MrSeb writes "When the Microsoft-Nokia strategic alliance was first announced in February, there was absolutely no mention of money: Nokia, seemingly on its own accord, had decided that Windows Phone 7 was the future of its smartphone efforts. A week later it emerged that Microsoft and Google had been competing for Nokia's affections — a bidding war that concluded with Microsoft agreeing to pay Nokia billions of dollars to help market and develop Windows phones. Fast forward to today and Nokia's CEO, Stephen Elop, is making rather odd comments about the tablet market: 'There’s a new tablet opportunity coming. We see the opportunity,' Elop said to Bloomberg Businessweek yesterday. Furthermore, he had only positive things to say about Windows 8 — that it's a "supercharged" version of WP7, but for tablets. Does that sound like Nokia is planning to bring out a Windows 8-powered tablet? Is it possible that Microsoft's multi-billion-dollar agreement with Nokia also included Windows 8?"

An anonymous reader writes "A tweet appeared from Raspberry Pi stating the launch of the $25 PC wasn't happening in November as expected. So I decided to investigate further and contacted Raspberry Pi to see what was going on. Eben Upton was kind enough to email me back and give us some good and bad news. The bad news is: we aren't getting the $25 PC this month as expected. But that's where the bad news ends, as it is still arriving in 2011 for some people. Eben confirmed that an order has been placed for 10,000 units, but they won't arrive until the end of November. That means we will see Raspberry Pi go up for sale in December, but it won't be a typical 'get as many out the door as you can' launch. Those first 10k are earmarked for programmers as software is desperately required before a full consumer launch." Update: Apparently some of the details about the production of units and who can get one from the first batch have changed. Raspberry Pi has updated their front page with the latest information.

UnknowingFool writes "When the Courier project was leaked out, it was a bold look at how MS would design new tablets. Microsoft was currently selling tablets but they didn't make a dent in the market. The problem was it was too bold. According to the story Ballmer had two competing executive visions for tablets: J. Allard and Steven Sinofsky. Allard's vision was very different from MS thinking while Sinofsky's was more in line with existing Windows but was years away. Ballmer called on Gates to help and Gates met with Allard. Gates was apparently troubled on how Courier would not mesh with Windows or Office. The project was cancelled shortly thereafter. An interesting detail was that Courier was more complete than most outsiders knew. While there was no one prototype that unified all the concepts of Courier, there were parallel efforts in the different aspects of it."

sammcj writes with news that HP is developing servers based on 32-bit ARM processors from Calxeda. Their current model is only a test setup, but they plan to roll out a finalized design by the middle of next year. "HP's server design packs 288 Calxeda chips into a 4U rack-mount server, or 2,800 in a full rack, with a shared power, cooling, and management infrastructure. By eliminating much of the cabling and switching devices used in traditional servers and using the low-power ARM processors, HP says it can reduce both power and space requirements dramatically. The Redstone platform uses a 4U (7-inch) rack-mount server chassis. Inside, HP has put 72 small server boards, each with four Calxeda processors, 4GB of RAM and 4MB of L2 cache. Each processor, based on the ARM Cortex-A9 design, runs at 1.4GHz and has its own 80 gigabit cross-bar switch built into the chip"

AmiMoJo writes "Belgium's political parties have reached a conditional agreement to shut down the country's two remaining nuclear power stations. Older reactors will be decommissioned by 2015, with the final closures happening before 2025. The exit is conditional on alternatives being available. 'If it turns out we won't face shortages and prices would not skyrocket, we intend to stick to the nuclear exit law of 2003,' a spokeswoman for Belgium's energy and climate ministry said."

blackbearnh writes "For many adults into technology, childhood was an alienating experience, pigeon-holed as a nerd and relegated to the A/V, Computer or Gaming club in high school. But according to a Christian Science Monitor article that looks at young Makers, the next generation of tech geeks are social and are gaining increasing support from corporate America. Radio Shack is stocking Arduinos, Autodesk bought Instructables, and teens are flocking to local Hackerspaces to learn how to create their own gear. Wired GeekDad David Giancaspro thinks the desire to create things is natural. 'As we've moved further and further away from that, towards what people call "knowledge work," as opposed to producing something physical, that urge is starting to come back,' he says."

