Crime-fighting robots with access to citizen databases will be patrolling the streets by 2084, according to an academic at the University of Sheffield.

Robotics expert Professor Noel Sharkey predicts that humanoid robots, that are able to arrest people, will have access to integrated databases of information on British citizens, including bank accounts, tax and movements, to enable them to identify who people are.

The “superior knowledge robots” will, according to Sharkey, be able to use their “super strength and inability to feel pain” to arrest criminals.

They will have human features and will be able to detect weapons including guns, knives and explosives, and recognise drunks and aggressive behaviour in large areas.

By 2070, police will also have the aid of autonomous police cars, which will be able to recognise speeding cars, identify license plates and automatically take fines from bank accounts and add points on driving licences.

The project examined the future of the robot in the UK and how it will be developed to aid police. The research was based on recent robotic developments around the world, and on current ideas and trends from robotics experts.

Amazing technology from Japan
but can you guess what it is ?

Look closely and guess what they could be…

Are they pens with cameras?

Any wild guesses? No clue yet?

Ladies and gentlemen… congratulations!
You’ve just looked into the future… yep that’s right!
You’ve just seen something that will replace your PC in the near future.

Here is how it works:

In the revolution of miniature computers, scientists have made great developments with bluetooth technology.. .

This is the forthcoming computers you can carry within your pockets .

This ‘pen sort of instrument’ produces both the monitor as well as the keyboard on any flat surfaces from where you can carry out functions you would normally do on your desktop computer.

IBM (NYSE:IBM) snared the top three spots in the TOP500 Supercomputer record book and had a total of 210 systems on the list, the most of any upper computer vendor, the company said Wednesday.

IBM also had the most aggregate performance on the list with 5.6 petaflops—48 percent of the total—and the most systems in the top 10, top 50 and top 100.

The official results were reported during the International Supercomputing Conference in Dresden, Germany, where the bi-annual listing of the World’s TOP500 Supercomputer sites was released.

Leading the pack was IBM’s much- ballyhooed Roadrunner supercomputer, which operates at 1 petaflop or 1,000 trillion calculations per second.

The speed demon was built for the Department of Energy’s National Nuclear Security Administration to ensure the safety and reliability of the nation’s nuclear weapons stockpile.

Roadrunner is powered by 12,240 IBM PowerXCell 8i Cell Broadband Engines—the specialty chips that power popular video game consoles. In addition, 6,562 AMD (NYSE:AMD) Opteron dual-core processors perform basic compute functions on Roadrunner, which free the cell chips for the math-intensive calculations.

Taking second place in the fastest computer category is the IBM Blue Gene/L system at Lawrence Livermore National Lab in California. The supercomputer clocks in at 478 teraflops or 478 trillion calculations per second.

IBM’s Team Blue Gene held the No. 3 spot with a 450 teraflop performance from the Blue Gene/P system. The supercomputer is housed at Argonne National Lab in Chicago.

IBM said it also has the most power-efficient systems. They are the IBM QS22 PowerXCell 8i-based supercomputers at IBM Germany and Fraunhofer; and the Los Alamos system.

According to the Top500 rankings, IBM also has the fastest machine in Europe, the Blue Gene/P at Juelich Research Centre in Germany.

The TOP500 Supercomputer Site is compiled and published by supercomputing experts Jack Dongarra from the University of Tennessee; Erich Strohmaier and Horst Simon of NERSC/Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory; and Hans Meuer of the University of Mannheim, Germany

AMD Nvidia Cannot Get USB 3.0 Specifications from Intel Corp.
by Anton Shilov

Advanced Micro Devices, Nvidia Corp. and Via Technologies have not yet started development of their own next-generation universal serial bus (USB) controller as they cannot get specifications of the bus from Intel Corp. The latter denies any wrongdoing or intention to affect competitive positions of AMD, Nvidia and others as well as claims that the spec is not finalized.

“The challenge is that Intel is not… giving the specification to anybody that competes with CPUs and chipsets,” a source close to AMD who is familiar with the dispute between chipset developers and Intel is reported to have said by News.com web-site.

While retaining full backward compatibility with USB 1.0 and USB 2.0, devices that feature USB 3.0 will be able to transfer data at up to 10 times higher speed compared to USB 2.0, or at 4.8Gb/s, meaning that a file as large as 600MB could be transferred in just a second in the best case scenario. In addition, the USB 3.0 specification will be optimized for low power and improved protocol efficiency. USB 3.0 ports and cabling will be designed to enable backward compatibility as well as future-proofing for optical capabilities.

In late 2007 the world’s largest x86 chip supplier formed USB 3.0 promoter group, consisting of HP, Intel Corp., Microsoft Corp., NEC Corp., NXP Semiconductors and Texas Instruments. Even though AMD, Nvidia and Via are the world’s largest providers of computer core-logic sets after Intel Corp., they are not a part of USB 3.0 promo group, but are members of USB Implementers Forum.

Sources close to AMD and Nvidia claim that Intel already has working chip with USB 3.0 support, which means that the specification is complete and the chipmaker may handle it to the industry and competitors. In fact, Intel demonstrated USB 3.0 operation at last year’s Intel Developer Forum, though, it has never said that the technology had been finalized by that time.

“Just as with previous generations of USB, Intel is working hard to get the complete spec to the industry with as little delay as possible in order to drive the wide adoption of USB 3.0. Intel only gives it out once it’s finished. It’s not finished. If it was mature enough to release, it would be released. If you have an incomplete spec and give it out to people, these people will build their chipsets and you’ll end up with chipsets that are incompatible with devices. That’s what Intel is trying to avoid,” a source at Intel was quoted as saying.

AMD and Nvidia need to have time to design their controllers according to any specification. Therefore, in case Intel does not provide the USB 3.0 spec soon enough, the companies plan to start to design based on their understanding of the final specification. This may cause incompatibility issues, however, both AMD and Nvidia reportedly do not want to lose competitive advantage of their platforms in the form of USB 3.0.

“We are starting development on it right now. A separate specification – though designed to be compatible with the Intel USB 3.0 spec – has the potential to create incompatibilities. This is not good for users. But we have no choice,” a source close to AMD was quoted as saying.

July 11 the 3G iPhone will reach the snatching hands of the crazed public. The new iPhone supports new features such as 3G wireless (surprise!), GPS mapping, enterprise features like Microsoft Exchange, and the new App Store. Keeping in line with the original iPhone, you get the same major features: widescreen iPod, and desktop-class web browser. It also includes smart sensors that help save battery life by adjusting the backlight based on ambient light.

The 3G iPhone is presented with the lines: “Twice as fast. Half the price.” The price will start at $199.

Click here to see the features of Apple iPhone 3G
 

WASHINGTON/SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - Google Inc has complied with a request by the Pentagon to remove some online images from its street-level map service because they pose a security threat to U.S. military bases, military and company officials said on Thursday.

Gen. Gene Renuart, head of the military command responsible for homeland defense, said the Pentagon had talked to Google about the risks and expected the company to cooperate in removing selected images from its Street View service.

“We have been contacted by the military,” Google spokesman Larry Yu said. “In those instances where they (the U.S military) have expressed concerns about the imagery, we have accommodated their requests.”

The Defense Department, which is still studying how many images are available, has also banned Google teams from taking video images on bases.

“We’ve got to get a sense of what is there and see how we can mitigate it,” Renuart said.

But because many images were taken from public streets, the military may not have a legal right to request that videos be pulled.

Street View, a feature of Google Maps, offers ground-level, 360-degree views of streets in 30 U.S. cities. Web users are able to drive down a street, in a virtual sense, using their mouse to adjust views of roadside scenery.

The feature has become a popular service for drivers seeking to plan a trip to an unfamiliar neighborhoods. But from the outset, Street View has been a magnet of controversy over potential privacy invasion of people captured in the images.

In one instance, a man was pictured exiting a San Francisco strip club. In another case, a woman was shown sunbathing. Complaints have even included a woman asking that a picture of her cat be taken down, a request Google denied.

The images that worry the Pentagon include views of bases, including security at the entrances to those installations.

