Really Remote Data

Researchers at Cambridge University want to put data centers in places so remote they aren't on any power grid. Their models indicate that moving data-hungry computation to places such as scorching deserts, windswept peaks, and the middle of the Atlantic Ocean?all rich in sunlight and wind energy?could allow this otherwise unharvestable energy to do useful work.

In a paper to be delivered at the 13th annual HotOS conference in May, the authors offer an extreme model of how cloud services could incorporate remote data centers powered only by renewable energy. Their scenario sites one solar- and wind-powered data center in the desert of southwest Australia and a second one in Egypt, on other side of the planet. This placement is no accident: putting them in different hemispheres, on opposite sides of the earth, maximizes the solar and wind energy they can harvest.

One catalyst for such a radical rethinking of how data centers can be sited and powered is the increasing availability of advanced fiber-optic networks.  Connecting a remote renewable-energy plant to a power grid remains prohibitively expensive, reasoned the researchers working on this project?Sherif Akoush, Ripduman Sohan, Andrew Rice, Andrew W. Moore, and Andy Hopper?but running fiber-optic cable to such a plant would be relatively easy and cheap.

"We envisage data centers being put in places where renewable energy is being produced and you could never economically bring it back to heat a house," says Andy Hopper, senior author on the paper and head of Cambridge University's computer science department. "But you could lay a fiber and use energy that is otherwise lost, in that it's not economically transportable." One way to think of the underlying principle, he notes, is that it's easier to move bits (made up of photons) than electrons.

Jonathan Koomey, a researcher and consulting professor at Stanford, cautions that a number of real-world factors could render the Cambridge team's hypotheticals invalid. While data centers are costly, Koomey explains, the value they create is so far in excess of those costs that anything that reduces their effectiveness would reduce their net benefit to society.

"If the actions you take to save costs would also cut into the number of computations that you can then deliver, you'll reduce economic benefits from data centers, and that's presumably not what the authors had in mind," says Koomey.

Hopper, however, points out that the larger effort of which this paper is a part?the Computing for the Future of the Planet project?takes it as a given that more computing is always good, because the virtualization of goods and services displaces more energy-intensive activities in the physical world. He says that a system like the one he proposes would be implemented only at either "no cost to overall performance [of a cloud computing system] or at an attractive cost to performance."

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Apple readying iMac, MacBook Air Sandy Bridge refreshes

Zotac preps custom GTX 580, GTX 560 rumored for May 17

Chinese tech site MyDrivers has some early details on Zotac's upcoming premium-grade Nvidia GeForce GTX 580. Set to debut this June at Computex Taipei, the GTX 580 Extreme Edition features a custom PCB outfitted with a 16+2 phase power design, spiffy Japanese capacitors, a custom cooler as well as factory-overclocked GPU and memory frequencies.

The GF110-powered card comes with all 512 CUDA cores enabled and features an 850MHz GPU clock (up from 772MHz), 1.5GB of GDDR5 VRAM running at an effective 4400MHz (from 4008MHz), a 384-bit bus, and two-way SLI support. In addition to the stock configuration of one HDMI and two DVI ports, Zotac has added a DisplayPort output.


That's crammed onto a PCB that is reportedly half an inch shorter than the standard 10.5-inch GTX 580 reference card. Meanwhile, heat dissipation is handled by a triple-slot solution consisting of a thin plate with fins for the GDDR5 memory and VRMs, as well as a nickel-plated copper block with six 6mm heatpipes and two 120mm Titan fans for the GPU.

No word on pricing yet, but it wouldn't shock us if the card launched for a $100 premium over the stock GTX 580. In other Nvidia news, the GTX 560 is now rumored to be due on May 17. The non-Titanium card is expected to rest between the GTX 550 Ti and GTX 560 Ti with 336 CUDA cores, 56 TMUs, a 256-bit interface and 1GB of GDDR5 memory for ~$199.

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Google introduces Background Send to Gmail

Google today introduced a new feature to Gmail that allows emails to be sent in the background while you use other parts of the app.

As Google points out in their announcement, waiting for an email to send can take a few seconds, and if you?re a heavy Gmail user, that?s a fair bit of time each day. Background Send dumps you back into your inbox while the process is completed out of sight.

Often when I?ve finished writing a message I?ll include an attachment and then hit Send ? this queues up the message to be sent once the upload is complete. Waiting for an attachment to upload and go out with an otherwise complete message is the biggest hold up of all, and after running a few tests it seems that Background Send doesn?t work while the upload is still in progress.