An anonymous reader writes "In recent times, the world's supply of rare-earth minerals has suffered from both increased demand, due to their use in modern technological devices, and uncertain supply, as China restricts the flow of exports. Now, Molycorp's mine in California has re-opened, and another in Australia is set to open later this year, easing — but not erasing — worries about skyrocketing costs. '[The mine had closed] in 2002 following radioactive wastewater spills and price competition. The largest spills, from a pipeline to Nevada, occurred in the late 1990s, in protected lands in the Mojave Desert. The company has since changed its ownership structure. ... It's being rebuilt to produce up to 40,000 metric tons of rare-earth elements by 2013, which would be a 700 percent increase from its production target for the end of this year."

An anonymous reader writes "In the first few days of the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear accident, no one outside the power station knew what the hell was happening. In the 9 months since, information has come out in confusing bits and pieces. Now, finally, we have an authoritative account of exactly what went wrong in the first 24 hours of the accident. It's a harrowing tale of creativity, heroism, and catastrophe. One thing I hadn't realized was just how close workers came to averting the worst nuclear disaster since Chernobyl."

garymortimer writes "A German team has managed to fly its super-sized hobby inspired platform with a man on-board! A one-hour flight would cost something near to 6 Euro for electricity. In addition, the device holds few parts that could wear out, making maintenance intervals and cost low and far between. The control firmware can be integrated with a sophisticated integrated GPS system or obstacle detection. As such, automated flight for predetermined points on a 3D map is possible."

An anonymous reader writes "Two recent papers, one from Microsoft Research and one from University of Wisconsin (PDF), are providing a refreshing take on rethinking 'what a file is.' This could have major implications for the next-gen file system design, and will probably cause a stir among Slashdotters, given that it will affect the programmatic interface. The first paper has some hints as to what went wrong with the previous WinFS approach. Quoting the first paper: 'For over 40 years the notion of the file, as devised by pioneers in the field of computing, has proved robust and has remained unchallenged. Yet this concept is not a given, but serves as a boundary object between users and engineers. In the current landscape, this boundary is showing signs of slippage, and we propose the boundary object be reconstituted. New abstractions of file are needed, which reflect what users seek to do with their digital data, and which allow engineers to solve the networking, storage and data management problems that ensue when files move from the PC on to the networked world of today. We suggest that one aspect of this adaptation is to encompass metadata within a file abstraction; another has to do what such a shift would mean for enduring user actions such as "copy" and "delete" applicable to the deriving file types. We finish by arguing that there is an especial need to support the notion of "ownership" that adequately serves both users and engineers as they engage with the world of networked sociality. '"

The hard drive crunch continues; reader Thorfinn.au writes "ASUS has said it only has hard disk drive (HDD) inventory until the end of November. 'Substitutes for HDD are very few, so if the situation persists, not only notebook production will be affected but also desktops, and other component shipments will also drop,' Asustek CFO David Chang told Reuters."

Bruce Perens writes "Open Hardware Journal is a new technical journal on designs for physical or electronic objects that are shared as if they were Open Source software. It's an open journal under a Creative Commons license. The first issue contains articles on 'Producing Lenses With 3D Printers,' 'Teaching with Open Hardware Submarines,' 'An Open Hardware Platform for USB Firmware Updates and General USB Development,' and more." Mr. Perens has promised to be around tonight to answer any questions readers might have.

An anonymous reader writes "Microsoft has announced that its Kinect motion-control system will be available for PCs in early 2012, and that they're planning to take it into the business world as well. 'Microsoft plans to launch a commercial program for the peripheral early next year, giving businesses the tools to develop customized applications for their companies and industries. The pilot program already includes such familiar names as Toyota, book publisher Houghton Mifflin Harcourt and design firm Razorfish. All totaled, over 200 "marquis brand" companies in 25 countries have signed up for the program... And while the majority of those companies have opted to keep their names hidden for now for competitive reasons, Microsoft is working with them to get the applications up and running, so they can debut as soon as possible. Just don't expect the Redmond-based company to do any first party apps for this program.'"

