Pownce has been sold and shuttered. The microblogging service that was launched to compete with Twitter has been flogged off to blogging diggdiggcompany Six Apart, which will "integrate the technology" (read: steal a few lines of code and bin the rest) with its existing services, which include Vox and Type Pad. Pownce failed to achieve any kind of critical mass, despite the appeal of its co-founder Kevin Rose, better known as the founder of Digg and hero to the legions of geek worshippers that read the site daily. Indeed, the death knell was sounded for Pownce when Rose himself switched over his regular postings to Twitter earlier this year. In an ironic twist, he swiftly became the most popular person on Twitter, even as his competitor service nosedived. ( www.theinquirer.net )Source
A TLB, found in pretty much all current desktop and server processors, is a CPU cache used by memory management hardware to improve the speed of virtual address translation. Intel's spec update notes "In rare instances, improper TLB invalidation may result in unpredictable system behavior, such as system hangs or incorrect data". The document goes on to say "Developers of operating systems should take this documentation into account when designing TLB invalidation algorithms. For the processors affected, Intel has provided a recommended update to system and BIOS vendors to incorporate into their BIOS to resolve this issue." A TLB flaw could have serious implications for Intel’s street cred, but the firm insists there is nothing to get excited about. "This is a spec clarification that points back to a programmer's application note written by Intel in April 2007. The Intel spinner went on to say that, as far as the spec clarification was concerned, the problem didn’t affect Core i7 or any Nehalem processor. "That was for Core 2 Duo and that has been fixed via BIOS updates long ago. Any outstanding software programmer developer manual changes are shown in all product spec updates so it was listed", he noted. ( www.atomicmpc.com.au )
Intel, Lenovo, and absolute just came out with the first purchasable version of the Intel Anti-theft technology. After a brief chat with guys from all three companies, it looks like they did things right. Anti-theft (AT) builds upon what Intel started in Vpro, basically a small amount of compute power and storage in the chipset. With Vpro, you can store sensitive information like encryption keys in the chipset itself, making things very hard to snoop/discover. The small amount of compute power allows it to tweak the machine without OS intervention. You can see how both of these things are useful for anti-theft. 
Everyone likes to get something for nothing, which is probably why outgoing Federal Communications Commission (FCC) Chairman Kevin Martin says he’ll push for a free, but porn-free Internet service in an upcoming December meeting. According to the Wall Street Journal, Martin proposes that all Americans should have unpaid access to a filth-free wireless Internet service as the airwaves are being auctioned off, left, right and centre. Apparently Martin reckons the winning bidder should set aside at least 25 per cent of the airwaves for a slower, but free-of-charge service, filled with appropriate, educationally-enlightening content... without titties. The rest of the airwaves would be reserved for a faster, paid service, with all the one-handed surfing you can stomach. ( www.atomicmpc.com.au )
