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OCAU News |
Old style incandescent bulbs are set to be phased out in favor of newer fluorescent models after a government legislation was announced to restrict the sale of the old style bulbs. Discussion of this can be found in this thread. "The Australian government on Tuesday announced plans to phase out incandescent light bulbs and replace them with more energy-efficient compact fluorescent bulbs across the country. Legislation to gradually restrict the sale of the old-style bulbs could reduce Australia's greenhouse gas emissions by 4 million tons by 2012 and cut household power bills by up to 66 percent, said Environment Minister Malcolm Turnbull."
O'Reilly has tested some software and hardware firewalls including Smoothwall and a Cisco device. Thanks Scott for the link. "According to estimates, an unprotected Windows computer system connected to the Internet could be compromised within twelve minutes. In light of this, the need for computer security has expanded in the last few years. Today, it is just as necessary for home users to secure personal computers as it is for businesses to secure office computers. In order to gain security benefits like those many businesses possess, home network security often utilizes the same models. The difference, however, has been that most home users do not have the financial resources for top of the line security equipment."
A new version of the Nvidia compiler which allows developers to offload mathematics functions to the GPU. "Today, NVIDIA announced the release of beta versions of the SDK and C compiler for their Compute Unified Device Architecture (CUDA) technology. The C compiler includes a set of C language extensions that will enable developers to write C code that targets NVIDIA's GPUs directly. These extensions are supported by software libraries and a special CUDA driver that exposes the GPU to the OS and applications as a math coprocessor."
Somebody has made a device that allows his wifi router to play the old 56k modem noise for nostalgia purposes (ie. doesn't actually do anything functional). It certainly brings you back to the good old days of Dialup. "Forward Compatible (FC) is a parasitic object meant to be attached to a Wi-Fi or fixed network router. The device monitors network traffic and when packets are sent, they are converted to audio, in the form of a 2400 baud modem dialing up and connecting, and played through the device's on-board speakers."
Stmok has sent in this video which hints at VMWare allowing full Direct X virtualisation in their software. This would allow much better gaming performance while virtualizing an OS. "Accompanying this intriguing video is a blog post from Regis Duchesne, a developer at VMWare, who confirms that there are internal beta builds of the program that support DirectX 8.1 virtualization. Regis notes that VMWare is currently working on DirectX 9 support and therefore, compatibility with Windows Vista's Aero interface technology."
Delays in broadcasting television programs in Australia are turning us into pirates as the average broadcast delay doubles from 7.6 months to 16.7 months over the last two years. "Huge delays in airing overseas TV shows locally are turning Australians into pirates, says a study conducted by technology lawyer and researcher Alex Malik. It took an average of 17 months for programs to be shown in Australia after first airing overseas, a gap that has only increased over the past two years, the study found. The findings were based on a "representative sample of 119 current or recent free-to-air TV series or specials", said Malik, who is in the final stages of a PhD in law at the University of Technology Sydney."
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All original content copyright James Rolfe.
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