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Pentagon says it won't spy on 'innocent' Americans, but critics say past record shows this is false. Claiming it needs greater latitude for the war on terror, the US Senate Intelligence Committee has approved a request from the Pentagon for the right to "covertly" gather intelligence on US citizens in order to determine whether they can recruit them as informants, without telling them that they are doing so on behalf of the US government. Reuters reported Friday that the Pentagon said the measure, which is aimed at the Muslim community in the US, could help them fight insurgencies in Iraq...

TheStreet provides an analysis of Apple's current market position with respect to its recent popularity. TheStreet also weighs in on potential product releases at tomorrow's Media event. Despite most recent rumors that the event will simply introduce upgraded regular iPods and new PowerBook/PowerMac (dual Core PPC) configs, the article still speculates on the possibility of a video iPod. That said, the article provides an interesting statistic from the NPD Group: Through August, Apple's share of the U.S. retail market for computers, excluding online sales, grew to 6.6% from 4.3% in the same period last year, according to market researcher NPD...

An Iranian group has killed American civilians, allied itself with Saddam Hussein, and holds a spot on the State Department’s terrorist watch list. So why might it become America’s newest friend in the Middle East? Hint: Tehran. In August 2002, intelligence reports revealed secret nuclear facilities in the Iranian cities of Natanz and Arak. The revelation left officials in Tehran speechless, in large part because the evidence was not gathered by the United States or any of its allies. Rather, the courier of such sensitive intelligence was the Mujahedin e-Khalq (MEK), a decades-old Iranian dissident group. In most cases, dissident...

Apple may not be able to roll out its Intel-based Macs on schedule as it had hoped, because Intel won't be releasing its Woodcrest and Merom processors until the third quarter of next year. A report from The Inquirer notes that "Apple is big, but not nearly big enough to bully Intel," and that the company is attempting to put pressure on Intel in the hopes that the chips will be delivered early. Intel is apparently not providing Apple with preferential treatment, despite the pressure, according to the report.

Vietnam’s communist government knows that it is impossible to monitor the country’s 5,000 cyber cafes, so it’s forcing the cafe owners to be its eyes and ears. Last July, a government directive informed cafe owners that they will have to take a six-month course so that they can better monitor their cyber customers. The Vietnamese government is justifying its move for reasons of “national security and defense” — that is, to protect itself against online journalists who, it says, “provide sensationalist news and articles while others even publish reactionary and libelous reports and a depraved culture.” Reporters Without Borders (RWB),...

Japanese Overclocker Sets SuperPI Record with 7.30GHz Pentium 4. Famous Japanese overclocker who calls himself Memesama has set a yet another world’s record in overclocking Intel Pentium 4 processor. This time the well-known computer enthusiast achieved 7.30GHz speed. According to the statement issued by Memesama in his blog as well as in XtremeSystems web-site’s forum, the system managed to calculate π (pi) number to 1 million decimal places in approximately 17 seconds, which is the world’s record of today. Core-clock of 7304MHz is also the highest speed Intel Pentium 4 processor ever achieved. Earlier clock-speed record breaking – 7.13GHz –...

ntel fired back at rival Advanced Micro Devices on Thursday in a legal response to AMD's lawsuit, denying it has violated antitrust laws. The 63-page response said AMD has fallen behind Intel because of its own business mistakes, not because Intel engaged in any antitrust activity. In the long run, Intel said, AMD's lawsuit will raise prices for consumers. Intel, based in Santa Clara, is the world's largest maker of semiconductor chips. AMD, a smaller rival based in Sunnyvale, filed suit in federal court in June contending Intel violated antitrust laws by using a combination of incentives and threats to...

Why are the polls down? Is public support for the war crumbling? Well, no. But the explanation for plummeting numbers varies depending on which war you are talking about. If you mean what started out as the "war on terror," support remains high. You may recall that war. It was about the eradication of militant Islam and its state sponsors. To the extent there is public uneasiness, it is not over the fact of that war but rather the manner in which it is being prosecuted, with terrorists continuing to score successes and their facilitators in Iran and Syria making...

THE CEO OF Intel said that an advert AMD took out today challenging it to a dual core dual quite spoilt his cup of coffee. The advert, in broadsheet the San Francisco Chronicle, challenges Intel to match it on performance for dual core chips. But Paul Otellini, CEO pf Intel turned down the challenge with some disdain, refusing to pick up the gauntlet the chipsters threw down. We’ve often noted the resemblance of both Intel and AMD to the Tweedledee and Tweedledum characters in Alice through the Looking Glass. These brave warriors were forced to live a sort of mock...

Speaking at the Intel Developer Forum on Tuesday company chief executive Paul Otellini said the industry is on a new "performance per watt" course that will deliver powerful Intel-based computers that are increasingly smaller, sleeker and more energy-efficient. During his keynote address at San Francisco's Moscone Center, Otellini unveiled the company's next-generation, power-optimized micro-architecture for future digital home, enterprise, mobile and emerging market platforms -- and low-power products aimed at a new category of converged consumer devices. In the second half of 2006, Otellini said Intel will introduce the micro-architecture, which combines the strength of the company's current Intel...

