integrate

The CIA allegedly purchased flawed targeting software for drone missile attacks on suspected terrorists--software it knew was faulty, and that could misdirect attacks by as much as 39 feet--according to a report in The Register based on claims made in a lawsuit.

The suit, filed by a Massachusetts-based company called Intelligent Integration Systems (IISi), involves another Massachusetts company, Netezza, The Register said in its report today. Netezza, a data warehousing company IBM has made a bid to buy, allegedly got a $1.18 million purchase order from the CIA last year to provide data warehouse appliances for use in drones, … Read more

Sandy Bridge is the culmination of a major Intel design effort to achieve a respectable level of graphics performance and make it a standard feature in all Intel mainstream processors going forward. This week at the Intel Developer Forum in San Francisco, Intel engineers were fairly candid in explaining what Sandy Bridge can and can't do.

First, some background. A number of technical sessions at IDF were devoted to discussing Sandy Bridge's graphics technology and the design teams that came together to take this critical feature out of the chipset--a separate companion chip--and put it, for the first time, in the main processor, or CPU.

Intel integrated graphics silicon started appearing in many mainstream laptops about six years ago. And since then has shipped in the lion's share of PCs sold worldwide. While this has made Intel the leading graphics chip supplier, it has also made it the perennial target of criticism from gaming devotees, who claim--rightfully so in many cases--that Intel graphics fall woefully short in handling a number of mainstream games. In turn, this has led to Intel rebuttals and corresponding primers on Intel integrated graphics.

And Nvidia, a leading graphics chip supplier, has always offered its two cents on Intel's graphics technology. "Today's visual computing applications--like photo and video editing, playing games, and browsing the Web--use a GPU for the best experience," Nvidia said in a statement just prior to IDF. Standalone graphics processing units from Nvidia and Advanced Micro Devices almost invariably offer better performance, particularly on games, but can add cost and, in the case of laptops, can up power consumption requirements.

At IDF, Intel engineers described the markets they can, and cannot, address with Sandy Bridge's graphics. Sandy Bridge technology will be part of Intel Core i series mobile processors to be introduced into laptops early next year, with the first Sandy Bridge laptop announcements expected at the Consumer Electronics Show in January.

"We're not trying to target the most high-end discrete (standalone) card. We don't have the bandwidth, we don't have the power budget. We're trying to do the best experience for the mobile platform," said Opher Kahn, senior principal engineer on the Sandy Bridge design team. … Read more

It was only a matter of time, but three months after acquiring Web-based photo editor Picnik, Google has gotten around to integrating the service into Picasa Web Albums.

Now, if a Picasa Web Albums user wants to make a quick edit to a photo, they can do so without leaving the photo page. Previously a user would have needed the software version of Picasa installed, or to use an external editor (such as Picnik)--both of which made for a disjointed experience.

While a seemingly minor move, it's the first step by Google to integrate the Picnik editor into … Read more

If you're a swimmer splashing around for help in the ocean near Malibu this summer, don't be afraid if you spot a red object speeding toward you. It's not a sunburned shark with a first-aid symbol tattooed on its back, but a robot lifeguard coming to rescue you.

Emily (Emergency Integrated Lifesaving Lanyard) is a remote-controlled motorized contraption containing a sonar device that can scan for underwater movements associated with distressed swimmers. Lifeguards toss it into the surf from a beach, aircraft, or ship, and it zooms toward its target at speeds up to 28 mph. Once … Read more

Good companies create new technology. Great companies integrate existing technology.

At least, that's how innovation happens today. Apple gets a lot of credit for its highly polished products, and rightly so. It may be, however, that Apple is simply the best at putting a pretty face on tightly integrated home-grown and open-source projects like FreeBSD (underpinning Mac OS X), Lucene (powering search on iTunes), and more.

That's innovation in the vendor community, but, as Gartner analyst Mark McDonald points out, it applies equally well for enterprise IT:

Does technology change the value of the IT professional?

Yes, as … Read more

I have no idea why giant electronics companies like Sony, Panasonic, Sharp, or Samsung never really tried to enter the audiophile market in the U.S.

Sure, Sony's very first SACD player, the $5,000 SCD-1 was a spectacularly good-sounding component; Sharp made an exotic, very high-end digital amplifier a few years ago; and back in the 1970s Panasonic's Technics gear was pretty impressive. I'm sure those companies are still producing no-holds-barred audio for their home markets. So the know-how is there, but apparently little interest in sending it here.

The first-generation Marantz audio products were designed and built by Saul B. Marantz in his home in Kew Gardens, New York, in the 1950s. The company truly advanced the state of the art, and those early Marantz designs now fetch big bucks on eBay. By the 1960s Marantz started building gear in Japan, and the company was sold and resold over the intervening decades. But through good times and bad, Marantz stayed true to its roots and always made above-average-sounding products, bettering the offerings from larger companies like Sony and Panasonic sold in the U.S.

Robert J. Reina's enthusiastic Marantz PM5003 integrated amplifier review in the January 2010 issue of Stereophile started me thinking about affordable high-quality gear from mainstream manufacturers. Yes, it can happen.

The Marantz PM5003 ($450) is a stereo integrated amplifier; it puts out 40 watts per channel. It was designed in Japan and made in China.

Do you have a turntable? Great, you can plug it directly into the PM5003; it has a rather sophisticated moving-magnet phono stage that'll bring out the very best sound from your records. The PM5003 also has five line-level inputs, two record outputs, a balance control, a headphone amplifier, treble, bass, and loudness controls. … Read more

For years the IT industry has been extolling the virtues of "best of breed." Build your IT environment using the best servers, networking gear, apps, storage--all from the best vendors within their own particular space. Now it appears to be doing an about-face with the multiple introductions of pre-integrated computing "stacks." Soon, all of the major IT vendors will either be partner to or the outright owners of an end-to-end, application-to-bits-on-spinning-disk, stack. And now comes Larry Ellison with the Oracle apps-to-storage stack. Bye-bye best of breed?

Remember when Sun's former CEO Scott McNealy told us … Read more

Intel on Thursday previewed new Core processors and graphics technology that will become the pillar of its mainstream chip offerings.

As reported previously, Intel said it will roll out new Intel Core i processors on January 7 at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, including the new i3 chip. These will be based on 32-nanometer technology for the first time. The smaller the geometry, the faster and more power-efficient the processor. Intel's main CPU processors are currently based on 45-nanometer technology.

Intel will introduce 17 new processors in all.

And the chipmaker restated the Core i series lineup. … Read more

My CNET column is called Apps Meet Ops for a reason. It's about the time and place where the creative, development side of IT meets the disciplined, operational side of IT.

This isn't to say that there isn't discipline in development, or that there's no creativity in operations. But the gestalt of the apps world is about creating new functionality; writing software that embodies new or updated business logic; making things. The gestalt of the ops side is about building and running infrastructure; managing logistics; keeping things up and running smoothly; operating things. The two zones … Read more