Everything You Need to Know About USB 3.0, Plus First Spliced Cable Photos

Slashdot It! No doubt you’re familiar with the Universal Serial Bus – we ranked it as our top PC innovation of all time. But what do you know about the next version of this ubiquitous interface? USB 2.0 (otherwise known as USB Hi-Speed) boosted the original 12Mbps data rate to 480Mmb/s over eight years ago, and now USB 3.0 (dubbed USB Superspeed) is set to multiply that bandwidth tenfold. Intel released the Extensible Host Controller Interface to hardware partners last week after some reported disputes with AMD and Nvidia (who, afraid Intel would have a jump start in incorporating the tech in chipsets, threatened to develop their own USB standard). But how does this affect you? We dug up some new information about USB 3.0, got our hands on the new connectors, and even took a look inside the new cables.

USB 3.0 will be backwards-compatible with USB 2.0

Like the upgrade from USB 1.1 to 2.0, the new 3.0 connectors and cables will be physically and functionally compatible with hardware from the older specs. Of course, you won’t be able to maximize your bandwidth unless you’re using a USB 3.0 cable with Superspeed devices and ports, but at least plugging a 3.0 cable into a 2.0 port won’t blow up your PC. The spec’s compatibility lies in the design of the new connectors. USB 2.0 cables worked off of four lines – a pair for in/out data transfer, one line for power, and the last for grounding. USB 3.0 adds five new lines (the cable is noticeably thicker), but the new contacts sit parallel to the old ones on a different plane, as opposed to being adjacent to them. This means you’ll be able to differentiate between 2.0 and 3.0 cables just by looking at the ends.

At first glance, the USB 3.0 connector looks just like the 2.0 design

The maximum speed of USB 3.0 is 4.8Gbps

It’s true: USB 3.0 SuperSpeed will be 10 times faster than the 480Mbps limit of the 2.0 spec. The example Intel likes to give out when talking about the new speed is that transferring a 27GB HD movie to your future media player will only take 70 seconds with USB 3.0, while it would take 15 minutes or more with 2.0. Keep in mind that you’re only going to be able to take advantage of this speed if your portable storage device can write data that quickly. Solid state devices will benefit most from the speed boost, while magnetic hard disks will be limited by their RPM and corresponding read/write speeds. Also, new Mass Storage Device drivers will have to be developed for Windows to take advantage of the spec.

The USB 3.0 A and B-side connectors

Uploads and downloads are kept on separate data lanes

Remember those five new lanes we mentioned earlier? With USB 3.0, two new lanes will be dedicated to transmit data, while another pair will handle receiving data. This not only accounts for the significant speed boost, but also allows USB 3.0 to both read and write at the same time from your portable storage device. In the old spec, the pair of lanes used for data transfer weren’t split between send and receive – they only could handle traffic in one direction. Bi-directional data transfer will be very useful for syncing up information on PDAs and storage backup.

The packed guts of a USB 3.0 cable -- note that the cable will be about as thick as a ethernet cable

USB 3.0 will charge more devices, quicker

Not only will USB 3.0 cables facilitate faster transfer speeds, but they’ll carry more power, too. The USB-IF recognizes the growing number of portable devices that charge via USB (cellphones, MP3 players, digital cameras), and have bumped the power output from about 100miliamps to 900 milliamps. That means not only will you be able to power more than 4 devices from a single hub, but the increase current will let you charge up heftier hardware as well.

USB 3.0 will be more power efficient

One of the mandates of the new spec is more efficient power-usage protocols. USB 3.0 abandons device polling in favor of a new interrupt-driven protocol, which means non-active or idle devices (which aren’t being charged by the USB port) won’t have their power drained by the host controller as it looks for active data traffic. Instead, the devices will send the host a signal to begin data transfer. This feature will also be backward compatible with USB 2.0 certified devices.

A look at the mini connector that'll connect to cell-phones and other portable devices

The spec that Intel released mid-last week is only 90% complete. Ravencraft says that they expect the spec to be finalized by Q4 of this year. Hardware partners are expected to have USB 3.0 controllers designed by mid 2009, and consumers won't see the first end products utilizing the spec until early 2010 (though a late Holiday 2009 push for new products isn't out of the question).

Via Max PC

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Royalties Deal in Online Music

Slashdot It! Record labels, music publishers, songwriters and online music services have reached an agreement on how to compensate music creators for online distribution of their content, they said. The agreement, revealed Wednesday, is designed to settle how the industry calculates royalty rates for limited downloads and music that is streamed online, including when it is provided by subscription and advertising-supported services. Fans using on-demand music streaming can select the songs they want to hear but do not keep a permanent copy. Under the proposal, providers of such services will pay a royalty of 10.5 percent of revenue after other royalties are calculated. The Digital Media Association described the agreement in a statement on its Web site Wednesday as a breakthrough that would facilitate new ways to offer music to consumers online. The other groups involved include the National Music Publishers’ Association, which represents American publishers, the Recording Industry Association of America, the Nashville Songwriters Association International and the Songwriters Guild of America. Get Daily Updates via Email Protect your computer with Windows Onecare

