Why Buy.com rocks

Are you wanting to buy something for your friend? If it is an tech toy, it is best that you read and watch this video so that you can get a better understanding of why I said Buy.com rocks. While, they just rock in my opinion. They sell only tech toys, so if you are looking for non tech toys products, I am sorry guys, but I cannot help you. However, if you have any interest, you would better read this review and watch the video review. If you want to leave, just watch my video once before you leave. Please. Thanks why buy.com rocks

I.B.M. Plans $15 Billion Share Buyback

Slashdot It! I.B.M. said that its board had authorized a $15 billion share buyback program that could increase 2008 earnings by up to 5 cents a share, sending its stock up 4.2 percent. News of the planned repurchase, equivalent to about 10 percent of the market capitalization of I.B.M., pushed the stock market higher. The company’s shares rose $4.30, to $114.38. “I.B.M. is showing its confidence it can still generate a lot of cash in a difficult environment,” an analyst at American Technology Research, Shaw Wu, said. “We are in a bear market, we are literally on the brink of recession — we actually might be in one already.” The new repurchase authorization comes after I.B.M. reported strong fourth-quarter results on Jan. 17 and gave a 2008 outlook that topped expectations, saying growth abroad would make up for the weaker American economy. I.B.M. said it now expected full-year earnings of at least $8.25 a share, or 16 percent year-on-year growth, as a result of the buyback. In January, the company forecast 2008 earnings at $8.20 to $8.30 a share. Get Daily Updates via Email Protect your computer with Windows Onecare Get paid $7.50 for reviewing my post

Sony to own one-third of Sharp's LCD plant

Slashdot It! Sony said it would take a one-third stake in Sharp's $3.5 billion LCD panel plant set for completion by March 2010, in an effort to meet fast-growing demand for flat televisions. The move is the latest in a wave of alliances among Japanese flat TV makers as they try to secure enough panels while keeping initial investments in check to fight steep price declines. Sharp, which offers Aquos LCD TVs, plans to turn the liquid crystal display factory, which would be the world's largest, into a joint venture, with the Osaka-based company owning 66 percent and Sony taking the remainder. Besides LCD panels, the joint venture will also produce LCD modules, which are display panels equipped with components such as a backlight unit and LCD driver chips. Sony and Sharp are the world's second- and third-largest LCD TV makers, behind South Korea's Samsung Electronics. The two Japanese companies plan to hold a joint news conference on Tuesday where Sony President Ryoji Chubachi and Sharp President Mikio Katayama will speak. "For Sharp, this is a positive step since it means a major buyer that would keep the 10th-generation factory busy," Daiwa Institute of Research analyst Kazuharu Miura said. Sharp's new factory would use so-called 10th-generation glass substrates, which can yield more panels than earlier-generation, smaller glass substrates, improving production efficiency and helping both firms offer attractively priced flat TVs. Global LCD TV sales are likely to more than double to 155 million units by 2012, according to the Japan Electronics and Information Technology Association. "Sony needed an extra source of panels because the large-size LCD TV market is growing faster than it had expected. As Sony expands TV production, it is natural to seek to diversify panel sources," said Park Hyun, an analyst at Prudential Investment & Securities. Via CNet Get Daily Updates via Email Protect your computer with Windows Onecare Get paid $7.50 for reviewing my post

Court rules in Microsoft patent spat

Slashdot It! A federal court that hears patent appeals told a lower court to reconsider damages that Microsoft must pay a Guatemalan inventor for infringing his software in its popular Office Suite. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit tossed out the damages award of 12 cents per copy because the lower court failed to explain how it calculated the award. At issue is a software program, which was patented by inventor Carlos Armando Amado, that links databases and spreadsheets. Amado sued Microsoft in 2003, alleging that several versions of Office Suite infringed his patent. A jury ruled in favor of Amado and awarded him 4 cents per infringing unit. The case was appealed and then remanded to a district court, which tripled the damage award. In the latest appeal, Microsoft asked for damages to be held at the jury award of 4 cents per copy of Microsoft's Office Suite sold with the infringing software. Amado asked for $2 per copy, an amount ordered held in escrow. Via Cnet Get Daily Updates via Email Protect your computer with Windows Onecare Get paid $7.50 for reviewing my post

Microsoft Restores Downed Hotmail Service

Slashdot It! The bug affected Hotmail, Windows Live, Xbox Live, Windows Messenger, and other Web sites and services that rely on users' Windows Live IDs for logins. "An issue began that has caused some consumers worldwide to experience difficulty logging in to their Windows Live ID accounts. This issue has since been resolved and normal operations have been restored to all customers," said Samantha McManus, Windows Live product manager, in an e-mail late Tuesday to InformationWeek.com sister site ChannelWeb. Microsoft didn't disclose the nature of the bug, but reports indicate that in addition to Hotmail and Windows Live, it affected numerous Web services -- including Xbox Live online gaming and Microsoft's Windows Messenger instant messaging platform -- that rely on users' Windows Live IDs for logins. The problem appeared to be global. Affected users posted messages on various Internet forums from countries ranging from Finland to Japan and Honduras in Central America. "Our customers have come to expect a high level of service reliability in their experience with Windows Live, and Microsoft worked aggressively to resolve this unique problem as quickly as possible," said McManus. The glitch also brought down a number of third-party services. Bell Canada's Sympatico e-mail service, which is hosted on Microsoft's MSN network, was knocked out for several hours, a spokesman told the Canadian Press wire service. Hotmail was created in 1996 by a pair of programmers who sold the service to Microsoft a year later. The service was rebranded from MSN Hotmail to Windows Live Hotmail last year as Microsoft looked to unify its online services under a single brand. Microsoft claims to have about 280 million Hotmail users. Get Daily Updates via Email Protect your computer with Windows Onecare Get paid $7.50 for reviewing my post

Google's CAPTHCA busted

Slashdot It! Websense Security Labs has discovered that Google’s popular web mail service Gmail is being targeted in recent spammer tactics. Spammers in these attacks managed to created bots that are capable of signing up and creating random Gmail accounts for spamming purposes. Websense believes that from the spammers’ perspective, there are four main advantages to this approach. First, signing up for an account with Google allows access to its wide portfolio of services. Second, Google’s domains are unlikely to be blacklisted. Third, they are free to sign up. And fourth, it may be hard to keep track of them as millions of users worldwide are using various Google services on a regular basis. Gmail, called Google Mail in Germany, Austria and the United Kingdom, is a free Web-based email (webmail), POP3 and IMAP e-mail service provided by Google. It was released on April 1, 2004 as a private beta release by invitation only and was opened to all as a public beta on February 7, 2007. With an initial storage capacity of 1 GB, it dramatically increased the standard for free storage. Gmail currently offers over 6000 MB of free storage with an additional 10 GB available for US$20 per year. Gmail is well-known for its simplicity and flexibility, its user-friendly design; and has tens of millions of users globally. Via Websense Get Daily Updates via Email Protect your computer with Windows Onecare Get paid $7.50 for reviewing my post

Mattress

A lot of adults and children are not sleeping well, it is time to get a good bed or rather mattress to have and sleep well in the room. Do you know how tough it is to have a bad sleep. It is very stressful. memory foam mattress Payment Payment methods include Paypal, Mastercard, Visa and discover. With so many payment methods available online, there is no reason why you should not visit them and even buy from them. Check them out.

Progesterone

Are you a women techie who is reading this review/ Then, you better read this review carefully as i am going to review a website that would concern people like you very much. progesterone The website that I am reviewing is called Ultra PMS. It is a website catered for womens as they talk about the problems that females faces. Like even daily small problems. Thus, they might answer one of your trivial question. Shall not describe much.

Yahoo Plans to Let Users Help Mold New Feature

Slashdot It! Even as it struggles to find alternatives to being acquired by Microsoft, Yahoo continues to push elements of a turnaround plan devised by Jerry Yang, the company’s co-founder and chief executive. Yahoo plans to introduce a service called Buzz that relies on users to help it compile the most popular articles from around the Web. Yahoo plans to include some of those on its front page, hoping to attract more users and turn it into a hub for driving traffic to other publishers. Yahoo will also announce Tuesday that it will allow fuller previews of online publishers’ sites in search results. A search result displaying a user of the social network LinkedIn, for instance, could include links to that person’s connections and full profile, and a result displaying a restaurant may include direct links to a reservations page or reviews. Both moves are part of a strategy Mr. Yang has been promoting to open Yahoo’s services to third-party publishers. The Buzz service borrows heavily from other so-called social news aggregators, like Digg and Reddit, as it asks users to “vote” on items they like. Items with the most votes, or buzz, will earn prominent placement. But the Buzz service is different in some important ways. Rather than turn Buzz into a Web destination for users, Yahoo plans to include the content that surfaces through Buzz on its front page. Via NYT Get Daily Updates via Email Protect your computer with Windows Onecare Get paid $7.50 for reviewing my post

F.C.C. Weighing Limits on Slowing Web Traffic

Slashdot It! The head of the Federal Communications Commission and other senior officials said that they were considering taking steps to discourage cable and telephone companies from delaying the downloads and uploads of heavy Internet users. The agency is considering rules and enforcement decisions to force the cable and telephone companies to disclose their policies more clearly for delaying traffic that they say is clogging their systems. Comcast, the nation’s largest cable company, has been the subject of a complaint after it acknowledged that it slowed down some Internet traffic of BitTorrent, a file-sharing service, because of heavy use of video-sharing applications. Consumer groups have said that such discrimination against some content providers has been aimed at Comcast’s rivals and is both unnecessary and threatens to undermine the freewheeling nature of the Internet. In his comments, Kevin J. Martin, the agency’s chairman, tended to agree. “They must be conducted in an open and transparent way,” Mr. Martin said at a hearing Monday on network neutrality and network management. “While networks may have reasonable practices, they obviously cannot operate without taking some reasonable steps, but that does not mean they can arbitrarily block access to certain services.” In sharp questioning to a senior executive from Comcast, Mr. Martin indicated that the commission was considering whether to levy a fine or issue an order that would limit the company’s ability to slow down broadband traffic to consumers using file-sharing programs. Via NYT Get Daily Updates via Email Protect your computer with Windows Onecare Get paid $7.50 for reviewing my post

I.B.M. to Introduce a Notably Improved Mainframe

Slashdot It! The mainframe, the aged yet surprisingly resilient survivor of computing, is getting a face-lift. A model called the I.B.M. z10, which is being introduced, is far faster and has three times the data-juggling memory of its three-year-old predecessor, the z9. But the significance of the new machine, analysts say, is that it is a big step in a broad campaign by I.B.M. to make the mainframe computer a high-performance, energy-efficient engine for running all kinds of nonmainframe software. The goal, according to I.B.M. executives and analysts, is to recast the mainframe as a nimble supercomputer in corporate and government data centers, running Web-based programs, Linux, advanced data mining and business intelligence software. To do that, I.B.M. has refined its mainframe hardware and come up with new software tools, as part of a five-year, $1.5-billion overhaul. “The mainframe’s ability to survive is only as good as its ability to innovate and compete for these new computing workloads of the future,” an analyst at Forrester Research, Brad Day, said. “And I.B.M. is starting to succeed at that.” The stakes are high. Though the sales of mainframes account for less than 4 percent of I.B.M.’s revenue, the sales of mainframe software, storage and services are a big, profitable business. The overall business dependent on mainframes represents about 25 percent of company revenue and nearly half of its profit, said A. M. Sacconaghi, an analyst with Sanford C. Bernstein & Company. At Hannaford Brothers in Scarborough, Me., a supermarket chain with stores in five states, the company has consolidated many programs onto its two mainframes. They include its consumer Web site, its Web portal for tracking shipments from suppliers and store and customer data that were once housed on computers in individual stores. “The mainframe has become very flexible and very scalable for us,” said Bill Homa, Hannaford’s chief information officer. Via NYT Get Daily Updates via Email Protect your computer with Windows Onecare Get paid $7.50 for reviewing my post

Jury rules against Desire2Learn in patent case

Slashdot It! A Texas jury has ruled that Kitchener software company Desire2Learn Inc. infringed on an American competitor's patent. The verdict, announced this afternoon, allows Blackboard Inc. to demand a ban on sales of Desire2Learn’s products in the United States. The jury in Lufkin, Texas, awarded Blackboard damages of $3.1 million US for royalties and lost profits, according to Judge Ron Clark’s assistant. The case has generated strong interest from the university community. Some information-technology professors fear Blackboard will use its patent, granted in 2006, to dominate its industry. Blackboard is already by far the largest company offering classroom management software, which teachers use to communicate with students Get Daily Updates via Email Protect your computer with Windows Onecare Get paid $7.50 for reviewing my post

Google, SingTel, and others to build submarine cable

Slashdot It! Web search company Google has agreed to build an undersea cable with five telecommunications operators that will link the United States to Japan, and provide the capacity to sustain a surge in Internet traffic between the continents. Google and the five telecommunications companies said in a joint statement that the 6,200-mile undersea fiber-optic cable, connecting the United States to Japan, will cost $300 million. Google's partners in the consortium, dubbed Unity, comprises Bharti Airtel, Global Transit, KDDI, Pacnet, and SingTel. The cable will provide much-needed capacity to sustain unprecedented growth in data and Internet traffic between Asia and the United States. "The Unity cable system allows the members of the consortium to provide the increased capacity needed as more applications and services migrate online," said Jayne Stowell, a spokeswoman for the consortium. The consortium said it has picked NEC and Tyco Telecommunications to construct and install the system, which is expected to be ready for service in the first quarter of 2010. Via Cnet Get Daily Updates via Email Protect your computer with Windows Onecare Get paid $7.50 for reviewing my post

All clicks are not equal, says Microsoft

Slashdot It! Microsoft is proposing a new way for marketers to think about the value of clicks on Internet ads, with the understanding that the last click a consumer makes isn't necessarily the most important. Say a consumer sees an ad for a product in a video ad one day, and then clicks on a text ad to visit the retailer's site the next day, and then eventually sees a banner ad that leads to a purchase. All of the monetary credit tends to go to the text link that was clicked on, says John Chandler, principal analyst for Microsoft's Atlas ad serving division. "Under our (Engagement Mapping) model, those will share the credit," for example, with 40 percent each going to the video ad and the text ad and 20 percent going to the banner, he says. The ability for advertisers and ad agencies to configure the distribution of their advertising campaign dollars is the core of Microsoft's new Engagement ROI tool, which launches in beta this week as part of the Atlas Media Console. In general, "the text links may be overvalued and the video site is probably being undervalued," Chandler says. The tool is being announced at the Interactive Advertising Bureau's annual meeting in Phoenix. Get Daily Updates via Email Protect your computer with Windows Onecare Get paid $7.50 for reviewing my post

AMD to die in 5 years

Slashdot It! IBM MIGHT NOT BE THE BEST choice of friends for AMD if the attitude of Bill Zeitler is anything to go by. He is predicting IBM and Intel will be the only players at the high-end of the chip market in five years time. In a gaffe that can only sour relations with AMD, Zeitler - Senior Vice President & Group Executive, Server Group - let slip to Fortune that he thinks the rest of the 64bit competition will fall by the wayside. AMD is pinning its hopes on its x86-64 technology, all of its new products over the next few years are offshoots from Opteron. If Opteron and its successors are dead in five years, it would leave AMD with nothing. The obvious inference is that Zeitler doesn't expect AMD to be around in five years time. AMD has worked hard to make its new 64bit processor a success and has gained enormous support within the industry, including from IBM. It is sure to come as a nasty shock that while IBM has been helping AMD along it has also been sharpening the knives behind its back. Get Daily Updates via Email Protect your computer with Windows Onecare Get paid $7.50 for reviewing my post

New alliances reshaping the LCD industry

Slashdot It! Competition in the LCD industry is shaping up as a battle between two groups of major manufacturers, each of which has struck alliances designed to reduce production costs and guarantee supply. Reports that Sony was planning to start buying LCD television display panels from electronics maker Sharp sent Sharp's shares up 5.2 percent. And an Asahi newspaper report that electronics manufacturer Pioneer plans to stop making 42-inch plasma display panels helped push its shares up 4.3 percent Monday. Such a move by Sharp, the world's No. 3 LCD TV maker, and Sony, the second-largest, would underscore the importance of securing enough display panels to meet fast-growing LCD TV demand. "The (LCD panel) industry is finally splitting up neatly into two groups," said Nikko Citigroup analyst Kota Ezawa. The deal would create a larger alliance between Sharp, Sony, and Samsung Electronics, which currently runs an LCD panel joint venture with Sony, along with Toshiba, which said in December that it would buy large LCD panels from Sharp. Meanwhile, Panasonic maker Matsushita Electric Industrial and Hitachi hold a large stake in joint venture IPS Alpha Technology, which makes large LCD panels. Matsushita also announced earlier this month it would spend 300 billion yen ($2.79 billion) to build an LCD panel plant by 2010. Still, Ezawa noted that the potential deal wasn't without risk for Sharp. "By providing panels to its television competitors, Sharp faces the risk of its own televisions not selling well," he said. For Sony, the procurement from Sharp is expected to help it secure enough panels without making heavy capital investment. Sony's shares rose 2.4 percent to 5,140 yen ($47.94), compared with the benchmark Nikkei's 3.1 percent gain. Via Cnet Get Daily Updates via Email Protect your computer with Windows Onecare Get paid $7.50 for reviewing my post

Microsoft gets another shot at Open XML standard

Slashdot It! Microsoft ramped up its fight to have its Office Open XML document format made into an international standard as delegates from 37 countries met to reconsider the proposal. Their weeklong meeting at the International Organization for Standardization, or ISO, is meant to help broker consensus after a preliminary vote on the standard failed six months ago. There will be no ballot during the talks, but the 87 national standards bodies who previously voted will have until March 29 to adjust their positions, giving the world's largest software maker another shot at the two-thirds majority it needs. "The ISO members who voted on the draft in September will have 30 days to change their votes if they wish," said Roger Frost, a spokesman for the Geneva-based agency. Microsoft won only 53 percent of the votes in September. Opponents of Open XML, which is the default file-saving format in Microsoft Office 2007, argue there is no need for a rival standard to the widely used Open Document Format (ODF) that is already an international standard. They argue that the Microsoft product's 6,000 pages of code, compared with ODF's 860 pages, make it artificially complicated and untranslatable. The productivity software suite OpenOffice uses ODF, which is supported by IBM and Sun Microsystems. But Microsoft and others have said that multiple standards are normal in software and other industries and that competition makes for better products. Microsoft says its format has higher specifications and is more useful than ODF. Standardization of Open XML would allow other companies to build products using the file format and simplify file exchange between different software suites. Microsoft has collaborated with Novell to develop a tool to translate Open XML documents into ODF and vice versa, though critics believe the tool cannot provide a complete translation due to the complexity of the Microsoft product. XML, short for Extensible Markup Language, is a standard for describing data in a way that allows it to be shared across various systems and applications. Microsoft has handed over control of Open XML to the standards-making body Ecma, which would make it available even in the event of the company's demise. Delegates submitted about 4,200 suggested modifications to the Microsoft documents in the lead-up to last year's ballot. Those have been whittled down to 1,100 comments for consideration during the Geneva meeting this week, the ISO said. Get Daily Updates via Email Protect your computer with Windows Onecare Get paid $7.50 for reviewing my post

