Filed under: Coupe, Budget, Kia, Canada, Design/Style

Kia Forte Koup with "R" package - Click above for high-res image gallery
In our initial review of the Kia Forte Koup, we were very impressed with the car's overall style and levels of standard equipment, but we wished that the car were a bit more potent on the street. One remedy for that is the "R" package of dealer-installed accessories that Canadian customers can now spec on either the SX or EX model.

Sadly, the R treatment doesn't aim to churn out any more power from the Forte Koup's four-cylinder mill, but it does add things like a performance exhaust, AIM drop-in performance air filter, stiffer springs and a strut tower brace. This healthy bit of tuning should help to make the Forte a bit more involving on twisty roads and the added appearance kit (front skirts, side sills and rear spoiler) and the obligatory badge package gives it a much more aggressive look. Those 18-inch Europa wheels wrapped in Yokohama S-Drive rubber are pretty spiffy, too.

Canadian Forte Koup buyers should be able to add the R package to their cars starting in mid-May, and the optional bits will be available a la carte from any Kia dealership in the country, so kurrent current Kia Koup owners who want to upgrade will be covered, too. Will all or part of the package make it to the States? We hope so. However, no confirmation could be given from Kia's American or Canadian public relations department at this time. A tip of the hat to Chuck!

Gallery: Kia Forte Koup R Package

[Source: Kia]

Canadian Kia customers get new dealer-installed Forte Koup "R" performance package originally appeared on Autoblog on Wed, 17 Mar 2010 20:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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GameStop might be worth roughly $3.27 billion, but if reports are correct, a group of folks at a private equity firm may be considering an offer of $4.94 billion (a 33 percent raise over the current, rumor-inflated stock prices) to acquire the publicly held game retailer. The Street is reporting that the rumors of a buyout have already raised stock prices by nearly six percent to $19.86 per share since just five days ago, as of this afternoon.

And those rumors could be seen as partially substantiated by the company's lackluster performance on Wall Street as a publicly held company. Sterne, Agee & Leech analyst Arvind Bhatia told The Street, "The company generates strong free cash flow and is not getting respect as a public company." A buyout of GameStop by a private equity firm could mean moving the company's public status to private, not to mention a possible management shakeup (among other things). We asked GameStop corporate for comment and were told, "We do not comment on speculation or rumor," so for now we'll just have to wait and see what shakes out.

Rumor: GameStop being eyed for purchase by private equity group originally appeared on Joystiq on Wed, 17 Mar 2010 19:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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GameStop might be worth roughly $3.27 billion, but if reports are correct, a group of folks at a private equity firm may be considering an offer of $4.94 billion (a 33 percent raise over the current, rumor-inflated stock prices) to acquire the publicly held game retailer. The Street is reporting that the rumors of a buyout have already raised stock prices by nearly six percent to $19.86 per share since just five days ago, as of this afternoon.

And those rumors could be seen as partially substantiated by the company's lackluster performance on Wall Street as a publicly held company. Sterne, Agee & Leech analyst Arvind Bhatia told The Street, "The company generates strong free cash flow and is not getting respect as a public company." A buyout of GameStop by a private equity firm could mean moving the company's public status to private, not to mention a possible management shakeup (among other things). We asked GameStop corporate for comment and were told, "We do not comment on speculation or rumor," so for now we'll just have to wait and see what shakes out.

Rumor: GameStop being eyed for purchase by private equity group originally appeared on Joystiq on Wed, 17 Mar 2010 19:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Filed under: Car Buying, Coupe, Performance, Japan, Lexus

Lease-only Lexus LFA - Click above for high-res image gallery
The rich are very different from you and we, now more than ever. First off, we don't have the mental fortitude for jumping through all of the hoops that Lexus is making potential LFA customers limbo beneath. Let alone the cash. Thing is, the rigamarole involved never mattered because Lexus is only making 500 examples of the LFA and we're simply not going to lose sleep over the process it takes to park one in our garage. However, a potential LFA owner sent us a copy of his order guide, and like any good train wreck, we can't look away. Also, remember, this info ain't intended for public consumption.

For your living-vicarious pleasure, here's how it works: As reported, you cannot buy Lexus' first ever supercar. You have to lease the mostly-carbon-fiber-and-unobtanium LFA. That's sort of good news for the non-disgustingly wealthy, right? After all, leases are the cheap and easy way to get into a new car. Are you sitting down? The monthly lease payment on the Lexus LFA is $12.398.44. For 24 months. That's $297,562.56 worth of lease payments over two years, at the end of which you own nothing. However, Lexus is quick to point out that the LFA's MSRP is $375,000, so you're technically not paying full price. And at the end of 24 months, lessees are free to plunk down an additional $93,750 (more than the base price of a very comparable Nissan GT-R, we should mention) and buy their LFA outright.

Of course, you can't just waltz into your local Lexus dealership with $12,398.44 and rocket waltz out in an LFA. Lexus has to actually select you to lease its (admittedly awesome) car. Once you're chosen, you've got 10 days to drop off a $10,000 deposit at your local Lexus dealer and submit to a credit check. We should mention that this will not be the only deposit and credit check Lexus requires.