BlackBerry Maker Reports Profit Is Up, but Shares Fall

Slashdot It! Research In Motion posted a 72 percent increase in quarterly profit Thursday but warned that income in the current quarter would be lower than analysts had expected because of higher costs related to its newest BlackBerry smartphones. The results and the forecast, released after the close of market trading, set off a decline of 19 percent in the company’s share price in after-hours trading. Research in Motion blamed increased expenses related to its latest handsets like the BlackBerry Bold, a high-end model aimed at the company’s mainstay base of corporate users. The company also revealed a gross-margin forecast that was softer than many had expected. Peter Misek, a Canaccord Adams analyst, called the results “a surprise, and not a positive one.” The company also said its enterprise business, mainly corporate customers, was still robust despite economic uncertainty in the United States. Even so, Research in Motion’s shares sold off immediately after it released its results, dropping to below $79, down 19 percent from their close at $97.53 on the Nasdaq. Research in Motion said it earned $495.5 million, or 86 cents a share, in its most recent quarter, up from $287.7 million, or 50 cents a share, a year earlier. Sales in the period, which ended Aug. 30 and was the second quarter of the company’s fiscal year, rose to $2.58 billion, from $1.37 billion. The results were in line with the company’s June forecast and just shy of analysts’ expectations. The chief executive, James L. Balsillie, told analysts in a conference call that the company’s newest, feature-rich handsets had higher costs associated with them, which in turn affects margins. “This is particularly the case with Bold and other unannounced 3G product platforms,” he said. It is also difficult for R.I.M. to pass the higher costs on to consumers and still keep next-generation BlackBerry prices at attractive levels, Mr. Balsillie added. Research in Motion, which is based in Waterloo, Ontario, has recently introduced BlackBerry models aimed at the broader consumer market, including a flip-phone BlackBerry Pearl. It is also preparing a touch-screen version of its smartphone to compete more directly with Apple’s iPhone. Get Daily Updates via Email Protect your computer with Windows Onecare

Yahoo Overhauls System for Selling Display Ads

Slashdot It! Yahoo announced the details about its system to buy and sell display advertising online, with the hope that the company can dominate the display ad market in the same way Google steers the search market. The new platform, called APT, will allow both publishers and advertisers to manage display advertising across the Web sites of several hundred newspapers across the country, along with Yahoo sites and large sites like eBay and WebMD. At an event at Advertising Week in New York, executives said that the 800 or so members of Yahoo’s newspaper consortium would be using the system, formerly known as AMP, by the end of the year. For advertisers, the new system would simplify the buying of display ads. Currently, advertisers typically buy display advertising from individual sites, or use ad networks, where they do not always control where their ads appear. If the platform develops as Yahoo promised, it would allow newspapers to make more money from online advertising. National advertisers do not want to make hundreds of tiny purchases, and the APT platform would make member newspapers’ Web site space available to national advertisers through one national purchase. It would also let publishers use Yahoo’s targeting capabilities for ads on their sites, and use the demographic and behavioral information Yahoo has about users to show them appropriate ads. That “allows us to charge more” for the advertising space, said William Dean Singleton, the chief executive of the MediaNews Group, at the event. Publishers can also allow Yahoo and other newspapers to sell their ad space as long as it meets a minimum price. For example, if a publisher knows his sales force can get $1 per thousand impressions on a certain ad unit, he might allow partners to sell it if they can get $1.25 or higher. The San Jose Mercury News and The San Francisco Chronicle have been testing the system, and the next users will be Cox Newspapers, the MediaNews Group and Scripps Newspapers. In 2009, Yahoo will offer APT to advertisers, agencies and advertising networks. “It’s going to be all about the execution of getting scale into the system — can they convince advertisers and publishers and agencies that this is the way to go?” said Benjamin Schachter, an analyst with UBS Securities. “If they can succeed with that, then clearly there will be enormous rewards.” Google, AOL and Microsoft, however, are all trying to develop their own versions of display advertising platforms. And Yahoo has problems: the Yahoo management team has been criticized by analysts and investors for not agreeing to an acquisition by Microsoft, its stock recently hit a five-year low and the Justice Department may be preparing to challenge a search deal with Google. “In general, you can’t give this team the benefit of the doubt,” Mr. Schachter said. Yahoo executives showed a preview of the system at the event. It featured a report center, a display of campaigns running, search capabilities and the ability to preview how an ad will look on a given site. If Yahoo can use its data well, said Darren Herman, the head of digital media at the Media Kitchen agency, “they can target, hopefully, much more effectively, and when I’m calling up for an advertiser, they can give me the exact audience I want.” Mr. Herman said, however, that Yahoo had made promising announcements for years, “but then it gets lost.” Jerry Yang, Yahoo’s chief executive, said in an interview after the event that Yahoo and its partners would “benefit from all that liquidity in the marketplace.” Get Daily Updates via Email Protect your computer with Windows Onecare

Press-Info: Noctua releases new CPU coolers for Intel Xeon and AMD Opteron CPUs

Slashdot It! Noctua today released four new CPU coolers for Intel Xeon and AMD Opteron processors. Optimized for use in dual socket systems, the new DX (Dual Xeon) and DO (Dual Opteron) versions of Noctua's highly successful NH-U12 and NH-U9 series introduce the premium quality quiet cooling performance that has become synonymous with Noctua to the world of professional workstations and servers. "Maximum cooling performance at minimum noise levels and excellent reliability can be particularly important when it comes to high-end workstations and special server applications", explains Mag. Roland Mossig, Noctua CEO. "Due to the ever-growing demand for our Xeon and Socket F mounting kits, we decided to design new, customized versions of our coolers that are completely tailor-made for use on Intel Xeon and AMD Opteron systems, especially dual socket configurations. Enter the DX/DO series!" Just to name a few examples of the customizations for server and workstation usage, the NH-U12DX's and NH-U9DX's fin shape has been modified so that two coolers form an air duct on Dual Xeon setups, producing superior cooling performance at very low noise levels. Also, the all new SecuFirm2™ mounting system for Socket 771 comes completely pre-installed in order to ensure maximum convenience and extremely short installation time. Fully compatible with the original Intel installation system, the new NH-U12DX and NH-U9DX work as a simple drop-in replacement for Intel's stock cooler. Both the new DX series coolers and the NH-U12DO and NH-U9DO are fitted with Noctua's renowned NF-P12 and NF-B9 fans as well as NT-H1 thermal compound, making them complete premium quality packages that provide outstanding quiet cooling performance for Intel or AMD based workstations and servers. Availability All new coolers are available immediately. Bundles can be customized for system integrators. Details NH-U12DX: http://www.noctua.at/main.php?show=productview&products_id=19&lng=en NH-U12DO: http://www.noctua.at/main.php?show=productview&products_id=21&lng=en NH-U9DX: http://www.noctua.at/main.php?show=productview&products_id=20&lng=en NH-U9DO: http://www.noctua.at/main.php?show=productview&products_id=22&lng=en Get Daily Updates via Email Protect your computer with Windows Onecare