Wiretapping Made Easy

Slashdot It! Silently tapping into a private cellphone conversation is no longer a high-tech trick reserved for spies and the FBI. Thanks to the work of two young cyber-security researchers, cellular snooping may soon be affordable enough for your next-door neighbor. In a presentation Wednesday at the Black Hat security conference in Washington, D.C., David Hulton and Steve Muller demonstrated a new technique for cracking the encryption used to prevent eavesdropping on global system for mobile communications (GSM) cellular signals, the type of radio frequency coding used by major cellular service providers including AT&T, Cingular and T-Mobile. Combined with a radio receiver, the pair say their technique allows an eavesdropper to record a conversation on these networks from miles away and decode it in about half an hour with just $1,000 in computer storage and processing equipment. Hulton, director of applications for the high-performance computing company Pico, and Muller, a researcher for mobile security firm CellCrypt, plan to make their decryption method free and public. In March, however, they say they'll start selling a faster version that can crack GSM encryption in just 30 seconds, charging between $200,000 and $500,000 for the premium version. Who will be the customers for their innovative espionage technique? Hulton and Muller say they aren't sure yet. But they plan to offer the method to companies that will integrate it with radio technology, not sell it directly to the law enforcement and criminal customers who will undoubtedly be interested in putting it to use. "We're not creating the technology that does the interception," Muller says. "All this does is crunch data." Hulton and Muller will likely make a tidy profit from the fruits of their research work, which they've personally patented. The companies they work for may profit less directly; Pico makes the high-performance processors necessary to do heavy-duty encryption work. CellCrypt makes software for encrypting mobile phone conversations, patching the security flaw that Hulton and Muller's research has uncovered. As for the moral question of chipping away at the privacy of cellphone users around the world, Muller gives an answer common to security researchers: He and Hulton didn't invent the hackable technology; they just brought attention to its vulnerabilities. In fact, Muller argues, GSM encryption was cracked--theoretically--in academic papers as early as 1998. "Active" radio interceptors, which impersonate cell towers and can eavesdrop on GSM phone conversations, have also been sold by companies like Comstrac and PGIS for years. (Active techniques, however, only allow eavesdropping from within about 600 feet and are easily detectable, Muller notes.) Undetectable, "passive" systems like the one that Muller and Hulton have created aren't new either, though previous technologies required about a million dollars worth of hardware and used a "brute force" tactic that tried 33 million times as many passwords to decrypt a cell signal. All of that means, Hulton and Muller argue, that their cheaper technique is simply drawing needed attention to a problem that mobile carriers have long ignored--one that well-financed eavesdroppers may have been exploiting for years. "If governments or other people with millions of dollars can listen to your conversations right now, why shouldn't your next-door neighbor?" Muller says. The new technique may serve as a wake-up call for mobile carriers, which have long been in denial about the vulnerabilities of GSM security, says Bruce Schneier, encryption guru and chief technology officer of BT Counterpane. "This is a nice piece of work, but it isn't a surprise," he says. " We've been saying that this algorithm is weak for years. The mobile industry kept arguing that the attack was just theoretical. Well, now it's practical." David Pringle, a spokesman for the GSMA trade association, which represents 700 GSM carriers around the world, said in a statement that “the mobile industry is committed to maintaining the integrity of GSM services, and the protection and privacy of customer communications is at the forefront of operators’ concerns.” He also pointed out that decrypting GSM still requires special equipment and is more secure than a typical landline. The GSMA, he noted, has developed and is working on implementing a higher level of encryption; Newer 3G cell carriers are also immune from the attack. Although their exploit doesn't target the competing CDMA cellular technology used by carriers like Verizon and Sprint Nextel, Muller argues it's not necessarily less secure. GSM was only decrypted first because it's more popular worldwide: Few cellphone subscribers outside North America use CDMA carriers. So how do Hulton and Muller ensure that their own phone conversations aren't intercepted? Muller responds to that question, posed by an audience member at Black Hat's gathering of hackers and security professionals, with a smile. "We don't use phones," he says. Get Daily Updates via Email Protect your computer with Windows Onecare Get paid $7.50 for reviewing my post

Electronic Arts Offers $2 Billion for Take-Two

Slashdot It! Electronic Arts, the video gaming giant, made an unsolicited $2 billion bid on Sunday for rival Take-Two Interactive, publisher of the Grand Theft Auto franchise, a deal that would further a wave of consolidation in the rapidly growing industry. Electronic Arts, which publishes hit games like the Madden N.F.L. and Need for Speed series, offered to pay $26 a share for Take-Two, a 50 percent premium over its share price of $17.36 on Friday. The offer was made publicly after a series of private offers to Take-Two were rejected by its board. Electronic Arts approached Take Two with a $26-a-share offer on Feb. 19, up from $25 share it initially offered on Feb. 15. The timing of the bid appears to be an attempt to acquire Take-Two before it releases what is widely expected to be the top-selling game of 2008, the fourth installment of the crime thriller Grand Theft Auto. The Grand Theft Auto franchise, Take-Two’s crown jewel, has sold more than 60 million copies since Grand Theft Auto III took the game industry by storm in 2001. Through its Rockstar subsidiary, Take-Two is scheduled to release the game on April 29 for Microsoft’s Xbox 360 and Sony’s PlayStation 3 consoles. If it lives up to consumers’ expectations, the game is expected to sell 10 million copies or more by the end of the year, which would almost certainly make Take-Two more expensive. Electronic Arts’s dominance has been strongly challenged by Activision. Not only has Activision had a recent string of hits, notably Guitar Hero, it also recently agreed to buy Vivendi’s game division to form a company called Activision Blizzard. At the same time, E.A. has endured a growing chorus of criticism from some investors who say the company has lost its creative and innovative edge. There is little doubt that E.A. remains the juggernaut of the video game industry. But it has come to rely heavily on sequels. A merger with Take-Two would be a union of two vastly different companies. E.A. has a reputation for steady growth and fiscal discipline, while Take-Two is known as a mercurial one-hit wonder. Electronic Arts said it was making its offer public to “bring its proposal to the attention of all Take-Two shareholders.” In a telephone interview on Sunday, Electronic Arts’ chief executive, John Riccitiello, said, “It is an enormous premium,” suggesting that rather than consider the offer hostile, “We think of ourselves as a ‘white knight.’ ” Take-Two was far less generous. In a statement, Strauss Zelnick, the company’s chairman, said, “Electronic Arts’ proposal provides insufficient value to our shareholders and comes at absolutely the wrong time given the crucial initiatives under way at the company,” referring to the new Grand Theft Auto and other products. Mr. Riccitiello said, however, he believed that Take-Two’s stock price already reflected an expectation among investors that Grand Theft Auto IV would be a success, and that Take-Two would become less valuable to E.A. after the game’s introduction than it was now. Mr. Riccitiello said his offer’s timing reflected a desire to integrate Take-Two’s operations with E.A.’s before the all-important holiday shopping season. He said he had formed a relationship in recent years with Sam Houser, one of Rockstar’s founders, but added that he had avoided contacting Mr. Houser while pursuing his negotiations with Mr. Zelnick. Mr. Zelnick said that Take-Two had offered to initiate discussions with Electronic Arts on April 30, the the day after Grand Theft Auto IV was scheduled for release. “We believe this offer demonstrated our commitment to pursuing all avenues to maximize stockholder value, while we believe that E.A.’s refusal to entertain this path is evidence of their desire to acquire Take-Two at a significant discount,” he said.Mr. Riccitiello refused to speculate about what steps he would take next, but it is possible that Electronic Arts could pursue a proxy contest to oust the board. Over the next several weeks, Mr. Riccitiello’s main challenge will be to persuade investors to accept the deal and convince employees that Electronic Arts will respect the creative autonomy of Take-Two’s various development teams. Over the last decade, E.A. has acquired many high-profile game studios, including Westwood (the Command & Conquer series), Bullfrog Productions (Populous) and Origin Systems (Ultima), which essentially dissolved after Electronic Arts tried to direct and homogenize their creative output. Any deal for Take-Two would be largely empty if Take-Two teams like Rockstar and Ken Levine’s group at 2K Boston, which recently released the acclaimed game BioShock, were to depart rather than work for E.A. Mr. Riccitiello seems aware of the danger and is taking steps to convince the game industry of E.A.’s newfound respect for creative talent. At a well-received speech at an industry conference in Las Vegas earlier this month Mr. Riccitiello promised that in future deals, Electronic Arts would avoid killing the creative golden goose as it has in the past. Get Daily Updates via Email Protect your computer with Windows Onecare Get paid $7.50 for reviewing my post

Sony to sell chip facility to Toshiba for $835 mln

Slashdot It! Sony Corp said it will sell its microchip production facilities in western Japan to Toshiba Corp for 90 billion yen ($835 million), in their latest move to focus on their core businesses. The equipment will be used by their semiconductor joint venture that will make high-performance Cell chips and RSX graphic chips, both used in Sony's PlayStation 3 game console, as well as other microchips that go into Toshiba products. The venture will be established on April 1. Sony, which is focusing on image sensor chips for digital cameras and pulling away from heavy investments for cutting-edge chip production equipment, said in October it would sell production facilities for making key microchips used in the PS3 to Toshiba, but the price has been unavailable. The announcement on the selling price comes on the heels of Toshiba's decision on Tuesday to abandon its HD DVD high-definition DVD format, ending a prolonged battle with the Sony-led Blu-ray camp. Toshiba twinned the HD DVD exit with an announcement that it and partner SanDisk Corp would spend $16 billion on two new flash memory plants. Shares in Sony were up 2.8 percent at 5,150 yen in afternoon trade while Toshiba fell 2.8 percent to 801 yen. The Tokyo stock market's electrical machinery index was down 2.1 percent. Get Daily Updates via Email Protect your computer with Windows Onecare Get paid $7.50 for reviewing my post

Stringer makes his mark

Slashdot It! Howard Stringer made history in 2005 for being the first non-Japanese executive to take the helm at Sony Corp. But he may be better remembered as the one who won the high-definition war, erasing the stain on the electronics firm's image ever since it lost the videotape war two decades earlier. Although celebrated yesterday, the victory was sealed last month when Sony swayed Warner Bros. to back Sony's Blu-ray technology and quit producing movies using Toshiba Corp.'s rival HD DVD format. What remains a mystery is just how big a push Warner needed to pick sides. Analysts say Sony only prevailed following a heated bidding war against Toshiba, with the reward reaching as much as $400-million (U.S.). Neither side has confirmed the size of any bids or payments. It was supposed to be the technology equivalent of First World War trench warfare: A prolonged battle to the death between Toshiba and Sony for global domination in high-definition DVDs. In the end, the denouement was more like Germany's swift 1940 end run of the Maginot line. Less than two years after its first HD DVD player hit the market, Toshiba president Atsutoshi Nishida raised the white flag, declaring yesterday that it would stop making and selling the devices altogether within a month. Toshiba's unconditional surrender leaves the spoils to Sony, maker of the rival Blu-ray disc player - a technologically superior format that had the backing of virtually all the major movie studies and retailers. "We simply had no chance to win," Mr. Nishida acknowledged bluntly. The final straw, he said, was Warner's decision last month to exclusively release movies in Blu-ray. The decision by Warner, with about 20 per cent of the movie market, put a critical mass of the industry in the Blu-ray camp. With billions of dollars in global sales at stake, experts had predicted the Toshiba-Sony battle would go on for years - not unlike the 1980s battle of videotape formats between VHS (Matsushita) and Betamax (Sony). That war lasted a decade, leaving Sony battered and humiliated. So how did this epic battle come to such an abrupt end? The answer lies in part with the bruising Sony experienced with Betamax, which, like Blu-ray, was also the better product on paper. For more that 20 years, Sony has been "haunted by Betamax" and was fiercely determined not to let history repeat itself, explained Xavier Drèze, a marketing professor at the University of Pennsylvania's Wharton business school. "Sony was much smarter," Prof. Drèze said. "They understood this time they couldn't do it alone. They understood that they needed strategic partnerships with industry players." The war was over when Sony managed to line up a critical mass of partners - in Hollywood, Silicon Valley and on Main Street. The tipping point was Warner Bros. But Sony Pictures, Walt Disney Co. and News Corp.'s Twentieth Century Fox Film Corp. had already done the same - signing exclusive sealed deals with presumably rich royalty arrangements. "This was heavy hitters in a back room talking about what the royalty structure was going to be and how much money they were willing to put on the table to be exclusive with one camp or the other. That was the determining factor here," concluded Van Baker, an analyst with market research firm Gartner Inc. Until last month, Warner had been backing both technologies. Last Friday, Wal-Mart Stores Inc. announced it would sell only Blu-ray DVDs. Officials said "customer feedback" prompted its decision. Netflix Inc., Best Buy Co. Inc., Blockbuster Inc. and Target Corp. had earlier done the same. "Everyone was tired of the format war, the retailers were tired of it, the consumer electronics vendors were tired of it and they just wanted this thing to get settled," Mr. Baker said. "Consumers and the industry learned the hard way with Beta and VHS that a prolonged format war was disastrous. There was a lot of motivation to get one or the other to win and the only thing that protracted it was the amount of money flying around." The groundwork for Sony's stunning victory, however, came months, even years ago. Prof. Drèze said Blu-ray had several things going for it that helped it to build loyalty with consumers and the industry. Six years ago yesterday - and years before the first Blu-ray disc or player was sold - Sony had lined up most of the other computer and electronics makers, including LG Electronics, Panasonic, Samsung, Apple and Dell. Sony also owned a major movie studio. So it could push its own technology. Third, the company sold Blu-ray to rival movie studios with the promise of superior digital copyright protection. Sony also used its PlayStation video game console, which also works as a Blu-ray player, as a sort of "Trojan horse," Prof. Drèze said. Sony has already sold 10.5 million of its PS3 consoles, compared with roughly one million HD DVD players. PlayStation buyers, he said, unwittingly embraced Blu-ray and undermined HD DVD. Ultimately, the technology is superior. Blu-ray can hold up to three times more data (200 gigabytes versus 60) and offers higher resolution. In the end, it could be a pyrrhic victory for Sony. The age of hard copy discs is already giving way to digital downloads, stored and played from PCs, iPods and other portable devices. "I don't think the heyday of DVD is going to return," said Mr. Baker, the analyst. "For most consumers, digital downloads are going to be very appealing." Via Globe & Mail Get Daily Updates via Email Protect your computer with Windows Onecare Get paid $7.50 for reviewing my post

Netscape being pulled down

Slashdot It! AOL has released its last ever update for Netscape Navigator and is encouraging its remaining users to switch to Flock or Firefox.. "Users will see the following major upgrade notice, released as Netscape 9.0.0.6," said Tom Drapeau, director of AOL's Netscape brand, in a company blog. "When the Netscape 9.0.0.6 upgrade is accepted and run, the following notice will appear, denoting the end of support date and the recommendations of Flock and Firefox." The pop-up offers users download links to a choice of the Flock or Mozilla's Firefox browser. Netscape diehards will be able to stick with the browser by clicking 'Remind me later' and 'Stay with Netscape' buttons. But as of the end of February no further updates or security patches will be added. Nearly 14 years after the once mighty browser made its first desktop appearance as Mosaic Netscape 0.9, its disappearance comes as little surprise. Although Netscape accounted for more than 80 per cent of the browser market in 1995, the arrival of Microsoft's Internet Explorer in the same year brought stiff competition and surpassed Netscape within three years. At the end of 2007, Drapeau announced that AOL would stop development of the browser and would end support on 1 February. Drapeau gave Netscape a one-month reprieve at the end of last month citing the need for more time to finish migration tools. Get Daily Updates via Email Protect your computer with Windows Onecare Get paid $7.50 for reviewing my post

One Exaflop from Sandi

Slashdot It! Preparing groundwork for an exascale computer is the mission of the new Institute for Advanced Architectures, launched jointly at Sandia and Oak Ridge national laboratories. An exaflop is a thousand times faster than a petaflop, itself a thousand times faster than a teraflop. Teraflop computers —the first was developed 10 years ago at Sandia — currently are the state of the art. They do trillions of calculations a second. Exaflop computers would perform a million trillion calculations per second. The idea behind the institute —under consideration for a year and a half prior to its opening — is “to close critical gaps between theoretical peak performance and actual performance on current supercomputers,” says Sandia project lead Sudip Dosanjh. “We believe this can be done by developing novel and innovative computer architectures.” Ultrafast supercomputers improve detection of real-world conditions by helping researchers more closely examine the interactions of larger numbers of particles over time periods divided into smaller segments. “An exascale computer is essential to perform more accurate simulations that, in turn, support solutions for emerging science and engineering challenges in national defense, energy assurance, advanced materials, climate, and medicine,” says James Peery, director of computation, computers and math. The institute is funded in FY08 by congressional mandate at $7.4 million. It is supported by the National Nuclear Security Administration and the Department of Energy’s Office of Science. Sandia is an NNSA laboratory. One aim, Dosanjh says, is to reduce or eliminate the growing mismatch between data movement and processing speeds. Processing speed refers to the rapidity with which a processor can manipulate data to solve its part of a larger problem. Data movement refers to the act of getting data from a computer’s memory to its processing chip and then back again. The larger the machine, the farther away from a processor the data may be stored and the slower the movement of data. “In an exascale computer, data might be tens of thousands of processors away from the processor that wants it,” says Sandia computer architect Doug Doerfler. “But until that processor gets its data, it has nothing useful to do. One key to scalability is to make sure all processors have something to work on at all times.” Compounding the problem is new technology that has enabled designers to split a processor into first two, then four, and now eight cores on a single die. Some special-purpose processors have 24 or more cores on a die. Dosanjh suggests there might eventually be hundreds operating in parallel on a single chip. “In order to continue to make progress in running scientific applications at these [very large] scales,” says Jeff Nichols, who heads the Oak Ridge branch of the institute, “we need to address our ability to maintain the balance between the hardware and the software. There are huge software and programming challenges and our goal is to do the critical R&D to close some of the gaps.” Operating in parallel means that each core can work its part of the puzzle simultaneously with other cores on a chip, greatly increasing the speed a processor operates on data. The method does not require faster clock speeds, measured in faster gigahertz, which would generate unmanageable amounts of heat to dissipate as well as current leakage. The new method bolsters the continued relevance of Moore’s Law, the 1965 observation of Intel cofounder Gordon Moore that the number of transistors placed on a single computer chip will double approximately every two years. Another problem for the institute is to reduce the amount of power needed to run a future exascale computer. “The electrical power needed with today’s technologies would be many tens of megawatts — a significant fraction of a power plant. A megawatt can cost as much as a million dollars a year,” says Dosanjh. “We want to bring that down.” Sandia and Oak Ridge will work together on these and other problems, he says. “Although all of our efforts will be collaborative, in some areas Sandia will take the lead and Oak Ridge may lead in others, depending on who has the most expertise in a given discipline.” In addition, a key component of the institute will be the involvement of industry and universities. A spontaneous demonstration of wide interest in faster computing was evidenced in the response to an invitation-only workshop, “Memory Opportunities for High-Performing Computing,” sponsored in January by the institute. Workshop organizers planned for 25 participants but nearly 50 attended. Attendees represented the national labs, DOE, National Science Foundation, National Security Agency, Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, and leading manufacturers of processors and supercomputing systems. Ten years ago, people worldwide were astounded at the emergence of a teraflop supercomputer — that would be Sandia’s ASCI Red — able in one second to perform a trillion mathematical operations. More recently, bloggers seem stunned that a machine capable of petaflop computing — a thousand times faster than a teraflop — could soon break the next barrier of a thousand trillion mathematical operations a second. Sandia is a multiprogram laboratory operated by Sandia Corporation, a Lockheed Martin company, for the U.S. Department of Energy’s National Nuclear Security Administration. With main facilities in Albuquerque, N.M., and Livermore, Calif., Sandia has major R&D responsibilities in national security, energy and environmental technologies, and economic competitiveness. Get Daily Updates via Email Protect your computer with Windows Onecare Get paid $7.50 for reviewing my post

