Issue no. 16, 2003
Published: Apr 18, 2003 |
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 Intel finds glitch in new chips |
| European DSL services the world's most expensive |
| Split passwords make data safer |
| No 'shock and awe' for Sony |
| Material makes backwards lens |
| New nanocomputer design ditches clock |
| Casting yields non-carbon nanotubes |
| Virtual life for ancient theatres |
| Women need widescreen for virtual navigation |
| Snail mail attack could be launched online |
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| Intel finds glitch in new chips |
Intel said Monday that it has halted the shipment of a new super-fast
Pentium 4 chip after its engineers discovered a problem in a small
number of the chips, just as some PC makers had been scheduled to roll
out products featuring the new chips.
Intel said over the weekend its validation team discovered an 'anomaly'
in a very small number of new Pentium 4 chips targeted for high-
performance desktop PCs. It was not more specific about the problem,
saying it has yet to uncover the cause of the glitch and hopes to do so
within a couple of days.
The problem concerns new Pentium 4 chips running at clock speeds of 3
gigahertz, with an improved system bus running at 800 megahertz.
Analysts speculated the problem could be in how the data is moving from
the processor over the bus. Intel already has a 3 gigahertz Pentium 4
chip with a system bus that runs at 533 megahertz. These older Pentium 4
chips have not been affected by the problem. |
| Siliconvalley.com / Mercury News
Apr 15, 2003 |
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| European DSL services the world's most expensive |
Europe is still the most expensive region of the world for DSL, the
broadband internet access service over the telephone network. The latest
DSL tariff research from Point Topic shows that service providers in
North America and Asia Pacific continue to be cheaper than those in
Europe, as they have been for the past three years.
The research looked at average residential tariffs from some of the
largest operators in March 2003, choosing the entry level service. It
then compared this data with similar research from 2002, 2001 and 2000.
Point Topic takes the 'first year cost' as the standard for comparing
the DSL charges of different operators.
The first year cost for Bell Canada's 1 Mbps service has consistently
been around $30 per month since 2001. By contrast costs in France were
between $43 and $69, and between $60 and $80 in the UK. Japan, one of
the world's fastest growing DSL markets, has DSL services at around the
$30 per month while in 2000 DSL services cost around $90 per month. |
| Telecom Paper
Apr 15, 2003 |
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| Split passwords make data safer |
RSA Security has unveiled a data-splitting technology to stop hackers
trying to break into company secrets contained in sensitive files. The
technology, called Nightingale, uses the relatively simple concept of
storing two elements of an encrypted file on separate servers.
Nightingale uses 'secret-splitting', a cryptographic technique
previously used in very high-end systems. A Nightingale server holds
part of the password, which has been cryptographically split in two,
according to a process invented by cryptographer Adi Shamir in the
1970s. The process has previously only been used in high-end bespoke
systems for banking.
Nightingale is just the start of secret-splitting in RSA's products.
Shamir's original paper suggested splitting secrets to several stores,
so that, for instance, three out of five of them could reconstruct the
secret. Nightingale simplifies the process to two. |
| Silicon.com / ZDNet UK / VNUnet UK
Apr 16, 2003 |
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| No 'shock and awe' for Sony |
Responding to criticism that it was trying to take advantage of the Iraq
war for commercial gain, Sony Corp said on Wednesday it will not use the
phrase 'shock and awe' for PlayStation videogames made by a subsidiary.
A US unit of Sony Computer Entertainment Inc has withdrawn an
application with the US Patent and Trademark Office to register the
phrase for commercial use, a Sony spokeswoman said. The application had
been made last month shortly after US-led forces began an attack on Iraq
with a strategy of heavy aerial bombardment termed 'shock and awe'.
While there had been no specific plans to use the phrase for a title of
PlayStation software, the electronic giant now felt the application was
inappropriate, she said. |
| CNN / Reuters
Apr 16, 2003 |
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| Material makes backwards lens |
Researchers from the University of Toronto have constructed a prototype
lens composed of a network of wires and tiny split rings that causes
microwaves to have a negative bend, or index of refraction.
The material affects waves of a relatively wide frequency in the useful
communications range of 1 to 2 gigahertz, and could lead to imaging
applications, devices that focus antenna beams for surveillance
applications, and smaller, higher bandwidth cellphone components.
Previous research brought this type of left-handed material to light;
the researchers took the research a step further by demonstrating that a
negative refraction material can be used to construct a useful lens.
