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On the production line with the 2010 Porsche Panamera

If you're a Porsche fan, I'm sure you may have a curiosity about how these revered automobiles are made. I'm in the same boat as you, and I found this neat little video that puts you right on the production line and watch these fine German assembly workers work their magic in putting together the much-talked about 2010 Panamera - Porsche's very first sedan model.

Unfortunately there's no real audio or narration to help guide us through this process, but I have been able to discern a few details about what you see going on … Read more

Carbon nanotubes capture greenhouse gases, desalinate water

Carbon nanotech has been applied to everything from boat construction to windshields and now, with a licensing agreement from Livermore Lab, a Hayward, Calif., company will apply it to water desalination and removing carbon dioxide from the atmosphere.

The National Nuclear Security Administration's Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory has licensed a new carbon nanotube technology to its spinoff company Porifera. The company will develop permeable membranes for CO2 sequestration, water desalination, and other liquid-based separations based on discoveries made at Livermore.

The technology integrates carbon nanotubes into polymer membranes, increasing the flux of carbon dioxide capture by two orders of … Read more

Intel to pay AMD $1.25 billion in antitrust settlement

Burying a very large hatchet in the computing industry, Intel has agreed to pay Advanced Micro Devices $1.25 billion as part of a settlement of a long-running antitrust case.

The pact, announced Thursday, resolves the private antitrust lawsuit AMD filed in 2004 and extends the companies' patent cross-licensing agreement. The new patent arrangement removes hindrances to AMD's effort to spin off its chip manufacturing business and to have other manufacturers build its processors.

In addition, Intel has agreed to "abide by a set of business practice provisions." Check below for a full list.

In turn, AMD … Read more

Simple file encryption

Advanced File Security Basic is an easy-to-use program that lets users encrypt files and folders using the Advanced Encryption Standard. It's not the most elegant thing we've ever seen, but it does make the encryption process simple enough for anyone to navigate.

The program's interface is a little strange, with buttons down the side representing its major functions and a menu bar across that duplicates much of the same stuff. The bulk of the interface is actually an ad for the Pro version of the software. It's not hard to figure out what to do--the buttons … Read more

Laser gunship hits moving ground target

Boeing continues to carve notches in its directed-energy bandolier.

The defense contractor said Tuesday that its Advanced Tactical Laser aircraft in mid-September fired from the air and hit a vehicle moving on the ground. That bull's-eye marks the first time the modified C-130H has used its onboard chemical laser to strike a moving target. Boeing didn't offer specifics on the type of vehicle, other than to say it was remote-controlled, or how fast it was moving, nor did it give the airspeed or altitude for the aircraft.

The actual damage was minimal: the laser beam put a hole … Read more

Intuitive file splitter

Advanced Batch PDF Splitter is a simple program that allows users to split PDF documents into multiple pieces. The program doesn't have a lot of features, but it works well, with an intuitive interface that makes it very quick and easy to use.

The program's interface is quite plain, but it's obvious what users are to do; each step is even helpfully numbered. Users simply select the PDF they want to work with, choose the pages that they want to extract, and select whether they want the pages extracted into one or multiple other documents. The program … Read more

'Microserfs' author Coupland talks tech

In an interview with CNET News sister site Silicon.com, Canadian author Douglas Coupland reveals his attitudes toward technology and its influence on his zeitgeist-defining books.

Douglas Coupland has been a keen observer of technology's impact on society for almost two decades. Through novels such as "Microserfs," which charts the progress of Microsoft employees during the mid-1990s, and "JPod," which tells a parallel tale of computer game developers in thrall to Google a decade later, he has consistently associated the development of technology with the progress of society.

1995's "Microserfs" paints a … Read more

BEAR robot roars to the rescue

While unmanned air vehicles are putting pilots out of business, a new U.S. Army-funded robot could do the same for rescuers and stevedores.

The humanoid BEAR (Battlefield Extraction-Assist Robot) can locate victims in a mine shaft, battlefield, toxic spill, or earthquake-damaged structure. And then it can lift them up and then carry them over long distances to safety, according to the manufacturer Vecna Robotics. And it does this without risking any more lives (PDF).

The challenge was to enhance search and rescue while reducing the time military, police, and emergency response personnel have to risk their lives each day. … Read more

Red Hat celebrates its 10-year IPO anniversary

Ten years ago today, on August 11, 1999, Red Hat saw its shares triple in an initial public offering that ushered in a new era of commercial open-source prosperity.

Iain Gray, then a Sun employee and now Red Hat's vice president of Global Support, writes nostalgically: "I remember sitting in the Sun office in UK watching the stock skyrocket, thinking the world had gone mad."

Indeed it had. Soon Red Hat's stock was to plummet to earth but not before the company learned a valuable lesson: there must be more than hype to make open source … Read more