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<p>A founding member of the campaign of Democratic presidential nominee Sen. Barack Obama of Illinois met in New York City tonight with Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.</p> <p>Jodie Evans, who co-hosted Obama's first major fundraiser in Hollywood in February 2007 just after Obama announced his candidacy and is a top fundraiser and donor to Obama's campaign, led a delegation of leftist anti-American groups that held a private meeting near the United Nations. The stated purpose of the meeting was to "serve as an opening for diplomatic resolution" to prevent war between Iran and the United States.</p>

Why Microsoft and Intel tried to kill the XO $100 laptopAt the World Economic Forum in Davos in January 2005, Nicholas Negroponte, supreme prophet of digital connectivity, revealed a strange tent-like object. It was designed to change the world and to cost $100. It was a solar-powered laptop. Millions would be distributed to children in the developing world, bringing them connection, education, enlightenment and freedom of information. The great, the good, the rich and the technocrats nodded in solemn approval. And then some of them tried to kill it. Microsoft, makers of most of the computer software in the world,...

Intel Corporation is presenting a paper at the SIGGRAPH 2008 industry conference in Los Angeles on Aug. 12 that describes features and capabilities of its first-ever forthcoming “many-core” blueprint or architecture codenamed “Larrabee.” Details unveiled in the SIGGRAPH paper include a new approach to the software rendering 3-D pipeline, a many-core (many processor engines in a product) programming model and performance analysis for several applications. The first product based on Larrabee will target the personal computer graphics market and is expected in 2009 or 2010. Larrabee will be the industry’s first many-core x86 Intel architecture, meaning it will be based...

(Intel is a sponsor of SVW)Intel announced plans for a new business group manufacturing system-on-a-chip (SOC) semiconductors. SOCs are souped-up microprocessors that are tuned for specific types of devices, such as mobile internet devices, smart phones, or medical devices.Intel's SOC chips combine a microprocessor with memory, graphics, and embedded software plus specialized chip and software functions.SOCs can shrink almost an entire board of chips into just one or two chips. This makes digital products more reliable and less expensive to make.Intel predicts that within a few years there will likely be billions of digital devices connected to the Internet. Most...

Security researcher and author Kris Kaspersky plans to demonstrate how an attacker can target flaws in Intel's microprocessors to remotely attack a computer using JavaScript or TCP/IP packets, regardless of what operating system the computer is running. Kaspersky will demonstrate how such an attack can be made in a presentation at the upcoming Hack In The Box (HITB) Security Conference in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, during October. The proof-of-concept attacks will show how processor bugs, called errata, can be exploited using certain instruction sequences and a knowledge of how Java compilers work, allowing an attacker to take control of the...

DreamWorks Animation SKG Inc. has chosen Intel Corp. to supply chips and other technology for its big computer-animation operations, a shift that will cost Advanced Micro Devices Inc. one of its most prestigious customers. The pact is expected to replace the studio's computing hardware -- which now includes 1,500 Hewlett-Packard Co. server systems and 1,000 workstations that use AMD microprocessors -- with new H-P systems that use Intel chips. DreamWorks Animation said the resulting increase in computing power would substantially shorten the time needed for many computing chores and aid the studio's planned shift next year to 3-D animation. "For...

Excerpt - PCW: Can you share any funny, interesting, or unusual anecdotes about the 8086 that we haven't covered already? SM: I always regret that I didn't fix up some idiosyncrasies of the 8080 when I had a chance. For example, the 8080 stores the low-order byte of a 16-bit value before the high-order byte. The reason for that goes back to the 8008, which did it that way to mimic the behavior of a bit-serial processor designed by Datapoint (a bit-serial processor needs to see the least significant bits first so that it can correctly handle carries when doing...

If Congress needed a kick in the pants to get moving on intelligence reform, this is it: A San Francisco judge ruled Wednesday that the federal government’s program to spy on terrorists and their affiliates is not protected by the “state secrets” privilege. This means that government officials and companies that helped to implement the program may be forced to testify about its structure and operations. If those aren’t state secrets, what is?

Intel Corp. disclosed that an internal team has been working on technology for use in solar panels, and now is spinning off that effort to form a new company. The chip maker said the company, SpectraWatt Inc., will make photovoltaic cells, the primary component in solar panels that use sunlight to generate electricity. It will receive $50 million in initial funding from a consortium including Intel's venture capital arm, Goldman Sach's Cogentrix Energy subsidiary, PCG Clean Energy and Technology Fund, and Solon AG, a German solar-panel maker. Intel's move is the latest in a scramble among Silicon Valley companies to...

Korea Fines Intel $25 Million for Antitrust Violations Steven Schwankert and Sumner Lemon, IDG News Service Wed Jun 4, 11:10 PM ET The Korea Fair Trade Commission has fined Intel a reported 26 billion won (US$25.42 million) for abusing its dominant position in the microprocessor market, by offering rebates to South Korean computer makers in a way that unfairly harmed its rival Advanced Micro Devices. Intel said it was unhappy with the ruling and indicated that it will appeal it to the high court in Seoul. Bruce Sewell, Intel general counsel, said Intel believes the Fair Trade Commission did not...