MacBidouille reported late last week that Apple Legal has taken action against the information floating around the web demonstrating successful use of Mac OS X on 3rd party PC hardware. This is exactly what Apple Legal has started to do last night (Central Europe time) by sending us an amazingly aggressive email asking for the immediate removal of all links to the videos showing OSX x86 booting from non-Apple certified SDK PC. MacBidiuille notes that Apple will have a difficult time keeping these efforts under check... especially once Mac OS X for Intel becomes publicly available. At present, it appears...

All the information the Mojahedeen provides the western media is pure lies and fabricated to discredit the Iranian regime and help the United States and Israel to put more pressures on Iran”, a former senior member of the outlawed, Baghdad-based Mojahedeen Khalq Organisation (MKO) told Iran Press Service. Referring to recent press conferences held by the MKO spokesmen in various capitals, including Paris, Vienna, London, Berlin and Washington “revealing” secret nuclear sites or the number of centrifuges undeclared to the international nuclear watchdog, the source who asked for anonymity said the MKO has no information about Iran’s sensitive military projects...

Iran has now defied the E.U.-3 by resuming uranium processing at Isfahan. During the months of negotiations, Iran has put in place somewhere between 2,000 and 4,000 advanced centrifuges. Just as soon as Iran gets enough uranium hexafluoride produced at Isfahan, Natanz will be re-opened to begin processing the uranium hexafluoride to weapons-grade uranium. What has the Bush administration done about it? As I predicted in "Atomic Iran," the E.U.-3 negotiations were bound to fail, simply because the mullahs were playing the Europeans for fools. They only stopped enriching uranium because they had technical problems at Isfahan and Natanz, so...

NEW YORK -- I have no doubt that the lying zealots running Iran these days are trying to produce nuclear weapons. And they are capable of using them. These are bad people -- not the people of Iran, but the people running the country. During their long war with Iraq in the 1980s, the mullahs gave their own children little slips of paper they called "tickets to paradise" and then sent the kids running into minefields, blowing themselves up so that regular troops could advance into battle. "Iran is not Iraq," said the Iranian envoy to the International Atomic Energy...

9/11 Commissioners Defend Intel Omission By KIMBERLY HEFLING, Associated Press Writer 1 hour, 59 minutes ago WASHINGTON - The leaders of the 9/11 commission late Friday disputed a congressman's criticism that the panel did not adequately investigate a claim that four hijackers were identified as al-Qaida members more than a year before the attacks. In a joint statement, former commission chairman Thomas Kean and vice chairman Lee Hamilton said a military official who made the claim had no documentation to back it up. And they said only 9/11 ringleader Mohamed Atta was identified to them and not three additional hijackers...

Does anyone else remember there was a rumor just before the OSX x86 announcement that Steve Jobs was willing to give up a bit of profit for more market share? Well, it looks like that is exactly what is happening and more. If you haven't heard already, the developer kit for OSX on Intel has been leaked and thousands of people all over the world are running OSX on their PCs right now. Now, there are a few different types of people running this pirated version of OSX. The curious type who just want to play with OSX, those who...

SAN JOSE, California -- For the first time in five years, Intel Corp. will make a major change in the plumbing of its chips by switching to a new design that promises better performance and lower power consumption than today's Pentium 4. The world's largest chip maker will announce the architecture this month at a conference in San Francisco, spokesman Bill Calder said Thursday. Chips based on the new architecture are expected to debut in the second half of 2006. The technology will replace the Netburst architecture that appeared in late 2000 with the Pentium 4 and enabled a...

MacBidouille posts a claim that some individuals have been able to launch Mac OS X for Intel Processors on non-Apple Developer Kit hardware. According to the unconfirmed claims, any dependancy on the TPM digital rights chip have been "cracked" and specific hardware requirements can be worked around with emulation. These solutions can be slow, so the best solution recommended is simply choosing compatible hardware to start. (Recommendations are listed). The supplied screenshot appears to have been pulled. Videos were also posted, but are presently unavailable due to server load.

Harvey M. Sapolsky, who directs the Security Studies Program at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, told some unpleasant home truths to Canadians last month in a full-page article published in the National Post. There has been little response to it, either officially or editorially, and that is significant. "Canada is a security risk to the United States," wrote Sapolsky. "Anti-Americanism is the unstated essence of the modern Canadian identity." But there are reasons for this. After the Second World War, when Canada's historic British connection began to decline, "the threat of being absorbed, not by a conquering but by a...

Where in the world is Osama bin Laden? Let's face it. He shouldn't be hard to find, especially from a Predator, an aerial reconnaissance vehicle that can read the minute hand of a wristwatch from an altitude of 26,000 feet. Bin Laden is very tall – slightly over 6'6" – and incredibly thin, less than 150 pounds. He wears shalwart kameez – the loose-fitting tunics and baggy pants of al-Qaida and Taliban soldiers – and, when the weather is cold, he dons a camouflage jacket. Although he was born in 1957 and far from retirement age, the al-Qaida chieftain appears...