Similar lenses that affect visible light are also possible, according to
the researchers. Such materials could more closely focus light in order
to etch smaller electronic devices, according to the researchers. |
| Technology Review / TRN
Apr 15, 2003 |
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| New nanocomputer design ditches clock |
Researchers from Communications Research Laboratory (CRL) in Japan have
made a design for nanocomputers that would use less power, dissipate
less heat, and be more reconfigurable than existing proposals.
The design is a type of cellular automata, which are large arrays of
simple, identical components, or cells. Each cell can be switched
between two states that can represent the 1s and 0s of computing. The
cells communicate via signals generated by chain reactions along lines
of cells. The cells can be made in bulk using inexpensive chemical
synthesis rather than the expensive photolithography process, used to
make today's computer chips.
The circuits can handle randomly timed signals rather than requiring
that all signals be synchronised by a central clock that coordinates the
processor's workings. The no-clock architecture fits well with cellular
automata, which are inherently asynchronous. Computers made using the
design would be able to process highly parallel applications one billion
times faster than today's computers, according to the researchers. |
| Technology Review / TRN
Apr 15, 2003 |
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| Casting yields non-carbon nanotubes |
Researchers from the University of California at Berkeley have developed
a method of making minuscule tubes of gallium nitride that have useful
electrical and optical properties.
The tiny tubes, which have diameters as small as 30 nanometres, are
semiconducting, and, unlike more common carbon nanotubes, are also
luminescent in the ultraviolet and blue light ranges. The gallium
nitride nanotubes could be used in microscopic electronic and
optoelectronic devices, and in nanofluidics chips that sense and
separate tiny traces of chemicals and biological material.
The researchers cast the gallium nitride tubes by depositing layers of a
chemical vapour on zinc oxide nanowires. They heated and evaporated the
zinc oxide to leave ordered arrays of nanotubes. Nanotubes of different
materials could be made using the same basic method, according to the
researchers. |
| Technology Review / TRN
Apr 11, 2003 |
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| Virtual life for ancient theatres |
Ancient Greek theatres have been brought back to life digitally by
British researchers. The team at the University of Warwick used
state-of-the-art 3D computer technology to create a virtual reality
model of the Odeon of Pericles, built mid-fifth century BCE in Athens.
The Odeon of Pericles was the first indoor theatre and served as a
prototype for modern auditoriums. But the 3D model created by
researchers at the School of Theatre Studies and e-lab at Warwick
University has provided new insights into its design. The researchers
found that 40 per cent of the audience would have had their view blocked
by the nine rows of nine columns. Instead of providing the best
experience for spectators, the building was designed to emphasise the
grandeur and spectacle of the auditorium itself.
The team plan to recreate 30 theatre sites in Europe, ranging from the
Theatre of Dionysus in Athens to the Globe Theatre in London. They hope
to use the virtual reality models to gain a better understanding of
ancient plays and the places where they were first staged. |
| BBC News
Apr 17, 2003 |
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| Women need widescreen for virtual navigation |
Female architects, designers, trainee pilots and even computer gamers
should be given much wider screens and more realistic 3D animations to
the match spatial orientation and 3D map-reading skills of their male
counterparts, according to scientists from Carnegie Mellon University
and Microsoft.
Men's much-debated ability to navigate better than women applies in
virtual environments as well as the real world. Women's lower spatial
ability is thought to have evolutionary origins. Male hunter-gatherers
roamed far afield, creating mental maps to do so. Women, on the other
hand, had more piecemeal maps centred on landmarks such as a homestead.
Women tend to be about 20 per cent slower than men when working out
where they are in a computer-generated world. But this difference
disappears when they have a large display. A standard monitor gives a
viewing angle of about 35°. With two screens delivering a 100° angle,
women matched men's spatial abilities. However, women only match men
when the 3D virtual environment moved smoothly, rather than jerky. |
| New Scientist
Apr 15, 2003 |
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| Snail mail attack could be launched online |
An avalanche of unwanted post could be released upon an unsuspecting
victim using nothing more than an internet connection and some simple
code. The attack, devised by researchers at Johns Hopkins University and
AT&T Labs, involves automatically subscribing a victim to hundreds of
thousands of catalogue request forms that are available online.
Using search engines to instantly locate such forms and then simple code
to automatically feed a victim's name and address into them, the
researchers say such an attack would be dangerously simple to carry out.
The inconvenience caused by such an attack was recently demonstrated
when the home address of self-confessed spammer was published online.
Frustrated recipients of spam began entering Ralsky's address into as
many online catalogue forms as they could find. A week later he was
receiving thousands of letters per day.
Aside from the impact on individuals, the researchers warn that such an
attack could even disable a local postal office. |
| New Scientist
Apr 15, 2003 |
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