Congress says the rules, which would give a 48-hour time limit for carriers to transfer numbers between each other, are necessary since carriers have been known to delay processing in a bid to throw as many retention offers as they can at customers trying to switch. The FCC seems to agree that it's a good idea, but was ambivalent as always about when it'd get around to implementing new regulations. [DSLreports]

This is not going to be a super technical breakdown of parallel computing for the super nerdy, just a rough overview for my mom. Basically, parallel processing is what it sounds like: Multiple computations or processes or um, just "things," are carried out or done simultaneously, in parallel (at the same time!). Multi-core processors like Intel's ubiquitous Core 2 Duo have quickly become mainstream. They're really good are doing several things at once, since each processor core can crunch away on something—more cores, more simultaneous Captain Crunching, more faster. A brilliant consumer taste of this was actually Rosetta on OS X—on a dual-core system, one core would be "translating" the code from the PPC version, while the other ran the program (roughly speaking).

Sounds gravy right? Well, as Steve alluded in his explanation of Snow Leopard, parallel programs ain't easy to write—they're harder than sequential ones for sure, 'cause it requires the kind of math that can be broken up into little parts you can solve independently and then put back together again. Artificial intelligence, for instance, is not cakey for this. On the other hand, something like tomography—a technique for creating 3D images—totally is, because it's highly vectorizable. Or video stuff (cause you can easily divvy up the chores), videogame graphics and physics, generally.

No surprise that modern graphics cards are actually really good at parallel processing, 'cause of the way they're architected and because they usually have a buttload of cores—Nvidia's latest high-end GeForce card, the GTX 280, has 240. (It's why they're suitable for cheap supercomputers.) Nvidia, for instance, showed me some of the insane physics jujitsu the GTX 280 can pull off, it and ATI both have crazy new graphics cards (FireStream 9250 and Tesla 10P) built for "general purpose" supercomputing. Sony's Cell is sorta like this with multiple cores, but none of these are very good general processors the way stuff is designed now. (You don't see any computers running on an ATI Radeon CPU, or Cell handling the main workload on Toshiba's new laptops, do you?)

You'll note that part of Snow Leopard's feature list is OpenCL, an easy way for developers to tap the parallel processing power of graphics cards, in addition to being optimized for multiple cores courtesy of its "Grand Central" tech set. So Snow Leopard is pretty much all about parallel processing. (Microsoft hasn't been overly vocal about Windows and parallel computing.)

From what Apple has said—and the whole "Grand Central" deal (it "takes full advantage by making all of Mac OS X multicore aware and optimizing it for allocating tasks across multiple cores and processors")—it's clear that Apple is totally re-architecting Snow Leopard around parallel processing, with Grand Central acting much like the real one, organizing, assigning and scheduling a whole bunch of tasks/trains along a bunch of different paths/tracks. It's a major undertaking—Intel and Microsoft are throwing a ton of money at parallel computing themselves—and we're pretty curious about Apple is going to make parallel programming easier for programmers in a way supposedly no one's done before.

Something we missed, or you still wanna know? Send any questions about processors, prostates, Bananas or anything else to tips@gizmodo.com, with "Giz Explains" in the subject line.

1.

The way the processor industry is going is to add more and more cores, but nobody knows how to program those things. I mean, two, yeah; four, not really; eight, forget it.

Jobs claims that Apple's made a "breakthrough" in parallel-programming called Grand Central, which he alluded to in his keynote yesterday. He didn't, however, go into details about how it works and why it's going to revolutionize dividing up tasks into multiple processors in ways that other operating systems haven't yet.

What's also interesting is the ability to bring the GPU (your graphics card) into the processing role to help out your CPU. Apple's calling this newly proposed standard OpenCL (Open Compute Library).

2.

Basically it lets you use graphics processors to do computation. It’s way beyond what Nvidia or anyone else has, and it’s really simple.

It's vaguely similar to the way that Photoshop CS 4 will use your graphics card to help process image manipulation and help out in rendering 3D models as well.

Will there be more features like Time Machine? Not according to Jobs.
3.