HD-DVD camp gets booted out by Microsoft

Slashdot It! It was only a matter of time before Microsoft officially discontinued manufacturing the Xbox 360 HD DVD add-on, but it took them a few days longer than we expected. Their statement is finally out, and it signals Microsoft's official withdraw from HD DVD on the console front. The good news is that they'll still continue to support and repair your player based on the standard warranty, but chances are you'll get little future use out of that player now that no movies will be made for it. What's still unclear is whether there will ever be a Blu-ray add-on to the 360 that's cheap enough to sell the Xbox + Blu-ray package at a comparable price to the PS3 ($399ish). We're guessing that something along these lines will hit within the year. Get Daily Updates via Email Protect your computer with Windows Onecare Get paid $7.50 for reviewing my post

Computer code trumps the law

Slashdot It! Australian High Court Judge Justice Kirby says computer code is more potent than the law--and that legislators are powerless to do anything about it. Technology has outpaced the legal system's ability to regulate its use in matters of privacy and fair use rights, said Kirby, speaking Thursday night at an Internet Industry Association (IIA) event. Kirby said the judicial system has faced difficulties in coping with changes the Internet and computing have brought. While the soon-to-be-reviewed Privacy Act has incorporated key privacy principles such as "usage limitation"--which states that data collected about an individual cannot be used for other purposes, except by the approval of the law or the person's consent--Google and Yahoo have rendered that principle defunct, Kirby said. "It was a good moral and ethical principle to keep people's control over the usage that was made of the information...And then along came Google and Yahoo," said Kirby. "And when the new technology came, there was a massive capacity to range through vast amounts of information. The notion that you could control this was a conundrum," he said, adding that because the technology is considered so useful, privacy concerns have been cast aside. The challenges that technology present continue to beat even the best legal minds in the world, Kirby said. Despite this, lawmakers should attempt to implement checks and balances. Without them, corporations pose an even graver problem for humanity. "To do nothing is to make a decision to let others go and take technology where they will. There are even more acute questions arising in biotechnology and informatics, such as the hybridization of the human species and other species. Points of no return can be reached," he said. Via Cnet Get Daily Updates via Email Protect your computer with Windows Onecare Get paid $7.50 for reviewing my post

Belgrade smash 'n' grab becomes YouTube hit

Slashdot It! A video of two young women looting with abandon during rioting in the Serbian capital Belgrade was becoming a Balkan smash hit on the video-sharing site YouTube. Police arrested some looters, but public humiliation by YouTube may prove a far more painful punishment for the pair, whose spree on Thursday night was also aired on local television stations and was being discussed across the Internet. A persistent amateur cameraman followed the women as they loaded up with chocolates at a corner shop, came out giggling, then went after designer bags, shoes, and clothes at Belgrade's swankiest stores in its vandalized main shopping street. "Get lost, stop filming," one of them shouted, so laden down with booty that clothes and bags dripped to the ground amid the broken glass below emptied storefronts. "But you are the heroines of this protest for me," the cameraman replied sarcastically above the din of burglar alarms. Looters seized their chance as rioters attacked Western embassies during a mass rally to protest U.S. and European support for Kosovo's independence. The second woman covered her face with a pair of looted shoes when she saw she was being filmed. "Have you found your size yet?" asked the cameraman. YouTube viewers were not amused. Via Cnet Get Daily Updates via Email Protect your computer with Windows Onecare Get paid $7.50 for reviewing my post

Researchers Find Way to Steal Encrypted Data

Slashdot It! A group led by a Princeton University computer security researcher has developed a simple method to steal encrypted information stored on computer hard disks. The technique, which could undermine security software protecting critical data on computers, is as easy as chilling a computer memory chip with a blast of frigid air from a can of dust remover. Encryption software is widely used by companies and government agencies, notably in portable computers that are especially susceptible to theft. The development, which was described on the group’s Web site Thursday, could also have implications for the protection of encrypted personal data from prosecutors. The move, which cannot be carried out remotely, exploits a little-known vulnerability of the dynamic random access, or DRAM, chip. Those chips temporarily hold data, including the keys to modern data-scrambling algorithms. When the computer’s electrical power is shut off, the data, including the keys, is supposed to disappear. In a technical paper that was published Thursday on the Web site of Princeton’s Center for Information Technology Policy, the group demonstrated that standard memory chips actually retain their data for seconds or even minutes after power is cut off. When the chips were chilled using an inexpensive can of air, the data was frozen in place, permitting the researchers to easily read the keys — long strings of ones and zeros — out of the chip’s memory. “Cool the chips in liquid nitrogen (-196 °C) and they hold their state for hours at least, without any power,” Edward W. Felten, a Princeton computer scientist, wrote in a Web posting. “Just put the chips back into a machine and you can read out their contents.” The researchers used special pattern-recognition software of their own to identify security keys among the millions or even billions of pieces of data on the memory chip. “We think this is pretty serious to the extent people are relying on file protection,” Mr. Felten said. The team, which included five graduate students led by Mr. Felten and three independent technical experts, said they did not know if such an attack capability would compromise government computer information because details of how classified computer data is protected are not publicly available. Officials at the Department of Homeland Security, which paid for a portion of the research, did not return repeated calls for comment. The researchers also said they had not explored disk encryption protection systems as now built into some commercial disk drives. But they said they had proved that so-called Trusted Computing hardware, an industry standard approach that has been heralded as significantly increasing the security of modern personal computers, does not appear to stop the potential attacks. A number of computer security experts said the research results were an indication that assertions of robust computer security should be regarded with caution. “This is just another example of how things aren’t quite what they seem when people tell you things are secure,” said Peter Neumann, a security researcher at SRI International in Menlo Park, Calif. The Princeton researchers wrote that they were able to compromise encrypted information stored using special utilities in the Windows, Macintosh and Linux operating systems. Apple has had a FileVault disk encryption feature as an option in its OS X operating system since 2003. Microsoft added file encryption last year with BitLocker features in its Windows Vista operating system. The programs both use the federal government’s certified Advanced Encryption System algorithm to scramble data as it is read from and written to a computer hard disk. But both programs leave the keys in computer memory in an unencrypted form. “The software world tends not to think about these issues,” said Matt Blaze, an associate professor of computer and information science at the University of Pennsylvania. “We tend to make assumptions about the hardware. When we find out that those assumptions are wrong, we’re in trouble.” Both of the software publishers said they ship their operating systems with the file encryption turned off. It is then up to the customer to turn on the feature. Executives of Microsoft said BitLocker has a range of protection options that they referred to as “good, better and best.” Austin Wilson, director of Windows product management security at Microsoft, said the company recommended that BitLocker be used in some cases with additional hardware security. That might include either a special U.S.B. hardware key, or a secure identification card that generates an additional key string. The Princeton researchers acknowledged that in these advanced modes, BitLocker encrypted data could not be accessed using the vulnerability they discovered. An Apple spokeswoman said that the security of the FileVault system could also be enhanced by using a secure card to add to the strength of the key. The researchers said they began exploring the utilities for vulnerabilities last fall after seeing a reference to the persistence of data in memory in a technical paper written by computer scientists at Stanford in 2005. The Princeton group included Seth D. Schoen of the Electronic Frontier Foundation, William Paul of Wind River Systems and Jacob Appelbaum, an independent computer security researcher. The issue of protecting information with disk encryption technology became prominent recently in a criminal case involving a Canadian citizen who late in 2006 was stopped by United States customs agents who said they had found child pornography on his computer. When the agents tried to examine the machine later, they discovered that the data was protected by encryption. The suspect has refused to divulge his password. A federal agent testified in court that the only way to determine the password otherwise would be with a password guessing program, which could take years. A federal magistrate ruled recently that forcing the suspect to disclose the password would be unconstitutional. Get Daily Updates via Email Protect your computer with Windows Onecare Get paid $7.50 for reviewing my post

Deadline in Viacom, Google copyright suit extended

Slashdot It! A deadline for Google to turn over documents in Viacom's $1 billion copyright lawsuit against the Web search leader has been extended by two months by a federal judge. Google's attorneys had asked that a March 7 deadline for both sides to turn over documents be postponed by three months because it was wading through 4.5 million documents. "It's a daunting task," Andrew Schapiro, an attorney for law firm Mayer Brown which represents Google, told the New York Southern District Court. Judge Louis Stanton agreed Friday to a new deadline of May 9. Last March, Viacom sued Google for copyright infringement on its popular YouTube online video sharing service, demanding over $1 billion in damages. Get Daily Updates via Email Protect your computer with Windows Onecare Get paid $7.50 for reviewing my post

RIAA video

Slashdot It! The RIAA apparently produced a new video, already available on a variety of torrent tracker sites, in conjunction with the National District Attorneys Association with the goal of instructing U.S. prosecutors on how to deal with music piracy cases. According to early reports, the video, called In Trial, also provides instructions on how to get an RIAA investigator qualified as a court expert. P2PNet's Jon Newton pointed out that the video kicks off with a judge's gavel slamming down, and that we can expect clips from the file to appear on video sharing sites soon. This of course would be followed by a meta-lawsuit in which the RIAA sues to protect something it recorded itself. - Update: The video apparently isn't as old as it seems, and pertains mostly to physical CD piracy, with ex-Maryland state trooper Frank Walters pointing to a CD burner tower and showing how prosecutors can identify a pirated CD (no printing on the CD). It also includes some choice lines like as this one, about how piracy accusations can help take down people who are skirting other laws (think Al Capone): Jim Dedman, National District Attorneys Association: "If I have my drug officers out there, and they see what seems like a nice music collection, this may be something you could help me out with." Deborah Robinson, Regional Counsel, Anti-Piracy Div., RIAA: "Exactly, exactly. And sometimes drug officers call us and say, 'we know they're selling music, can you help us?... We're trying to arrest this drug dealer, what should I look for, what should I put in that affidavit? Here's a short clip from YouTube (again, the entire "In Trial" video is available via torrent tracker sites): Get Daily Updates via Email Protect your computer with Windows Onecare Get paid $7.50 for reviewing my post

Lingerie

All right, this maybe out of topic for this blog, but it is a lingeries review that I would be doing today. In today's review, I am going to review this lingeries website. It is a website that sells lingeries. While, that is not all, it is sell it at a very cheap price. But the quality is there still. lingerie\ I cannot talk too depth about this website as there are different problems and things that women want to buy. So you must check it out yourself

Insurance

Everyone has to die one day. Why not prepare yourself now? Buy an insurance policy from the following website that I am going to review today and protect your family if you are the sole breadwinner. Do you know how tough it is for the family if the sole breadwinner dies? It is a tough period. Trust me, because I saw my friend struggling. burial policy

Coolink 120 & 92 MM Fan

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Coolink Chipchilla Chipset Cooler

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Can Apple Patent the Pinch?

Slashdot It! Is pinching proprietary? We may find out in the coming months as many companies, inspired by the success of Apple's iPhone, release their own multitouch-enabled laptops, smartphones and tablets. In doing so, these companies -- including RIM, Nokia and Synaptics -- may run afoul of multitouch patent applications recently filed by Apple. "If Apple's patents are granted, the company could absolutely stop others from using similar technology," says Raj Abhyanker, a patent lawyer who used to write patent applications for Apple. "They'd also be in an especially good position to stop others from including certain features. Apple could stop [their use] not only on mobile devices but also desktops." Patent experts contacted by Wired.com stressed that the patent office can take four or more years to grant patents, and Apple is far from certain to win these patents. Indeed, other companies, including BenQ-Siemens and Nokia, have also filed patent applications on a series of gestures and touch applications for multitouch devices. However, with more than 200 patent claims for the iPhone alone, including several multitouch-related patent applications, Apple is clearly seeking to control as much of the multitouch world as it can. Multitouch technology itself is far from being an Apple invention. Jeff Han wowed the crowd at TED in 2006 with a demo of his multitouch research, and Bill Gates demo'd Microsoft's Surface Table in early 2007, months before the iPhone was released. Even Apple CEO Steve Jobs reportedly used Microsoft's work with tablet PCs as the jumping-off point for iPhone development. However, the iPhone is arguably the first mainstream gadget to successfully implement a set of concrete touch gestures and link them to specific functions. Pinching zooms in and out. Double tapping initiates a "smart zoom" that hones in on a particular area of the screen. What's more, iPhone and iPod Touch users are now familiar with these gestures and their effects, and will expect to see other multitouch devices work the same way. "It seems that Apple could win patent claims where they are directed toward a touchscreen user device," says Chad Peterman, an expert on patent and antitrust litigation and an attorney at Patterson Belknap Webb and Tyler. While a gesture like "the pinch" in and of itself is not patentable, if you connect that motion to a specific function on a popular device, it is possible to argue that other devices using the same technique are infringing, Peterman says. If Apple's patent applications are successful, other manufacturers may have no choice but to implement multitouch gestures of their own. The upshot: You might pinch to zoom on your phone, swirl your finger around to zoom on your notebook, and triple-tap to zoom on the web-browsing remote control in your home theater. That's an outcome many in the industry would like to avoid. Synaptics, a company that by most estimates supplies 65 to 70 percent of the notebook industry with its touchpad technology, is working on its own set of universal touch gestures that it hopes will become a standard. These gestures include scrolling by making a circular motion, moving pictures or documents with a flip of the finger, and zooming in or out by making, yes, a pinching gesture. "My guess would be that 80 to 90 percent of consumer notebooks will have these new multigestures by the end of the year," says Mark Vena, vice president of Synaptics' PC business unit. Years before the iPhone and iPod Touch were introduced, Apple began quietly filing detailed patents pertaining to the technology and user interface of its capacitive multitouch interface on the iPhone. The company is thought to have secured much of its multitouch and gesturing technology by acquiring a company called FingerWorks. Its founders, Wayne Westerman and John Elias, have continued working for Apple and filing multitouch patents. As far back as 2004, Apple had begun filing applications for multipoint touchscreens and gestures connected to those touchscreens, including the pinch as well as other important usability features. All together, there are around 200 patents filed for the iPhone alone. This week, Apple filed yet another multitouch patent, this time for an advanced multitouch gesturing-control panel to be used in conjunction with Mac OS X. For companies like Synaptics, which is trying to bring the rest of the industry up to speed with its own brand of multitouch technologies, Apple's pending patents could spell trouble. At a basic level, winning a patent requires the development of "a new and useful process, machine or a composition of matter," according to the patent code. But there are other factors that weigh heavily in awarding a patent. Popularity often becomes a component in awarding some patents. There have also been cases where patents were awarded to companies who came up with novel uses or implementations for older technologies. Multitouch may not be new, but "using the pinching motion where the zoom is relative to the space between the users fingers … meets the base requirement for patentability," according to Peterman. William James, an attorney with Van Pelt, Yi & James, which counts Apple among its clients, agrees. "The technological pieces don't have to be new to be able to patent an interface like that," he says. "It helps, but a new application of existing technology will sometimes suffice." While it would be hard to patent a simple flicking motion, the pinch in particular raises a red flag for some patent experts, who say that Apple could claim infringement if it is eventually awarded the patent. Indeed, all indications are that the company is very serious about this technology. On the same day the iPhone launched, Apple even applied for a trademark in a Far East intellectual property office for the term "multi-touch." Yet it appears that the company is not trying to patent the entire multitouch concept, but rather trying to protect certain uses of it -- specifically the methods to interpret gestures, and in some cases, the gestures themselves. Whether Apple succeeds in that attempt is still uncertain. 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Super-speed Internet satellite blasts off in Japan

Slashdot It! Japan launched a rocket Saturday carrying a satellite that will test new technology that promises to deliver "super high-speed Internet" service to homes and businesses around the world. The rocket carrying the WINDS satellite -- a joint project of the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) and Mitsubishi Heavy Industries -- lifted off its pad at 5:55 p.m. (0855 GMT). If the technology proves successful, subscribers with small dishes will connect to the Internet at speeds many times faster than what is now available over residential cable or DSL services. The Associated Press said the satellite would offer speeds of up to 1.2 gigabytes per second. The service initially would focus on the Asia-Pacific region close to Japan, a JAXA news release said. "Among other uses, this will make possible great advances in telemedicine, which will bring high-quality medical treatment to remote areas, and in distance education, connecting students and teachers separated by great distances," JAXA said. The rocket was launched from Japan's Yoshinobu Launch Complex at the Tanegashima Space Center. Get Daily Updates via Email Protect your computer with Windows Onecare Get paid $7.50 for reviewing my post

Vacuum Cleaner

Are you on the computer now? Then, are you looking for a vacuum cleaner online? Then, you are in luck, that is because I had found the best place to buy your next vacuum cleaner. Even if you are not intending to buy one, you might want to read this review before you make a hast decision. Remember, good deals come when you least expect. vacuum cleaners The website for this company is quite nice designed. It has a very catchy domain name. So catchy that the website would appear at the back of my mind if I intend to buy a vacuum cleaner now. This website are separated into two sections. One section is the info part and the other is the shopping part. Info part The info part is what you least expect from a shop. It is like giving away free info online. They provide you with info about dust mines and everything. Shopping Part They sell all the stuff you need. Check them out