Background Send is a great first step, and I?m all for saving seconds, but this feature will truly be worthwhile if Google can release an update that handles uploading in the background as well.

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Really Remote Data

Researchers at Cambridge University want to put data centers in places so remote they aren't on any power grid. Their models indicate that moving data-hungry computation to places such as scorching deserts, windswept peaks, and the middle of the Atlantic Ocean?all rich in sunlight and wind energy?could allow this otherwise unharvestable energy to do useful work.

In a paper to be delivered at the 13th annual HotOS conference in May, the authors offer an extreme model of how cloud services could incorporate remote data centers powered only by renewable energy. Their scenario sites one solar- and wind-powered data center in the desert of southwest Australia and a second one in Egypt, on other side of the planet. This placement is no accident: putting them in different hemispheres, on opposite sides of the earth, maximizes the solar and wind energy they can harvest.

One catalyst for such a radical rethinking of how data centers can be sited and powered is the increasing availability of advanced fiber-optic networks.  Connecting a remote renewable-energy plant to a power grid remains prohibitively expensive, reasoned the researchers working on this project?Sherif Akoush, Ripduman Sohan, Andrew Rice, Andrew W. Moore, and Andy Hopper?but running fiber-optic cable to such a plant would be relatively easy and cheap.

"We envisage data centers being put in places where renewable energy is being produced and you could never economically bring it back to heat a house," says Andy Hopper, senior author on the paper and head of Cambridge University's computer science department. "But you could lay a fiber and use energy that is otherwise lost, in that it's not economically transportable." One way to think of the underlying principle, he notes, is that it's easier to move bits (made up of photons) than electrons.

Jonathan Koomey, a researcher and consulting professor at Stanford, cautions that a number of real-world factors could render the Cambridge team's hypotheticals invalid. While data centers are costly, Koomey explains, the value they create is so far in excess of those costs that anything that reduces their effectiveness would reduce their net benefit to society.

"If the actions you take to save costs would also cut into the number of computations that you can then deliver, you'll reduce economic benefits from data centers, and that's presumably not what the authors had in mind," says Koomey.

Hopper, however, points out that the larger effort of which this paper is a part?the Computing for the Future of the Planet project?takes it as a given that more computing is always good, because the virtualization of goods and services displaces more energy-intensive activities in the physical world. He says that a system like the one he proposes would be implemented only at either "no cost to overall performance [of a cloud computing system] or at an attractive cost to performance."

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Justices Reject Request for Fast Health Law Ruling

Nor was there any indication that any justices had disqualified themselves from the case. The court?s practice is to note such recusals, and it now appears almost certain that all nine justices will hear cases challenging the law when they reach the court in the ordinary course, probably in the term that starts in October.

Federal trial courts around the nation have issued varying decisions about the constitutionality of a key provision of the law, the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act. Some judges have upheld the provision, which mandates the purchase of health insurance in some circumstances, while others have ruled that the requirement exceeds the scope of Congressional power authorized by the Constitution.

At least three appeals courts will hear appeals from those decisions in coming months. The Supreme Court?s usual practice is to consider cases only after an appeals court has ruled.

In a filing in February, Attorney General Kenneth T. Cuccinelli II of Virginia argued that an exception was warranted in his state?s challenge to the law given the law?s importance, complexity and the likelihood that the final decision on its constitutionality will be made by the Supreme Court.

?This case is of imperative national importance requiring immediate determination in this court,? Mr. Cuccinelli wrote.

In response, the federal government acknowledged the momentous issues involved. ?The constitutionality of the minimum coverage provision is undoubtedly an issue of great public importance,? Acting Solicitor General Neal K. Katyal wrote in March.

But he urged the justices to let the issues in the case, Virginia v. Sebelius, No. 10-1014, reach them in an orderly way. ?Especially given the court of appeals?s imminent consideration of this case,? Mr. Katyal wrote, ?there is no basis for short-circuiting the normal course of appellate review.?

The Supreme Court only rarely hears expedited appeals of the sort Mr. Cuccinelli sought, and so Monday?s order is perhaps more notable for seeming to settle the question of Justice Elena Kagan?s participation in the case. She joined the court in August, after serving about a year as United States solicitor general, the federal government?s top appellate lawyer.

Last summer, while under consideration for a seat on the court, Ms. Kagan wrote that she had had almost nothing to do with the administration?s plans to defend the health care law against legal challenges.