Evercool releases the new Rifling Fan

Slashdot It! Evercool had just released the new Rifling Fan. It is a 92mm fan housed in a 80mm fan frame. The theme is targeted at gamers whom have a small casing but need a powerful fan. With only a noise level of 17db. It is silent and powerful. Look out for my review on it soon For more detailed information, please visit Evercool's website here: http://www.evercool.com.tw/products/rf-8.htm Get Daily Updates via Email Protect your computer with Windows Onecare

Industry Rethinks Moneymaking Software Practice

Slashdot It! Before they ship PCs to retailers like Best Buy, computer makers load them up with lots of free software. For $30, Best Buy will get rid of it for you. That simple cleanup service is threatening the precarious economics of the personal computer industry. Software companies pay hundreds of millions of dollars to PC makers like Hewlett-Packard to install their photo tools, financial programs and other products, usually with some tie-in to a paid service or upgrade. With margins growing thinner than most laptops, this critical revenue can make the difference between profit and loss for the computer makers, industry analysts say. If the programs are removed, the software makers gain no value out of the $2 to $10 they typically pay H. P. and others to install them on each PC — and PC makers miss out on their cut from revenue-sharing deals. But Best Buy, the nation’s largest electronics retailer, tells computer buyers that the preinstalled software, also known as bloatware, can clutter their machines and slow them down. “You’d be surprised how often consumers tell us to get rid of it,” said Robert Stephens, the head of Geek Squad, the technical support division of Best Buy that removes the software. He declined to say how many people were paying for the service, but said that “it’s going to increase in popularity.” The demand for the service, along with similar offers from Circuit City and other chains, reflects an outpouring of consumer frustration with the way that a brand-new computer can feel as if it is full of digital infomercials — even if those come-ons knock a few dollars off the PC’s price tag. The Web has dozens of do-it-yourself guides to removing such software, which, as one tutorial puts it, “turns your computer into a messy battleground.” Mr. Stephens said the personal computer makers should be worried about the demand for less cluttered computers. “No matter what manufacturers want, we’ll give consumers what they want,” he said. But he added that he believed computer makers would find different ways to profit: “While they may be scared by these trends, they’ll be O.K.” As it turns out, H. P., the world’s largest technology company, is already working on a fundamental change in the way it packages software on its new computers, and thus how its business model works. Stephen DeWitt, who oversees H. P.’s personal computer business in the Americas, said that starting next year the company’s new computers would point users to a Web site where they can buy and download games, productivity software and other programs. Revenue from the site will be split in some fashion among H. P., a retailer like Best Buy and the makers of the software. Mr. DeWitt said the change would cut how much software comes preloaded. Mr. DeWitt said this was happening because consumers were demanding something different, but also because the technology was now in place to allow downloading of software on demand. For now, he said, the benefits to consumers of the free software far outweigh whatever small slowdown it might cause. And he said Best Buy’s cleanup service was not pressuring H. P. to move to a new model. “There’s no tension coming from Best Buy on this — none,” he said. But in Best Buy stores in Northern California, there is clear evidence of the different agendas of Best Buy and the computer makers. The stores display two H. P. computers, identical except that one desktop is cluttered with software icons from eBay, Quicken, AOL, Yahoo and others, while the other is entirely cleaned up. Best Buy workers use the display to promote the company’s $30 “optimization” service. Industry analysts said that the planned change in H. P.’s approach could well reflect Best Buy’s growing influence — and its ability to exact new concessions from computer makers. They said Best Buy has benefited from two key changes: the declining fortunes of competing retailers like CompUSA and some large regional chains, and the addition to its shelves in the last year of computers made by Dell and Apple. Bob Kaufman, a spokesman for Dell, said, “This is an evolving story and Dell is evaluating how it can best deliver software to its customers.” Best Buy’s offer to remove software began in 2006. But recently the toll its policies are taking has heightened considerably, analysts and industry executives say. “Best Buy’s sway is definitely growing,” said Matt Fassler, an industry analyst who covers Best Buy for Goldman Sachs. He said the company had good relationships with computer makers, and, while it wouldn’t seek to harm those relationships, “if they have a strong competitive position, it is incumbent on them to use it.” Mr. Fassler estimates Best Buy will have sales of $44 billion this year. Of that, $1.5 billion to $2 billion will be from the sale of H. P. computers, analysts estimated. One important question is whether the new model being developed by H. P. will be as profitable as the current one. Mr. DeWitt said he expected it to be more profitable. But A. M. Sacconaghi Jr., an industry analyst at Sanford C. Bernstein & Company, said the change could imperil H. P.’s profitability, in part because there is no guarantee that consumers will buy software offered through H. P. instead of another site. As software buying moves online, Mr. Sacconaghi asked, “what makes a consumer go to HP.com over Google?” He also says the challenge for personal computer makers is that they are losing control of what shows up on PC screens — a form of real estate that they have used to sell billboard advertising for software. “They no longer have that real estate advantage,” he said. “There’s a substantial profit pool at risk.” And there can be little profit to begin with, analysts said. The profit margin on many personal computers can be 5 percent or lower, depending on the model. The margins are slim in part because of intense competition that has driven down prices. In some cases, the computers are profitable only because their makers earn $30 or more for each computer for preinstalling the software, according to Shaw Wu, an industry analyst with American Technology Research. And J. P. Gownder, an analyst at Forrester Research, said, “For the average PC, that could be the entire margin.” Without the preloaded software, Mr. Gownder said, “it could put them in the red. That’s why they’ve become so addicted to it.” Mr. Stephens of Geek Squad says he agrees with H. P. that the future is in allowing computer buyers to choose and download what they want. But he said he believed Best Buy, not H. P., was in the best position to help people choose what works for them because, he argued, the in-store technicians are in closest contact with them. “Geek Squad agents have one thing over Apple and Microsoft engineers. We spend most of the day talking to people,” he said. Get Daily Updates via Email Protect your computer with Windows Onecare