Convert from HD-DVD to Blu-Ray

Slashdot It! HD DVD is dead. Long live HD DVD! By converting your movies to a more enduring format, you can ensure your movie collection survives the death of the machine that plays them. The process is simple in principle but excruciating in practice, thanks to the complexity of the technology, the myriad of applications needed and the predations of an industry that doesn't want you format-shifting at all. Get Daily Updates via Email Protect your computer with Windows Onecare Get paid $7.50 for reviewing my post

Apple Releases iTunes 7.6.1, $0.99 Rental Discounts

Slashdot It! Apple released iTunes 7.6.1 today through the Mac OS X Software Update. This maintenance release includes several bug fixes and improves compatibility with Apple TV 2.0. The included description remains the same as the original 7.6 release: Rent and download your favorite movies with iTunes on your computer or directly to your living room on Apple TV. Enjoy rented movies in sizes up to 720p HD with surround sound on your Apple TV and sizes up to DVD-quality on your computer. Transfer your rented movies from iTunes to your iPod or iPhone and enjoy them on the go. Also, purchase and download your favorite TV shows, music, and more directly on your Apple TV. Effortlessly transfer purchases made on Apple TV back to your computer with iTunes. Meanwhile, Apple has notified iTunes customers through its weekly email, that they will be offering a different $0.99 movie rental every Thursday. The special price is available from Thursday through Monday. Once rented, like all other movies, you have 30 days to watch it. This week's $0.99 rental is The Hours (iTunes Link) Get Daily Updates via Email Protect your computer with Windows Onecare Get paid $7.50 for reviewing my post

Mozilla celebrates

Slashdot It! Firefox just reached 500,000,000 downloads. This is an absolutely phenomenal milestone for Firefox. It is sort of hard to imagine what that number means. For some perspective, that’s roughly the audience size of 10,000 Rome Colosseums combined. It would be the weight, in kilograms, of 8,500 Boeing 747 airplanes. In dollars, for $500 million you and 15 of your friends can fly to the International Space Station. OR, you can affect change and invite 15 of your friends to play a game and feed 25,000 people. With your help we can break another milestone today with FreeRice.com –500,000,000 grains of donated rice in one day. Imagine helping to feed the hungry while picking up some new vocabulary too! Get Daily Updates via Email Protect your computer with Windows Onecare Get paid $7.50 for reviewing my post

Microsoft to Share More Technical Secrets

Slashdot It! Seeking to satisfy European antitrust officials, Microsoft said on Thursday that it would open up and share many more of its technical secrets with the rest of the software industry and competitors. Microsoft executives, in a conference call, characterized the announcement as a “strategic shift” in the company’s business practices and its handling of technical information. They also portrayed the moves as only partly a nod to the continuing challenge Microsoft faces from Europe’s antitrust regulators. The broader goal, they said, is to bring Microsoft’s flagship personal computer products — the Windows operating system and Office productivity programs — further into the Internet era of computing. Increasingly, people want a seamless flow of documents, data and programming code among desktop PCs and the Internet, especially as they make the shift from using software on a PC to using services on the Web. “These steps are being taken on our own,” said Steven A. Ballmer, Microsoft’s chief executive. The move, he said, was a recognition of Microsoft’s “unique legal situation,” but it was also the company’s effort to adapt to “the opportunities and risks of a more connected, more services-oriented world.” Microsoft’s first step will be to put on its Web site 30,000 pages of technical documentation detailing how its Windows desktop and Microsoft server programs communicate and share information. Until now, that information was treated as a trade secret and was available only under a special license. Ray Ozzie, Microsoft’s chief software architect, said that by sharing more information, Microsoft would make it easier for others to write Internet programs that tap into personal information on a PC. That, Mr. Ozzie added, should bring new sets of Web services that, for example, might match a person’s calendar information with a doctor’s schedule. Then smart software could make an appointment. At home, he noted, someone’s digital collection of music, movies and family photos would be more easily shuffled to different devices and screens. “The Internet opens up a world of potential innovation,” Mr. Ozzie said. “And I think we’ve just scratched the surface.” Microsoft announced other plans to open up its technology, like allowing developers to add more non-Microsoft document formats to its Office word processing and spreadsheet programs. Microsoft also made commitments to increase its support for industry standards and work with open-source software developers. European regulators and others have long accused Microsoft of using its dominance in PC operating systems and software to lock out competitors. Last October, after a nine-year confrontation and a ruling against the company by Europe’s second-highest court, Microsoft agreed to share information with rivals on terms it had long resisted. Then, after fresh complaints from Microsoft’s competitors, the European antitrust regulators last month announced that they were opening new investigations of the company. The new inquiry focuses partly on whether Microsoft has withheld essential information from competitors that want to make products that work smoothly with its Office programs. The Office products were not part of the previous European action against Microsoft. After the Microsoft announcement on Thursday, the European Commission issued a skeptical statement. The commission said it “would welcome any move towards genuine interoperability,” or allowing software programs from different companies to work smoothly together. But the commission noted that “today’s announcement follows at least four similar statements by Microsoft in the past on the importance of interoperability.” Asked about the commission’s statement, Bradford L. Smith, Microsoft’s general counsel, said that the company’s moves were “qualitatively and quantitatively different from anything we’ve done in the past.” “People will test us not just by our words but by our actions,” Mr. Smith added. The industry is taking a wait-and-see stance on Microsoft’s plan. Linux, an open-source competitor to Windows, stands to benefit from Microsoft’s more open posture. Regulators and competition are “forcing Microsoft to change the way it does business,” said James Zemlin, executive director of the Linux Foundation, a nonprofit consortium. The change comes as Microsoft is trying to buy Yahoo, a huge deal that, if it proceeds, will be closely scrutinized by antitrust officials worldwide. The European regulators typically take a harder line than their American counterparts in challenging takeovers. “To get the deal approved, Microsoft has to convince the European regulators that it has changed its spots on interoperability, no longer acting like a proprietary monopoly,” said Ken Wasch, president of the Software and Information Industry Association, a trade group that includes Microsoft competitors like I.B.M., Oracle, Sun Microsystems and Red Hat. Microsoft is also trying to win approval from an international standards body for its new document format, Office Open XML. Microsoft contends its format is “open,” meaning files in the format can be created and read by anyone. A different format standard for Internet-based computing, the OpenDocument Format, is supported by I.B.M., Google, Oracle and other Microsoft rivals. They assert that the proposed Microsoft standard is complex and layered with the company’s own features, making it effectively a corporate standard instead of a truly open one. Last September, Microsoft failed to win enough support for its standard from the International Organization for Standardization. But the standards body will review that decision in proceedings that begin next week. Get Daily Updates via Email Protect your computer with Windows Onecare Get paid $7.50 for reviewing my post

Ads in the Videos

Slashdot It! Hoping to earn more from its vast advertising network, Google said it planned to begin selling ads to appear inside videos on sites across the Web. While the money spent on Web video ads is a small fraction of the $20 billion spent on Internet ads in the United States, Google is hoping to capitalize on both the explosion in online video and the scale of its advertising network, which analysts say includes a vast majority of Web advertisers and hundreds of thousands of Web sites. The new program, called AdSense for Video, could help Web publishers in that network make more money off their video clips. While AdSense for Video is the latest in a string of new advertising initiatives that Google has started over the last two years, few, if any, of those initiatives have created substantial revenue for Google. They include Google’s programs to place ads in newspapers, on radio and on TV stations and on a variety of new formats on the Web and on cellphones. Last year, an overwhelming majority of the company’s $16.6 billion in revenue came from small text ads that appear alongside search results and on the Google ad network. In its 2007 annual report, which it filed last week, Google noted: “Revenues realized through the Google Print Ads Program, Google Audio Ads, Google TV Ads, Google Checkout, YouTube, Postini and Search Appliance were not material in any of the periods presented.” AdSense for Video will offer advertisers a choice between video or text ads that will be overlaid on a small portion of the video viewer. The text ads will rotate every 20 seconds and be tailored to match the content of the video and of the Web page where the video is played. Overlay video ad formats have been gaining favor with marketers, as an alternative to the more common and intrusive “preroll” ads, which force viewers to sit through a TV-style commercial before getting to the video they want to watch. Google began using video overlays on YouTube in August, and a number of other sites use them as well. “This allows us to become a one-stop shop for people interested in in-video advertising,” said Christian Oestlien, a Google product manager. Advertisers will be able to place ads on YouTube and on Google’s network of partners at the same time, he said. AdSense for Video will start the program with about 20 partners’ Web sites. They include video aggregator sites like Revver and Blip.tv and video technology companies like Brightcove and YuMe, which themselves deliver video content and ads to their own networks of Web publishers. The program will initially be available only in the United States and to sites that stream at least one million videos a month. AdSense for Video will put Google in competition with start-ups like VideoEgg and others, which run online video advertising networks. Microsoft and Yahoo also sell and deliver video ads to partner sites. Just last week, Yahoo paid $160 million to acquire Maven Networks, which is used by publishers like Fox News, CBS Sports and Gannett to show and distribute videos and ads on their Web sites. Get Daily Updates via Email Protect your computer with Windows Onecare Get paid $7.50 for reviewing my post

Auto Insurance

With so many car accidents happening everyday, you might be one of the victims of one of the accident. It may not be your fault, but you must be saved from all this auto insurance quotesproblems and a least get an insurance to save your loved ones or at least your ass. This is more serious if you are the sole brandwinner. Actually, cutting all the crap, this is a website you should go to for your next insurance plan buy. You can buy many of insurance plans from them. That includes auto, home, health and many more. All fully covered, just give them the cash and they would settle everything for you. Quick Quote You can get a quick quote from them just by entering your zip code number and done. Blog With the world so into blogging, what is a company without a blog? This is the company you might want to look into. Because they have a blog for you. Yes, you heard me right. Set up for customers like you. It is a wordpress blog and is frequently updated. They also do a lot of explanation of rules and the industry in depth to allow you to be more informed. I seriously recommend them. Check them out

PC Gaming Alliance debuts

Slashdot It! With consoles increasingly intruding on such hallowed ground as the real-time strategy genre, many PC gamers have adopted something of a siege mentality. This defensive attitude is also apparently afflicting hardware manufacturers and software publishers, a number of which on Monday announced the formation of the PC Gaming Alliance. The first body ever formed solely to promote the PC gaming industry, the PCGA is a nonprofit organization dedicated to "driving coordinated marketing and promotion of PC gaming...and creating forums for member companies to cooperate on solutions to challenges facing the PC gaming industry, such as hardware requirements and antipiracy." Said member companies include PC hardware manufacturers Acer-Gateway, Dell-Alienware, Intel, and Advanced Micro Devices. AMD also owns ATI, a leading manufacturer of PC graphics cards, whose chief rival, Nvidia, is also on the PCGA board along with PC game peripheral company Razer USA. Rounding out the list are game developer Epic Games and the biggest third-party publisher on the planet, Activision. Via Cnet Get Daily Updates via Email Protect your computer with Windows Onecare Get paid $7.50 for reviewing my post

Now even Amazon supports Blu-Ray

Slashdot It! In an effort to help demystify high-definition entertainment for consumers, Amazon.com, announced its support for Blu-ray as the digital format of choice for customers. As part of this announcement, Amazon.com will more prominently promote Blu-ray hardware and software products on its website. "The high-definition landscape is rapidly changing, and consumers are looking for guidance on how to make the best high-definition buying decisions," said Peter Faricy, vice president of movies and music at Amazon.com. "Our customers have clearly voiced their support for the Blu-ray format. Blu-ray titles have increased from just over half of our high-definition sales to over three-quarters of our high-definition sales since early January. In order to best serve our customers, Amazon is recommending Blu-ray as the preferred digital format and will continue to carry the 'Earth's Largest Selection' of Blu-ray products." Amazon.com currently carries a wide array of Blu-ray hardware and software products including players, Blu-ray discs, and the Sony PlayStation 3. For the hundreds of thousands of HD DVD owners who may still wish to purchase products for that format, Amazon will continue to carry a wide assortment of HD DVD products, including the broadest selection of HD DVD movie titles. Get Daily Updates via Email Protect your computer with Windows Onecare Get paid $7.50 for reviewing my post

Microsoft pulls SP1

Slashdot It! Microsoft has stopped automatically distributing a prerequisite piece of software for Vista Service Pack 1, following some customer complaints that it had caused system problems. Servicing stack update KB937287, released last week, contained updates to Windows Vista installation software, and was billed as being "necessary to successfully install and to remove Windows Vista SP1 (Service Pack 1) on all versions of Windows Vista." Microsoft stopped distributing the update on Wednesday, according to a blog post by Microsoft product manager Nick White. "We've heard a few reports about problems customers may be experiencing as a result of KB937287," wrote White. "Immediately after receiving reports of this error, we made the decision to temporarily suspend automatic distribution of the update to avoid further customer impact while we investigate possible causes." Vista SP1 is already available to subscribers to the Microsoft Developer Network but won't receive a formal public release until mid-March. One irate Windows Vista Ultimate user replied to White's blog post, saying the prerequisite had corrupted a PC and resulted in the need to reformat the hard drive, with the resulting loss of all of the files and programs. When advised by an anonymous contributor of the System Restore option on the Vista installation disc, the Vista Ultimate user replied that the copy of Vista had been purchased and downloaded from the Internet, so there was no disc. Two users complained that Windows Update prompted them to install the prerequisite, even after they had installed it. Another user, S Marusic, wrote: "New Dell Inspiron PC stuck on the update loop as well. Any ETA from Microsoft on when/how to fix it? My client has valuable data that I need to consider stripping off the (hard drive) unless a patch/fix comes out soon...Help!" According to Microsoft's White: "This problem only affects a small number of customers in unique circumstances." Get Daily Updates via Email Protect your computer with Windows Onecare Get paid $7.50 for reviewing my post

Blu-Ray wins all the money

Slashdot It! Forget about customer satisfaction or superiority of image quality. The real issue in the war between Blu-ray and HD DVD was about royalties. With the competition gone, the Blu-ray consortium now has the opportunity to persuade PC makers and consumer electronics makers to adopt Blu-ray drives as their optical drives of choice. It will also get studios and disc makers to deliver Blu-ray discs to consumers. And every time one of those drives or discs leaves a factory, the Blu-ray Disc Association will get a royalty. The numbers add up quickly. Look at DVD, for example. To make a DVD player legally, manufacturers recently had to pay around $4 per player or drive, according to some estimates. A few years ago, those fees were around $15 to $20. Fees get paid every time a DVD drive gets included in a PC. Nearly every PC in the world has a DVD drive these days and roughly 250 million PCs get shipped every year. Companies that legally make DVD discs also pay fees. The DVD6C licensing group dropped the per disc fee in January to 4 cents per disc. Years ago, it was 7.5 cents per disc. Then there are verification fees. The royalties, in fact, lead to what Chinese leaders call the "DVD mistake," said Zhisheng Niu, vice dean of the school of information sciences at Tsinghua University, in an interview with CNET News.com last year. Because of intense competition, many Chinese companies have lost money, or just broke even, on selling DVD players. The people that have made money, he added, were the patent holders. Chinese manufacturers often got around the licensing issues problem by making illegal players. (The DVD Forum eliminated the royalty for DVD players made and sold in China for a few years, but a lot of those systems ended up overseas.) The royalties are one of the prime reasons China has pushed for its own optical standard. "We have to develop our own standards so that we can have our own industry," said Niu. "We have a big DVD industry, but we are probably losing money. The market is big enough so that we can have our own industry." Now, remember. Niu isn't some pirate off the street. He's one of the chief academics at China's leading university. That gives you a gauge on the feelings there. The same went for CDs. Philips got about 1.8 cents per CD disc while Sony got about 1.2 cents per disc, according to analysts estimates. When some of the patents expired in 2001, Philips said its royalty revenue would drop by about $42 million. Collecting royalties is a great business. The Blu-ray camp will likely move more cautiously than the DVD Forum in granting licenses to player and disc manufacturers, said Richard Doherty, principal analyst at the Envisioneering Group, adding that one of the reasons that the studios liked Blu-ray over HD DVD was it is probably easier to set up a pirate HD DVD shop. Gartner analyst Van Baker, however, said he doesn't believe that Blu-ray will be as lucrative as DVD. For one thing, Blu-ray will have to compete against digital download services, which could prove popular with consumers. Second, the studios have been knocking down the royalty rates. "This is what a lot of the negotiations were about," Baker said. "My suspicion is that this is not going to be as good as it was for DVD." We don't know the royalty standards from Blu-ray. The consortium hasn't been aggressive about collecting them yet, but it will likely move into action once the industry gets moving. The royalties will be split among several players, said Doherty. Blu-ray has a lot of grandfathers. A lot of people call it a Sony standard but by our estimates Sony doesn't even have 30 percent of the IP," Doherty said. The top four intellectual property holders are likely Sony, Panasonic, Pioneer, and Warner. Royalties were one of the primary reasons that it took so long to get manufacturers to come out with players that could handle both HD DVD and Blu-ray discs. Manufacturers with dual-format players have to license technology from both camps, which boosts costs. "There are so many players. There is a lot of intellectual that went into this, and companies like Philips and Toshiba and Sony will all look for a return on investment," Rudy Provoost, the then-CEO of Philips Electronics told News.com in 2006. "That is what makes it a challenging debate. It's like the CD days. Everybody looks for a fair reward." When a combo player did come out, it ended up being more expensive than buying separate Blu-ray and HD DVD players. Get Daily Updates via Email Protect your computer with Windows Onecare Get paid $7.50 for reviewing my post

Sony to move on with OLED

Slashdot It! After the great news that their Sony camp won the Blu-Ray War, it is focusing on a new technology. Japanese consumer electronics maker Sony said it will spend $203.5 million to develop technology to make medium to large organic light-emitting diode panels. Sony launched the world's first TV using such panels in November at a price of 200,000 yen. Organic light-emitting diode, or OLED, displays use organic, or carbon-containing, compounds that emit light when electricity is applied. Unlike liquid crystal display panels, they do not need backlighting, making OLED TVs slimmer and more energy-efficient. Just 3 millimeters thick, the new TV consumes 40 percent less power than a comparable LCD set and, because of its quick response time, is suitable for watching fast-moving images such as those typical on as sports programs. It also offers bright colors and a wide viewing angle. But it is technologically difficult at the moment to make large OLED panels. Sony's existing OLED TV has an 11-inch screen, or roughly as large as two CD cases put side by side. Shares in Sony, which competes with Samsung Electronics and Sharp in LCD TVs, ended Tuesday trade up 2.2 percent at 5,010 yen, outperforming the Tokyo stock market's electrical machinery index, which gained 1.1 percent. Get Daily Updates via Email Protect your computer with Windows Onecare Get paid $7.50 for reviewing my post

