Texas Instruments (TI) is facing a patent infringement suit from Cradle IP, which claims that the company is violating three of its patents with its TMS320-series digital signal processors as well as its ARM-based AM389x Sitara and OMAP3 and 4 processors.

The patents in question are #6,647,450 (Multiprocessor computer systems with command FIFO buffer at each target device), #6,708,259 (Programmable wake up of memory transfer controllers in a memory transfer engine) and #6,874,049 (Semaphores with interrupt mechanism).

All three patents were held until November 9, 2011 by Cradle Technologies, which was spun off Cirrus Logic in 1998. Cradle IP is a subsidiary of Cradle Technologies that was apparently created to monetize Cradle Technology’s patents. Cradle Technologies describes itself as a “leader in network video surveillance systems”.

According to the suit, Cradle continued to develop multi-core hardware designs after it was separated from Cirrus Logic and even released chips, including the CT3600 multi-core DSP in 2005 and was earlier to market than TI and Freescale. The company also stated that it has tried to contact TI about the alleged patent violations as early as November 2008, but has been supposedly ignored.

As usual, the document asks for a court trial to confirm the infringement, as well as “compensatory damages, past and future, amounting to no less than reasonable royalties, prejudgment interest, and/or any other available damages based on any form of recoverable economic injury sustained by Cradle as a result of TI’s infringement including enhanced damages for TI’s wilful infringement of the Patents-in-Suit.”

SOURCE via Morris James

Certificates signed with MD (Message-Digest) version 2 (released in 1989) and 4 (released in1 995), both of which produce 128-bit hash values, are being rejected in the latest Chromium releases over delivering “fatal errors”.

MD5, also a 128-bit version, results in an “interstitial warning”, according to Chrome developer Peter Beverloo. Google decided to also reject RSA and DSA key with fewer than 1024 bits. The changes are in effect in Chromium 18 and Chrome 18 developer versions with a revision number of 114,432 (MD2, MD4, MD5) 114,709 (RSA, DSA) and higher.

Other recent changes in Chrome include pausing, resuming and canceling downloads via the new Download API, hardware-based video-encoding (only in Chrome OS), a 5 percent memory improvement on Chrome for Windows as well as 4 percent JavaScript speed improvement in Mozilla’s Kraken benchmark

SOURCE via Google

Sony’s PlayStation Vita was first unveiled almost a year ago, back in January of this year, and the device wasn’t given a price or estimated launch until June, at E3. Though the waiting game is never fun, it does give the company time to drum up excitement for a more successful launch. So, how did Sony do? Well, we already know there were some moderate queues at stores around Japan, but that doesn’t guarantee success. The real question is how many units did Sony sell?

Reuters points to data from research firm Enterbrain in reporting that Sony sold just over 320,000 PS Vitas in its first 48 hours of availability. This is about 50,000 fewer than Nintendo managed to shift with the 3DS’s first days of availability. Nintendo’s 3DS launched in Japan in February of this year to strong sales but things soon slowed to a point where Nintendo was forced to cut the price of the device significantly to give sales a boost. Sony is no doubt crossing its fingers it manages to avoid a similar scenario with the PS Vita.

The PS Vita hit Japanese shelves on Saturday, December 17. However, the company has already been forced to issue a software update and an apology to early adopters after some users reported issues with the device locking up and freezing. The company said in a statement to its Japanese users that its information center for PS Vita, as well as its usual customer service center, was receiving ‘many inquiries’ and apologized if users’ phones weren’t connecting right away. The device is scheduled for launch in the United States and Europe in late February, and it’s likely this issue will have been completely resolved long before then, so the chances that this will have any impact on you (if you decide to get a Vita) are slim.

Christmas at the House of Meg means there’s two new wireless mice coming to fill the stockings of those who don’t eat chocolate. Both units are clad in shimmering plastic and (not-so-shimmering) soft touch rubber, accommodating righties and lefties with equal ease. The 2.4GHz devices will give you 30-foot of roaming distance and a purported battery life of 30 months (on the X4000). The higher-end X5000 [pictured] has a touch scroll strip and four customizable buttons — including a one-click Facebook button to match the social butterfly X7000. We’ve got a teaser video below that’s either hyping these mice or the next James Bond movie, and you can snap ‘em up from our source links, costing $29.99 (X4000) and $39.99 (X5000) respectively.

