The Inquirer

Hardware hack gets hitched

Wily Ferret — Sat, 05 Jul 2008 00:24:19 GMT

Wily Ferret , Monday 30 June 2008. 08:28:00

Swapping shaders for champers

IT'S NOT VERY OFTEN that we in the computer journalism business drop our cynical masks and get the chance to just have a break from giving graphics companies a hard time over their latest exploits, or processor manufacturers a talking to over their latest roadmap miss. So it is with a degree of relief that we can link you to the latest article on top hardware review-wibble PCPerspective, which eschews traditional testing techniques in favour of... well, gushing praise. Objectivity isn't completely out of the window, however - the article in question is a write-up of the wedding (yes, really) of Editor and long-time L'INQer Ryan Sprout (nee Shrout)....

Hardware hack gets hitched

Wily Ferret — Mon, 30 Jun 2008 08:06:31 GMT

Wily Ferret the Inquirer, Monday 30 June 2008. 08:28:00

Swapping shaders for champers

First AMD Game PC reviewed

Silvie Barak — Sat, 14 Jun 2008 01:58:10 GMT

Silvie Barak , Wednesday 28 May 2008. 18:34:00

Hebrew homebrew

THE FIRST AMD GAME PC has been tried and tested according to an Israeli news site, which says it will definitely give the competition a run for their money. Ynet, the Israeli news site belonging to Yediot Aharanot, claims that Tech Data, an Israeli computer distributor, gave it a prototype of a new AMD Game! machine to play around with before anyone else got their grubby paws on it. AMD announced it would be launching a new badge for computers called AMD Game! (sic), based on the Spider and Cartwheel gaming platforms. The new machines are supposed to fall within the $600-$1500 price range, which AMD is convinced will make its machines an attractive option to serious gamers and multimedia fanatics....

First AMD Game PC reviewed

Silvie Barak — Wed, 28 May 2008 19:41:28 GMT

Silvie Barak the Inquirer, Wednesday 28 May 2008. 18:34:00

Hebrew homebrew

HP prints itself a green suit

Silvie Barak — Fri, 23 May 2008 00:54:04 GMT

Silvie Barak , Thursday 22 May 2008. 23:37:00

Pulling the wool over its ears

HEWLETT PACKARD HAS come up with a way of making computer printing more eco friendly, by focusing, not on recycled paper, but rather on recycled plastic used to manufacture the actual body of the printer itself. HP boasts that its latest Deskjet D2545, which is effectively 83 per cent recycled plastic, will debut as part of the company's new "green focused label" , which will also include various other HP products in the near future. With green becoming the new black where IT trends are concerned, HP seems to be playing straight into the green-fingered hands of customers looking for both low prices ( the D2545 is currently priced at $45) and a clean conscience....

HP prints itself a green suit

Silvie Barak — Thu, 22 May 2008 22:50:22 GMT

Silvie Barak the Inquirer, Thursday 22 May 2008. 23:37:00

Pulling the wool over its ears

The INQUIRER Guide to spelLing

Glenda O'Brien — Thu, 22 May 2008 15:53:35 GMT

Glenda O'Brien , Friday 25 April 2008. 15:12:00

It's our web site and we'll spell how we want to

AMONGST the sometimes amusing; sometimes rabid; and sometimes just plain mad feedback we get here at the INQ, there's one theme that recurs time after time - spelling. We take a simple view on spelling - we try to get it right, regardless of what overpaid cokeheads in marketing departments believe. Hence when a company thinks it's really big and clever to call a product the 'cOmpuTer', we change it to 'Computer' out of respect for the language of Shakespeare, Dickens, Chaucer and Magee. All Via press releases have a note at the end that advises editors that VIA must be written in ALL CAPS....

Brits keen to go green

Sylvie Barak — Thu, 22 May 2008 15:53:35 GMT

Sylvie Barak , Monday 28 April 2008. 15:35:00

Some even think it'll help

WORKERS in the UK believe that their companies could be doing much more towards making their workplaces more eco friendly. They also think staff should bebetter informed about environmental work practices. According to a survey, 89 per cent of company-employed workers reckonthat their firm didn't recycle enough, even though 55 per cent of British businesses support a "print less" policy, 20 per cent more than the international average. Seventy-three per cent of Brits also said that they wanted their company to make them more aware of environmental issues, probably an indication of how mind numbingly boring their actual jobs are, that they would rather spend an afternoon learning about how to recycle aluminum cans and how to build a compost heap in the staff room....

