle, buy and sell in online games and virtual worlds,
such as Second Life and World of Warcraft. But to many, these virtual
goings-on can be a total mystery. Armed with his lens, photo journalist
Robbie Cooper has been facing up to gamers, revealing their intricate
lives and identities to the rest of the world.
Read
more. Source: BBC |
Nanocar takes a test drive
(Oct 24, 2005)
The world's smallest toy cars have been set rolling. They measure
just 3 by 4 nanometres: a million of them parked bumper to tail would
cover the length of a flea. And they are stripped down to the absolute
basics: just a chassis and two axles with wheels at either end. But
they move. Using a powerful microscope, James Tour and his coworkers
at Rice University in Houston, Texas, have watched their 'nanocars'
trundle over a layer of gold.
Read
more. Source: Nature |
Study lists top five tech trends
(Oct 20, 2005)
Specialised robots, devices for DIY content creation and new TV displays
are among the trends to watch in 2006. That is according to the American-based
Consumer Electronic Association which has published its view of technologies
set to influence in next 12 months. Devices and trends around video
gaming and high-definition TV (HD) also make it into the top five.
Read
more. Source: BBC |
Robotic racers achieve milestone
(Oct 10, 2005)
A team from Stanford University's School of Engineering has made motoring
history, winning a $2m (£1.14m) prize in the process. Its car, a Volkswagen
Touareg nicknamed "Stanley", has become the first self-navigating
vehicle to successfully complete the gruelling 131.6 mile (211km)
cross-country Darpa Grand Challenge, a race for autonomous robot vehicles
held in Nevada's Mojave desert.
Read
more. Source: BBC |
New breed of 'fish-bot' unveiled
(Oct 8, 2005)
The world's first autonomous robotic fish are the latest attraction
at the London Aquarium. Biologically inspired by the common carp,
the new designs can avoid objects and swim around a specially designed
tank entirely of their own accord. This new kind of cyber-fish took
three years to develop, by a team of scientists from Essex University.
Future generations may be used for seabed explorations, detection
of leaks in oil pipelines, or even as spies.
Read
more. Source: BBC |
Nanotubes refine computer memory
(Oct 5, 2005)
Will computers that require no time to boot up become a reality? One
company thinks the answer is yes, thanks to its carbon nanotube memory
chips. Nantero presented its achievement at the Emerging Technologies
Conference in Cambridge, Massachusetts. It uses rolled-up tubes of
carbon to make transistors, the on-off switches that carry digital
information inside computing chips: strings of the nanotubes move
up and down to represent the ones and zeroes of binary code. Unlike
the electrons in normal electrical transistors, these nanotubes stay
in place even when a computer is turned off.
Read
more. Source: Nature |
Google and NASA in space venture
(Sep 29, 2005)
Web search firm Google has formed a partnership with US space agency
NASA in an effort to harness new technology which could boost the
space programme. Google is to build a new office complex on the site
of NASA's research facility in California, close to its own headquarters
in Silicon Valley. The two companies will co-operate in a range of
areas including IT solutions, data management and nanotechnology.
It would look to "bring entrepreneurs into the space programme", NASA
added.
Read
more. Source: BBC |
Deadly plague hits Warcraft world
(Sep 23, 2005)
A deadly virtual plague has broken out in the online game World of
Warcraft. Although limited to only a few of the game's servers the
numbers of characters that have fallen victim is thought to be in
the thousands. Originally it was thought that the deadly digital disease
was the result of a programming bug in a location only recently added
to the Warcraft game. However, it now appears that players kicked
off the plague and then kept it spreading after the first outbreak.
Read
more. Source: BBC |
Computer networks more vulnerable than ever
(Sep 20, 2005)
Software vulnerabilities that open computers up to malicious attacks
are reaching record levels, while the methods hackers use to exploit
them become more sophisticated, a new report warns. A total of 1862
new vulnerabilities were announced between January 1 and June 30 2005,
according to computer-security firm Symantec, based in Los Angeles,
California, US, in its biannual Internet Security Threat Report on
Monday. This is a 31% increase from the second half of 2004 and a
46% increase over the same time period last year. Ninety seven per
cent of the vulnerabilities were “severe” and 73% were classified
as “easily exploitable”.
Read
more. Source: New Scientist |
Dartmouth researchers build world's smallest
mobile robot
(Sep 19, 2005)
In a world where "supersize" has entered the lexicon, there are some
things getting smaller, like cell phones and laptops. Dartmouth researchers
have contributed to the miniaturizing trend by creating the world's
smallest untethered, controllable robot. Their extremely tiny machine
is about as wide as a strand of human hair, and half the length of
the period at the end of this sentence. About 200 of these could march
in a line across the top of a plain M&M.
Read
more. Source: Dartmouth College |
Will web users ‘Flock’ to social surfing?
(Sep 16, 2005)
A “social” web browser has been created to meet the needs of a new
generation of web users who want to edit, comment on and share web
content, rather than just peruse it. With the underlying capabilities
of a basic web browser like Microsoft's Internet Explorer or Mozilla's
Firefox, the new browser, called Flock — after the buzz it hopes
to create – adds features specifically designed to make writing, editing,
sharing and displaying web content faster and easier. “The problem
is that the web browser has remained fairly stable over the last 10
years, but the web has changed quite a bit,” says its creator, Silicon
Valley-based Bart Decrem, who left the Mozilla Foundation to build
Flock.
Read
more. Source: New Scientist |
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