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Connected Intelligence, a unit of market research firm NPD, found that the willingness of consumers to be paying for wireless data plans to connect their tablets is declining (not that there has been ever enthusiasm for expensive data plans). According to the firm, only 5 percent of tablet users paid for a data plan last spring and it is around 4 percent right now. It is quite apparent that most tablet users feel that Wi-Fi availability is good enough as 65 percent of tablet owners use Wi-Fi (up from 60 percent earlier this year). Interestingly, about 5 percent of tablet owners said they do not connect the devices to the Internet at all.

“There are multiple reasons for greater Wi-Fi reliance,” said Eddie Hold, vice president, Connected Intelligence, in a prepared statement. “Concern over the high cost of cellular data plans is certainly an issue, but more consumers are finding that Wi-Fi is available in the majority of locations where they use their tablets, providing them ‘good enough’ connectivity. In addition, the vast majority of tablet users already own a smartphone, which fulfills the ‘must have’ connectivity need.”

SOURCE via Connected-Intelligence

Intel just warned investors that the hard drive shortage caused by the Thailand flood has impacted processor sales and will lead the company to report a revenue shortfall of about $1 billion in the fourth calendar quarter.

AMD, however, claims that the hit may be insignificant for its business. CEO Rory Read told Marketwatch that he does not see “major pressure in terms of the quarter.” Read indicated that hard drive supply in the channel at the beginning of the quarter was healthy, which is in line with Intel’s statements, but the blue team said that PC vendors are not ordering as many CPUs as they would in a normal circumstance.

Read conceded that there could be a stronger impact in Q1 or Q2 2012, but he “wouldn’t bet against the supply chain,” which he described as “very resilient.” Read is confident that AMD can take back market share against Intel.

AMD has not issued a Q4 revenue warning and it appears that it is not seeing reasons to do so in the near future. The company will discuss its Q4 results on January 24 and recently scheduled its 2012 analyst day for February 2, which should bring more details how the hard drive shortage may or may not affect AMD’s business. Analysts from IHS recently said that the overall hard drive supply will recover in the second half of next year, while IDC is more pessimistic and said that the effects of shortage may be around until 2013.

SOURCE via Market Watch

The Louisiana Department of Health and Hospitals has issued a weird warning: if you have to irrigate your sinuses with water for some medical reason, don’t use tap water. The reason: your brains may get eaten by the Naegleria fowleri.

That’s the scientific name of the brain-eating amoeba, the gross thing in the picture above. It’s like the brain slug in Futurama, except this one kills you instead of controlling your brain.

It’s also what happened to two people in that state. They were infected and died after irrigating their sinuses with tap water.

So what’s this nae… nal… er… Naegleria fowleri? Well the Naegleria fowleri is a micro-organism that lives in ponds, lakes, hot springs or anywhere where there is warm fresh water. It also lives in soil and un-chlorinated swimming pools. When you drink it, there’s no danger. But when you put it up your nose using a device like a neti pot, you are playing with death.

And so how can a person get infected? If you get it through the nose, the brain-eating will attack your nervous system until you are dead. The chances of surviving its attack are slim: 98 percent of attacks end in the morgue.

When you’re infected, the symptoms start one to 14 days after the infection. Your taste and smell will be altered, you will have headaches, fever and nausea. Your neck will go rigid and you will start vomiting. You may also experience confusion and hallucinations, as well as seizures. Death occurs one to two weeks after exposure.

Well the good news is you can actually avoid Naegleria fowleri. More correctly, you can prevent this. Just boil the water first and kill the bastard little bug. In fact, try not to put anything up your nose and ears that hasn’t been sterilized first. It’s a common point of entry not only for this bloody thing, but also to viruses and bacteria.

SOURCE via Yahoo! News