Thunderbird Gets A New Home At Mozilla Messaging

Slashdot It! Mozilla's Thunderbird open-source e-mail application has a new nest. David Ascher on Monday was CEO of MailCo, an organization with a placeholder name charged with Thunderbird's future development. Today, he is the CEO of Mozilla Messaging, the newest subsidiary of the Mozilla Foundation. Mozilla Messaging begins with the proposition that e-mail is broken. The organization's goal is to fix it. "E-mail and other forms of Internet communications present us with a paradox," Ascher said in a blog post on Tuesday. "The stunning proportion of our days spent communicating online clearly indicates that as a society, we are more intricately connected via the internet than ever before. ... Yet as the number of such interactions grows, and as the number of ways in which we interact grows, the joy that communication can bring is too often replaced by frustration, confusion, or stress. Furthermore, as we transmit more and more digital data, privacy and control questions become more and more troublesome." Mozilla Messaging won't be alone in its efforts to improve e-mail. It wants help from those who believe that communication online can be better. "E-mail is broken," said Ascher. "What are you going to do about it?" Mozilla Messaging aims to build a community of open-source developers to do for e-mail what Firefox has done for Internet browsers. Its initial focus will be developing Thunderbird 3, which is slated for beta release in 2Q (without calendaring) and in 3Q (with calendaring). In a phone interview, Ascher cautioned that Thunderbird milestones will be released when they're ready. The third iteration of Thunderbird will include an integrated calendar, improved search capabilities, easier configuration, and a variety of user interface improvements that will support a better RSS feed reading experience, for example. Ascher's first order of business is to bring in more users. "Thunderbird's impact is proportional to its user count," he said in a post last month in the Mozilla Developer Forums. "Thus driving adoption is my primary concern. Our current user base is very significant (many millions of mostly quite satisfied users), but the number of possible users of Thunderbird is orders of magnitude greater than our current reach." But Mozilla Messaging faces at least three significant challenges: a less dominant Microsoft (NSDQ: MSFT), the fact that e-mail clients, unlike Internet browsers, don't look like much of a platform at the moment, and the absence of an obvious source of revenue. In the absence of the marauding Microsoft of the mid-1990s, Thunderbird is likely to have a hard time inspiring its legions with the evangelical zeal that made Firefox such a success. The desktop e-mail client market may still be dominated by Microsoft, but it isn't frozen in time the way the browser market was when Firefox debuted. And to further complicate matters, e-mail for many is moving from desktop applications to browser-based services, not to mention the mobile phone. Ascher concedes things are different now but he remains convinced that Thunderbird's developers have real issues to address. "The situation is quite different and the ways that we can succeed will be quite different in ways that I can't explain just yet," he said. "People complain about having too much information to manage. While the competitive landscape is different, there's an incredible amount of frustration on the part of hundreds of millions of people around with world in how they handle messaging." Ascher points to the ongoing investment in messaging companies as a sign that the problem hasn't been solved yet. Indeed, Microsoft's desire to acquire Yahoo is driven in no small part by Yahoo Mail and Zimbra, the messaging company Yahoo bought last year. As for Thunderbird's platform prospects, Ascher expects that over time Thunderbird will become integrated with a variety of Internet services and that developers will add value by creating extensions. Revenue, Ascher said, is not something he's spending a lot of time thinking about at the moment. His first priority is building the best product possible. He also said he don't expect Thunderbird to step on Firefox's toes by striking ad revenue deals for Internet searches. "The chance of our being at odds with Firefox is quite slim," he said, adding that search can do more than drive ad revenue. "We think that getting a handle on your e-mail is a huge problem and we think that search is a huge tool for that." Ultimately, Ascher believes that Thunderbird's tale will be told by those who get involved. "The big story is going to come with the people who want to join forces with us," he said. Get Daily Updates via Email Protect your computer with Windows Onecare Get paid $7.50 for reviewing my post

Microsoft is buying Yahoo people

Slashdot It! Bill Gates is willing to pay a lot for engineering talent. Asked what makes Yahoo worth more than $40 billion, Gates pointed not to the company's products, its huge base of advertisers, or its market share, but rather to the company's engineers. Those people, he said, are what Microsoft needs to go after Google. In an interview after his speech at Stanford University, Gates said that it turns out it takes a lot of manpower to build tools for advertisers, mobile, and video products as well as improving its core search algorithm and building an infrastructure for cloud computing. "The amount of computer science it is taking to do that is phenomenal," he said. "As you get more scale of engineering you can just pursue that agenda more rapidly. Yes, the advertisers and the number of end users is good, but we'd put the people and the engineering as the key thing." Of course, that's also what makes the Yahoo deal so risky. A nightmare scenario for the company would be if it succeeds in its bid to acquire Yahoo, only to see its top talent move to new ventures. Gates played down the notion of cultural differences between the two companies. "Yahoo wants to do breakthrough software," Gates told CNET News.com. "The engineers there want to compete very effectively against Google or any other thing that comes along, so I don't think there is really a different culture." But, he hinted that the company might have made itself less attractive had it continued down the path championed by former CEO Terry Semel. "If Yahoo had gone the direction of just being a media company and not said that software innovation was important to them then no, there wouldn't be that intersection because we're about breakthrough software," Gates said. "Jerry Yang to his credit has kept a lot of very top engineers that have been just doing their work and improving those things. That's why we see the combination as so powerful." Gates was quoted in the last 24 hours as saying Microsoft wasn't looking to hike its bid for Yahoo, but he sounded very much like a man committed to the deal in his comments Tuesday. He didn't say whether Microsoft would move ahead with a plan to wage a proxy battle, but that appears to be a real possibility if Yahoo does not come to the table. The Microsoft chairman also indicated that Microsoft has a plan for taking on Google with or without Yahoo, but acknowledged Microsoft's plans can move faster if it succeeds in the acquisition than if it has to go it alone. "It involves breakthrough engineering," he said. "We think the combination with Yahoo would accelerate things in a very exciting way because they do have great engineers and they have done a lot of great work." Gates had plenty more to say about other things besides Yahoo. In a little bit, I'll post another blog on some interesting things Gates said about Windows 7 and a more complete transcript of my interview should be ready tomorrow. Get Daily Updates via Email Protect your computer with Windows Onecare Get paid $7.50 for reviewing my post

HP profits up

Slashdot It! Hewlett-Packard, the world's largest personal-computer maker, reported a higher quarterly profit as it sold more PCs and server computers. The company raised its full-year fiscal 2008 revenue forecast, sending its shares higher. Net income in HP's fiscal first quarter ended January 31 increased to $2.13 billion, or 80 cents per share, from $1.55 billion, or 55 cents per share, a year earlier. Revenue advanced to $28.5 billion from $25.1 billion. Excluding special items, profit was 86 cents per share. Analysts, on average, expected earnings before some costs of 81 cents per share and revenue of $27.6 billion, according to Reuters Estimates. HP in November had forecast first-quarter earnings of 80 cents per share before special items and revenue of as much as $27.5 billion. HP was helped by cost cuts and strong sales outside the United States as U.S. technology spending slowed on recession concerns. But HP faces a tougher environment this year as consumers and companies reduce spending on technology hardware, the bulk of HP's business, and competition with a resurgent Dell, the No. 2 PC maker, heats up. HP shares, down 14 percent this year, trade at about 13 times expected 2008 earnings per share, a discount to the average of companies on the Standard & Poor's 500 index and about the same as competitor International Business Machines. Get Daily Updates via Email Protect your computer with Windows Onecare Get paid $7.50 for reviewing my post

Cnet Editor in chief steps down

Slashdot It! Jai Singh, an internationally recognized pioneer in online journalism, is leaving CNET Networks after more than a decade in executive editorial positions. Singh joined the company in 1996 to create News.com, which quickly became a leading authority in technology news at the height of the Internet boom. His responsibilities were expanded two years ago to include CNET's product reviews and other editorial operations, under the title of editor in chief and senior vice president of CNET.com. "Last month marked my 12th anniversary here at CNET, and I realized I've outlasted the founders of this great company in tenure. I've decided it's time to take a breather, restore my health, and ponder what's next," Singh said in a letter to his staff. "A lot has changed and a lot will continue to change since I had the good fortune to conceive, create, and launch News.com. But I remain confident in the immutable law: users always reward media that put relentless focus on timely, insightful, and credible content." Singh, 51, built a news staff that won scores of national journalism awards at a time when mainstream media were still skeptical of the Internet as a source of credible information. Under his stewardship, CNET News.com received honors from a broad array of journalistic organizations, including the Society of Professional Journalists, the Society of American Business Editors and Writers, the Gerald Loeb Awards, the National Press Club, the Online News Association, and the Western Publications Association. Named the Best Online News Service by Editor & Publisher three years in a row, News.com won the coveted National Magazine Award for General Excellence in 2004. It was recipient of the first Webby Award given to any news organization. "Jai has done more than anyone else in legitimizing online journalism. As an early pioneer in an online-only news operation, Jai demonstrated that, irrespective of the medium, good journalism was good journalism," said Shelby Bonnie, co-founder and former chief executive of CNET. "He demonstrated that you could be both timely and right." Aggressive reporting was a hallmark of Singh's tenure. As a result, News.com itself has occasionally been the subject of national headlines, involving such controversies as Hewlett-Packard's surveillance of reporters, Google's boycott on speaking with News.com, and Microsoft's lawsuit over sealed court documents obtained from confidential sources. "For 12 years, the name Jai Singh has been synonymous with CNET. His dedication to building a world-class news organization has made News.com one of the most credible and well-respected media entities today," Joe Gillespie, executive vice president of CNET Networks, said in a staff e-mail. "Jai has been a trusted adviser and friend to many people in this company, and his leadership and integrity have contributed to CNET Networks' growth into a leading online media company with some of the world's most important and influential brands." Singh had an extensive background in technology reporting even before coming to CNET, having held senior editorial positions at such leading trade publications as PC Week and InfoWorld. He began working in online journalism as early as the mid-1980s, when he was responsible for a 24-hour news operation owned by the Readers Digest Corp. Via Cnet Get Daily Updates via Email Protect your computer with Windows Onecare Get paid $7.50 for reviewing my post

Money made via hacking

Slashdot It! There is not much doubt that Oleksandr Dorozhko used inside information when he made a killing trading stock options last fall. Nor is there a dispute that he gained the information illegally. His lawyer, arguing before an appeals court this week, spoke of “a high-tech lock pick.” But that does not mean that Mr. Dorozhko, a Ukrainian resident, will have to forfeit the $296,456 he earned in one day of trading, beginning just hours before the company in question announced disappointing earnings. The Securities and Exchange Commission blocked him from collecting the profits from his brokerage account, but a federal judge has ordered the S.E.C. to let him have the cash. The hearing this week, before the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit, in New York, was on the S.E.C.’s request for an emergency order to keep the money frozen. If the commission loses, the case against Mr. Dorozhko will effectively be over. Even if the S.E.C. later won the case, the chances of collecting a judgment in Ukraine would be slim at best. This situation exists because of a strange anomaly in American securities laws. A person who legally obtains insider information — as a corporate official or an investment banker, for example — will almost certainly break the securities law if he or she trades on the basis of that information before it is made public. But it is far less clear that someone who illegally gets their hands on such information will have violated the securities laws by trading on it. The securities law used to bring insider trading charges — Section 10(b) of the 1934 Securities Exchange Act — talks of “a deceptive device or contrivance,” and it is not clear that there is any deception involved in simple theft. “Dorozhko’s alleged ‘stealing and trading’ or ‘hacking and trading’ does not amount to a violation” of securities laws, Judge Naomi Reice Buchwald of United States District Court ruled last month. Although he may have broken laws by stealing the information, the judge concluded, “Dorozhko did not breach any fiduciary or similar duty ‘in connection with’ the purchase or sale of a security.” She ordered the S.E.C. to let him have his profits. She refused to dismiss the case, saying the S.E.C. could try to prove he got a tip from an insider, but there does not appear to be any evidence of that. Instead, the evidence indicates that on Oct. 17, 2007, someone hacked into a computer system that had information on an earnings announcement to be made by IMS Health a few hours later. Minutes after the breach of computer security, Mr. Dorozhko invested $41,671 in put options that would expire worthless three days later unless IMS shares plunged before that. The next morning the share price did plunge, and Mr. Dorozhko made his money by selling the puts. The S.E.C. argues there was deception involved in hacking into the computer system, which was designed to allow access only to authorized people. That view drew scorn from Charles A. Ross, Mr. Dorozhko’s lawyer, at the appellate hearing Wednesday. “They want you to believe there is a deception of a computer,” he said. “All there is is a high-tech lock pick.” That argument seemed to draw some sympathy from one of the three judges hearing the appeal. “You deceived a machine,” said Judge Sonia Sotomayor, invoking the image of Big Brother from George Orwell’s novel, “1984.” “We are treating a machine as a person.” Judge Buchwald’s ruling was the first one to address the S.E.C.’s theory of deception by hacking from overseas. Two previous cases were filed, but one was settled and in the other the defendants chose to forfeit $1.6 million rather than fight the charges. If her opinion stands, it will be very hard for the commission to go after hackers in the future. The judge appreciated the absurdity of the situation, and expressed disappointment that the Justice Department had not brought criminal charges for computer hacking. The government has offered no explanation for that, but it is possible the department saw no likelihood of ever being able to arrest Mr. Dorozhko, and did not think the case worth the trouble. The judge also noted that case law could have developed differently, harking back to Justice Harry Blackmun’s dissent to the Supreme Court’s 1980 decision that reversed the insider trading conviction of Vincent Chiarella, a financial printer who learned of takeover targets from his work and traded on the information. The court, Justice Blackmun wrote then, was moving in a direction “that catches relatively little of the misbehavior that all too often makes investment in securities a needlessly risky business for the uninitiated investor.” Donald Langevoort, a law professor at Georgetown University and the author of a treatise on insider trading law, said in an interview that he thought the S.E.C. should prevail in the case. “Did he commit fraud? Yes,” Mr. Langevoort said. “Was it for the purpose of obtaining a trading advantage? Yes. Why should that not reach the level of the statute?” The appeals court will decide soon if the asset freeze stands, but a ruling on whether Judge Buchwald correctly interpreted the law, if it comes at all, is many months away. She would first have to dismiss the case. In the meantime, Congress could clear all this up with a simple amendment to clarify the law. “The European Union revised their insider trading laws to make it clear that any gaining of inside information by criminal activity would be a violation of insider trading laws,” Mr. Langevoort said. As Chief Justice Warren Burger wrote in his dissent in the Chiarella case, “A person who has misappropriated nonpublic information has an absolute duty to disclose that information or to refrain from trading.” If it is illegal to trade on information acquired legally, why should it be legal to trade on information that was acquired illegally? 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Toshiba stops production of HD-DVD

Slashdot It! Toshiba Corp is planning to give up on its HD DVD format for high definition DVDs, conceding defeat to the competing Blu-Ray technology backed by Sony Corp, a company source said. The move will likely put an end to a battle that has gone on for several years between consortiums led by Toshiba and Sony vying to set the standard for the next-generation DVD and compatible video equipment. The format war, often compared to the Betamax-VHS battle in the 1980s, has confused consumers unsure of which DVD or player to buy, slowing the development what is expected to be a multibillion dollar high definition DVD industry. Toshiba's cause has suffered several setbacks in recent weeks including Friday's announcement by U.S. retailing giant Wal-Mart Stores Inc (WMT.N: Quote, Profile, Research) that it would abandon the HD DVD format and only stock its shelves with Blu-ray movies. A source at Toshiba confirmed an earlier report by public broadcaster NHK that it was getting ready to pull the plug. "We have entered the final stage of planning to make our exit from the next generation DVD business," said the source, who asked not to be identified. He added that an official announcement could come as early as next week. No one answered the phone at Toshiba's public relations office in Tokyo. NHK said Toshiba would suffer losses running to tens of billions of yen (hundreds of millions of dollars) to scrap production of HD DVD players and recorders and other steps to withdraw from the business. Hollywood studios had initially split their alliances between the two camps, meaning only certain films would play on any one DVD machine. The balance of power tipped decisively toward the Sony camp in January after Time Warner Inc's (TWX.N: Quote, Profile, Research) Warner Bros studio said it would only release high-definition DVDs in Blu-ray format. With that, studios behind some three-quarters of DVDs are backing Blu-ray, although some release in both formats. Toshiba responded by slashing prices of HD DVD players, but the loss of retail support has hurt. In addition to Wal-Mart, consumer electronics chain Best Buy Co Inc (BBY.N: Quote, Profile, Research) and online video rental company Netflix Inc (NFLX.O: Quote, Profile, Research) also recently signed up to the Blu-ray camp. The exclusive backing of Microsoft Corp (MSFT.O: Quote, Profile, Research) was also put in doubt when the software giant said in January that it could consider supporting Blu-ray technology for its Xbox 360 video game machine, which currently works only with HD DVD. Sony has spent large sums of money to promote Blu-ray in tandem with its flat screen TVs and its PlayStation 3 game console, which can play Blu-ray movies. The Toshiba source said the experience would not be a total loss for the sprawling conglomerate, whose products range from refrigerators to power plants, which would learn valuable lessons. "Marketing was a weak point for Toshiba. We learned a lot from HD DVD. Strengthening marketing will continue to be an issue for us going forward," the source said. Via Reuters Get Daily Updates via Email Protect your computer with Windows Onecare Get paid $7.50 for reviewing my post

Microsoft: Xbox would not be hurt by HD-DVD

Slashdot It! Microsoft does not expect sales of its Xbox 360 game console to suffer if Toshiba discontinues HD DVD technology, Microsoft said in a statement. "We do not believe the recent reports about HD DVD will have any material impact on the Xbox 360 platform or our position in the marketplace," the company said. "We will wait until we hear from Toshiba before announcing any specific plans around the Xbox 360 HD DVD player." Xbox 360 supports a plug-in HD DVD accessory that allows customers to view high definition DVDs produced only with this Toshiba technology. Toshiba sources said on Saturday that the company is preparing to exit the HD DVD business, thereby surrendering a two-year battle to control the format of next-generation DVDs. The Nikkei business daily has reported that Toshiba plans to make an announcement on Tuesday. Customers would be left to buy high-definition DVDs produced with Blu-ray, a technology controlled by Sony. The Microsoft statement pledged that Xbox 360 customers would continue to be able to consume high-definition movies, television programs, and DVDs they already own. In January, a Microsoft executive said the company would be open to supporting Blu-ray technology for its Xbox 360 machine. Get Daily Updates via Email Protect your computer with Windows Onecare Get paid $7.50 for reviewing my post

Blackberry sues Motorola

Slashdot It! BlackBerry maker Research In Motion and rival Motorola have sued each other over what they say are patent infringements for technology used in their mobile phones. RIM alleges that Motorola is infringing on the Canadian company's patents and demanding "exorbitant" licensing fees, according to court documents. The civil action, filed on Friday in U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Texas, alleges that Motorola infringed on a number of patents held by RIM. In addition, RIM alleges that Motorola "is demanding exorbitant royalties...for patents that Motorola claims are essential to various standards for mobile wireless telecommunications and wireless computing that RIM practices." This includes technology that allows mobile telephone handset users to use Wi-Fi, RIM said. At the same time, Motorola is refusing to acknowledge or pay royalties for certain patents held by RIM, the BlackBerry maker said. Motorola refuted RIM's claims and said it had filed two lawsuits over the weekend against the Canadian company in Texas and Delaware. Motorola is challenging RIM's patents and argues that RIM is infringing on certain Motorola patents. "We have not yet reviewed the complaint, but based on our understanding of the matter, we believe that their claims are entirely without merit and Motorola intends to vigorously defend itself," Motorola said in a statement e-mailed to Reuters. Illinois-based Motorola added that it permits others to use its technology if it deems it appropriate and it is properly compensated. The current dispute appears to stem from failure to reach an amicable renewal of a 2003 cross-license agreement between Motorola and RIM. "In this instance, our agreement with RIM expired and we have been unable to reach a suitable agreement going forward," Motorola said. RIM products targeted in one of the Motorola lawsuits include the BlackBerry 8100, 8300, and 8800 models and BlackBerry Exchange Server software. None of the allegations from either company has been proved in court. RIM and Motorola are rivals in the market for mobile phone handsets that can provide several services, including e-mail and Internet access, as well as play music or take photographs. RIM has been expanding from its mainstay business market into the consumer sector with sleeker handsets such as its multimedia-friendly BlackBerry Pearl model. Motorola, which has slipped to No. 3 world mobile handset maker behind Samsung Electronics and market leader Nokia, has a keyboard on its Q model that is designed for e-mail use. Last month, Motorola said it was beginning a strategic review that could lead to the separation of its money-losing mobile devices unit. Analysts took that to mean Motorola was shopping around its handset business. Via Cnet Get Daily Updates via Email Protect your computer with Windows Onecare Get paid $7.50 for reviewing my post

Replacement for Moore's Law?

