Even as the IEEE P1901 working group was set to meet this week to recommend its draft standard for broadband over powerline networks for official status, Netgear announced its line of Powerline AV 500 adapters that incorporate the HomePlug-compatible flavor of the standard. The new devices theoretically promise up to gigabit Ethernet speeds over home electrical wiring, and are the first to incorporate the newest standard.
The Powerline AV 500 comes in either standard or power pass-through versions, and are available in two-adapter "kits" to set up a source and destination point for your network. While hardcore geeks won't settle for anything less than running Cat 6 cable all throughout the house, powerline adapters have the benefit of being able to utilize existing electrical wiring to move data from point to point, and could be convenient for homes or apartments where running new cable would be impractical, prohibitively expensive, or just not allowed by your landlord.
While the IEEE P1901 standard promises speeds up to 1Gbps, no powerline adapters come close to the top theoretical speeds (and to be fair, neither does most wireless networking hardware). Still, it can provide greater and more consistent bandwidth for applications like networked AV equipment or gaming consoles compared to increasingly crowded home WiFi networks.
"Almost every new home entertainment device today can be connected to the Internet. This puts tremendous demand on the home network," Netgear product manager Chris Geisersaid in a statement. The new Powerline adapters are up to 2.5 times faster than competing products and provide a useful supplement to WiFi networks, he said.
The Powerline AV 500 line starts at $159 for a kit, and will begin shipping this fall according to Netgear. The P1901 WG expects its standard to be submitted the IEEE for adoption as an official standard at the end of this month.
Read the comments on this post
Canonical has announced the availability of the Ubuntu 10.10 beta release. The new version of the popular Linux distribution, codenamed Maverick Meerkat, is scheduled for final release in October. It brings some noteworthy user interface improvements and updated software.
The beta ships with GNOME 2.31, which introduces support for the new dconf configuration storage system. Ubuntu's standard F-Spot photo tool has been replaced by Shotwell, a relatively new application that is developed by nonprofit software group Yorba. Although it's not as feature-complete as F-Spot, it's progressing quickly and has a lot to offer.
Canonical has continued its work on panel indicators, especially the audio indicator which now has playback controls in addition to a volume management slider. This will eliminate the need for individual audio applications to have their own notification area icons.
Work has also continued on the Ubuntu Software Center, which now promotes "Featured" applications and has a section for purchasing commercial third-party applications. The look and feel of the Software Center is more refined and aesthetically sophisticated.
The Ubuntu Netbook Edition has seen particularly dramatic improvements during this development cycle due to Canonical's work on the new Unity user interface. Unity, which was initially introduced in May, has matured very rapidly. It has a global menubar that works surprisingly well.
Users who want to get an early look at the new version can download the beta release from the Ubuntu website. For additional information, you can refer to the release notes.
Read the comments on this post
We are going to begin by downloading the Visual Studio 2010 express from Microsoft’s website so that we can get started on some C# development. After the file has been downloaded you will need to have a connection to the Internet so that the program can download the necessary files to complete the install. For the sake of customization we won’t walk through the rest of the install and will pick up with some add-ons that will make your coding experience easier.
With the Express edition now installed, it is good to know that the express editions of Visual Studio 2010 do not support extensibility. This means that the ability to install plug-ins and add-ons is not included. If you happen to acquire or have a full version of Visual Studio 2010 then the option is there for you to add these plug-ins that have helped me out in a tough spot before.
The extraction of heavy crude oil from oil sands in Canada is releasing as many as 13 kinds of pollutants into the surrounding air and water, according to a study published in PNAS this week. The independent report directly contradicts the results of the government-administered Regional Aquatic Monitoring Program (RAMP) that claimed neither humans nor the environment were at risk from the oil extraction.
Oil sands are swaths of ground that are laced with heavy crude oil that can be extracted and refined into fuel. Development of oil sands in Canada has been taking place since 1967, but scientists have long been uncertain of the production's impact on the environment.