Once your credit checks out, you then have to deposit an additional $50,000. To mini-recap, that's $60,000 down on a $375,000 car. Sounds reasonable (from a detached, algebraic ratio perspective) until you remember that you're not buying the car, just leasing it. All of this will be/is happening from March-June 2010. Production of the LFA doesn't start until December. We don't know how long each car will take to build, but customers lessees will be required to go through a second credit check immediately prior to delivery. We're not entirely sure you really want to pass the second credit check. Here's why.

Remember the $12,398.44 per month lease payment we mentioned a couple paragraphs up? That's just the breakdown. All LFAs are being doled out via Lexus' 1Pay Lease Program. Meaning that to lease the LFA, you hand Lexus a check for $237,562.56, which is the full amount of the lease minus your $60,000 pair of deposits. Oh, and there's a $700 "aquisition fee." Plus tax, title, license and registration. The good news? Even though you have to lease the LFA, because of the lengthy approval/deposit process, each car is still made to order. Meaning that even though you don't own the car, you can still order it in Passionate Pink, a $3,000 option. Make the jump to read the pricing guide.

Gallery: First Drive: 2011 Lexus LFA

Continue reading Lease the Lexus LFA for $12,400 per month, $298,000 due at signing

Lease the Lexus LFA for $12,400 per month, $298,000 due at signing originally appeared on Autoblog on Wed, 17 Mar 2010 19:27:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Quatre mois jour pour jour après son entrée en chantier d’hiver dans sa base de St Philibert, le maxi-trimaran Gitana 11 a été remis à l’eau ce mercredi 17 mars en fin d’après-midi. Les travaux mis en œuvre par l’équipe technique de l’écurie de course au large du Baron Benjamin de Rothschild visaient à gommer les erreurs de jeunesse du géant pour en améliorer les performances et la fiabilité. De retour dans son élément, Gitana 11 est désormais fin prêt pour attaquer les nombreuses navigations d’entraînement au programme de son skipper Yann Guichard.

Someone passed this post along to us, and since our Chinese is limited here in CrunchGear-land, I’m afraid we can’t vouch for it. The video contained may, in truth, provide the recipe for a lovely London broil for all we know, so take it with several healthy grains of salt. But at least the basic premise is amusing.

It seems that HP in China received a number of complaints about their wares. And, in an effort to spread out the responsibility, someone decided to point out that a computer user’s environment can impact the performance of the machine. Since the local authorities had to come in and remove the 49 cats from our 350-foot studio apartment, the fan on our computer have been running much more effectively. So there is undoubtedly some truth to the environmental factors argument.

But we never thought they’d blame cockroaches.

Somewhere, a lazy comedian just made a joke about software bugs.

Eurocom has recently released the first ever six-core notebook PC, the D900F Panther. The 17-inch desktop-replacement is knowingly thick and uses the space to house the 3.33GHz Core i7-980X or Xeon 5600 for desktop-level performance. It can be configured with either a screen with a resolution of 1920x1200 or 1680x1050, as well as up to 24GB of DDR3 RAM. The notebook can also house four hard drives, each sized at 640GB for a 2.56TB total capacity....

net-ldap version 0.1.0 has been released! Pure Ruby LDAP library. Changes: ### Net::LDAP 0.1.0 / 2010-03-08 * Small fixes throughout, more to come. * Ruby 1.9 support added. * Ruby 1.8.6 and below support removed. If we can figure out a compatible way to reintroduce this, we will. * New maintainers, new project repository location. Please see the README.txt. ### Net::LDAP 0.0.5 / 2009-03-xx * 13 minor enhancements: * Added Net::LDAP::Entry#to_ldif * Supported rootDSE searches with a new API. * Added [preliminary (still undocumented) support for SASL authentication. * Supported several constructs from the server side of the LDAP protocol. * Added a "consuming" String#read_ber! method. * Added some support for SNMP data-handling. * Belatedly added a patch contributed by Kouhei Sutou last October. The patch adds start_tls support. * Added Net::LDAP#search_subschema_entry * Added Net::LDAP::Filter#parse_ber, which constructs Net::LDAP::Filter objects directly from BER objects that represent search filters in LDAP SearchRequest packets. * Added Net::LDAP::Filter#execute, which allows arbitrary processing based on LDAP filters. * Changed Net::LDAP::Entry so it can be marshalled and unmarshalled. Thanks to an anonymous feature requester who only left the name "Jammy." * Added support for binary values in Net::LDAP::Entry LDIF conversions and marshalling. * Migrated to 'hoe' as the new project droid. * 14 bugs fixed: * Silenced some annoying warnings in filter.rb. Thanks to "barjunk" for pointing this out. * Some fairly extensive performance optimizations in the BER parser. * Fixed a bug in Net::LDAP::Entry::from_single_ldif_string noticed by Matthias Tarasiewicz. * Removed an erroneous LdapError value, noticed by Kouhei Sutou. * Supported attributes containing blanks (cn=Babs Jensen) to Filter#construct. Suggested by an anonymous Rubyforge user. * Added missing syntactic support for Filter ANDs, NOTs and a few other things. * Extended support for server-reported error messages. This was provisionally added to Net::LDAP#add, and eventually will be added to other methods. * Fixed bug in Net::LDAP#bind. We were ignoring the passed-in auth parm. Thanks to Kouhei Sutou for spotting it. * Patched filter syntax to support octal XX codes. Thanks to Kouhei Sutou for the patch. * Applied an additional patch from Kouhei. * Allowed comma in filter strings, suggested by Kouhei. * 04Sep07, Changed four error classes to inherit from StandardError rather Exception, in order to be friendlier to irb. Suggested by Kouhei. * Ensure connections are closed. Thanks to Kristian Meier. * Minor bug fixes here and there.