AT&T’s Rivals Are Happy to Attack Over iPhone’s Network Woes

Slashdot It! Apple sold more than a million iPhone 3G cellphones its first weekend — with some stores running out — and two million more since then, analysts say. But its July debut has been nothing less than a public relations headache for AT&T, with eager buyers complaining about dropped calls and poor network connections. Some fingers point to Apple, which has tried to deflect the complaints. But many others point to AT&T’s cellular network. Whatever the source of the problems, AT&T’s rivals, long irritated by all the attention the iPhone has received, are on the attack and happy to exploit the discontent. “A phone is only as good as the network it’s on,” said a full-page Verizon Wireless newspaper ad on Thursday, lobbing a shot at AT&T’s 3G, or third generation, high-speed network. A Verizon executive sent an e-mail to Wall Street analysts last week: “So much for a ‘new’ way of doing business at the old AT&T — your father’s phone company.” For AT&T, the nation’s No. 1 wireless carrier, which exclusively offers the iPhone, the situation is especially tricky because the stakes are so high. Apple’s customers are largely forgiving of any foibles of the iPhone’s maker. But wireless companies like AT&T and Verizon are afforded no such a luxury. The 3G network is supposed to make it easier to surf the Web and watch videos online. With nearly 90 percent of all Americans owning a mobile phone, there is little room to grow and these rivals can ill afford to lose customers. Further aggravating consumers, neither company has fully explained why calls were dropped and the network was slow. Theories abound, which is causing even more confusion — and finger-pointing. Is it a problem with the phone itself? Richard Windsor of Nomura Securities surmised in a research report that a new radio chip made by Infineon, a German chip maker, was to blame for the iPhone’s spotty service in areas where the cellular signal was weak. Since Americans are not the only iPhone users complaining — consumers in the Netherlands reported iPhone problems too — some analysts think the iPhone is partly to blame. Apple offered a software fix to mixed reviews — but no explanation. Most analysts put the onus on AT&T. “If consumers are not getting the full 3G experience, that is not Apple’s fault,” said Akshay K. Sharma, a research director of carrier network infrastructure at the Gartner Group, a consulting firm. Nielsen Mobile, a consulting firm, said that in tests in the 47 largest American cities, it was able to connect to 3G networks 93 percent of the time. (Its sample included all carriers.) By contrast, in the San Francisco area, where many of the iPhone troubles have been reported, that number was 87 percent. Phil Marshall, of the research firm the Yankee Group, said the problem probably lies somewhere in between, in how the iPhone interacts with AT&T’s network and signals are transmitted and received. AT&T’s growing pains with its 3G network might otherwise be overlooked if not for the popularity of the iPhone. (Verizon executives conceded they too had problems when data users increased use of their highest speed network.) AT&T’s 3G network includes 310 cities with 100,000 people or more, but it plans to add 40 cities by the end of the year. “It’s hard to launch an iconic device like the iPhone on a network that it is not yet fully deployed,” said Mr. Marshall. “As they build these networks they will need to make more improvements or the complaints will persist.” But there is a bigger issue at play too, Mr. Marshall said. “Both companies are accustomed to controlling all aspects of the delivery of its products,” he said. “It illustrates the culture clash, when you create an environment where you share the responsibilities between them. Then you have problems.” Already there seem to be fissures in the relationship. Two camps are emerging at AT&T: those who think Apple is too controlling with information and those who think Apple can do no wrong, said two people who have talked to AT&T executives but who declined to be named because they were not authorized to speak on their behalf. Get Daily Updates via Email Protect your computer with Windows Onecare

Poor earning virtual gaming gold

Slashdot It! Nearly 500,000 people in developing nations earn a wage making virtual goods in online games to sell to players, a study has found. Research by Manchester University shows that the practice, known as gold-farming, is growing rapidly. The industry, about 80% based in China, employs about 400,000 people who earn £77 per month on average. The practice is flourishing despite efforts by games companies to crack down on the trade in virtual goods. Big industry Professor Richard Heeks, head of the development informatics group at Manchester who wrote the report, said gold farming had become a significant economic sector in many developing nations. "I initially became aware of gold farming through my own games-playing but assumed it was just a cottage industry," said Professor Richard Heeks from the University of Manchester who wrote the report. "In a way that is still true. It's just that instead of a few dozen cottages, there turn out to be tens of thousands." In many online games virtual cash remains rare and many people turn to suppliers such as gold farmers to get money to outfit avatars with better gear, weapons or a mount. Screenshot from Wrath of the Lich King, Blizzard Many gold farmers focus on World of Warcraft Some gold-farming operations offer other services such as "power levelling" in which they assume control of a player's character and turn it into a high-powered hero far faster than the original owner could manage themselves. Prof Heeks said very accurate figures for the size of the gold farming sector were hard to come by but his work suggested that in 2008 it employs 400,000 people who earn an average of $145 (£77) per month creating a global market worth about $500m. But, he said, the true size of the sector was hard to estimate - it could easily be twice as big. The quasi-criminal nature of gold-farming made it hard to truly gauge its extent, said Prof Heeks. In most online games all the activities associated with gold farming - gathering in-game cash to items to sell, buying game gold or sharing accounts - are a violation of the terms governing that title. Anyone caught engaging in any of these activities is likely to be banned from the game and have their account shut down. "I was drawn to write about gold farming due to my perception that it's a significant phenomenon that academics and development organisations are unaware of," he told the BBC. Already, he said, gold farming was comparable in size to India's outsourcing industry. You could get rid of it, but you would get rid of one of the most fundamental parts of player-to-player interaction. Steve Davis, Secure Play "The Indian software employment figure probably crossed the 400,000 mark in 2004 and is now closer to 900,000," said Prof Heeks. "Nonetheless, the two are still comparable in employment size, yet not at all in terms of profile." Prof Heeks suspects gold-farming might be an early example of the "virtual offshoring" likely to become more prevalent as people spend more time working and playing in cyberspace. "It is also a glimpse into the digital underworld," he said. "Or at least the edges of a digital underworld populated by scammers and hackers and pornographers and which has spread to the "Third World" far more than we typically realise." Cashing out Steven Davis, chief of game security firm Secure Play, said gold farming had been around since the earliest days of online gaming but had mushroomed along with the popularity of gaming. The trade was clearly meeting a real need, he said. Screenshot from Eve Online, CCP Economic depth in games such as Eve Online means it is not as prone to gold farming "When you get people with more money than time and time than money the two will find a way to meet," he said. While exchanges of goods and gold take place inside game worlds the deals are typically done via one of many hundreds of online market places and shops. Some gold farming sites employ just a handful of people but many were large businesses with hundreds of people on their books. A hierarchy of gold farmers arranged by where wages were lowest was starting to emerge, said Mr Davis. For instance, the low wages gold farmers in Vietnam will accept means they now do for Chinese gamers what many in China do for those in the West. "It's moving down the chain," he said. Gold-farming was proving so lucrative that criminal gangs were cashing in on it, said Mr Davis. These pay for their accounts with stolen credit cards, take money from players and do not hand over gold or goods in return and fill chat channels with adverts for websites hawking game gold. There were also significant problems in tracking down and prosecuting those behind the gold-farming, he said. Games makers had tried to limit the amount of trade in game gold and gear, few had reported significant success, said Mr Davis. "You could get rid of it," he said, "but you would get rid of one of the most fundamental parts of player-to-player interaction." Get Daily Updates via Email Protect your computer with Windows Onecare

EECB Scores Direct Hit On Best Buy After They Sell Used Phone As New

Slashdot It! Obviously, stores sell items that has been returned by other customers as "open box" merchandise, but before reader David left the store, he specifically asked if the phone he was buying was "new" and was told it was. When he got home and found addresses saved on the phone and a few scratches he was understandably annoyed. He launched an EECB on Best Buy and after a little negotiation, he got a $120 gift card. Now he's writing to compliment Best Buy on the way they handled his complaint. David writes: Long story, short: Bought 2 (brand new) Instinct phones from Best Buy. One of them turned out to be used. I know this because it had scratches on it, and already had personnel locations stored in the GPS. Found an email address using Consumerist. Hours after sending the email out they call me up and offer me a $50 gift card for my inconvenience. I say 'no', and will talk to them further via email when I get back to town, as I'm on vacation. Email a lot back and forth... and finally get a $120 gift card (the price of the new phone). I used the gift card to pay for the broken phone. Happy endings all thanks to you. I also have to admit, that besides the ass hats that actually work in the store, Best Buy really handled this well. Hey, that's great to hear! Here's the email David sent to Best Buy: Dear Mr. Anderson, My wife and I just purchased two "brand new" Samsung Instinct phones from the Best Buy in Pentagon City, VA. We were told that even though one was missing the plastic, and had some small defects, that it was brand new, never used. It became clear once it was activated that it was used. In fact, it had addresses stored in the GPS. I am a long time Best Buy customer, but I will be returning the phones and I will buy them directly because I was blatantly lied to. Sincerely, David Best Buy responded with an offer of a $50 gift card, to which David responded: Thank you for responding to my concern and offering me the $50 gift card. However, at this time I cannot accept this offer. I cannot accept because I do not believe these terms corrects the situation. Let me explain briefly what I have to do because Best Buy has lied to me and my wife: I have to use up my Saturday morning to go to the metro, pay $5 (round trip) and ride the metro approx 30-45 minutes to Pentagon City, walk to the Best Buy - approx 15-20 minutes, and return the used cell phone Best Buy sold me ( who know how long that will take). Then, hopefully the Best Buy is Pentagon city will have another Samsung Instinct (we bought the last one the previous time we were there, which probably explains why they sold us the used one) for us to purchase. And then, I have to get ahold of Sprint to port the number from the previous account to the new cell phone which took 2.5 hours(!) last time. Then return home via walking, and metro. So that will be my Saturday morning August 23, 2008. I understand that you had no fault in this matter and that you are only trying to help. I believe that a credit of $120 (the amount I paid for the phone) to my credit card account would right this wrong. It is not all about the money. It's about Best Buy lying directly to my face, causing unneeded stress, and wasting my time and money. I thank you again for helping. Best Buy responded: Thank you for taking the time to follow up with me. I am so sorry that the situation transpired in the manner it did and am still working internally with the Pentagon City store management team to find out why a store associate provided you with incorrect information regarding the phone. Given the circumstances, I would be happy to send you a $120 gift card to cover the cost of the phone. You can still opt to return the phone to the store within the thirty day return and exchange period to acquire a refund to your credit card, or if it's easier, you are welcome to mail the phone to my attention at the address referenced below and upon its receipt, I will credit your account. I will still send you the gift card given the inconvenience this issue continues to cause you. Way to go David! We're so proud. Get Daily Updates via Email Protect your computer with Windows Onecare