The RAMP study conducted by the government showed no significant ill effects, but another group of scientists decided to double-check their work. They took samples around an oil sands development facility in Alberta near the Athabasca River from the air and surrounding watersheds, and found some highly contradictory evidence.
Summertime water samples downstream from the development area had concentrations of elements like mercury, arsenic, chromium, and beryllium eight times as high as the background levels. Air samples showed concentrations twice that of the late 1970s, and during the winter, the water concentrations were also twice as high as normal.
The authors speculate that the concentration difference results from the snow capturing many airborne particulates and holding them until summer, when it all melts into the ground and water. The researchers also suspect that many of the airborne contaminants are scattered, lowering their local concentrations but spreading their effects over a wide area.
While this single study doesn't automatically invalidate the RAMP study, this data seriously undermine the government's results and methods, and suggests that the long-term effects of oil sands development bear further scrutiny.
PNAS, 2010. DOI: 10.1073/pnas.1008754107 (About DOIs).
Read the comments on this post
64 Studio Ltd. has created a Linux distribution for HörTech gGmbH to aid in research on hearing impairment and augmentation technology. "64 Studio was commissioned by HörTech to create a GNU/Linux real-time audio distribution, code-named Mahalia, optimized for the Lenovo Thinkpad X200 notebook. Giso Grimm of the Carl von Ossietzky-Universität Oldenburg explained: "We prefer to use ready-to-use Linux audio distributions over patching the kernel ourselves, since our expertise is in signal processing, not kernel development. When we were faced with the fact that our then favourite audio distribution failed to deliver stable real-time kernels for several releases, we asked 64 Studio to tailor us a customized distribution with a working real-time kernel that matched our specific needs and ran stable on the selected hardware.""
The news of an upcoming announcement at PAX, followed by a tweet that showed the image of a flying pig. These were the hints pointed at a momentous occasion in gaming history: Duke Nukem Forever will see release late this year, or maybe next year, on the Xbox 360, PlayStation 3, and PC. Gearbox Software will be taking over development from the now-defunct 3D Realms.
After the studio's closing, litigation began between 3D Realms and Take-Two Interactive, the publisher of Duke Nukem Forever. According to the Wall Street Journal, the suits have now been settled and neither side was willing to discuss terms. The game has not sat still, however:
According to Pitchford, Gearbox began finishing “Duke Nukem Forever” in late 2009. “Clearly the game hadn’t been finished at 3D Realms but a lot of content had been created,” he says. “The approach and investment and process at 3D Realms didn’t quite make it and it cracked at the end. With Gearbox Software we brought all those pieces together. It’s the game it was meant to be.”
The game is actually playable at PAX, for both the press and the general public. If you're there and you get to play, send in your report. We'd love to hear what it's like to finally put your hands on it.
If the release slips into 2011, we won't exactly be shocked.
Read the comments on this post
[Harvey] wrote in to share the Spindicator with us. The spindicator is a hard drive activity activity indicator built in a ring to resemble a dekatron. Using the pulses from the hard drive activity LED, [Harvey] tested several different methods of interpreting that data for display. The final version, negative edge triggered with a lowpass filter can be seen after the break. It is nice and smooth and vaguely reminiscent of many programs’ loading screens.
He has pictures and tons of detail on the project including videos of previous versions that acted quite erratically.
Ars Technica
Bruce Schneier
Cool Tools
Debian Package a Day
EFF News
FSF Blogs
FSF News
Gizmag
GoRobotics.net
Graffiti Research Lab
Groklaw
Hack a Day
Linux Journal
Linux Weekly News
Make Links
Optimus Project
Robot Magazine
Sparkfun
Surj
The Daily WTF
Toolspotitng
Ubuntu Fridge
bldgblog
penguin.swf
robots.net
Last updated:
September 05, 2010 06:09 AM
All times are UTC. Isn't that just super?
Powered by:
