PHNOM PENH, Cambodia — The United Nations chief says the planned Nov. 7 elections in Myanmar may not be fully legitimate if the junta does not free political prisoners in the run-up. Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon told The Associated Press on Thursday that freeing the more than 2,000 political prisoners in Myanmar may help create a “perception that this election will be more inclusive than participatory.” The Southeast Asian country’s military rulers have enacted laws that prevent pro-democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi and other political prisoners from contesting in the elections, which have been slammed by critics as a sham. But, Ban says, “without releasing all political prisoners then…
Continue reading …
A 20-year-old Notre Dame student died Wednesday after the tower from which he was filming football practice fell over.
Continue reading …
Mentawai Islands: The death toll from a tsunami and a volcano rose to more than 340 Thursday as more victims of Indonesia’s double disasters were found and an official said a warning system installed after a deadly ocean wave in 2004 had broken from a lack of maintenance. Hundreds were still missing after Monday’s 10-foot (3-meter) wave spawned by a massive quake struck the remote Mentawi islands off western Sumatra, where rescue officials — kept away for days because of stormy seas and bad weather — started arriving at the scene to chart the scope of the devastation. Some wore face masks as they wrapped swollen corpses littering roads and beaches in black body bags. Huge swaths of land were…
Continue reading …Verizon FiOS field trial introduces XG-PON2 to the lexicon, shows 10Gbps capabilities
October 28, 2010 No Comment
Verizon’s FiOS footprint may be on an expansion hiatus , but that’s not to say the company’s abandoning existing users. Nearly 3.5 years after boosting FiOS internet speeds with G-PON , the company is now out testing XG-PON2 — a newfangled iteration that somehow enables 10Gbps upstream and downstream from its existing fiber network. If you’ll recall, we heard just a few weeks back that the outfit was close to being able to serve GigE on its existing platform , and now that this field trial has been successful, we’d say the boundaries are stretched even further. In the test, technicians were able to suck down a 2.3GB movie in four ticks of the second hand, and if you’re hoping to see the nerdiest video of the day, a highlight reel of the trial awaits you just past the break. [Thanks, David] Continue reading Verizon FiOS field trial introduces XG-PON2 to the lexicon, shows 10Gbps capabilities Verizon FiOS field trial introduces XG-PON2 to the lexicon, shows 10Gbps capabilities originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 28 Oct 2010 02:02:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds . Permalink
Continue reading …
The Statue of Liberty is dedicated in New York; Benito Mussolini takes control of the Italian government; The Cuban Missile Crisis ends; Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates and actress Julia Roberts are born. (Oct. 28)
Continue reading …China’s Tianhe-1A is world’s fastest supercomputer, plans to usurp the West now complete
October 28, 2010 No Comment
It happened. China just passed the US and the world with the reveal of the world’s fastest supercomputer. The fully operational Tianhe-1A, located at the National Supercomputer Center in Tianjin, scored 2.507 petaflops as measured by the LINPACK benchmark. That moves it past Cray’s 2.3 petaflops Jaguar located at Oak Ridge National Lab in Tennessee. Tianhe-1A achieved the record using 7,168 NVIDIA Tesla M2050 GPUs and 14,336 Intel Xeon CPUs consuming 4.04 megawatts. Knowing that 10 petaflops is within reach by 2012, we’ll see if Tianhe-1A can maintain its title when the new Top500 supercomputers list is released next week. China’s Tianhe-1A is world’s fastest supercomputer, plans to usurp the West now complete originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 28 Oct 2010 01:21:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds . Permalink
Continue reading …Nikon debuts Android-powered stereoscopic picture frame, 2D to 3D conversions for a monthly fee
October 28, 2010 No Comment
2D to 3D conversion techniques — whether cinematic or otherwise — don’t have us jumping for joy, but Nikon’s new NF-300i display sounds like a concept we could get behind. It’s a 7.2-inch digital photo frame running Android 2.1 on an autostereoscopic (glasses-less) screen, which sports a special double-density lenticular lens to display images at full WSVGA resolution (800 x 600) whether in 2D or 3D modes. It pulls down images from the cloud to 4GB of internal storage over wired ethernet and 802.11 b/g WiFi, or via USB port if you happen to have MPO files just sitting around for some reason . The notion is that Japanese users will sign up for Nikon’s new My PictureTown 3D conversion and hosting service for
Continue reading …
An Aston Martin DB5 used by Sean Connery’s James Bond was auctioned off Wednesday for $4.1 million. The winning bidder is an American classic cars collector who has a small private museum in Ohio. (Oct. 27)
Continue reading …