WASHINGTON - A turf war is being waged in the closed world of U.S. intelligence agencies that could disrupt how spy operations are carried out around the world, according to former and current CIA officials. The Office of the Director of National Intelligence, which for the past four years has overseen U.S. intelligence agencies, is angling for more power over and insight into spy operations worldwide. At stake is the authority of the CIA's legendary station chiefs, who for 60 years have enjoyed a great deal of autonomy in overseas intelligence operations. In 2005, the director designated an intelligence officer...

The U.S. is its own worst enemy when it comes to the desperately important task of recruiting immigrants as spies, analysts and translators in the war on terror, new Americans are telling intelligence officials. The government's policies raise suspicions and fear in the immigrants' home countries and disturb potential recruits here who might otherwise want to help. The U.S. knows it needs the help. At the heart of a Friday summit with immigrant groups was a stark reality: The intelligence agencies lack people who can speak the languages that are needed most, such as Arabic, Farsi and Pashtu. More importantly,...

The technological and economical development of Scandinavia (including Finland) is today more groundbreking than anywhere else in the world. The investments being made in relation to population size is mind-boggling. Despite a mere population of 25 million inhabitants, the combined GDP of the Scandinavian countries today ridicules that of a Russia often viewed to be a "reborn" super power "on the go" (combined Scandinavian GDP is actually 125% that of of Russia - and the gap is widening!!) But, let's focus on telecommunications here; Five bidders have paid €226 million ($346 million) for fourth generation (4G), super-fast mobile telephony licences,...

As Intel and AMD near the end of the discovery process in their US antitrust battle, the two companies have begun fighting over whose testimony will make it to the big dance. In a legal filing, AMD has pointed to the employees at some of the technology world's biggest names - HP, Dell, IBM and others - who it thinks will help make its case. Intel has responded in kind, and it's now up to a judge to decide on the strength of the vendors' arguments. Following a dispute over the number of depositions allowed in the case, Special Master...

In a move that could have broad implications for the high-performance computing (HPC) market, Intel and Cray have announced a broad collaboration that will see engineers from the two companies work together on future products and projects.With the first Intel-Cray products appearing in the 2010-2011 timeframe, it's clear that three Intel technologies have caught Cray's eye: the native 32nm Sandy Bridge microarchitecture, the QuickPath Interconnect (QPI) scheme, and the forthcoming discrete, x86-based graphics product, codenamed Larrabee. Cray will plug all of these components into its SeaStar interconnect fabric, and when combined with Cray Linux they'll make for an HPC and...

FORT HUACHUCA, Ariz. — One of the most experienced interrogators in the Defense Department looked straight into Ahmed's eyes and asked him for the third time: "Ahmed, what insurgent organization do you belong to?" Sitting in the room with no windows, Ahmed refused to answer the interrogator's questions. He was stoic — similar to many al Qaeda insurgents the interrogator had questioned at the detention center at the U.S. Naval Base Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. But, this time, things were different. Ahmed, who uses an alias, was practicing as an advanced interrogation student at Fort Huachuca, the nation's largest intelligence-training facility...

The United States has agreed to provide Israel with access to its BMEWS (ballistic missile early warning system). The half century old system uses radars and satellites to monitor the planet for ballistic missile launchers (specifically ICBMs, but any large missile launch is detected.) Twice before, in 1991 and 2003, the U.S. allowed Israel to plug into BMEWS (to get warning of Iraqi missile launches). This time around, BMEWS will give Israel warning about any Iranian ballistic missiles headed west. Early on, BMEWS consisted of long range radars that could spot warheads coming over the north pole (from Russia). When...

FBI chief blames Britain’s laws for the ‘dark hole’ in terror intelligence 13th April 2008 The war on terror is being hindered by restrictive British law which has created a "dark hole of intelligence", the director of the FBI has claimed. Robert Mueller, America's top counter-terrorist official, said in an exclusive interview that he sometimes felt "frustration" at MI5 and Scotland Yard's inability to obtain critical information from suspects. He blamed Britain's banning of plea-bargaining – which, in America, means suspects can receive much lighter sentences in return for revealing everything they know about other members of their cell and...

Intel 'will survive US recession' By Rory Cellan-Jones Technology correspondent, BBC News Intel Chief Executive Paul Otellini says increasingly faster chips will drive the use of Wimax wirelss broadband. Intel will ride out any US recession and make a success of Wimax wireless broadband, the firm's chief executive Paul Otellini has told BBC News. He said: "People turn to computers to improve productivity during downturn, because at the end of the day the computer is a tool for productivity." Intel is the world's largest chip maker for desktops and laptops. Answering BBC News users' questions, he said Intel's developing world...

CAMP VICTORY, Iraq, March 19, 2008 – Multinational Division Center formed in spring 2007 as part of the U.S. troop surge. The progress made since then has been well-documented, as soldiers have built a network of patrol bases covering the “belts” of suburbs and agricultural communities surrounding southern and eastern Baghdad. What is less well-known is the surge in support required from other U.S. government agencies in bringing about those gains. In Multinational Division Center, one of the most significant of those surge partners is the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency. The NGA – a Defense Department support agency and a member...