“We’ve added over a thousand features to Mac OS X in the last five years,” he said Monday in an interview after his presentation. “We’re going to hit the pause button on new features.”

Seems to us that Snow Leopard won't be heavy on the features, but it will increase processing speeds for people who are heavy on the processing in their daily computing and have more than just a few cores—a place we're all heading to in the next few years. [NYT]

The recording was made in 1949 by a student at a concert in Newark, N.J. When it was eventually found and played recently, the ancient magnetic wire had stretched and twisted and was so frail it broke often. It took 36 hours of work to just get the audio safely off the wire and into a computer, and even then the tracks were peppered with holes, slowed-down sound and missing high-frequencies.

By finding rhythmic sounds buried in the recording, and using mathematician Dr. Kevin Short's signal processing algorithms, the team carefully pieced together the tracks, interpolating holes and correcting for distortions and speed-shifts. The resulting album, The Live Wire, was nominated for the Best Historical Album category in the Grammys. You can listen to tracks showing just how nifty the processing was via the Science News link. [Science news and University of New Hampshire]

While it's difficult to believe that three major corporations could violate a patent after so much time and investment in the Cell, Sony was forced to pay big bucks to Immersion for their rumble technology used in PS2 controllers (since absent in the PS3's SIXAXIS). If PPC has a legitimate claim, expect the PS3 to become even less profitable for Sony. [gamespot]

The energy produced is better for the environment, producing up to 60% less CO2 than standard petrol, whilst being biodegradable. But we are not too sure having such units within homes is such a good idea in terms of safety; last time we checked fuel was quite flammable. Eturk offer to fully train people on the correct procedure to ensure safety. We are sceptical of the viability of the device, it is a semi-good idea, but until the website is up and running, or someone trials it, we shall have to reserve our judgment. Alternatively, if anyone can figure out how to trap our blogger gas so it can be transferred to our vehicles, then we would be listening upright and with considerably more restraint on our anuses. [Red Ferret]

It gets better:

The first-reported cracks for HD DVD and Blu-ray discs were not completely effective, because each individual title had secret codes that were needed to unravel the rest of the encryption on that disc. But now this newly-found processing key is apparently the holy grail that unlocks the DRM on all HD DVD and Blu-ray discs released so far. The guy found it by simply watching his computer memory, where the secret code—which we won't publish here for fear of doing jail time—simply appeared. Incredible. Let the free downloads begin! – Charlie White

Processing Key, Media Key and Volume ID found!!! [Doom9 Forum]

Interview/Article by Jonah Brucker-Cohen

As an exponential amount of digital objects begin to permeate our daily lives, the tendency for manufacturers to combine multiple functionalities into one "mega" device seems to be a popular methodology. Taking this credo as a starting point with his hardware inspired projects is French media artist, Benjamin Gaulon. From combining the mechanism of a Paintball gun with an Ink-Jet printer in his almost absurdist "Printball" project to using the exterior of an office building as an interactive surface in "De Pong Game", Gaulon's projects attempt to challenge popular conceptions of how electronic objects and software should and could function in our daily lives. By examining the fragility of data transfer and transmission of files across the Internet with his "Corrupt" project, he is also attempting to comment on the seemingly delicate nature of our global communications networks. Gizmodo recently caught up with Gaulon to discuss his approach to infiltrating pop cultural icons through creative interventions in hardware hacking and how recycling outdated technology can lead to new forms of collaborative musical and visual expression.

Name: Benjamin Gaulon
Age: 26
Education: Masters at the Ecole Superieuredes Arts Decoratifs in Strasbourg (2002) , Masters (Interactive Media & Environment), Frank Mohr Institute, Groningen (The Netherlands, 2005).
Affiliation:Independent, but I have also created a European group of artist, designers, theorist, engineers, etc.. called Deponk (www.deponk.com).
URL(s): http://www.recyclism.com,
Recyclism is my general website, where I present my works. I started most of my projects with a site called www.digitalrecycling.com (a database for digital file recycling, where people can upload and download digital junk to create new works.

GIZMODO: Your project, "Printball", combines the mechanism of an Ink-Jet printer and a Paintball cannon. What were you attempting to discover by combining these two devices?