“It actually shows where all the guards are. It shows how the barriers go up and down. It shows how to get in and out of buildings,” said Renuart, commander of U.S. Northern Command.

“I think that poses a real security risk for our military installations,” he told reporters at the Pentagon.

The Google spokesman said his company’s policy was to photograph only those images visible from public roads.

“It is against Google’s policy for a driver to seek access to a military base,” Yu said.

Street View has yet to be introduced outside the United States. Web-based Google Maps and a related computer-based service called Google Earth have drawn criticism from a variety of countries for providing images of sensitive locations, such as military bases or potential targets of terror attacks.

The services rely on civilian versions of satellite maps that it licenses from commercial mapping services.

LONDON (Reuters) - A British company has developed a camera that can detect weapons, drugs or explosives hidden under people’s clothes from up to 25 meters away in what could be a breakthrough for the security industry.

The T5000 camera, created by a company called ThruVision, uses what it calls “passive imaging technology” to identify objects by the natural electromagnetic rays — known as Terahertz or T-rays — that they emit.

(more…)

The format war ends with victory for Blu-ray, as Toshiba confirms speculation that it’s dropping HD DVD.

The decision by Toshiba to axe the format it pioneered was widely expected, after several high profile movie studios and content creators including Warner Bros dropped HD DVD support in favour of Blu-ray, while several retailers also walked away from selling HD DVD content, including Wal-mart and Netflix in the US and several retailers in the UK including Woolworths.

“We carefully assessed the long-term impact of continuing the so-called “next-generation format war” and concluded that a swift decision will best help the market develop,” says Toshiba’s chief executive Atsutoshi Nishida in a statement.

“While we are disappointed for the company and more importantly, for the consumer, the real mass market opportunity for high definition content remains untapped.”

Nishida did not make any comment about the financial implications of Toshiba’s withdrawal of HD DVD, though the company is expected to report a significant financial loss in relation to unsold products and components, potential compensation to suppliers and partners, and the general write down of the value of its HD DVD operation on its balance sheet.

Implications
The company will now wind down shipments of HD DVD drives and associated components, with the intention of stopping supply altogether by the end of next month.

Retailers and PC builders are now expecting a sharp rise in sales of Blu-ray players and drives, with several of the major computing brands including Apple already a Blu-ray supporter, expected to add Blu-ray drives as an option for workstations and laptops.

Author: Chris Green

nVidia to Add PhysX to Geforce 8-Cards

During Nvidia’s fourth-quarter financial results conference call, Nvidia shed a little more light on its acquisition of Ageia and what it plans to do with the firm’s PhysX technology. CEO Jen-Hsun Huang revealed that Nvidia’s strategy is to take the PhysX engine and port it onto CUDA (Compute Unified Device Architecture), a C-like application programming interface Nvidia developed to let programmers write general-purpose applications that can run on GPUs. All of Nvidia’s existing GeForce 8 graphics processors already support CUDA, and Huang confirmed that the cards will be able to run PhysX.

“We’re working toward the physics-engine-to-CUDA port as we speak. And we intend to throw a lot of resources at it. You know, I wouldn’t be surprised if it helps our GPU sales even in advance of [the port's completion]. The reason is, [it's] just gonna be a software download. Every single GPU that is CUDA-enabled will be able to run the physics engine when it comes. . . . Every one of our GeForce 8-series GPUs runs CUDA.”

Intel has informed motherboard makers that it will definitely launch its X48 chipset in mid March, two months later than its original launch date, according to industry sources. The X48 chipset was originally slated for launch in January, but Intel pushed it back as inventory of X38 had yet to be cleared, the sources said.

Some makers, such as Gigabyte Technology and Micro-Star International (MSI), have already announced details of their X48 motherboards, but Intel’s delay in officially launching the new chipset is preventing the mobo makers from setting shipping schedules of their new motherboards.

But Intel has told motherboard makers that the mid March launch date is definite, and there will be no more delays, the sources claimed. As X48 will be launched in mid March, the Core 2 Extreme QX9770 that the chipset supports will not be available until then, the sources said.