The abundance of pop culture out there means that things are going to slip by, especially when they’re targeted to a different demographic. Which is why I feel like I’ve seen a large number of comments recently from people who have no clue who Justin Bieber is. (It’s kind of reminiscent of when everyone was confused by that Fred kid, including the fact that they even look a little bit alike.)

I wouldn’t argue that being familiar with the Canadian-born pop star/teen idol is essential for complete pop culture awareness, but for those interested in what the kids are into these days, here are some things you need to know about Justin Bieber if you are over the age of 21.

He’s from Stratford in Ontario, Canada

The reason this is worth noting is because that is far far away from the hustle and bustle of the American music industry. It’s also far away from some of Bieber’s friends and family, which is how Bieber got his start on YouTube: According to Reuters, Bieber’s mother first started uploading clips of him performing in 2007 (at the age of 13) because the video files were too big to email to friends and family. Once he built a following, he was discovered by manager Scooter Braun — a story that echoes Justin Timberlake’s discovery of Esmee Denters. Except that unlike Denters…

He’s gotten very successful very fast

Largely unknown until midway through 2009 to even the teen set, Bieber has exploded since even before the release of his first, My World, which has gone platinum and given Bieber performing opportunities ranging from It’s On With Alexa Chung to the White House. His YouTube channel has almost 150,000,000 million views, making his channel the #72 most viewed channel of all time, and the third most viewed in Canada. Why?

The kids frakking love him

I’m not just talking about this three-year-old girl (who, per the video description, “didn’t take a nap and [thus] was very emotional”). Despite claims that the under-18 set doesn’t use Twitter, Bieber has 1.4 million Twitter followers and is frequently a trending topic of discussion.

In fact he’s so popular that a riot, in which six people were injured, broke out at the Long Island Roosevelt Field Mall in November 2009 because he canceled a performance. (In an odd twist, record executive James A. Roppo was arrested on felony charges because he didn’t Twitter out a cancellation notice; he’s since plead not guilty.) Plus…

He generates interesting reactions from the rest of the web community

YouTube vloggers constantly invoke his name for views, including What the Buck’s Michael Buckley, who enlisted a Canadian correspondent to report on local feelings about the teen sensation.

And don’t even get comedian Aziz Ansari started about Bieber — or, to be specific, don’t get Ansari’s alter ego Raaaaaaaaaandy (first created for the film Funny People) started, as the stand-up comedian is convinced that Bieber’s latest hit, Baby, rips him off.

He sings like a girl

Listen to this before you argue with me, especially when you consider that in Baby, he’s pretty much singing the typical girl part in a hip-hop tune — it’s not hard to imagine Rihanna or Alicia Keys filling in for him. The only reason I deem this worthy of mentioning is that his career might not have much longevity when his voice breaks. I mean, he might end up sounding like this. But puberty is fickle.

Related GigaOm Pro Content (subscription required): New Use For Web Stats: Finding Hot Markets, Offline

By Scott M. Fulton, III, Betanews

In the first series of comprehensive performance tests comparing Microsoft's Internet Explorer 9 technical preview, released yesterday, to stable Web browsers in current use today, Betanews confirmed superb speed gains by the IE9 chassis in specific categories. Not everything in the new IE9 was faster than IE8, but in the computational department, the development team's Chakra JavaScript engine shows much-needed gains.

In anticipation of IE9, Betanews has been developing a radically improved set of performance tests to complement (and, in a few categories, replace) those we've used in recent months. Our objective is to determine not just how much faster IE9 is, but how much better and more efficient it will be, in computing data, in rendering on-screen objects, and in adapting to varying workloads.

Betanews estimates that the IE9 chassis on Windows 7 offers 9.32 times better raw computational performance than IE8 on Windows 7, on the same machine. That's a welcome number due in large part to vastly improved scores in the widely respected SunSpider battery, as well as high scores in a new set of variable-workload computational tests produced by Betanews. Specifically on the SunSpider, the IE9 preview scored a 44.77 on Betanews' relative performance index, compared to 5.59 for IE8. Our index is based on cumulative relative performance in each category of the test battery, compared against the score posted by an old, slow Web browser: IE7 on Vista SP2. This means, yes, IE9 (thus far) offers almost 45 times the computational speed of IE7 on the older operating system -- easily the single largest surge we've seen between generations.

A recent dev build of Google Chrome 5 on Windows 7 scored a 69.83 on that same SunSpider index, followed closely by the first stable version of Opera 10.5 with 68.64.

As Microsoft embraces HTML 5, it's also managing to eke out some marginal speed gains in the rendering department, although it must be noted that the IE9 chassis is running in an almost feature-less window with very minimal overhead. As of now, the IE9 preview offers 23% better rendering performance (CSS, DHTML, support for the Canvas element in HTML 5) than IE8.

Looking for the good

What Microsoft did yesterday was give outside developers, for the first time, direct access to just the engine of its next-generation Web browser, long before the functionality and usability features are attached to it. The reason, the Internet Explorer 9 product team says, is to elicit real-world feedback so that the product can be fine-tuned.