Web browser to get 'privacy mode'

Slashdot It! Microsoft is planning a "privacy mode" for the next release of its Internet Explorer (IE) web browser. By clicking a button, users of IE8 will be able to limit how much information is recorded about where they go online and what they do. Microsoft watchers have spotted two patent applications covering ways to manage the amount of information a browser logs. When introduced the privacy mode will match features found on other browsers. Medical test Australian blogger Long Zheng has found two patent applications made by Microsoft on 30 July for ideas it calls "Cleartracks" and "Inprivate". The applications deal with methods of erasing data that browsing programs log, turning off features that record sites visited or notifying users of what sites are doing to log a visit. While many browsers already have menu options that let people alter security settings and clear history files it typically has to be done on a use-by-use basis. Users may wish to turn on the privacy mode if they are planning a surprise party, buying presents or researching a medical condition and do not want others users of the same computer to find out. Internet Explorer 8 is due to go on general release late in 2008 though early trial versions are already available. By comparison Apple's Safari browser already has a privacy mode and developers working for Mozilla, creators of Firefox, are reportedly working on a similar feature for future versions. Other browsers, such as Xerobank, take a more thorough approach to privacy and try to anonymise all web use. Get Daily Updates via Email Protect your computer with Windows Onecare

Web Audience for Games Soars for NBC and Yahoo

Slashdot It! Steve Ferguson woke up early on Friday — 3 a.m. to be exact — to watch his stepdaughter Margaux Isaksen, a 16-year-old Olympian, complete a grueling 11-hour performance in the modern pentathlon. Mr. Ferguson did not watch Margaux compete in person. From his home in Fayetteville, Ark., he watched a live stream of her sport on NBCOlympics.com, where 2,200 live hours of the Summer Olympics were shown for Internet users. The ratings for NBC’s television coverage of the Games were record-breaking this month. But the extent to which the Internet served as a supplement to television was unprecedented, and there were two clear winners: NBC’s own Web site and Yahoo’s Olympics section. Benefiting from the growth in broadband Internet access, NBCOlympics.com served up more than 1.2 billion pages and 72 million video streams through Saturday, more than doubling the combined traffic to its site during the 2004 Games in Athens and the 2006 Games in Turin. The popularity of the site will very likely make digital rights more significant in next year’s bidding for the 2014 and 2016 Games. As this Olympics demonstrated, the Internet turns the action into a digital version of the “Choose Your Own Adventure” children’s books, where every sport can receive its time in the spotlight. Enjoy cycling? NBC had 90 videos of the competitions by Sunday. Prefer softball? Yahoo had 186 photos. The Internet is “allowing people to create their own broader Olympics experience,” said Jon Gibs, the vice president for media analytics at Nielsen Online. During previous pentathlons, Mr. Ferguson would sometimes have to wait until a Wednesday to see Margaux’s performances from the prior weekend. “It’s really nice to have this available,” he said of the streaming video, even though his connection at home was somewhat slow. NBC, as the holder of United States rights to the Olympics, was the sole source for online video and the only media organization that could use the Olympics logos. But Yahoo, which offered a feature-oriented mix of news stories and slide shows, gave NBC a run for its online advertising money, or at least audience, attracting just as many visitors, according to Nielsen. “The demand that we’re seeing has far exceeded even our wildest expectations,” said Jimmy Pitaro, the head of sports and entertainment for Yahoo. Olympics sites operated by AOL, ESPN, Sports Illustrated, the Beijing Organizing Committee, The New York Times, and USA Today also had high levels of traffic, according to Nielsen. They differentiated themselves from the NBC site by offering slice-of-life features and entertainment stories. (The top Olympic story on Yahoo this month was, “Why divers always take showers.”) NBC cites statistics that show its site had a clear advantage over Yahoo’s. But Nielsen Online’s numbers show that Yahoo drew an average of 4.7 million unique visitors a day through Aug. 18, compared with 4.3 million for NBC. The third-ranked site, AOL’s Olympics section, had 1.3 million visitors a day. NBC treated the Olympics like a research laboratory, and it says it is gleaning information about how people preferred to consume content from its combination of television, online and mobile offerings. (Critics charge that because the network did not stream the most popular sporting events live, its findings are skewed.) Regardless, the network is using the Olympics to assert that TV is the preferred medium of consumers, with the vast majority of viewing — 93 percent — done via television. Alan Wurtzel, the head of research for NBC, concluded that many NBCOlympics.com visitors used the Web site as a video playback device. “People want to catch up on events that they miss,” he told reporters during a conference call on Aug. 13. “About half say that’s the main reason” they view video. “The second reason,” cited by close to 40 percent, “is that they want to resee and revisit the major events they had seen on TV earlier.” In 1995, when the media rights to the Beijing Games were awarded, NBC could not have imagined millions of live video streams of sporting events, but the company ensured it would own all video rights to the events, protecting its content no matter what technologies emerged. NBC’s most popular video from Beijing, with 2.3 million views, was the United States swimming team’s 4x100 relay on Aug. 11 featuring Michael Phelps’s second gold medal win. On Friday the research firm eMarketer estimated that NBC earned $5.75 million in revenue from online video ads, a tiny proportion of the $1 billion in total advertising revenue it raised from the Games. NBC officials said that Internet advertising revenues could not be estimated because the ads were sold across various platforms. Traffic to NBCOlympics.com peaked each day around noon as office workers checked in during the lunch hour. Mr. Gibs said Nielsen also saw traffic spikes on the last two Monday mornings, presumably as office workers caught up on Olympics action they might have missed over the weekend. NBC’s decision to save some popular sports for prime time — up to 12 hours after they have happened — put the network at odds with the spirit of the Internet, which rewards speed and rejects scarcity. Americans awakened to breaking news e-mail messages and Web site headlines revealing the results of gymnastics and track and field races, but had to wait until bedtime to see the events on television. Nonaffiliated sites tried to fill that void. On Wednesday, for example, Yahoo’s Olympics blog linked to two Web sites that were showing BBC video of Usain Bolt’s 200-meter race, hours before NBC showed it on television and placed it on its Web site. Yahoo, which added a gold medal to its logo for the duration of the Games, used the power of its popular home page to push visitors to a special mini-site devoted to the Olympics. Mr. Pitaro said the site more than tripled its traffic compared with Turin in 2006. For people like Mr. Ferguson who could not travel to China to watch family members compete, the Internet allowed them to watch full coverage in a way that television did not. That was especially true for sports like the women’s pentathlon, which took place over the course of the day Friday in China. “It’s not real TV-friendly,” Mr. Ferguson said. “But now I can watch it.” Get Daily Updates via Email Protect your computer with Windows Onecare