Heavy metal ferns clean up

Andrew Thomas — Thu, 22 May 2008 15:53:34 GMT

Andrew Thomas , Monday 19 May 2008. 11:38:00

Very fond of arsenic, apparently

CHINESE BOFFINS have modified a plant to suck toxins out of the soil. The Chinese brake fern is being used to absorb heavy metals such as arsenic from contaminated soil near factories and mines, which is ferntastic news for a country with 280,000 mines and one environmental inspector. Chen Tongbin, principal investigator at the Centre for Environmental Remediation of the Chinese Academy of Sciences Institute of Geographical Sciences and Natural Resources Research, and his team have improved the Pteris vittata fern, enabling it to clean up the environment. "The work we've done in Guangxi, Hunan, Yunnan, Zhejiang and Guangdong is quite impressive," Chen said in a telefern interview....

Prime minister Brown backs Google

Mark Ballard — Thu, 22 May 2008 15:53:34 GMT

Mark Ballard , Monday 19 May 2008. 20:44:00

Belittles Microsoft

PRIME MINISTER Gordon Brown today hailed Google as an example for the world in its struggles with recession, oppressive dictators, and poverty. In a speech that read like a tacit disapproval of convicted monopolist Microsoft, Brown banged on before an audience of business bigwigs about the stupidity of protectionism. He said the model of openness integral to the internet and enshrined by the likes of Google was an example to be replicated on the international stage, in politics and economics. "You stand for an open and non-protectionist economy," he said. "The only way the net and the new technology can work is if there is openness and we are not protectionist"....

Prime minister Brown backs Google

Mark Ballard — Mon, 19 May 2008 20:05:07 GMT

Mark Ballard the Inquirer, Monday 19 May 2008. 20:44:00

Belittles Microsoft

Heavy metal ferns clean up

Andrew Thomas — Mon, 19 May 2008 10:49:38 GMT

Andrew Thomas the Inquirer, Monday 19 May 2008. 11:38:00

Very fond of arsenic, apparently

Brits keen to go green

Sylvie Barak — Mon, 28 Apr 2008 15:26:24 GMT

Sylvie Barak the Inquirer, Monday 28 April 2008. 15:35:00

Some even think it'll help

The INQUIRER Guide to spelLing

Glenda O'Brien — Fri, 25 Apr 2008 15:12:08 GMT

Glenda O'Brien the Inquirer, Friday 25 April 2008. 15:12:00

It's our web site and we'll spell how we want to

AMONGST the sometimes amusing; sometimes rabid; and sometimes just plain mad feedback we get here at the INQ, there's one theme that recurs time after time - spelling. We take a simple view to spelling - we try to get it right, regardless of what overpaid cokeheads in marketing departments believe. Hence when a company thinks it's really big and clever to call a product the 'cOmpuTer', we change it to 'Computer' out of respect for the language of Shakespeare, Dickens, Chaucer and Magee. All Via press releases have a note at the end that advises editors that VIA must be written in ALL CAPS....

Creative's new drivers ate my porn

The Letterman — Tue, 22 Apr 2008 00:36:48 GMT

The Letterman , Friday 28 March 2008. 17:06:00

Letter o't'day I am a power user, damn it,

DEAREST INQ scribes, Ed and everyone, So I decided to install the newest drivers update for my Creative X-Fi Extreme Music, that the company recently released. After a year or more waiting, new shiny drivers, imagine that. I can't say I didn't know what I am going to get into, reading the INQ articles about Creative and all. Previous reports on beta version released a month or so ago indicated that the new XP/Vista drivers updated the soundcard's firmware and they were practically impossible to uninstall then, because the old drivers didn't work with the new firmware. Also, some users on the forums were quite unhappy with more cracking sounds, etc....

Win a prize by choosing an Intel caption

Adamson Glass — Tue, 22 Apr 2008 00:36:48 GMT

Adamson Glass , Wednesday 2 April 2008. 03:54:00

IDF Spring 2008 Be witty, not pretty

PICTURED ABOVE are two shills from Intel and a third party application, captured by our local snapperazzi here in Ole Shanghai. If you can come up with a very very witty caption for these three below, you will win a prize, and the prize will be that you will become very very famous, very very quickly. So have at it, ye varlets, and email your witty captions to andrew.thomas@theinquirer.net, obviously coping the Ed if you wish. Competition now closed. Results next week.