BG: The idea of the Ink-Jet printer is more conceptual than literal. So it's a Paintball gun (hacked to be automatic, because in Europe [we are] not allowed to have automatic Paintball guns, so you need to directly control the solenoid that triggers the gun) with a custom made Pan and Tilt [mechanism]. The idea was to create a "graffiti robot" that could shoot images, so instead of using a Paintball gun to play war games this machine can create images and text. I'm (in most of my projects) really interested by the idea of "detournement" (as Guy Debord as defined it in 1959) This project is a Deponk project (my collective) because it's an idea that we had with a friend and French artist (Geraud de Bizien: www.vastemonde.com). We had the idea together and I then realized the project during my Masters at the Frank Mohr Institute.

"Recycling Entertainment System" (Gaulon, 2004)

GIZMODO: The "Recycling Entertainment System" connects six Nintendo Entertainment System (NES) controllers to a computer to control a shared software synthesizer. Why did you choose these hardware devices as interfaces for collaborative music composition?

BG: First, after working on digital recycling with the digital recycling website, I wanted to explore hardware recycling. I also liked the idea of recycling the NES controllers, which are for me the origin of videogame controllers (the basics: directional buttons, select and start and the A and B buttons). Nowadays game controllers are a bit more advanced but basically they are based on those controllers. So it was a way to go back to the roots of the game controller (they are also the video games that I could play with as a kid, so part of my personal mythology). With this project I also wanted to make an interactive system for several players to play and create something together in real time. The digital recycling project is also based on that idea but it's not made for "real time" composition, but the structural concept is really close since both projects are using the concept of database jamming to create new and original works (sampling art). The RES has the structure of a band (with a bass player, a drummer, percussion, a loop player and a synthesizer) but it's like a DJ playing as a band (jamming with audio samples).


"Corrupt" (Gaulon, 2005)

GIZMODO: Your "Corrupt" project breaks down an image file into its binary equivalent and replaces some of this code with a random value from 1 to 20. What were you trying to accomplish with this project? And why are some of the results too damaged to show?

BG: I'm reading the binary of a file, swapping some bytes (randomly, from 1 to 20 swaps) and I save it again. Then another part of the code (done with Processing) is loading the saved file again (checking if it's still readable) and the readable files are "saved as" in a result folder. So I only keep the corrupted files that are still readable. This project explores the limit of digital technologies and tries to reproduce and control data corruption: this corruption normally occurs during data transfer (i.e. e-mail, ftp, etc. - see this link for a complete definition: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Data_corruption) As Kim Cascone write in his article ""The Aesthetics of Failure"" [accidents usually cause the most interesting things to happen].

"De Pong Game" (Gaulon, 2004)

GIZMODO: "De Pong Game" recreates the famous PONG game as a projection on the surface of a building. A custom modified joystick controls game play and the player must use the built-in elements of the building (windows, doors, etc) as elements in the game. What is your ultimate aim with creating these large-scale public interactive pieces?

BG: Well, this project came during a workshop where I was asked to create some media stuff in the "real world" outside my studio and outside the computer. At that time I had just discovered the concept of Augmented Reality and I was interested to find ways to explore that concept. My idea was first to use the windows as pixel, but since I found the "Blinkenlights" project (by Berlin's Chaos Computer Club), I had to re-think my idea. I'd liked the idea of an intersection between a projection and the real world, since I'm [into all things] "recycling". I see the creative process as an endless recycling process, such as the socio-cultural loop of creation. I thought that the PONG game was a really interesting thing to recycle when you talk about video games (since it's the origin of the video game).

GIZMODO: What projects are you currently working on? How are they similar or different than your past projects?

BG: Actually I'm working on different things, but one of those is the "E-Waste" workshop with a Dutch company called Blue Melon. Those workshops (and your "Scrapyard Challenge" workshops were an influence for that) are based on the idea of recycling (hardware recycling) and we are trying to combine the creative possibilities of hardware recycling and to bring some awareness to the participant about the issues of "E-waste" pollution. I think as an artist and as a human being working with electronics and computers, it's important to know what is happening to the equipment once it becomes obsolete, which occurs really fast for computers.