Slashdot It! The National Science Foundation will fund projects that push computing power beyond silicon. In anticipation of Moore's Law becoming irrelevant in the next 10 to 20 years, the National Science Foundation (NSF) wants funding for research that could lead to a replacement for current silicon technology. The NSF last week requested US$20 million from the U.S. government for fiscal 2009 to start the "Science and Engineering Beyond Moore's Law" effort, which would fund academic research on technologies, including carbon nanotubes, quantum computing and massively multicore computers, that could improve and replace current transistor technology. Moore's Law states that the number of transistors that can be placed on silicon, and its attendant computational capability, doubles every 18 months. The formula is credited to Intel cofounder Gordon Moore. Striving for Faster, Better Human and economic progress in the U.S. over the past 20 years has depended on an increasing capability to do information processing and computing, said Michael Foster, division director of computing and communication foundations at NSF. "If the current technological basis of that ends, we've got to find some way to replace it or we're going to stop moving forward." The traditional way to improve transistor performance is to decrease the thickness of the gate oxide, or insulator that separates one part of the transistor from the other. The looming barrier is that transistors will be shrunk as small as possible for them to still work effectively, after which they may need to be replaced or somehow improved on, Foster said. "In the kind-of near future -- in 8 to 10 years -- we will have reduced that gate oxide thickness to the point where it will no longer act as an effective insulator," Foster said. "I don't know of any other proposals to increase the performance of... [current] transistors, which is why we have to look at really radically new structures like transistors based on nanostructures." Next Technology Carbon nanotubes could provide a way to create smaller transistors, Foster said. Transistor performance is correlated to transistor size -- the smaller a transistor, the better it performs. "Carbon nanotubes give us the possibility of much smaller transistors than we can make right now," Foster said. Carbon nanotubes could also be used as interconnect on circuits, Foster said. Nanotubes could be placed one after another on a circuit, though it would require fault-tolerant architectures. That would require new research and improvements on chip architecture as well, Foster said. "We think architecture is going to become an important component of any beyond-Moore's-Law topic," Foster said. Looking far ahead, quantum computing could be the next answer to delivering massive computing power, Foster said. Quantum computing uses matter -- atoms and molecules -- to process massive amounts of tasks at supercomputing speeds because basic data units, called qubits, hold both the values 0 and 1 simultaneously, and share those values among all qubits. It is based on the laws of quantum mechanics, which look at interaction and behavior of matter on atomic and subatomic -- proton, neutron and electron -- levels. "The implementations we have so far will, for example, trap single ions at very cold temperatures and use those as qubits. That takes a room full of equipment to make a very small register. We clearly need progress there, but it's promising," Foster said. The idea behind quantum computing is that it provides inherent parallelism, so its development requires improvements in parallel programming, in which several computers work on the same program together, Foster said. Parallel programming has been researched since the 1970s but progress has been slow, Foster said. Current Research "We could continue to expand our IT abilities without necessarily expanding the capabilities in any one computer. But we need software research to understand how to coordinate the efforts of not just one or two computers, but thousands or millions of computers," Foster said. That poses a research problem, as scientists have been trying to understand parallel programming for decades and haven't succeeded yet, Foster said. NSF is already doing research in nanotechnology, software and architectural ideas that will contribute to the effort to develop chips that will continually improve computing power beyond Moore's Law. Ultimately, current transistors may be hard to replace, Foster said, so researchers may look to develop better architectures and chip designs that use current transistor technology to maintain the computing capability growth rate. "It's not out of the question to me that we could build very large chips with thousands of cores on them -- I hesitate to go too much higher than that just because it will sound crazy -- but if we did that... we [could] use those things to get done the computing and information technology that we need to have done," Foster said. The $20 million budget request is modest compared to research budgets of companies like Intel and IBM. "The funding is intended to help laboratories assist, not compete, with research from the private sector," Foster said. NSF will seed academic laboratories and industry associations like Semiconductor Research to conduct research, which in turn may work with commercial organizations. The commercial organizations may further invest in the research to drive it into mass production, Foster said. Expectations from the project are modest, Foster said. "It's very early stage research. Any expectations we have will probably not be accurate." However, it could lead to better fault-tolerant techniques to design and operate systems with small components in them, Foster said. Get Daily Updates via Email Protect your computer with Windows Onecare Get paid $7.50 for reviewing my post

AMD 3 core chips in Dell systems

Slashdot It! Still think that Dell is dropping AMD? Think again: Dell is far from dropping its AMD line-up. In fact, there will be a surprise in new products scheduled for a global launch next week, on February 19. Dell has developed a new line of AMD-based machines for businesses under the OptiPlex brand. At first sight, you won’t see a lot of changes from the old Dimensions C and E series, which were the first AMD system from Dell. The new features are under the hood. . Code-named “Heineken”, the official names of these new computers will be OptiPlex 740 and 740 Enhanced. The OptiPlex 740 comes with either a single or a dual-core Athlon 64 and GeForce 6150LE graphics/chipset combinations. The 740 Enhanced introduces triple-core and quad-core Phenom processors. These Phenoms are mounted on GeForce 6150LE/nForce 430 motherboards, but oddly enough, Dell will not use an integrated graphics subsystem. The manufacturer opted to continue to use the old motherboard, while the graphics subsystem will be Nvidia’s Quadro NVS 210S, a decent entry-level card for the multi-monitor era. One of the more interesting system specs is the number of USB 2.0 ports, which is set at seven (the Intel-based OptiPlex 745 features eight ports). We expect these two machines to end up in thousands of cubicles and offices around the world, but Dell has more plans with AMD. There are new AMD consumer systems scheduled for launch in the upcoming back-to-school period, in line with the announcement of the Peruses platform – which is a combination of AMD's triple-core or quad-core Phenom processor, AMD’s new chipset as well as ATI RV7x0 based graphics cards: The RV740 will be at the entry level and the RV770 + R700 on the high end. For the corporate world, the company planning with Nvidia’s GeForce 8200, an mGPU chipset that is set to arrive during the second quarter of this year. This chipset is planned to upgrade the graphics performance from the current 6150LE and 6150, which are basically cut-down GeForce 6200 chips. The introduction schedule should provide Dell with enough time for qualification and implementation into its next-gen business machines – the successors of Dimension C/E and OptiPlex machines this article is about. Processor details Despite the technical specs, we noticed that some Dell employees think that the AMD Phenom processor comes with 128 KB of L1 cache, 512 KB of L2 cache, and 2 MB of L3 cache. However, it actually comes with 512KB L1 cache (128 KB per core) and 2 MB of L2 cache (512 KB per core). But they are spot-on when it comes to the amount of L3 cache. Thus, a triple-core processor actually has 384 KB of L1 cache, 1.5 MB of L2 cache and 2 MB of L3 cache. The reason for the odd numbers here is that one core is disabled for good, thus its L1 and L2 caches are gone. All in all, next week’s launch of the new OptiPlex machines is hopefully going to put an end to all the naysayers who are claiming that Dell is dumping AMD. Also, we have been saying for a while that the Phenom triple-core may turn out as AMD’s ace against Intel’s dual-cores: In a world that has changed from focusing on Megahertz to the number of cores, the perception that three cores are better than two may work in AMD’s favor – at least if the triple-cores are priced against the dual-cores and AMD isn’t taking a hit with the production cost. Get Daily Updates via Email Protect your computer with Windows Onecare Get paid $7.50 for reviewing my post

Google's online ad market share slips in Q4

Slashdot It! Google Inc. lost online advertising market share in the U.S. in the fourth quarter of 2007 for the first time in two years, according to a forthcoming report by market research firm IDC. Google, the leader in the U.S. Internet ad market, slipped 0.5 percentage points to 23.7% in the last quarter in comparison with the third quarter due to a slower growth rate in advertising sales, IDC said. In addition, Google's estimated net U.S. online ad sales grew by a little more than 40% in the fourth quarter of 2007 in comparison with the same quarter a year ago, IDC said. However, Google's year-over-year growth rate in the previous quarter had been 50%, the firm said. IDC is a subsidiary of IDG Corp., the parent company of Computerworld. Total U.S. Internet ad spending in the fourth quarter grew nearly 28% to US$7.3 billion, compared with the same quarter in 2006. Online ad revenue grew 27% year over year to $25.5 billion for all of 2007, according to IDC. "If a merger between Microsoft's new media business and Yahoo would come to pass, the combined entity would have a net U.S. advertising market share of about 17% based on our fourth-quarter 2007 data," said Karsten Weide, program director of IDC's Digital Marketplace: Media and Entertainment service and author of the upcoming report. "It would not quite bring Microsoft-Yahoo to where Google is in online advertising in the U.S., but it would give them a much better fighting chance than if they went it alone." Meanwhile, a combination of the online ad businesses of Microsoft and Yahoo would give the merged company a better chance to catch up to Google in four or five years, according to a separate IDC report released this month that looked at how a Microsoft-Yahoo combination would stack up against Google in the U.S. online advertising market. According to IDC, merging the existing businesses in search, display and rich-media advertising would bring Microsoft-Yahoo's annual estimated gross U.S. online ad marketing share to 21.4% compared with Google's 33.4% annual market share as of the fourth quarter of 2007. In addition, combining the existing online products, advertising platforms, and engineering resources of Microsoft and Yahoo would extend the combined companies' reach, improve products and services for both consumers and advertisers and increase ad revenue, according to the report also authored by Weide. A merged Microsoft-Yahoo would also be very competitive and might be stronger than Google in markets such as mobile advertising, social networking and behavioral targeting, in which ads are targeted more precisely at consumers' needs by monitoring their online and consumption behavior, Weide said in the report. However, even a combined company could not compete with Google in video advertising, he said. Get Daily Updates via Email Protect your computer with Windows Onecare Get paid $7.50 for reviewing my post

Alienware Phone

Slashdot It! Google and Dell are on the point of launching a new mobile phone to run on the Android operating system, probably at the 3GSM World Congress in Barcelona that’s going on at the moment. Dell have tried to enter the mobile phone market once before but their range of PDAs was a complete flop. Well, would you buy a Dell phone? Exactly.

Dell have also recently acquired Alienware, the trendiest tech company in the world, an expert in Video, Gaming, and Audio, and a company crying out for a mobile phone.

So here are the first pictures of the Alienware mobile phone!

• Classic Alienware eye catching design
• Large screen with high resolution
• Superb video gaming capability
• Fantastic Audio
• Built on the Google Android platform

It’s well known that Dell want to enter the mobile phone market. Rivals such as Apple, Hewlett Packard and Asus already have mobile divisions, and last year Dell poached Motorola executive Ron Garriques to run their new global consumer group.

But so far their efforts have come unstuck, the uninspiring Axim PDA handset was dropped mid 2007, and Strategy Analytics Director Neil Mawson gave the following verdict “It makes sense for Dell to have a high-profile entry back into the market because its last effort with PDAs pretty much flopped.”

Why was this? The increasingly dull associations with the Dell brand? Maybe they should change their name to Dull. One thing for sure is there wasn’t exactly much of a stir when the last batch of handhelds were introduced.

The brand did get a shot in the arm however in 2006 when Dell acquired Alienware, the mega-stylish American laptops and desktops manufacturer, known for their expertise in video, audio and gaming.

Alienware are famous for their eye catching designs and innovative technology, only last month they launched the ultimate in video gaming experience, a giant curved monitor that fills the entire of the gamer’s peripheral vision. Conclusion, Alienware cool, Dell not cool.

The argument for an Alienware mobile phone is overwhelming. It would have the striking design to make an impression in a mobile market dominated by fashion phones, it would instantly be the coolest phone on the market thanks to the popularity of the Alienware brand, it would have the marketing muscle of Dell behind it to push it beyond its established niche and into the mainstream, and it would be the mobile gamer’s dream, just as video gaming on mobile phones is starting to enter the picture.

To add to the excitement there have been rumours recently that Dell and Google are on the point of making a surprise announcement at the 3GSM World Mobile Congress with speculation growing over an iPhone-challenging mobile device.

The first wave of phones built on the Google Android Open Development Project are due this summer, what price an early announcement of a real Google phone to sink our teeth into.

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Bittorent to bypass comcast

Slashdot It! Several BitTorrent developers have joined forces to propose a new protocol extension with the ability to bypass the BitTorrent interfering techniques used by Comcast and other ISPs. This new form of encryption will be implemented in BitTorrent clients including uTorrent, so Comcast subscribers are free to share again. BitTorrent throttling is not a new phenomenon, ISPs have been doing it for years. When the first ISPs started to throttle BitTorrent traffic most BitTorrent clients introduced a countermeasure, namely, protocol header encryption. This was the beginning of an ongoing cat and mouse game between ISPs and BitTorrent client developers, which is about to enter new level. Unfortunately, protocol header encryption doesn’t help against more aggressive forms of BitTorrent interference, like the Sandvine application used by Comcast. A new extension to the BitTorrent protocol is needed to stay ahead of the ISPs, and that is exactly what is happening right now. Back in August we were the first to report that Comcast was actively disconnecting BitTorrent seeds. Comcast of course denied our allegations, and ever since there has been a lot of debate about the rights and wrongs of Comcast’s actions. On Wednesday, Comcast explained their BitTorrent interference to the FCC in a 57-page filing. Unfortunately they haven’t stopped lying yet, since they now argue that they only delay BitTorrent traffic, while in fact they disconnect people, making it impossible for them to share files with non-Comcast users. In short, the Comcast interference works like this: A few seconds after you connect to someone in a BitTorrent swarm, a peer reset message (RST flag) is sent by Comcast and the upload immediately stops. Most vulnerable are users in a relatively small swarm where you only have a couple of peers you can upload the file to. For the networking savvy people among us, here’s an example of real RST interference (video) on a regular BitTorrent connection. In this case, the reset happens immediately after the bitfields are exchanged. Evil? Yes - but there is hope. The goal of this new type of encryption (or obfuscation) is to prevent ISPs from blocking or disrupting BitTorrent traffic connections that span between the receiver of a tracker response and any peer IP-port appearing in that tracker response, according to the proposal. “This extension directly addresses a known attack on the BitTorrent protocol performed by some deployed network hardware. By obscuring the ip-port pairs network hardware can no longer easily identify ip-port pairs that are running BitTorrent by observing peer-to-tracker communications. This deployed hardware under some conditions disrupts BitTorrent connections by injecting forged TCP reset packets. Once a BitTorrent connection has been identified, other attacks could be performed such as severely rate limiting or blocking these connections.” So, the new tracker peer obfuscation technique is especially designed to be a workaround for throttling devices, such as the Sandvine application that Comcast uses. More details on the proposal can be found at BitTorrent.org, which aims to become a coordination platform for BitTorrent developers. TorrentFreak talked to Ashwin Navin, president and co-founder of BitTorrent Inc. who has some of his employees working on the new extension. He told us: “There are some ISPs who would like people to believe that “slowing down” BitTorrent or “metering” bandwidth consumption serves the greater good. Consumers should be very weary of this claim.” “In recent months, consumers enjoyed unprecedented participation in the political process thanks to the ability to upload opinions and feedback in the YouTube presidential debates. Musicians, filmmakers and artists are finding ways to connect with their audiences across the world thanks to MySpace and BitTorrent. Students are engaging with interactive learning tools in their schools. Which bandwidth intensive application will banned or shaped or metered next by these ISPs? The creative spirit of millions has been ignited, and our need to participate, to communicate will not be silenced.” “The US government should encourage ISPs to innovate and invest in their networks,” Ashwin said. “Permitting them to interfere or interrupt in the communications of consumers, to protect ISP profit margins, would be a tremendous set back for our country and economy, when we are already slipping behind the first world (UK, EU, Japan, Korea, Singapore, etc) in its broadband capacity.” We wholeheartedly agree with Ashwin on this one, as we’ve said before. The Internet is only a few years old, if the plan is to keep using it in the future, ISPs need to upgrade their networks. So, invest in more Internet gateway capacity, 10Gbps interconnect ports, and peering agreements. BitTorrent users are not the problem, they only signal that the ISPs need to upgrade their capacity, because customers will only get more demanding in the future. The Internet is not only about sending email, and browsing on text based websites anymore. The new protocol extension is still under development, but the goal is of course, to get it out as soon as possible. Get Daily Updates via Email Protect your computer with Windows Onecare Get paid $7.50 for reviewing my post