That describes exactly what we intend to do. Over the last few weeks, Betanews has been compiling a suite of next-generation browser tests, having taken into account the feedback we've received from both our readers and browser manufacturers, Microsoft included. As rapidly as browsers have evolved in just the past year, it's become clear to us that when we compare brands, at one level, we truly are comparing apples to apple trees, or lawnmowers to bulldozers. When we concentrate on the prowess or power angle, with all the adrenaline-rushing metaphors and superlatives, we sometimes forget that sometimes, what the world really wants is an efficient lawnmower.

Last year, IE General Manager Dean Hachamovitch asked me to take a closer, fairer look at Internet Explorer. Specifically, he said that there were architectural efficiencies to be found in the product line, if only we took the time to look for them.

How I opted to respond to that challenge was to focus on one under-appreciated aspect of the Web browser that will become more important as its components are transported to six-core desktop systems on one end, and Snapdragon handsets and netbooks on the other: scalability. Specifically, I started exploring whether there was a way to effectively measure how well a browser handles increasing workloads, of ever higher orders of magnitude.

Mozilla helped to begin making scalability an issue with its introduction of the TraceMonkey JavaScript engine in Firefox. Tracers make problems that appear complex in coding simpler for their processing engines to execute, by pre-processing instructions ahead of time, converting and optimizing long sequences into easily digestible, assembly language-like instructions. Theoretically, the simpler and longer the sequences, the easier the digestive process should become.

So in this new era, it becomes necessary to test the efficiency of a browser's capability to digest those long sequences, to make harder problems simpler for themselves. This is the scalability element which will represent 30% of the score in our revised Relative Performance Index.

Yesterday, Dean Hachamovitch played down the importance of just-in-time compiling as a factor in improving browser efficiency, promoting instead the option of moving the interpreter to a background process. But doing that alone, as we're discovering now, may not effectively combat what has historically been IE's biggest problem as a Web apps platform: the ability to fall off a cliff (see: "stack overflow") when problems get especially difficult. On new tests involving sorting algorithms, for instance, where recursion easily becomes thousands of layers deep, IE8 can spin off into a coma. So far, we have not seen the comatose effect in the IE9 tech preview, which could be the first sign of very good news for Web app developers.

What I was surprised to discover in crafting this new set of tests was that IE was not alone. Chrome can fall off a cliff too, just several orders of magnitude later (after 10 million iterations, for example, rather than 100,000). As the problem gets more and more complex, the gap between Chrome or Safari or the new Opera's performance and that of IE becomes wider and wider...and wider. And that's a problem because you could arbitrarily choose some point out in space, where Chrome is a thousand times faster than IE rather than, say, ten. Wait long enough and you might get 10,000.

And that, as IE proponents assert, would not be fair. It's actually the reason we chose not to include Google's V8 benchmark battery in our tests: because there does not appear to be a real-world correlation between the hundreds of times greater performance the V8 battery can report over IE, and the differences we see in ordinary use.

So the goal of our scalability tests is to recognize that smaller engines can still be efficient in what they do, even when they offer lesser horsepower. Maybe IE can't run a 10-million-iteration test. But the difference between its performance in 100,000 iterations and in 10,000 can be compared to Chrome's difference between 10 million iterations and 1 million. That factor may still be meaningful.

In the very first report of browsers' scalability compared to IE7 in Vista SP2, the IE9 tech preview in Windows 7 scored a 6.57 compared to IE8's score of 1.13. That means, we believe IE9's new "Chakra" interpreter offers 581.4% greater efficiency than IE8 at speeding up when workloads increase. Betanews is applying these new tests to the latest stable browsers from the other Top Five browser makers; and yes, Ross Perot fans, we'll have the charts ready when the numbers come in.

Copyright Betanews, Inc. 2010

Via John Schumacher on Twitter comers this opinion piece from Oregon Live:

http://www.oregonlive.com/opinion/index.ssf/2010/03/shhh_its_a_library_not_the_cor.html

Ellen Hansen writes about her love of quiet and the lack of it in her library: (emphasis is mine)

No, my full wrath is reserved for library-quiet abusers. When did the library turn into the local coffee shop? One man comes into our library and sets up as if it’s his own, private office space. That’s fine, if you’re reading, writing or even typing on your computer nonstop. But his work entails talking on the phone nonstop, for hours on end.

Others conduct education tutorials or hours-long business collaborations or gadget-comparing conferences at nearby tables. Even if not full-throated, the constant drone of nonstop voices rubs nerves raw.

Another fellow comes in, sits down at the table behind me, pins his ears back and tucks into a tub of cottage cheese, smacking his way through a tall can of pineapple slices as a side dish. He then slurps a half-gallon of orange juice to complete the performance. As choral accompaniment in this flu season, a symphony of sniffs and snorts, coughs and throat-clearings chimes in all around me.

A teacher walks through giving a gaggle of fifth-graders a library tour in full recess-volume voice … two friends carry on an excited and loud conversation in the stacks about a favorite author’s recent tome … a grandfatherly fellow peruses magazines and shouts into his cell phone, “Where are you now? Still in the fiction section? No, I’m over in magazines.”

In fact, the periodicals section is often the loudest section of the library, despite two prominently displayed signs which read: “Quiet Reading Area, No [picture of a cell phone].” One woman plops herself down daily on one of the upholstered chairs, chattering away into her cell phone. When a fellow library patron finally points to the sign not 10 feet from the chatterbox’s head, the woman nods, and keeps on talking.