?I attended at least one meeting where the existence of the litigation was briefly mentioned,? she wrote, ?but none where any substantive discussion of the litigation occurred.?

Documents released last month under the Freedom of Information Act to CNS News, a conservative Web site, appear to confirm that she took pains to avoid involvement in meetings concerning challenges to the health case law. On March 21, 2010, for instance, about six weeks before her nomination to the Supreme Court, Mr. Katyal, then her deputy, sent Ms. Kagan an e-mail about a meeting the next day.

?This is litigation of singular importance,? Mr. Katyal wrote. ?I think you should go, no??

Two minutes later, Ms. Kagan responded with a question: ?What?s your phone number??

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iPad Review: Sword and Sworcery EP

iPad Review: Sword and Sworcery EP

Posted on 11th Apr 2011 at 10:50 by David Hing with 12 comments

Superbrothers: Sword and Sworcery EP for the iPad is like nothing else you have ever played. Described as ?a 21st century interpretation of the archetypical old school videogame adventure? it uses beautifully crafted pixel-scapes to do for video gaming what the impressionist painters did for art.

A collaborative project from indie studio Capybara, rock musicians and art from the Superbrothers themselves, Sword and Sworcery EP is a essentially a point and click adventure game that sees you cast as a warrior out to destroy an ancient evil. To do that you?ll need to solve puzzles, fight bears and collect an artefact called the Megatome ? so far, so adventure-game. What sets is apart from the likes of Kings Quest however are the lashings of surrealism, abstraction and poetry that somehow never slips into infuriating pretentiousness.


The real star isn?t the music or the mysticism, however, but the visual style. It?s absolutely perfect, causing us to frequently stop playing for a moment or two just to admire the scenery ? no mean feat considering the outstanding visual quality of most modern games. The landscapes are rich and detailed and invoke a near painterly quality. There?s a rare sense of artistry to Sword and Sworcery that we?ve not seen in a long, long time.

Sword and Sworcery?s music is still exemplary, however. The sound design has been meticulously crafted, fitting perfectly with the gameplay and creating an absorbing atmosphere that genuinely hooks you in to the moment. The sounds and music towards the end of our first session built a huge amount of tension and it was only after the threat ? which we won?t name to avoid spoiling it ? passed that we realised that our eyes were stinging due to lack of blinking.

A major drawback of most iPad and iPhone games is that they fail to make the most of the touchscreen interface or try to shoe horn in an ineffective d-pad. Point and click games seem like an assured win for touch-screens however, so Sword and Sworcery is a natural fit. It doesn?t limit itself to the conventions of the genre though, using screen-tilting mechanics regular switches from landscape to portrait to keep things interesting. In landscape mode you?re able to move around with your sword and shield equipped, while turning to portrait position opens your Megatome ? a combination spell book and help guide.


Sword and Sworcery isn?t all hard-core art-game, however ? there are points of genuine humour and awesome subtlety. At one point, for example, you have to travel into your dreams to find a lost key, which involves following a bear which dances like Ricky Gervais in the Office. It?s a moment which, like the game as a whole, feels beautifully surreal and yet oddly poignant.

Verdict: Sword and Sworcery could be a landmark in history of mobile gaming, proving to be the first title we?ve seen on the iPad platform which so wonderfully blurs the line between gaming and ambient art. Pensive, intelligent and wonderfully rich, you can feel the deep love and adoration for gaming that has gone into this project and it shines from its every pixel.

Superbrothers: Sword and Sorcery EP is developed by a whole host of talented artist and is available for the iPad via the AppStore.

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Lawmakers Seek to Unclog Road to Confirmation

The proposal to end Senate review of about 200 executive branch positions would be the most serious effort in recent years to pare the chamber?s constitutional power of advice and consent. It amounts to a rare voluntary surrender of Congressional clout, and it has high-caliber, bipartisan support with the endorsement of the Senate majority leader, Harry Reid of Nevada, and the Republican leader, Mitch McConnell of Kentucky.

?We are losing very good people because the process has become so onerous, so lengthy and so duplicative,? said Senator Susan Collins, Republican of Maine and a leading advocate of the bill. ?Why should there be a full F.B.I background check back to age 18 for an individual serving on a part-time board??

Ever since the Senate rejected President George Bush?s selection of John G. Tower as secretary of defense in 1989, Senate confirmations have become bruising public affairs that delve deep into a nominee?s background. President Obama?s initial picks for several cabinet posts withdrew their nominations after the process turned up embarrassing details.