An anonymous reader writes "IEEE reports that Boston Dynamics has unveiled video footage showing its biped humanoid robot PETMAN walking, kneeling, and doing push-ups. Boston Dynamics is building the robot for the U.S. Army, which will use it to test chemical protective suits for soldiers. The requirement was that the robot had to be the approximate size of a 50th percentile adult male (180 pounds, nearly 6 feet tall) and capable of a full range of dynamic movements. The company says PETMAN could also be used to survey disaster zones and access hazardous environments."

MrSeb writes "Drawing yet another battle line between the incumbent oligarchs of the West and the developing hordes of the East, China has unveiled a new supercomputer that uses entirely-homegrown processors — 8,704 of them, to be exact. The computer is called Sunway BlueLight MPP and it has a peak performance of just over 1 petaflop — or around the 15th fastest supercomputer in the world. Sunway uses the ShenWei SW-3 1600, a 16-core, 64-bit MIPS-compatible (RISC) CPU. The process used to make the chips is not known, but it is likely 65 or 45nm, a few generations behind Intel's latest and greatest. Each of the 139,264 cores runs at 1.1GHz, the entire system has 150TB of memory and 2PB of storage, and of course it's water-cooled. The ShenWei chips are based on the Loongson/Godson architecture, which China — as in, the country itself — probably reverse engineered from a DEC Alpha CPU in 2001 and has been developing ever since. Sunway is significant for two reasons: a) It's very low-power; it consumes just one megawatt, about half of its contemporaries and one seventh of the US's Jaguar — and b) This is China's first significant supercomputer to be built without Intel or AMD processors."

cylonlover writes "Detecting explosives is a vital task both on the battlefield and off, but it requires equipment that, if sensitive enough to detect explosives traces in small quantities, is often expensive, delicate and difficult to construct. Researchers at the Georgia Tech Research Institute have developed a method of manufacturing highly sensitive explosives detectors incorporating RF components using Ink-jet printers. This holds the promise of producing large numbers of detectors at lower cost using local resources."

jfruhlinger writes "Apple's North Carolina data center will, it appears, be turning greener: the company is building a dedicated solar farm to power it. That would be a welcome turnaround for proponents of green energy, as Apple was lured to North Carolina in part by the promise of cheap electricity from coal-fired plants."

1sockchuck writes "Is the data center industry on the verge of a revolution in which open source hardware designs transform the process of designing and building these facilities? This week the Open Compute Project gained momentum and structure, forming a foundation as it touted participation from IT heavyweights Intel, Dell, Amazon, Facebook, Red Hat and Rackspace. That turnout is not an isolated event, but reflects a growing focus on collaborative projects to reduce cost, timelines and inefficiency in data center construction and operation. The Open Compute project is just one of a handful of initiatives to bring standards and repeatable designs to IT infrastructure."

New submitter gbl08ma writes "The Raspberry Pi project, which aims to create a $25 Linux box, won an award for the category 'Best in Show for Hardware Design' at ARM TechCon, even though they haven't yet released any final product (the release will be sometime in late November). Eben Upton demonstrated the capabilities of one of the prototypes that have been built. From advanced graphics at 1080p resolution to simple web browsing and desktop productivity, the small boards with ARM-based processors and PoP SDRAM have proven to be very versatile, fast and durable."

New submitter wesbascas writes "Have you ever wanted to play a new PC game, but weren't sure where your PC falls between the minimum and recommended system requirements? I don't have a whole lot of time to game these days and with new hardware perpetually coming out and component vendors often tweaking their model numbering schemes, knowing exactly what kind of experience I'm buying for $60 can be difficult. Luckily, somebody benchmarked Battlefield 3's campaign on a wide range of hardware configurations and detail settings. If you've purchased a system in the past few years you should be in luck. The video cards tested start with the AMD Radeon HD 4670 and Nvidia GeForce 8500 GT, and go up to the brand new Radeon HD 6990 and GeForce GTX 590. I hate it that my aging Radeon HD 4870 isn't going to cut it at 1080p, but am glad that I found out before buying the game." If you're curious about the game itself, here's a detailed review from Eurogamer and a briefer one from Rock, Paper, Shotgun.