Maybe it’s my jetlag today, but it concerns me that Hansen has monitored these behaviors for “hours on end” to list out the offenses library patrons commit. No shushing librarians come to her rescue during these hours. I wonder what another patron might say about all the activity? That the library feels “alive?”

I hope a representative of her library responds with some thoughts about library use. I wonder if the building is of such size that mixing a quiet area and more general use spaces is difficult. Maybe the library is in transition now. Any readers have the rest of the story?

Take a look at the full piece and the comments. I’ll be sharing this with my Intro to LIS class – maybe an exercise where we write a response.

Linux Magazine: "In the last article we looked at using strace to examine the IO patterns of simple serial applications. In the High Performance Computing (HPC) world, applications use MPI (Message Passing Interface) to create parallel applications. This time around we discuss how to attack parallel applications using strace."

At Logic class last week we saw how to solve a Sudoku using SAT and for fun I decided to actually try this out using Python. It turned out to be pretty trivial to implement and I thought I’d share the experience.

First of all let’s see how the Sudoku problem was described at class: we have a table with 9 rows and 9 columns;

• 1. Each field [i, j] (where i=1..9 and j=1..9) has at least one value (between 1 and 9).
• 2. Each field [i, j] (where i=1..9 and j=1..9) doesn’t have more than one value.
• 3. There isn’t any repeated value in any row, column or 3×3 group.
• 4. Some of the fields have a predefined value.

Now to implement this in code, first of all I needed a Python module implementing SAT solving. A quick search in Debian’s repositories gave me python-logilab-constraint, which I’ve found to be quite nice to use, even though it could definitely take some speed improvements.

Conditions 1 and 2 aren’t a problem at all, as logilab.constraint can be used quite naturally [0]. We just define a variable for each field (eg., x11 to x99, where the first number is the row and the second number is the column) and the domain in which they operate (integer value from 1 to 9):

values = range(1, 10) # [1..9] variables = ["x%d%d" % (i, j) for j in values for i in values] domains = {} for variable in variables: domains[variable] = fd.FiniteDomain(values)

The 4th rule is also straightforward, we just need to hardcode the values. If we have a bidimensional list sudoku containing the initial numbers and None in all empty fields, we add each of them as a constraint:

constraints = [] for i, row in enumerate(sudoku): for j, field in enumerate(row): if field is None: continue variable = "x%d%d" % (i+1, j+1) constraints.append(fd.make_expression((variable,), "%s == %d" % (variable, field)))

Now only rule 3 remains; here we basically have to set up three more groups of constraints: one for rows, one for columns and one for the 3×3 groups. My initial implementation checked each row/column/group at once; for example, for the first row «x11 != x12 != x13 != … != x19», for the first column «x11 != x21 != … != x91», etc. However, this proved to be extremely slow, and after checking the «Performance considerations» section of Logilab Constraint’s documentation I split up the row and column conditions [1] to lots of smaller conditions, as in: «x11 != x12», «x11 != x13», «x11 != x14», etc. I also moved the constraints for the initial numbers to the top (I had them at the end of the constraints list before), as they are the simplest ones. With those changes resolution time changed from several minutes to some tenths of a second.

And this is it. After all constraints have been added, we just need to run the solver:

repository = Repository(variables, domains, constraints) solutions = Solver().solve(repository)

The complete code is available via Bazaar at lp:~rainct/+junk/sudoku-sat. Being completely new to the logilab.constraints module, or implementing any such stuff at all, it took me around half an hour to write this, which shows how SAT makes such sort of problems really straightforward.

[0] Using logilab.constraint it’s possible to assign arbitrary Python data to variables (here we just give each an integer, but variables could also take tuples or whatever else). When this problem was presented at class using pure propositional logic it was a bit more cumbersome, as we couldn’t just say “there’s a variable x11 with domain [1..9]“. For instance, rule 1 was «(p111 | p112 | p113 | … | p119) and (p121 | … | p129) …», where “p111″ would be True if field [1,1] is supposed to contain a one, “p112″ is True if it’s supposed to contain a two, etc.
[1] I didn’t bother also splitting up he 3×3 group constraints since the other two changes already gave me enough of a speedup; changing that may squeeze a few msecs more out of it.
P.S.: If you’d like a more formal explanation of this, a search on Google found this paper: A SAT-based Sudoku Solver.

Related posts:

• You no longer have an excuse not to look at Python Snippets!

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© Siegfried-Angel Gevatter Pujals, 2010. | Permalink | License | Post tags: logics, python

By Tim Conneally, Betanews

Though you might come to Betanews expecting an article with either performance testing and graphs or inflammatory diatribes, we're not above a good unboxing; especially when it's a brand new piece of hardware that we intend to thoroughly test (or just very seriously play with.)

Today, we're fortunate enough to have received a new TiVo Premiere, the first TiVo DVR with an HD interface designed especially to unite content from multiple sources under a single experience. They call it "The One Box."

Have a look!

Click the TiVo logo above for the Grand Premiere Unboxing Slideshow!