Intel rejects call for sustainability committee

Ambrose McNevin — Tue, 22 Apr 2008 00:36:48 GMT

Ambrose McNevin , Wednesday 2 April 2008. 15:27:00

Shareholder's told to vote "AGAINST"

AN INTEL investor has called for the setting up of a Board Committee on Sustainability but vote has got the thumbs down from the firm's directors. The call came from green activist investment advisor Harrington Investments which owns "$2,000 or more of Intel stock." The proposal is to change an intel company bylaw to add the statement: "There is established a Board Committee on Sustainability. The committee is authorized to address corporate policies, above and beyond matters of legal compliance, in order to ensure our corporation's sustained viability. The committee shall strive to enhance shareholder value by responding to changing conditions and knowledge of the natural environment, including but not limited to, natural resource limitations, energy use, waste disposal, and climate change." The supporting statement says that among other things the new committee would cover: "Issues related to sustainability might include, but are not limited to: global climate change, emerging concerns regarding toxicity of materials, resource shortages, and biodiversity loss." Intel's board doesn't like the way the change has been proposed saying: "The Board also opposes this proposal due to the format it is using." It doesn't like setting up more committees....

No one cares about green IT

Ambrose McNevin — Tue, 22 Apr 2008 00:36:48 GMT

Ambrose McNevin , Thursday 3 April 2008. 17:16:00

Greenwashing dirty IT laundry in public

IT'S JUST AS we suspected. UK IT managers couldn't give a reboot about green IT. Only one in 20 of them even bother to ask their IT suppliers anything green related. The vast majority don't care with 87 per cent of those without a green policy saying they'd adopt one if they had to. The kind of pressure that would make them green is regulation, which comes out tops for 69 per cent, 29 per cent would listen to their customers, 14 per cent say they'd listen to suppliers (why?). And the good old stand up and be counted three per cent said "nothing would spur them to implement a green policy." Well done, lads....

Artificial Intelligence is still the future

Wendy M. Grossman — Tue, 22 Apr 2008 00:36:47 GMT

Wendy M. Grossman , Monday 7 April 2008. 09:51:00

Speakers' Corner John McCarthy, optimist

JOHN McCARTHY IS an optimist. Yet the field McCarthy is most commonly associated with, artificial intelligence, has made little progress since 1956, when he convened the first Dartmouth conference. "I've been working on logical AI since 1958," he says, "and I've done some I think good work (and other people also), but still we don't have human-level intelligence yet. I can't predict any definite date at which it will be achieved, even though Ray Kurzweil is eager to say it will happen by 2029. If I live to be 102 and am still capable of laughing I expect to laugh at him then." He sees no evidence, either, for that science fiction staple the Singularity....

Reduce carbon emissions or else, Nasa scientist warns

Sylvie Barak — Tue, 22 Apr 2008 00:36:47 GMT

Sylvie Barak , Monday 7 April 2008. 12:48:00

Disaster guaranteed

WE'RE NOT DOING ENOUGH to cut carbon dioxide emissions and the Earth is doomed in even less time than we originally thought. That's the message a leading climate scientist gave the European Union today, when he urged them to go back to the drawing board and pull a lower CO2 target out of their collective hat. Head of the Nasa Goddard Institute for Space Studies in New York, James Hansen, told the EU that their 550 parts per million of C02 was simply not good enough, and should be slashed down to 350 ppm. Europe's 550 ppm target is already the world's most rigorous, with countries like the US and China grumbling about even having to come close to that, but Hansen is convinced that levels need to be drastically reduced if, "humanity wishes to preserve a planet similar to that on which civilisation developed"....

UK IT sagging without women

Mark Ballard — Tue, 22 Apr 2008 00:36:47 GMT

Mark Ballard , Monday 14 April 2008. 18:06:00

Don't we all

THE UK IT INDUSTRY must urgently attract more women to stem an alarming decline in its fortunes, according a report published by e-Skills, the government's IT skills quango. UK's IT talent was diminishing at an alarming rate, said the Gartner report, UK Skills Implications. The industry needs to recruit more women to improve its competitive position with the rest of the world. It had become a " national imperative" that the UK expanding its IT talent pool to include more women, it said. Tackling the "increasingly disproportionate" numbers of men in the IT industry was vital. "Gender balance in IT is not only an issue of social equality," apparently....

UK IT sagging without women

Mark Ballard — Mon, 14 Apr 2008 17:20:50 GMT

Mark Ballard the Inquirer, Monday 14 April 2008. 18:06:00

Don't we all

Reduce carbon emissions or else, Nasa scientist warns

Sylvie Barak — Mon, 07 Apr 2008 13:29:40 GMT

Sylvie Barak the Inquirer, Monday 7 April 2008. 12:48:00

Disaster guaranteed

Reduce carbon emissions or else, warns Nasa scientist

Sylvie Barak — Mon, 07 Apr 2008 12:58:40 GMT

Sylvie Barak the Inquirer, Monday 7 April 2008. 12:48:00

Disaster guaranteed

Artificial Intelligence is still the future

Wendy M. Grossman — Mon, 07 Apr 2008 09:21:52 GMT

Wendy M. Grossman the Inquirer, Monday 7 April 2008. 09:51:00

Speakers' Corner John McCarthy, optimist