Several presidents, frustrated by delays, have sought to bypass the process by making so-called recess appointments while Congress is not in session. Mr. Obama used that tactic last summer to install the administrator of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services.

Backers of the confirmation measure say they want to ease what they call an arduous chore for midlevel nominees trying to navigate the Senate in a supercharged partisan era. While it would not affect senior positions, the legislation, and a related proposal to expedite filling about 250 part-time positions, is intended to reverse an explosion in confirmable posts from about 280 when President John F. Kennedy took office in 1961 to 1,400 today.

Yet it is never easy to tinker with the rules in an institution renowned for its resistance to change.

Looking at the list of assistant secretaries, department directors, chief financial officers and advisory board members who would be removed from the Senate docket, some conservatives see an effort to give the White House carte blanche to extend bureaucratic sprawl. The change would also limit the leverage that lawmakers have over the administration by reducing the number of appointments they could block in order to win concessions or other considerations.

Writing for the conservative Heritage Foundation, David S. Addington, who served as chief of staff to Vice President Dick Cheney, urged defeat of the bill, saying the drafters of the Constitution ?did not give the president the kingly power to appoint the senior officers of the government by himself.?

Conservative senators have raised similar objections.

?Allowing the president to appoint czars and bureaucrats without Congressional oversight adds to the problem of an ever-expanding, unaccountable government,? said Moira Bagley, a spokeswoman for Senator Rand Paul, Republican of Kentucky, who has expressed objections to the measure.

Others worry that officials exempted from confirmation will lose stature among colleagues who will consider the posts to be downgraded.

And some say the Senate, where the slow pace and partisan maneuvering over confirmations has kept high-level offices vacant for extended stretches, is being too timid and should consider more far-reaching changes for all presidential appointees.

?This is a start, but it doesn?t address the real problems with the rules or with the confirmation process,? said Senator Tom Udall, Democrat of New Mexico, who has proposed shortening the time that lawmakers can debate a nomination after cutting off a filibuster to 4 hours from 30. ?These are baby steps.?

Mr. Udall helped push the Senate into considering an overhaul of the confirmation process early this year when he threatened to force a floor fight on a proposal to limit filibusters. To avert a showdown, the leadership agreed to look at procedural changes, and the proposal to cut the number of Senate confirmations was one result.

Senator Lamar Alexander of Tennessee, the No. 3 Republican in the chamber and a former cabinet secretary, said the jump in jobs that require confirmation has cut into the Senate?s time for more pressing issues and put an unnecessary burden on nominees.

?We drag some unsuspecting citizen through this gauntlet of investigations and questioning,? said Mr. Alexander, who has dubbed the process the ?innocent-until-nominated? syndrome. ?They are very fortunate if they get all the way through without being made to appear a criminal.?

The legislation, which cleared the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee this month, would remove roughly 200 positions ? many of them public affairs or Congressional-relations jobs for various agencies ? from Senate scrutiny. Among the more notable positions on the list are the United States treasurer, which officials say has become a mainly ceremonial position, and the director of the Mint.

Authors of the bill said they picked positions they did not consider central to setting policy or spending money. For instance, the list includes the assistant secretary of agriculture for Congressional relations; the assistant secretary of defense for networks and information integration; and the assistant attorney general for legislative affairs, among others. The bill also proposes to end confirmation of the chief financial officers in many agencies.

Senator Joseph I. Lieberman, the Connecticut independent who leads the governmental affairs committee, said the reduction in jobs requiring confirmation should enable presidents to fill vacancies more quickly.

?Eighteen months into the Obama administration, 25 percent of his nominees were still unconfirmed,? Mr. Lieberman said. ?This is not an aberration.?

In addition to exempting the 200 jobs, the measure would create a working group in the administration to report within 90 days on proposals to create a single ?smart form? intended to allow nominees to ?answer all vetting questions one way, at a single time.?

The legislation ? which would need to be approved by both chambers of Congress, though the House generally defers to the Senate on such matters ? is intended to be supplemented by a new Senate rule that would automatically place the names of dozens of appointees to boards and commissions on the Senate calendar for approval once they have submitted a required questionnaire. Senators would have 10 days to intervene.

?Instead of spending our time confirming an appointment to the Literary Society Board or the Morris K. Udall Scholarship Fund, we should be working on reducing the debt,? Mr. Alexander said. ?We still end up with more than 1,000 nominees, which is more than President Clinton had and four times more than President Kennedy appointed.?