Four US newspaper companies form online ad partnership

Slashdot It! Four major U.S. newspaper chains launched an online advertising network on Friday that will let advertisers book national campaigns through a single point of contact, reaching 50 million people a month across the U.S. Investors include the Tribune, Gannett, Hearst and New York Times companies, which publish flagship newspapers such as the Chicago Tribune, USA Today, the San Francisco Chronicle and the New York Times, respectively. The network, QuadrantOne, will let an advertiser place ads on hundreds of Web sites focused on 27 major markets, targeting users by what they are viewing, their online behavior and demographic information. QuadrantOne is most notable for the online players that aren't participants, such as Google, Yahoo or Microsoft. This latest move by the newspaper companies may be designed to assert greater control over their print and Web properties. Yahoo reached a landmark revenue-sharing deal in November 2006 with seven U.S. publishers. Yahoo provides search services, places job ads on its own HotJobs site and sells Web advertising. The deal was expanded in April 2007, with some 264 newspapers distributing their content on Yahoo's portal. One of the QuadrantOne's investors, the Hearst company, is participating in the Yahoo deal. Google's PrintAds program lets its customers who are already buying contextual Web-based ads to also place ads in 600 daily and weekly U.S. newspapers. Google also offers easy tools for customers to design their own ad that can be uploaded to particular newspaper. The Chicago Tribune, the New York Times and the San Francisco Chronicle participate in PrintAds. If newspapers develop better ways to sell their own online ads, they may not have to share revenue with their Web counterparts such as Yahoo and Google. Online advertising accounted for about US$16.9 billion in revenue in 2006 and is expected to rise to $50.3 billion by 2011, according to a December 2007 report from the Yankee Group. The U.S. newspaper industry is in dire straits, in part because of a bumpy U.S. economy, declining print readers and falling print advertising revenue. Critics argue that newspaper companies waited far too long to revamp their businesses with the surge in online publishing and advertising over the last 15 years. Companies such as Google, which has made a fortune in Web-based advertising, have reaped some gains at the expense of newspapers, as advertisers look for cheaper and more targeted ways to reach buyers. Classified advertising, once a bread-and-butter source of revenue for newspaper, has also declined over the years due to advertising boards such as Craig's List. Get Daily Updates via Email Protect your computer with Windows Onecare Get paid $7.50 for reviewing my post

Toshiba shares rise

Slashdot It! Shares in Toshiba Corp. (6502.TO) moved sharply higher in early trading Monday as investors and analysts welcomed signals from the electronics company that it's reconsidering whether it's worth plowing more money into its next-generation DVD business as the movie world begins to put its weight behind a rival format developed by Sony Corp. (6758.TO). Toshiba shares were up over 5% after people familiar with the situation told The Wall Street Journal Sunday that Toshiba is highly likely to pull the plug on its HD DVD version of next-generation DVD technology, as early this week. The report prompted Nikko Citigroup analysts to raise their rating on Toshiba to Buy from Neutral, If Toshiba abandons HD DVD, that would seal a crystal-clear victory for consumer tech giant Sony's rival Blu-ray format in what had become one of the consumer electronics industry's biggest format battles since the days of the VHS-Betamax VCR tussle almost 30 years ago. The high-definition DVD market is key for both the movie business and the consumer electronics industry, with sales of players and disks for home movie entertainment likely to provide a lucrative stream of revenue for years to come. Both Sony and Toshiba have poured resources into their efforts to win customers to their formats. In a statement, Toshiba, a relatively small player in the consumer electronics business, but with operations stretching from semiconductors to elevators, said that it is "considering its operations policy going forward." Although it would be a blow to Toshiba's prestige, not to mention its balance sheet in terms of capital expenditure, investors savored the prospect of the company pulling out of the high-definition DVD segment to focus on other businesses. At 0112 GMT, Toshiba shares were trading 5.1% higher at Y824; Sony shares were up 2.7% at Y4,980, compared with a 1.3% gain on the Nikkei 225 Stock Average. Nikko Citigroup said in a note to clients that a withdrawal from the segment by Toshiba would be smart. "On the earnings front, its operating profit will likely gain by 20% from the next fiscal year," said analyst Hiroyuki Masuko. Some sector watchers have viewed such a move as likely ever since Time Warner Inc.'s Warner Bros. movie studio decided last month to support Blu-ray exclusively, leaving only Viacom Inc.'s Paramount Pictures and General Electric Co.'s Universal Pictures as exclusive supporters of HD DVD. In addition to Warner Bros., Blu-ray is backed by Sony Pictures, Walt Disney Co. and News Corp.'s Twentieth Century Fox. News Corp. owns Dow Jones, publisher of this newswire. One strategist at a Tokyo brokerage said a withdrawal from HD DVD business would be positive for Toshiba as a signal of its willingness to take a tough but quick decision to renew its business focus elsewhere rather that staying in a losing battle. The Nikkei newspaper reported earlier Monday that Toshiba, a major player in memory chips, is pressing ahead with plans to invest in the flash memory business, and has chosen Iwate and Mie prefectures in Japan as sites to build two new plants in fiscal 2008 starting in March. Flash memory is used to store data in electronic gadgets such as portable music players and mobile phones, and is starting to replace hard disk drives in laptop PCs. Get Daily Updates via Email Protect your computer with Windows Onecare Get paid $7.50 for reviewing my post

Porn King wants more protection for kids

Slashdot It! The world's largest porn studio says that Google and Yahoo! should "erect stronger barriers" to keep porn away from the world's children. Steven Hirsch, the co-chairman and co-founder of Vivid Entertainment, is to deliver this message in New Haven, Connecticut as he addresses an army of Yale University MBA candidates. "Responsible companies in the adult industry such as ours have done a great deal to deter minors from accessing adult material," Hirsch proclaims from inside a Vivid press release. "None of the search engines and portals, but particularly Yahoo and Google, has taken any significant steps in this direction. "Vivid will work with any company that is ready to make it much more difficult for children to be exposed, even inadvertently, to material intended only for adults. This is not about First Amendment rights, it is about protecting children." They are endangered, the porn king says, because the likes Google and Yahoo! do a poor job of promoting their porn filters and age-verification tools. And while we are on the subject... Hirsch also says that he does his best to convince his porn stars they shouldn't be porn stars. "I do interview all of the Vivid Girls personally before we sign them to exclusive contracts," he continues. "But, guess what? I spend more time trying to talk a new girl OUT of becoming a porn star as I do discussing the deal points of her contract once she's convinced me that she really does want to go down that path." And he wants everyone to understand that he's a serious businessman. "In the end, running the world's biggest adult film studio isn't that much different than running any other studio except that our product is pretty much exclusively about sex," he rambles on. "The truth is, Vivid Entertainment is a business like any other. And my job is concerned as much with cost of goods, margins and EBITDA as it is with trying to come up with the idea for the next 'Debbie Does Dallas...Again.'" Oh, and he knows his tech too. "We always believed it was important to stay on top of all new technologies," he insists, before listing all sorts of things that only occasionally involve new technologies. "But we were also the first adult studio to sign talent to exclusive contracts; the first to change adult video packaging to make it more appealing to consumers and retailers; the first to really capitalize on the Internet for branding; the first to own a cable TV network; the first to shoot movies in Hi Def and to go after the wireless market in an effective way; the first to diversify with special interest labels such as Vivid-Alt, Vivid-Ed, Vivid-Celeb and even Vivid-Plus for those who like to watch women of notable stature; and the first to license our name with a professionally managed program that has included book publishing, comics, condoms, vodka, shoes, apparel and other merchandise. In publishing, 'How to Have a XXX Sex Life' by the Vivid Girls, published by HarperCollins, became a best seller and recently went into paperback." Get Daily Updates via Email Protect your computer with Windows Onecare Get paid $7.50 for reviewing my post

Tosiba to make plans to drop HD-DVD

Slashdot It! Since the beginning of the year, when Warner Bros. announced that it was pulling support for HD DVD, the prospects appeared grim. Toshiba and some of the other backers of the format put on a brave face, but most observers were wondering if and when Toshiba would acknowledge Blu-ray's fait accompli and let HD DVD join Betamax in The Place Where Unloved Formats Are Eternally Blessed. That time may be soon, according to a report in The Hollywood Reporter, which quotes "reliable industry sources" as saying that Toshiba will euthanize HD DVD in the months ahead. Throughout the battle with Blu-ray, Toshiba and the HD DVD Promotions Group had fought aggressively to defend HD DVD, even as Warner Bros. abandoned ship. But that strong support appeared to weaken perceptibly for the first time in the wake of Netflix and Best Buy's decisions to throw their weight behind Blu-ray earlier this week, and Wal-Mart will be ditching HD DVD as well by summer. The usual forceful response from the Group was eschewed in favor of the subdued "While the Best Buy announcement says they will recommend Blu-ray, at least they will continue to carry HD DVD and offer consumers a choice at retail." Toshiba has attempted to stave off the encroaching tide of Blu-ray by slashing prices on players and running other promotions. Microsoft, which has backed HD DVD from the beginning, has also cut the price of its HD DVD player add-on for the Xbox 360 to $129, a $50 drop. Amazon also appears to be in the midst of a blue-light special on HD DVD movies, although the company has not responded to our inquiries as to whether it is indeed clearing out HD DVD inventory. tombstoneWhile denying that a decision on the fate of HD DVD has been made, a Toshiba marketing exec left the door wide open. "Given the market developments in the past month, Toshiba will continue to study the market impact and the value proposition for consumers, particularly in light of our recent price reductions on all HD DVD players," Jodi Sally, VP of marketing for Toshiba America Consumer Products, told The Hollywood Reporter. At current price points—HD DVD players are available for as little as $119—Toshiba has to be taking a substantial loss on each player sold. If there was a realistic prospect that those loss-leader sales would result in a large installed base for future movie sales and resultant royalties, those losses would be eagerly embraced. That's an all-but-impossible scenario at this point, however. HD DVD early adopters who are likely to find themselves with nowhere to buy or rent HD DVD movies can take comfort in one small solace. An HD DVD player makes one heck of an upscaling DVD player. Get Daily Updates via Email Protect your computer with Windows Onecare Get paid $7.50 for reviewing my post

Yahoo's Jerry Yang is no Bill Gates

Slashdot It! The New York Post, a paper whose business section has a special flair for getting the story wrong, may finally have gotten one right. In its Friday edition, the Post writes that an independent group of Yahoo board members believes Yahoo CEO Jerry Yang may be letting emotions trump his better judgment and that's why he's opposed to accepting Microsoft's buyout offer. When it comes to big acquisitions, so much of what gets put forward as informed analysis is likely to be off the mark. But among people familiar with his thinking, Yang's distaste for Microsoft is an open secret. "Jerry would rather give up his left pinky than see Microsoft wind up running this company," said a former Yahoo employee who knows Yang. I can understand Yang's reluctance to do this deal. Along with David Filo, he built Yahoo from scratch. Now an increasingly noisy chorus of shareholders is pressuring him to turn over the keys to the "Monkey Boy" and his cohorts. That has Yahoo scrambling to come up with alternatives. One day Google pops up as the leak du jour, the next day it's News Corp. At this rate, it won't be long before we hear rumors of Warren Buffett sightings. Would one of those scenarios result in a better denouement? The answer depends on who you're asking. Via Cnet Get Daily Updates via Email Protect your computer with Windows Onecare Get paid $7.50 for reviewing my post

HD-DVD RIP?

Slashdot It! HD DVD, the beloved format of Toshiba and three Hollywood studios, died Friday after a brief illness. The cause of death was determined to be the decision by Wal-Mart to stock only high-definition DVDs and players using the Blu-ray format. There are no funeral plans, but retailers and industry analysts are already writing the obituary for HD DVD. The announcement by Wal-Mart Stores, the nation’s largest retailer of DVDs, that it would stop selling the discs and machines in June when supplies are depleted comes after decisions this week by Best Buy, the largest electronics retailer, to promote Blu-ray as its preferred format and Netflix, the DVD-rental service, to stock only Blu-ray movies, phasing out HD DVD by the end of this year. Last year, Target, one of the top sellers of electronics, discontinued selling HD DVD players in its stores, but continued to sell them online. “The fat lady has sung,” said Rob Enderle, a technology industry analyst in Silicon Valley. “Wal-Mart is the biggest player in the DVD market. If it says HD DVD is done, you can take that as a fact.” Toshiba executives did not return calls asking for comment. Analysts do not expect the company to take the product off the market but the format war is over. Toshiba had been fighting for more than two years to establish the dominance of the format it developed over Blu-ray, developed by Sony. The combined weight of the decisions this week, but particularly the heft of Wal-Mart, signals the end of a format war that has confounded and frustrated consumers and that had grown increasingly costly for the consumer electronics industry — from hardware makers and studios to retailers. Andy Parsons, a spokesman for the Blu-ray Disc Association, an industry trade group, said retailers and movie studios had incentives to resolve the issue quickly because it was costly for them to devote shelf space and technology to two formats. Besides, he noted, many consumers have sat on the sidelines and not purchased either version because they did not want to invest in a technology that could become obsolete. Thus far, consumers have purchased about one million Blu-ray players, though there are another three million in the market that are integrated into the PlayStation 3 consoles of Sony, said Richard Doherty, research director of Envisioneering, a technology assessment firm. About one million HD DVD players have been sold. Evenly matched by Blu-ray through 2007, HD DVD experienced a marked reversal in fortune in early January when Warner Brothers studio, a unit of Time Warner, announced it would manufacture and distribute movies only in Blu-ray. With the Warner decision, the Blu-ray coalition controlled around 75 percent of the high-definition content from the major movie and TV studios. The coalition includes Sharp, Panasonic and Philips as well as Walt Disney and 20th Century Fox studios. Universal, Paramount and the DreamWorks Animation studios still back HD DVD; none of those studios responded to requests for comment Friday. “It’s pretty clear that retailers consumers trust the most have concluded that the format war is all but over,” Mr. Parsons said. “Toshiba fought a very good battle, but the industry is ready to move on and go with a single format.” Because movie and entertainment technology has become integrated into a range of consumer electronics, the high-definition movie format war has created unusually wide-ranging alliances. The battle included, for example, video game companies; Microsoft has backed the HD DVD standard and sold a compatible player to accompany its Xbox 360 video game console. Sony has pushed vigorously for the Blu-ray standard, not just because it is a patent holder of the technology, but also because it has integrated the standard into PlayStation 3. Sony has argued that consumers will gravitate to the PlayStation 3 because of the high-definition movie player. Any celebration over the victory may be tempered by concerns that the DVD — of any format — may be doomed by electronic delivery of movies over the Internet. The longer HD DVD battled Blu-ray, the more the consumer market has had an opportunity to gravitate to downloading movies. Such a move, coupled with the growth of technology that makes such downloading easier and cheaper, has threatened to cut into the long-term sales of physical movies in the DVD format. Mr. Doherty, like Mr. Parsons, argued that digital downloads are not yet affecting the DVD market and that they would not for some time. They said that movie downloads face a host of challenges, chief among them that many consumers have insufficient bandwidth to download movies or move them from device to device on a wireless home network. Mr. Enderle, however, argued that bandwidth was improving and that major telecommunications carriers, which are pushing to increase speeds, would like to be able to make their pipes the delivery mechanism for high-definition movies. Wal-Mart, Warner Brothers, Best Buy and all the others lining up behind Blu-ray realized they had to kill HD DVD — and fast, he said. “The later it gets, the much worse it gets,” he said. By contrast, Mr. Parsons said that downloading movies “is not a viable option now or even in the near future.” “It’s something that will move very gradually in that direction.” Get Daily Updates via Email Protect your computer with Windows Onecare Get paid $7.50 for reviewing my post

Macbook Air Rival

Slashdot It! Only a month or so after Apple announced its MacBook Air laptop, which it calls the world’s thinnest laptop, Lenovo is about to spring its own super-skinny machine: the ThinkPad X300. Here’s a sneak peek. My full review will appear after I have fully tested this unusual new laptop, which I expect to be of great interest to road warriors. Like the MacBook Air, this is a rare small laptop that is built around a full 13-inch-wide screen display and a full keyboard, rather than the little screens and cramped keyboards common in subnotebooks. And, like the Air, it offers a fast, rugged solid-state drive instead of a hard disk. But, unlike the Apple, Lenovo’s new skinny ThinkPad comes with a hefty complement of ports and features, some of the very things critics complained Apple left out. It has a built-in DVD drive, removable battery, three USB ports, and a wired Ethernet networking jack. Inside, in addition to Wi-Fi, it can be ordered with a built-in cellphone modem and even GPS. It comes with either Windows Vista or Windows XP. Sporting the traditional ThinkPad black slab design, the X300 isn’t as skinny or sexy as the Apple, but it’s still very slender and attractive, at under an inch thick. Also, unlike the Apple, most of the ThinkPad’s configurations are a bit heavier than the 3-pound weight that traditionally denotes a subnotebook. But it still feels very light to carry around, at 3.12 pounds with the standard battery and DVD drive. The biggest downsides to the new ThinkPad X300 are price and limited storage capacity. Unlike the Apple, which can be ordered with a higher-capacity, lower-priced hard disk, the new ThinkPad will only be available with the expensive, limited capacity solid-state drive. So it will start at between $2,500 and $2,800–up to $1,000 more than the Apple’s base price–and will be limited to a paltry 64 gigabytes of storage. Get Daily Updates via Email Protect your computer with Windows Onecare Get paid $7.50 for reviewing my post

Report: Nortel CEO to consider takeover opportunities

Slashdot It! Nortel Networks' chief executive will examine potential takeover opportunities when they arise, he told a German newspaper, but he declined to comment on media reports of a unit merger with Motorola. "We are a normal company again, have doubled our expenses for research and development, and are spending less money on lawyers to deal with accounting problems," Mike Zafirovski told Germany's Frankfurter Allgemeine newspaper in an interview. An advance copy was released. "We are becoming more visible in the market again and can rely on organic growth again. But if the right opportunity for an acquisition arises, we will, of course, look at it. I can't say more on the issue of Motorola," he told the paper. Zafirovski would not comment on a report in The Wall Street Journal on Monday that the company was in talks with Motorola--the world's third-largest mobile-phone maker--to combine their wireless-infrastructure units. The paper had said the talks could create a joint venture with sales of about $10 billion, combining businesses that make network equipment for wireless-phone carriers. Any deal would follow a wave of mergers in the global telecommunications sector, as equipment makers combine in a bid to gain economies of scale and more pricing power against telephone carriers that are also merging. "It is important for us to stabilize the business and to make the company profitable again after difficult years," he added. Via Cnet Get Daily Updates via Email Protect your computer with Windows Onecare Get paid $7.50 for reviewing my post

Free Wifi at Mcdonald's

Slashdot It! Boingo Wireless Inc. and Wayport have inked a deal that enables Boingo subscribers to access all of Wayport's hotspots, including 9,000 WiFi-enabled McDonald's restaurants. Boingo now boasts more than 100,000 locations. Boingo announced earlier in the week a new $7.95-per-month Wi-Fi plan for people with specific handsets, including iPhones, as well as Sony Ericsson, Nokia and Windows Mobile 5 and 6 handsets. The pricing goes into effect later in the year for most handsets, including the iPhone. The battle for breakfast between McDonald's and Starbucks has intensified this week, with Starbucks announcing two hours of free WiFi for all Starbucks cardholders, and now the Boingo announcement that may bring in more business customers to McDonald's. Get Daily Updates via Email Protect your computer with Windows Onecare Get paid $7.50 for reviewing my post

Plasma Lift

Are you looking for a lift for you heavy TV or anything? Then you better read this review. This review is about the cheapest and the best plasma lift you can ever find on the internet. plasma lift Free Shipping For people like you and me, the heading come as a hugh relief. They had agreed to have free shipping for all the things that they are selling on the website so it means that there would not be anymore problems with regards to this small things. They sell both the traditional stand and the Digital TV lifts. Check them out

Medical Jewelry

I do not know why this store is called medical jewelry. Anyway, if you are interested in this review, do read this review. Maybe it is for medical stuff only. More more suited, as you can say and see from the brands that are selling on their stores. medical jewelry Free Shipping For many people like you and me, this is great news. They offer free shipping for people whom spend more then $75 in a single purchase. Not bad. Help You can contact their helpdesk online and if they are offline, you can leave them a message. Their email address is customer.service@jewelelegance.com

Coupon Chief

Time to buy gifts. Need to buy something? Want a coupon? Go to Coupon Chief and get a coupon code immediately. They provide coupon codes for discounts on the products they support. No worries, they support major brands like Dell, BestBuy, Target and many more. You click on the logo and shop online. After you had finished, use the coupon code they provided you can you get a discount. It is that simple. Amazon coupon code About them CouponChief.com is a wholly owned subsidiary of Coupon Chief, Inc. At Coupon Chief, they strive to provide a one stop coupon deal and discount resource for their Web site visitors. Their focus on customer support and providing up to date coupon codes and promotional deals and discounts is unparalleled in the online shopping e-commerce industry.