South Korea: Duties to End for Memory Chip Maker

Slashdot It! Hynix Semiconductor said the United States had decided to end punitive duties imposed on the company in 2003, a move the company said would help it move back to profitability. Hynix, one of the world’s largest makers of computer memory chips, said the Commerce Department released a letter notifying the International Trade Commission that it planned to revoke the duties. The letter, dated Tuesday, said the decision to revoke the duties came because there was no substantive response from parties in the United States during a review of the tariffs. Get Daily Updates via Email Protect your computer with Windows Onecare

A third of new PCs being downgraded to XP, says metrics researcher

Slashdot It! More than one in every three new PCs is downgraded from Windows Vista to the older Windows XP, either at the factory or by the buyer, a performance and metrics researcher said today. According to Devil Mountain Software Inc., which operates a community-based testing network, nearly 35% of the 3,000-plus PCs it examined had been downgraded from Vista to XP. "Either these machines were downgraded by [sellers like] Dell or HP, or they were downgraded by the user after they got the machine," said Craig Barth, chief technology officer at Devil Mountain. "In any case, these machines are no longer running Vista." Barth used data provided by users to Devil Mountain's Exo.performance.network — which it kicked off last year and has expanded by partnering with InfoWorld, a Computerworld sister publication — to come up with his numbers. Infoworld first reported the data earlier today. By collating such things as the vendor and system model number with manufacturers' catalogs, Barth was able to identify machines that were probably shipped within the past six months, a period when virtually every new PC was offered with Vista preinstalled. "The 35% is only an estimate, but it shows a trend within our own user base," Barth said. "People are taking advantage of Vista's downgrade rights." Under the terms of Microsoft's end-user licensing agreement, Vista Business and Vista Ultimate can be "downgraded" to XP Professional; businesses that purchase Vista Enterprise can also downgrade to XP. Although Microsoft retired Windows XP from mainstream availability at the end of June — it stopped shipping the seven-year-old operating system to retail and large computer makers — some OEMs have continued to offer new PCs with XP preinstalled by doing the downgrade at the factory. Hewlett-Packard Co., for example, has promised that it will offer the downgrade option on its business-class desktops, notebooks and workstations through July 2009. "Vista's installed base certainly doesn't equal the number of Vista licenses [that Microsoft has] sold," Barth said, citing the Exo.performance.network data as proof. "We're seeing this a lot in the financial sector." Devil Mountain's primary product, the DMS Clarity Studio performance-analyzing software, is installed in large numbers at several major financial firms. "One client is not doing Vista at all, but they're refreshing their entire platform this year," Barth said. The company, a nationally known securities firm, is instead downgrading to the 64-bit version of Windows XP, he said. Last year, Devil Mountain benchmarked Vista and XP performance using other performance-testing tools and concluded that XP was much faster. Barth said things haven't changed since then. "Everything I've seen clearly shows me that Vista is an OS that should never have left the barn," he noted. Even when stripping Vista down to core components to make it as close in functionality to XP as possible, Vista was 40% slower, Barth claimed, citing recent tests Devil Mountain has performed. "Vista's performance had been an ongoing problem, and the only thing that's saving Microsoft's bacon is the faster processors and more RAM on today's PCs," he said. "Moore's Law is always on their side." Get Daily Updates via Email Protect your computer with Windows Onecare