Copyright Betanews, Inc. 2010

If you've had a tough time choosing between Parallels and VMware Fusion for running Windows on your Mac, all-things-Apple site MacTech pitted the two virtualization tools against one another in a giant faceoff. The results: In tests covering boot speed, CPU usage, application performance, CPU speed, graphics, and more, Parallels 5 came out on top of VMware Fusion 3 in every instance; Parallels particularly outdid VMware in graphic performance, which you can see demonstrated in the video above. [MacTech via Gizmodo] More »

If you've had a tough time choosing between Parallels and VMware Fusion for running Windows on your Mac, all-things-Apple site MacTech pitted the two virtualization tools against one another in a giant faceoff. The results: In tests covering boot speed, CPU usage, application performance, CPU speed, graphics, and more, Parallels 5 came out on top of VMware Fusion 3 in every instance; Parallels particularly outdid VMware in graphic performance, which you can see demonstrated in the video above. [MacTech via Gizmodo] More »

Remember EVGA's seven-GPU motherboard monstrosity, the W555? That experimental beast of a board just got declassified -- and given immediate launch orders. Under the new "Classified SR-2" callsign, the board's layout has hardly changed since CES (though the heatsinks certainly got a makeover) but the big news here is that each of its two CPU sockets will support that fancy new Intel Core i7-980X six-core processor. As you're well aware, two times six is twelve -- and since each of the i7-980X's cores can handle 12 threads, you're looking at the basis for a 24-threaded powerhouse for mondo multitasking performance. Factor in enough slots for 4-way SLI, CrossFireX and 48GB of RAM, and it's not hard to wonder why the red-and-black HPTX (15- x 13.6-inches!) creation commands a $600 price point. The only questions are how much a full system will deplete your wallet, and how many fuses your house will blow after pressing the power button.

Gallery: EVGA Classified SR-2

EVGA Classified SR-2 fits two 980X CPUs for 24 threads, exemplifies overkill originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 17 Mar 2010 16:33:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Zinedine Zidane estime que les Bleus ont assez de talent pour briller lors du Mondial dans des propos tenus ce mercredi devant les caméras de Canal +. Il a néanmoins été décu par la performance tricolore face à l’Espagne (0-2).

Canoe Moving To Bigger Digs, Plans To Double Staff In 2010; the firm specialized on interactive advertising for cable TV has a hiring plan for 2010 that would roughly double headcount. It had 68 employees at the start of the year and its plan calls for 135 by year-end. (Multichannel News)

Sky Buys 15,000 3D TVs from LG; BSkyB has signed a deal with LG to buy around 15,000 3DTVs to prepare for the launch of the Sky 3D Channel in pubs and bars next month. (Tech Watch)

What’s Behind Justin.tv’s Live Video Broadcasting Architecture?; an in-depth look at the hardware and network architecture required to encode and broadcast 30 hours of video uploaded every minute. (High Scalability)

Sorenson Strikes Deals with Universities; Sorenson Media’s online video solutions have been adopted by five of the world’s most well-known colleges and universities. (FierceOnlineVideo)

EdgeCast Networks Launches EC360 Analytics Suite; the new reporting suite is comprised of four modules: the Basic Reporting module, the Edge Performance Analytics module, the Real Time Statistics module and the Advanced Content Analytics module. (press release)

A Comicbook Orange Auctions Off Penny Arcade Book for Charity; proceeds from the auction will got to the charity Child’s Play, which donates toys, games, books and cash for sick kids in children’s hospitals across North America. (eBay)

More Stats on the People of ChatRoulette; according to the latest research, the site is 89 percent male, 47 percent american, and 13 percent perverts. (TechCrunch)

San Bruno, Calif. - Google's (NASD: GOOG) YouTube has launched a new program for independent artists looking to make advertising dollars from their music videos and live performance footage. Artists may apply now to join the Musicians Wanted program, a spin on the existing YouTube Partner Program that lets producers whose videos reach a certain level of popularity to share in monetization.

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Filed under: Performance, BMW, Luxury

If there's one thing that's certain in this crazy world, it's that Ultimate Driving Machines are driven by their rear wheels. Sure, there's an occasional all-wheel-drive model thrown in for good measure, but even those revert to the tried-and-true RWD when extra traction from the front two contact patches isn't deemed necessary or desirable. Well, alert the media (oh, wait...): BMW has confirmed the rumors that it will build front-wheel-drive automobiles.

At the Annual Accounts Press Conference for 2010, Dr. Norbert Reithofer, Chairman of the Board of Management of BMW, had this to say:
[The small car] segment is expected to grow further. And we will take advantage of this opportunity. We are exploring the possibility of developing a joint architecture for the front and four-wheel drive systems of these cars. In other words: There will be front-wheel drive BMWs in the smaller vehicle classes in the future. Heresy, BMW fans? We wouldn't worry too much - there seems little chance that BMW will make a wholesale switch from powering the rear wheels to the fronts, especially for its mainstream models like the 3 Series, 5 Series and 7 Series - but the addition of a FWD chassis will make it easier for the automaker to share platforms with other companies and to "reduce [its] fleet's carbon-emissions worldwide by at least another 25 percent between 2008 and 2020."

In fact, take it from Reithofer himself:
BMW will continue to be a sport-inspired brand. We at the BMW Group continue to deliver maximum performance, tackle new challenges and sharpen our competitive edge. Click past the break for the complete text of Reithofer's speach.