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The ?immersive? elements of browsing in Windows 8 are downright ugly

As the entire world begins to fix its eyes onto Windows 8, and as the leaks start to break with increasingly frequency, it is time now to wonder if what Microsoft is cooking up actually appears to be appealing.

After all it is one thing to write about every new screenshot, and another altogether to ask if it is an image of something that would be useful on a daily basis.

TNWmicrosoft, after a new crop of screenshots dropped concerning the much touted ?immersive browsing? capabilities of Windows 8, feels comfortable in saying that the feature had best find a way to get hit by the pretty stick, or it?s likely going to flop with consumers.

What follows are a number of pictures of the ?immersive? parts of Windows 8:

At the risk of being flippant, we rest our case.

Now, it could, and will be argued that this feature is nearly without a doubt designed to support tablet/slate computing. This is a fair reading of the images, and it does soften the ugly of the feature as it might in fact bring some useful functionality, but to quote Home Alone: ?woof!?

There is a piece of similar functionality in Windows 7 on the task bar that looks like this:

But as you will notice, that feature is not ugly. We don?t want to kick the horse too many times in one post, but Microsoft needs to get some seriously talented UI designers over the Windows 8 building to sort out this out. It?s only ?immersive? if people allow themselves to be immersed, and with what we have we seen so far, we doubt that many will let that happen.

In other news, a new build of Windows 8 leaked today.

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Meet Heather Poe


This is Heather Poe. She?s a young woman, living in Los Angeles and attending college there, though it isn?t her hometown. She?s kind, happy, eager to please and a little bit geeky. She?s also one of the best features of one of my favourite games, Troika?s Vampire The Masquerade: Bloodlines.

You find Heather in the hospital, where she?s been rushed into the emergency room for some strange neck wound. As a newly turned vampire yourself, you know that there?s more to this story than meets the eye, but your heightened senses also tell you that she?ll survive her undead encounter if she just gets some fresh haemoglobin. Unfortunately, there isn?t a doctor to hand and the hospital is criminally understaffed.

Earlier, a friend of yours told you that vampire blood has certain special characteristics when drunk by humans ? mainly as a healing elixir. You pause, then slit your wrist to save her young life before disappearing back into the night. You have errands to run, after all. Little do you know that this isn?t the last time you?ll be seeing Heather.

She shows up a few nights later, grabbing you on the street and desperate to thank you. She?s babbling and doe-eyed and she knows far too much about you and your kind ? you?ll suffer reprisals if you don?t take this matter in hand, but now is not the time. You send her back to your haven ? that grotty motel in Santa Monica ? and tell her to wait for you.

You have a choice now. Your blood is mixing with Heather?s and creating a potent, mind-altering brew. The more time she spends with you, the more she falls under your thrall, whether you want her to or not. You know you should send her away, break the bond and tell her to forget all this silliness about vampires. You know you should, but a lot of reasons run through you mind for why you shouldn?t ? a lot of excuses.

You?re little more than a servant for others at the moment, so the idea of cultivating your own slave does have a certain appeal. Letting her go may bring the wrath of your superiors if she exposes you. You wonder about the direction you could steer Heather, making her serve you in a way that seems repugnant in the daylight hours.

That?s what's great about being a vampire; not casting a reflection. You can avoid a lot of guilt and shame when you don?t have to meet your own gaze.


Over the next few days or weeks, Heather changes. Sometimes you're the one pushing, telling her how to dress or to surrender her life savings. At other times, it?s the blood that changes her. She was eager to please at the beginning, but now her devotion is fanatical. One day you find she?s bought you home some food - still alive and locked in the bathroom. The longer the ?relationship? lasts, the more you get the idea that it isn?t going to end well, but the harder it becomes to end it.

Heather?s fate ultimately lies in your hands. She?s a nice, likeable person and you want to do well by her. At the same time, though, the rest of LA is working to reshape you. You may have been just an average guy a few weeks ago, but now you?re a vampire; suffering and cruelty is your stock and trade.

As you acclimatise to this new existence, you start to adapt. You already don?t have to look at yourself in the mirror, but now you?re learning to hide the rest of yourself behind your new definition of what you are. You are a demon. Once you accept that, it becomes very easy to do very nasty things to a very nice person.

Then, when the game ends, you realise what?s happened and you learn something about yourself. That?s why Vampire: Bloodlines is one of my favourite games.

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