Oracle and Intel are now working together on enterprise Could Computing that will use encryption for improved privacy on data, the two companies said at this week’s OracleWorld conference.

Data encryption was mentioned as part of a larger agreement which also calls for collaboration around greater database performance for corporate clouds and mutual work on Web standards for cloud provisioning and management, as well as on the Open Virtual Format (OPF) for porting virtual machine images across platforms.

The collaboration will revolve around Intel Virtualization Technology (VT) and Oracle Grid Computing technologies such as Oracle’s database, Real Application Clusters (RAC), Automatic Storage Management, Application Grid, Enterprise Manager, and VM.

More can be read at C-NET

Via Slashdot:

“InfoWorld reports on an experiment in air economization, aka ‘free cooling,’ conducted by Intel. For 10 months, the chipmaker had 500 production servers, working at 90 percent utilization, cooled almost exclusively by outside air at a facility in New Mexico. Only when the temperature exceeded 90 degrees Fahrenheit did they crank on some artificial air conditioning. Intel did very little to address air-born contaminants and dust, and nothing at all to deal with fluctuating humidity. The result: a slightly higher failure rate — around around 0.6 percent more — among the air-cooled servers compared to those in the company’s main datacenter — and a potential savings of $2.87 million per year in a 10MW datacenter using free cooling over traditional cooling.”

From article at Reuters:

“Rising development costs might force console makers Microsoft and Sony to publish more video games themselves, as independent studios avoid exclusive deals for blockbusters.”

Google announced today that it is seeking to develop grass roots support for its “white spaces” campaign at the FCC, its lobbying effort to convert some radio airwaves in order to provide wireless broadband access.

The “Free the Airwaves” campaign invites consumers to sign a petition, create their own video testimonials on the subject for posting to YouTube, and to contact their Congressional representatives.

Via Broadbandreports.com:

Microsoft, Google and Dell have formed the backbone of a six-partner coalition named the Wireless Innovation Alliance. Their goal is to use the so-called unlicensed “white space” spectrum — partially freed by the migration to digital television — to offer un-served consumers inexpensive Internet access via the airwaves (with these companies obviously providing the hardware, software and most importantly to Google: ads).

More on White spaces at Wikipedia.

An experimental build of CrossOver Games is now available for the BSD platform. This edition is unsupported by CrossOver, but it is a great opportunity to test out playing Windows games on BSD.

pcbsd.org notes that Jeremy White from CodeWeavers has issued a challenge to the BSD community to show their support for this release by signing up with CodeWeavers, and voting for BSD support as a requested feature.

Although premature and entirely speculation, this is a possible opportunity for a BSD port of CrossOver Professional (which includes CrossOver Games) to be developed, pending enough interest and pledges in the project.

You can download CrossOver Games here.

Satoru Iwata, Nintendo President, recently talked with GameDaily about the rumors surrounding the $249 Wii price point, his take of the PS3 price point and controller, and to reassure us that the GameBoy is far from dead.

‘You may want to check our past records of price points when launching past hardware… I think you’ll agree that we always come up with an affordable price point.’

Marriott International has admitted that it is missing backup computer tapes containing credit card account information and the Social Security numbers of about 206,000 time-share owners and customers, as well as employees of the company.

From the Washington Post story:

“Officials at Marriott Vacation Club International said it is not clear whether the tapes, missing since mid-November, were stolen from the company’s Orlando headquarters or whether they were simply lost. An internal investigation produced no clear answer. The company notified the Secret Service over the past two weeks, and has also told credit card companies and other financial institutions about the loss of the tapes.”