New and promising torrent sites

Slashdot It! BitTorrent’s popularity is still growing, and new sites are launched every day. Unfortunately it is impossible to feature all the new sites here, so we decided to post a selection of BitTorrent sites that look promising, or offer something new. PizzaTorrent PizzaTorrent is a meta-search engine, inspired by the enormous success of another site we introduced last month, YouTorrent. The site has a similar look and feel as YouTorrent, but it also includes some unique features. One of the most significant differences is that it sorts the torrents by category. In the sidebar you can also click on one of the indexed sites to perform a direct search. The search results are presented in a clean way and ordered by rank, which is the output of a formula that looks at the torrent name, keywords, date added, number of seeds and seeds vs. peers. The administrator of PizzaTorrent told TorrentFreak that his site is indeed based on the YouTorrent concept, but that he will continue to add more unique features. Via Torrent Freak Get Daily Updates via Email Protect your computer with Windows Onecare Get paid $7.50 for reviewing my post

6% of web users generate 50% of the clicks

Slashdot It! Media agency Starcom USA, behavioral targeting network Tacoda, and digital consumer insight company comScore collaborated on a research study whose results call into question click-through rates as a primary source of accountability for Internet display advertising aimed at brand-building. Called “Natural Born Clickers,” the study reveals that a very small group of consumers who are not representative of the total U.S. online population is accountable for the vast majority of display ad click-through behavior. Full findings of the study, its methodology and results are being presented this afternoon at the iMedia Brand Summit in Coconut Point, Florida. The study illustrates that heavy clickers represent just 6% of the online population yet account for 50% of all display ad clicks. While many online media companies use click-through rate as an ad negotiation currency, the study shows that heavy clickers are not representative of the general public. In fact, heavy clickers skew towards Internet users between the ages of 25-44 and households with an income under $40,000. Heavy clickers behave very differently online than the typical Internet user, and while they spend four times more time online than non-clickers, their spending does not proportionately reflect this very heavy Internet usage. Heavy clickers are also relatively more likely to visit auctions, gambling, and career services sites – a markedly different surfing pattern than non-clickers. Further preliminary Starcom data suggests no correlation between display ad clicks and brand metrics, and show no connection between measured attitude towards a brand and the number of times an ad for that brand was clicked. The research presentation suggests that when digital campaigns have a branding objective, optimizing for high click rates does not necessarily improve campaign performance. “There is more and more emphasis by advertisers for greater return-on-objectives in campaigns, particularly in the digital space where the accountability data is so readily available,“ says Starcom USA Director of Connections Research and Analytics Grant Prentice. “Natural Born Clickers shows us that we can’t count on click-through rate as our primary success metric for display ads; Starcom is more reliant on shifts in brand attitude metrics and analytics tying on-line exposure to sales as the true measures of online advertising efficacy.” “While the click can continue to be a relevant metric for direct response advertising campaigns, this study demonstrates that click performance is the wrong measure for the effectiveness of brand-building campaigns,” said Erin Hunter, executive vice president at comScore. “For many campaigns, the branding effect of the ads is what’s really important and generating clicks is more of an ancillary benefit. Ultimately, judging a campaign’s effectiveness by clicks can be detrimental because it overlooks the importance of branding while simultaneously drawing conclusions from a sub-set of people who may not be representative of the target audience.” “One of the underlying values of looking at people and not just pages in our business is that we are able to help uncover behavior that is counterintuitive to what much of the media world assumes about online audiences,” says Daniel Jaye, CEO of TACODA. comScore, Inc. (NASDAQ: SCOR) is a global leader in measuring the digital world. This capability is based on a massive, global cross-section of more than 2 million consumers who have given comScore permission to confidentially capture their browsing and transaction behavior, including online and offline purchasing. comScore panelists also participate in survey research that captures and integrates their attitudes and intentions. Through its proprietary technology, comScore measures what matters across a broad spectrum of behavior and attitudes. comScore analysts apply this deep knowledge of customers and competitors to help clients design powerful marketing strategies and tactics that deliver superior ROI. comScore services are used by more than 800 clients, including global leaders such as AOL, Microsoft, Yahoo!, BBC, Carat, Cyworld, Deutsche Bank, France Telecom, Best Buy, The Newspaper Association of America, Financial Times, ESPN, Fox Sports, Nestlé, Starcom, Universal McCann, the United States Postal Service, Verizon, ViaMichelin, Merck and Expedia. For more information, please visit www.comscore.com. Get Daily Updates via Email Protect your computer with Windows Onecare Get paid $7.50 for reviewing my post

Microsoft Reassigns Several Top Executives

Slashdot It! Microsoft announced a sweeping shake-up of its executive ranks Thursday, placing new executives over operations facing fierce new competition from Google, Apple and cellphone makers. The announcements were part of a broad management reorganization involving seven new senior vice presidents and seven new corporate vice presidents. One of the more significant leadership changes was in the cellphone operations. Andy Lees was named senior vice president for mobile communications operations. Mr. Lees, who had overseen the server business, succeeds Pieter Knook, who, the company said, “made the decision to leave Microsoft to pursue other opportunities.” Microsoft has been paying more attention to its cellphone business following the introduction of Apple’s iPhone and Google’s Android software operating system. In only a few months of the iPhone’s release, according to Canalys, a market research firm, Apple gained 28 percent of the smartphone market in the United States, a greater share of the market than the cellphones using Microsoft’s Windows Mobile software. Research In Motion, maker of the BlackBerry, leads the category that has been dominated by phones made for business users. Microsoft is showing more interest in the consumer market. This week it announced it was buying Danger, the maker of the popular Sidekick cellphone. Analysts said that Microsoft was moving to confront a growing competitive threat from a range of companies that have positioned themselves to offer Web-based alternatives to Microsoft’s core office-productivity applications. The other major change was the replacement of Steve Berkowitz, the current senior vice president of Microsoft’s Online Services group. Mr. Berkowitz, the former chief executive of the online site Ask Jeeves, was hired with great fanfare in April 2006 to help revive Microsoft’s search and portal operations. Microsoft has been unable to make a dent in Google’s growing dominance in search and search advertising. Mr. Berkowitz will leave the company this August, the company said. Responsibility for online operation was split among three executives who will work in the combined organization that handles both Internet activities and the Windows operating system, which is run by Kevin Johnson. Satya Nadella, will be the senior vice president for the search, portals and advertising group. Mr. Nadella is on the engineering side of Microsoft, and will look after the technical side of Web search, advertising systems and related systems. He will also have responsibility for the programming of the MSN portal. Bill Veghte, will be the senior vice president for online services and Windows, handling sales, marketing and product management both for Windows and online operations. Brian McAndrews, the senior vice president of the advertiser and publisher solutions group, will look after the strategy and marketing of Microsoft’s online activities jointly with Mr. Veghte and Mr. Nadella. Get Daily Updates via Email Protect your computer with Windows Onecare Get paid $7.50 for reviewing my post

Google to enter china music market

Slashdot It! Google plans to enter the online music market in China for the first time, as it steps up its battle with local incumbent Baidu.com, media reported. Google is expected to announce a joint venture with Top100.cn that would allow users to listen to and download licensed music files for free, major portal Sina.com said, citing local newspaper reports based on sources close to the U.S. firm. The joint venture expects to generate revenue through online advertisements on the music search pages, Sina added. A spokeswoman for Google in China said she did not comment on rumours or speculation. Top 100 was set up with initial capital of $2.78 million by Chinese basketball star Yao Ming, Yao's agent Zhang Mingji, and industry professional Ge Chen, Sina said. Chinese Internet firms such as Baidu have built up their popularity by providing search services for and access to music files, or MP3s, many of which are pirated. This has drawn the ire of international music industry heavyweights. The International Federation of the Phonographic Industry has said that more than 99 percent of all music files distributed in China are pirated and the country's total legitimate music market, at $76 million, accounts for less than 1 percent of global recorded music sales. Last week, Universal Music, Sony BMG Music Entertainment (Hong Kong), and Warner Music Hong Kong said they had launched legal proceedings against Baidu, accusing it of violating copyright. Legal action is also being taken against Sohu.com and Yahoo China. Baidu had a 60.1 percent share of China's search market in last year's fourth quarter, according to data firm Analysys International. Google came second with a 25.9 percent share, followed by Yahoo China with 9.6 percent. Get Daily Updates via Email Protect your computer with Windows Onecare Get paid $7.50 for reviewing my post

FF Beta 3 is out for download

Slashdot It! Firefox 3 Beta 3 is now available for download. This is the eleventh developer milestone focused on testing the core functionality provided by many new features and changes to the platform scheduled for Firefox 3. Ongoing planning for Firefox 3 can be followed at the Firefox 3 Planning Center, as well as in mozilla.dev.planning and on irc.mozilla.org in #granparadiso. New features and changes in this milestone that require feedback include: * Improved security features such as: better presentation of website identity and security including support for Extended Validation (EV) SSL certificates, malware protection, stricter SSL error pages, anti-virus integration in the download manager. * Improved ease of use through: easier add-on discovery and installation, improved download manager search and progress indication in the status bar, resumable downloading, full page zoom, and better integration with Windows Vista, Mac OS X and Linux. * Richer personalization through: one-click bookmarking, smart bookmark folders, location bar that uses an algorithm based on site visit recency and frequency (called “frecency”) to provide better matches against your history and bookmarks for URLs and page titles, ability to register web applications as protocol handlers, and better customization of download actions for file types. * Improved platform features such as: new graphics and font rendering architecture, JavaScript 1.8, major changes to the HTML rendering engine to provide better CSS, float-, and table layout support, native web page form controls, colour profile management, and offline application support. * Performance improvements such as: better data reliability for user profiles, architectural improvements to speed up page rendering, over 350 memory leak fixes, a new XPCOM cycle collector to reduce entire classes of leaks, and reductions in the memory footprint. (You can find out more about all of these features in the “What’s New” section of the release notes.) Testers can download Firefox 3 Beta 3 builds for Windows, Mac OS X and Linux in over 30 different languages. Please be sure to read the full release notes before using this preview release. Developers should look at the Firefox 3 for Developers article on the Mozilla Developer Center. Get Daily Updates via Email Protect your computer with Windows Onecare Get paid $7.50 for reviewing my post

Samsung sued over defective Blu-Ray players

Slashdot It! Blu-ray may be at the cusp of victory over HD DVD in the next-gen format war—especially with Netflix's decision to stop offering HD DVD rentals—but some of the decisions its backers made in the format's infancy may be coming back to haunt them. A Connecticut man has filed a lawsuit against Samsung and a bunch of John Does in federal court over what he calls the "defective" Samsung BD-P1200 Blu-ray player. At issue are some significant title-compatibility problems with the player. In his complaint, plaintiff Bob McGovern says that a number of movies he purchased after buying his BD-P1200 wouldn't play on the device. He also accuses Samsung of failing to offer firmware updates to remedy the problem, saying that the consumer electronics giant "does not intend to provide future firmware updates or otherwise repair" the problematic player. As one of our readers pointed out via e-mail, the P1200 has a checkered reputation when it comes to hardware reliability. A massive thread in the AV Science forum is filled with numerous complaints about the player. "I have had the BDP 1200 for 7 weeks. Not a finished product," reads one post. "Should not have been brought to the market until it was fully beta tested. Would not play Blu-ray Weeds. Was told needed updated software." In other words, the P1200 has had problems from the outset, and Samsung has not been able to fix them to the satisfaction of its customers. But there are a couple of other issues that could be lurking in the background, issues that are not named directly in the lawsuit, but may be contributing to the obsolescence and playback problems cited in the lawsuit. First, there's the question of the BD+ layer of DRM certified last summer. Not long after movies with the bonus DRM began shipping, owners of some players—including the BD-1200—began reporting playback issues. As Wired pointed out in its coverage of the Samsung lawsuit last week, McGovern's frustrations and resulting lawsuit may be due in no small part to the extra layer of DRM now a part of the Blu-ray spec. The Samsung player's hardware profile is another one of the issues. All Blu-ray players have a hardware profile which denotes the base set of requirements that a player must support in order to be certified. The first of those was Profile 1.0, which made local storage, network connectivity, secondary audio, and secondary video decoders all optional features. The meager requirements of the 1.0 profile mean that Blu-ray players which fail to implement the optional features won't be able to take advantage of picture-in-picture, which requires secondary decoders. 1.0 players are also unable to store local content, lacking the 256MB of storage mandated by the 1.1 profile. Profile 1.1 discs should still play on 1.0 players, however, but the extra features will not work. As we pointed out in our coverage of the 2.0 spec, there's no upgrade path for older players due to the changed hardware requirements—a simple firmware update will not suffice. (If you want the most future-proof Blu-ray player available, we suggest the PS3.) McGovern's suit seeks class-action status for his lawsuit as well as the usual damages and attorneys' fees. Get Daily Updates via Email Protect your computer with Windows Onecare Get paid $7.50 for reviewing my post

Microsoft to Buy a Maker of Consumer Smartphones

Slashdot It! Microsoft said it would acquire Danger, a maker of consumer smartphones, an indication that the software giant is quickly moving to expand its mobile strategy. The acquisition came after an on-again, off-again series of talks with Danger, based in Palo Alto, Calif., beginning in the middle of last year. According to a person familiar with the negotiations, Microsoft ultimately doubled what it was willing to pay to keep Danger out of the hands of other suitors, including Google. Terms of the purchase were not disclosed. The transaction is evidence of the accelerating shift away from the personal computer and toward a proliferating array of hand-held devices that can access information and entertainment on the Internet. The rapid emergence of this capability is likely to have the same impact on the popularity of smartphones as the rise of the graphical user interface had on the personal computer industry. Microsoft, based in Redmond, Wash., and which dominates the PC market, wants to be a leader in this new market for the hand-held computers. After stumbling for years in the mobile phone business with its Windows Mobile software, Microsoft has recently won over Palm, Motorola and other cellphone makers. However, Microsoft’s software has been more popular in smartphones made for business users, rather than consumers, several analysts and industry executives said. Analysts said that the acquisition, could be a hint of a broader plan by Microsoft to build a consumer strategy around brands like Yahoo, which Microsoft recently bid $44.6 billion to acquire. “Microsoft is lining up every asset it can get to challenge Research In Motion and Google’s Android,” said Richard Doherty, president of Envisioneering Inc., an industry consultancy. R.I.M. makes the BlackBerry cellphone, and Android is the operating software for cellphones developed by Google. Danger, founded in 2000 by three engineering veterans of Apple, WebTV and General Magic, designed a soap bar-sized cellphone, the Sidekick, that was one of the first mobile devices to give consumers easy access to wireless data beyond electronic mail. Early on, the Sidekick, which was distinguished by a fold-out screen that opens like a switchblade knife, attracted a celebrity following that helped the company make inroads into consumer and youth markets. But it missed early opportunities to expand its service provider alliances beyond T-Mobile, the third-ranking cellular carrier in the United States, limiting Danger’s ability to grow quickly. Currently the Danger handsets are manufactured by Sharp Electronics and by Motorola. In a Securities and Exchange Commission filing last December to raise $100 million, Danger said that its revenue rose to $56.4 million in its fiscal year ended Sept. 30, from $49.3 million in the previous year. It reported that it had 923,000 customers, most of them through its T-Mobile Sidekick line of devices. In an interview on Monday, Henry R. Nothhaft, Danger’s chief, said the company had strong holiday sales that pushed the company close to profitability and took its subscriber base to close to 1.2 million. Microsoft indicated to him that it plans to continue to invest in Danger and expand it beyond its current 300 employees and 60 contractors, he said. “I think they view us as a foundation for their consumer Internet experience,” he said. Although he declined to comment on the “select” list of companies that had been interested in acquiring Danger, Mr. Nothhaft said that he owned 11 thoroughbred horses and that during the negotiations Danger executives had assigned one of his horses’ names as a code name for each possible deal. He said that he had more horses than potential deals, but that he had run through a number of the names. Like much of the Valley’s mobile computing technology, Danger has its roots in Apple during the late 1980s. All three of the founders worked at Apple as engineers. Two of the founders, Joe Britt and Matt Hershenson, have remained with Danger, leading its technical direction. The third founder, Andy Rubin, left Danger to form Android, which was acquired by Google in 2005. The cellphone software it was developing became the basis for Google cellphone software announced last year. Get Daily Updates via Email Protect your computer with Windows Onecare Get paid $7.50 for reviewing my post

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