Microsoft and NBC Officially Split

    On Sunday night, MSNBC.com did something that successful Web sites very rarely do: rename itself. The site became NBCNews.com, signifying the end of a relationship between NBC and Microsoftthat dates back to the beginning of the commercial Web. Next year, MSNBC.com will become a website singly for the cable channel MSNBC, possibly relieving some previous confusion. NBC is controlled by Comcast, which will be acquiring Microsoft's 50% stake to essentially solidify position in the web-based news genre.The precise value of the acquisition is not being made public but will likely be in the range of several hundred million dollars. Television news operations are looking more and more to increase their online presence in pursuit of advertising dollars inexpansion of audience. NBC will likely realize advantages by having their staffs become more closely knit and improving digital distribution of television products.

Phone Scam Artists Pretend to be Microsoft

    A friend texted and then called me the other day saying he had received a phone call from Microsoft. He then began to describe the situation and I knew there was a problem. FIRST - Microsoft will NOT call you to complain about any possible virus/malware you may have exposed them to because they just don't do that. This scam will attempt to get you to give the scam artist control of your computer explaining that they can resolve the problem (which does not exist at all). While advising my friend to disconnect his ethernet cable immediately I called Microsoft at their normal phone contact #:

Power Consumption is a Hurdle for Exascale Computing

    If history is any guide, about 10 years after the existence of exascale supercomputers, the technology will find its way into PCs. But if current trends hold true, an exascale computer are likely to consume vast amounts of power. The formidable challenge would be to create an exascale computing system that consumes much less power. If engineers can use new technology to create an exascale system utilizing relatively little power, the same technology can also be used to dramatically lower the power consumption of lower performance systems, to the point where giga-scale systems consuming mere milliwatts of power can be used in small toys and mega-scale systems that consume very few microwatts could be used in heart monitors.

    Scaling down supply voltage can defitely increase energy efficiency but this can have a side effect—leakage power does not scale back as much as total power consumption, therefor that leakage power becomes a higher percentage of total consumption. More on exascale computing can be found here.

Russian Wikipedia Shuts Down in Protest of 'Censorship' bill

   The Russian version of Wikipedia shut down Tuesday in protest of a "censorship" bill. The free encyclopedia on Tuesday temporarily shut down access to most of its Russian-language site in protest of proposed legal action in Russia that it says would result in Internet censorship. Visitors to ru.wikipedia.orgon Tuesday saw a black censorship bar over the Wikipedia logo and a message asking them to imagine a world without free access to knowledge. In January, Wikipedia shut down its English sites for 24 hours in protest of anti-piracy laws that were being discussed in the U.S. Congress.