Nvidia vice president firmly denies CPU rumours

Slashdot It! A senior vice president of Nvidia has denied rumours that the company is planning an entry into the x86 CPU market. Though the company has never formally suggested it might build a CPU, commentators have noted that its major competitors, AMD and Intel, offer integrated CPU and GPU platforms, and speculation has been rife that Nvidia might develop a platform of its own. Chairman Jen-Hsun Huang, a co-founder of the company, did nothing to quash the notion at his press conference on the opening day of NVISION, affirming merely that "we believe in x86... we believe in heterogeneous computing." Nvidia to "stay focused" on graphics But speaking to PC Pro, Chris Malachowsky, another co-founder and senior vice president, was unequivocal. "That's not our business," he insisted. "It's not our business to build a CPU. We're a visual computing company, and I think the reason we've survived the other 35 companies who were making graphics at the start is that we've stayed focused." He also pointed out that such a move would expose the company to fierce competition. "Are we likely to build a CPU and take out Intel?" he asked."I don't think so, given their thirty-year head start and billions and billions of dollars invested in it. I think staying focused is our ADVERTISEMENT best strategy." More laughs at Larrabee Like everybody at NVISION, Malachowsky was dismissive of the threat from Intel's Larrabee architecture. "If you look at a block diagram of Larrabee," he commented, "the processing elements, the fabrics, the interconnects... some special function units, some I/O, some memory controllers... then go and look at a GPU from five years ago." "You'll see the special function units, the I/O, the memory controllers... we built 'Larrabee' five years ago." When asked whether Nvidia's emphasis on mobile and low-power devices was intended to strengthen the company's presence in areas where Larrabee isn't competing, Malachowsky responded with ridicule, noting that Larrabee is not expected to launch until next summer. "We're focusing 100% on areas where Larrabee isn't competing," he laughed, "because there is no Larrabee! It's a PowerPoint presentation!" "But we are committed to mobile and low-power computing," he confirmed. "To not be committed would be corporate suicide." Get Daily Updates via Email Protect your computer with Windows Onecare

The 1-petabyte barrier is crumbling

Slashdot It! I'd been a database industry analyst for a decade before I found 1-gigabyte databases to write about. Now it's 15 years later, and the 1-petabyte barrier is crumbling. Specifically, we're about to see production data warehouses -- running on commercial database management systems -- that contain over 1 petabyte of actual user data. Greenplum is slated to have two of them within 60 days. Given how close it was a year ago, Teradata may have crossed the 1-petabyte mark by now too. And by the way, Yahoo already has a petabyte+ database running on a home-grown system. Meanwhile, the 100-terabyte mark is almost old hat. Besides the vendors already mentioned above, others with 100+ terabyte databases deployed include Netezza, DATAllegro, Dataupia, and even SAS. Get Daily Updates via Email Protect your computer with Windows Onecare

Firefox to get massive JavaScript performance boost

Slashdot It! Mozilla is leveraging an impressive new optimization technique to bring a big performance boost to the Firefox JavaScript engine. The code was merged today (but is not yet ready to be enabled by default in the nightly builds) and is planned for inclusion in Firefox 3.1, the next incremental update of the open-source web browser.

I discussed this new optimization strategy with Mozilla's VP of engineering Mike Shaver and Mozilla CTO Brendan Eich, the creator of JavaScript. They are concerned that sophisticated web applications are being held back by the limitations of JavaScript interpreter performance. They aim to improve execution speed so that it is comparable to that of native code. This will redefine the boundaries of client-side performance and enable the development of a whole new generation of more computationally-intensive web applications.

They are "getting ready to take JavaScript performance into the next tier" with a radically innovative optimization tactic called tracing that has already produced performance improvements ranging between 20 and 40 times faster in some cases. They believe that this is just the beginning of what can be accomplished with tracing, and they expect to be able to achieve even better speed as the work continues.

The theories behind tracing optimization were pioneered by Dr. Michael Franz and Dr. Andreas Gal, research scientists at the University of California, Irvine. The tracing mechanism records the path of execution at runtime and generates compiled code that can be used next time that a particular path is reached. This makes it possible to flatten out loops and nested method calls into a linear stream of instructions that is more conducive to conventional optimization techniques. Tracing optimization is particularly effective in dynamic languages and also has a very light memory footprint relative to alternative approaches.

Mozilla already incorporated tracing optimization into Tamarin, a next-generation JavaScript runtime engine that leverages Adobe's ActionScript virtual machine. Tamarin, however, still lacks maturity and doesn't yet deliver significant performance gains—partly because Tamarin's ActionScript heritage means that it is optimized for efficient execution of code with type annotations. Tamarin is a long-term project and won't be ready until Firefox 4.

SpiderMonkey art by Shane Lewis

To get a real-world performance increase right now, Mozilla has adapted the tracing technology and Adobe's nanojit so that they can be integrated directly into SpiderMonkey, the JavaScript interpreter that is used in Firefox 3. This has produced a massive speedup that far surpasses what is currently possible with Tamarin-tracing. In addition to empowering web developers, the optimizations will also improve the general performance of the browser itself and many extensions because many components of the program are coded with JavaScript.

Bringing more power to client-side scripting will move the web forward and create new opportunities for web developers. Eich says that Mozilla wants to "get people thinking about JavaScript as a more general-purpose language" and show them that "it really is a platform for writing full applications."

Apple has also been implementing some extremely impressive JavaScript performance improvements with its compelling SquirrelFish virtual machine engine, which will be included in Safari 4. Like Mozilla, Apple says that the current performance gains delivered by the latest optimization techniques only scratch the surface of what is possible.

JavaScript isn't just a clumsy solution for client-side form validation anymore. While the implementors are aggressively addressing JavaScript's performance limitations, the ECMAScript standards community is making progress on addressing some of the language's historical syntactic weaknesses. The addition of some rather nice Pythonic sugar in JavaScript 1.7 and 1.8 is a great start, and the recent emergence of consensus in the standards community on the future of ECMAScript lifts some of the roadblocks that had prevented those efforts from going further.

With so much forward momentum and rapid evolution, JavaScript appears capable of meeting the demand for a more robust web programming platform. As more applications shift into the cloud, these capabilities will be essential for building the future of the web.

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