[Source: BMW]

Continue reading BMW confirms plans for front-wheel-drive models

BMW confirms plans for front-wheel-drive models originally appeared on Autoblog on Wed, 17 Mar 2010 15:29:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Aeon est un programme qui vous permet de lancer des application DOS sur des versions modernes de Windows. Elle émule le matériel des vieux PC avec un processeur 386, une carte VGA, une carte SoundBlaster, un périphérique pour les musiques MIDI, ainsi que le clavier et la souris. Elle fournit également une implémentation de la plupart des fonctions DOS communément utilisées. Aeon a été développé en C# en tant qu'exercice pour le développement d'une application .NET. Les performances du programme n'ont pas encore subit d'optimisations, alors Aeon requiert une machine puissante pour faire tourner convenablement des jeux DOS.

Avec la version 0.51, la plupart des jeux en mode EGA/VGA devraient fonctionner et même être jouables. La grosse nouveauté de cette édition est le support des jeux protégés. Ainsi les FPS comme Doom et Rise of the Triad sont fonctionnels. Ils tournent convenablement si vous désactivez le son de la carte Sound Blaster.

Wolfenstein 3-D
- Correction d'une fuite mémoire lors du lancement de plus d'un programme sans restauration d'Aeon entre temps.
- Améliorations mineures des performances.
- Beaucoup de corrections dans la gestion du processus DOS.
- L'interpréteur de commandes est maintenant moins bricolé.
- Ajout du support de la configuration. Ajout d'un éditeur de configuration (pas encore complet).
- Possibilité de changer le montage de disque lorsque l'émulateur tourne.
- Les exceptions entier divisé-par-zéro du CPU sont maintenant gérées plus efficacement.
- Ajout du support de certaines MSCDEX primitives.
- Correction d'un bogue dans l'instruction LMSW.
- Correction d'un bogue dans la fonction d'attributions des fichiers DOS.
- Ajout du support du lancement de fichiers programmes/configurations DOS via les lignes de commande.
- Correction d'un crash intermittent dû à un bogue dans le retour de service du pilote de la souris.
- Correction de problèmes avec la manière dont Aeon gère les noms de fichiers MS-DOS invalides.
- Nettoyage et reconstruction du code interne.

When it comes to gaming, nothing tops the PS3 in weight. By weight, I don't mean the metaphorical equivalent of power, performance, or whatever. I mean actual weight, y'know, like how much it'll hurt if it fell

Filed under: Motorsports, Coupe, Performance, Videos, Scion

Tanner Faust tears up Mullholland Drive in his Scion tC - click above to watch the video
Look for the tire tracks. If you've ever been around drift cars, you know that with all that gumption, these beasts tend to break the tires loose. And when they cut loose, they leave synchronized patches of molten rubber in their wake. In the case of Tanner's NASCAR V8-powered Scion tC, we're talking about 600 horsepower and an equally crazy amount of torque. Probably to the wheels. Meaning that Tanner's car doesn't just burn rubber, the little Scion incinerates it.

Why are we harping on this point? Why are we encouraging you to watch the video looking for tire tracks? That's a tough question to answer without giving away the video, so we'll just say that despite being fully within the city limits of big, bad, mega-metropolis Los Angeles, Mulholland Drive is a pretty pristine place. Er, it was before Tanner Foust sunk his smoky, rubber claws into it. Make the jump to watch how great Top Gear USA could have been and read the press release.

[Source: YouTube]

Continue reading Video: Tanner Foust drifts Mulholland Drive in his 600-horsepower Scion tC

Video: Tanner Foust drifts Mulholland Drive in his 600-horsepower Scion tC originally appeared on Autoblog on Wed, 17 Mar 2010 14:58:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Filed under: Motorsports, Coupe, Performance, Ford

2011 Ford Mustang V6 Pace Car - Click above for high-res image gallery
Historically, pace cars have been limited to the highest performing models of each brand. That's about to change this weekend when the new 2011 Ford Mustang V6 will serve as the pace car for NASCAR's Food Land 500 at Bristol International Speedway. This will be the second time a Mustang has paced a NASCAR race this year after the new 5.0-liter Mustang GT led the pack at the Daytona 500 in February.

Despite being the least powerful Mustang available for 2011, the V6 model will be more than capable of carrying out its duties thank to its new 3.7-liter engine and six-speed transmission. With 305 horsepower and 280 pound-feet of torque, it should have no trouble setting the pace on Bristol's half mile oval. The budget pony car will undoubtedly be one of the most efficient pace cars in history as well, with the V6 officially rated at a record 31 mpg on the highway. You can see the new 2011 Mustang V6 pace car in action by tuning into Fox this Sunday at 1:00 pm EST.

Gallery: 2011 Ford Mustang 3.7-liter V6

[Source: Automobile Magazine]

2011 Ford Mustang V6 to pace NASCAR race at Bristol originally appeared on Autoblog on Wed, 17 Mar 2010 14:29:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Veescope Live 2.0Veescope Live provides real-time visual feed back on a live video source connected to your Apple MacIntosh computer. Veescope displays real-time chroma key, and high and low video level Zebra patterns. It uses the computer's graphics card, instead of the CPU allowing for much better performance. Veescope Live works with any Quicktime video input source, such as a DV firewire stream, or a high-definition video capture card. In addition, Veescope Live can display a waveform or vector scope directly on top of the video. Veescope Live provides industry standard scopes such as, Waveform and Vector. Veescope Live overlays any scope directly on top of the video in order for you to locate problems with the video. The video underneath the scope is changed to black and white, in order to make the scope more visible. Veescope Live has a real time Chroma Key preview allowing you to make adjustments to key color, hue range, saturation range, and luminance range. Best of all, the chroma keying is being performed on your graphics card leaving your computer free to do other things.
WHAT'S NEWVersion 2.0:

• Quicktime movie export..
• Audio meters now display properly.
• Send to Final Cut Pro.
• Digital Photo import and export with Alpha Channel.
• See all the video scopes at once in the Multi-scope window.

REQUIREMENTSMac OS X 10.4 or later.
PRICE$100.00
DEVELOPERdvdxdv.com
DOWNLOADS2765
DOWNLOAD NOW (15.4 MB)
More information

What if we told you there was a way to have the svelteness and power of Dell's $1,500 Adamo for less than half the price? You'd be interested, right? That's exactly why we've been trying to get a Dell Vostro V13 in-hand since its launch a few months ago. Besides starting at $449 - our unit's configuration rings up at a higher $844 -- the less-than-an-inch-thick, aluminum clad Vostro V13 promises five hours of battery life and good-enough everyday performance. Sure, it was created for small business types, but its blend of style, performance and price had us convinced that it could be the best ULV laptop out there. Ah, but is it? We'll tell you everything you want to know after the jump in our full review.

Gallery: Dell Vostro V13 review

Continue reading Dell Vostro V13 review

Dell Vostro V13 review originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 17 Mar 2010 14:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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· LTA confirms that Lloyd has stepped down from post
· Great Britain face Turkey in relegation play-off in July

John Lloyd has resigned as Great Britain's Davis Cup captain, the Lawn Tennis Association has announced.

Following the recent defeat by Lithuania, the chief executive, Roger Draper, asked the LTA player director, Steven Martens, to review Great Britain's Davis Cup performance.

But Lloyd has now opted to leave the role, leaving the position vacant ahead of the relegation play-off with Turkey in July. Failure to beat Turkey would see Great Britain drop into Europe/Africa Zone Group III, the lowest level of the competition.

"I am very proud of my time as Davis Cup captain, and grateful to all the players for their support," said Lloyd. "Davis Cup captaincy is a tough job and I'm sure that the next captain will be as passionate as I was and have no doubt that the team is capable of defeating Turkey in July."

Draper added: "I would like to thank John for all his efforts and in particular recognise his real achievement in guiding the team back into the World Group of the Davis Cup. He has always shown great passion and enthusiasm as captain."

Lloyd is the nation's first Davis Cup captain to preside over five successive defeats. The former British No1 Greg Rusedski is one name thought to be in the running, though Tim Henman has ruled himself out.

Andy Murray, the current British No1, has said previously that players should be involved in the process of selecting the next captain.

• Davis Cup
• Tennis

guardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds

Cornichon 1.0

Cornichon is a powerful tool you can use to dynamically profile Mac OS X applications on the system and track the process' performance over time (CPU usage, resident memory size, total memory size, ...). The Cornichon application includes the ability to see the different collected data of a process in real time in a graph and export the data as TAB files that you can later easily import in Apple Numbers or Microsoft Excel.
REQUIREMENTSMac OS X 10.5 or later.
PRICE$5.00
DEVELOPERtimac
DOWNLOADS5
DOWNLOAD NOW (1.2 MB)
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By Tim Conneally, Betanews

Sprint is making the bold first move into 4G smartphone market next week, a Wall Street Journal report said today, when the company is expected to show off the WiMAX-enabled HTC Supersonic.

The Supersonic has been a pretty big blip on the Android community's radar for several months, after a whole list of HTC device names was uncovered in a leaked Sense UI ROM last December. Since that time, a few more details have been discovered, and a few blurry spy camera shots and renders have surfaced; but as far as official specs go, there are none. It looks to have the same massive 4.3" screen that the HD2 has, run on the Android platform, and possibly contain a Snapdragon processor.

Sprint is the only major mobile network operator with a higher-speed "4G" network immediately available to consumers, but it is currently only accessible through USB dongles and portable hotspots like the Sierra Wireless Overdrive, and these are still only available in about 10 markets nationwide.

There are nearly 30 WiMAX networks active in the U.S. now under the Clear brand (a joint venture of Sprint and Clearwire,) and this year Clearwire expects to complete 80 more cities including major markets Chicago, Philadelphia, New York, Boston, Seattle and Washington D.C.

Since Betanews is headquartered in Baltimore, we've been using Sprint's WiMAX network since it first launched in 2008. I ran a quick test this morning to see how well the WiMAX connection holds up against my smartphones' 3G connections, and the performance was actually only marginally better.

Using the FCC's Ookla network tester three times for each network, Sprint 4G averaged 5.35Mbps/.30Mbps with 130ms latency, Verizon 3G averaged 1.61Mbps/.65Mbps with 122ms latency, and T-Mobile 3G averaged .5Mbps/.45Mbps with 215ms latency. Unfortunately, I didn't have a device handy to test AT&T's speeds in the area this morning.

We will be meeting with both Sprint and HTC at CTIA next week and will be able to give you a crystal clear look at the device if it does, in fact, show up.

Copyright Betanews, Inc. 2010