IT Information and Knowledge

Good Bye Facebook

2010-07-23T16:33:00.000+07:00

What’s my big news this month? I’ve quit Facebook. There’s been a lot of talk recently about the site’s privacy policy, and the increasing amount of data that the social behemoth is trying to make publicly available.

As always, it’s geeks and tech journalists that get irate about these kind of things, while most users don’t even bat an eyelid. But that doesn’t make the current situation with Facebook OK. It’s anything but OK.

I look at Facebook like a virtual form of smoking. In isolation, each cigarette you smoke doesn’t really do your body much damage. To the contrary, you even see headlines screaming statements such as ‘Smoking found to be good for you!’ But these stories only ever focus on one small side-effect of smoking, such as the way cigarettes suppress appetite or help to prevent the onset of various dementias by bolstering receptors in the brain. The problem is – and it’s a fairly big problem – that despite these little wins, half of the people that smoke will eventually be killed by their habit.

By no means am I trying to say that Facebook will kill you – at least, I don’t think it will – but what I am trying to say is that you won’t notice the negative effects of Facebook’s increasing lack of privacy and endless obfuscation until it’s too late.

Ask yourself these questions about Facebook: Do you know what information is publicly available about you? Do you know how much of your information advertisers and third-party developers can access? Do you know the last time Facebook made arbitrary changes to its privacy policy? I don’t, and neither do most people, and that really bothers me. When I signed up to Facebook, it was under the proviso that it was a closed network, but that’s not the case any more (if it ever was). The bottom line is this: it doesn’t pay for Facebook to keep your information private – it pays for it to make it public.

If Facebook’s default was ‘Everything private, unless you state otherwise’, then I’d be more than happy, but that doesn’t look likely. So, taking all these things into account, I deleted my Facebook account about a month ago, and the very act of doing so reassured me that I was doing the right thing. Facebook makes it very difficult to find information on deleting an account, and many people only ever ‘deactivate’ them (not realising there’s a difference). Also, as you go through the process you get little messages informing you that random people in your Friends list are going to miss you, which is just creepy. Very creepy.

Despite not getting one ‘Miss you’ message after leaving – damn you, real world! – I did start to receive some interesting messages from people I knew. I got messages like ‘Facebook has made my life hell on more than one occasion, just not sure I’m as brave as you are’ and ‘You went ahead and deleted? I salute you, I’m not that brave just yet...’. Brave? I found that a really interesting adjective to use in this situation, because if I had to use one word to describe how I’ve felt since quitting Facebook, it’s ‘liberated’.

However, it’s not all plain sailing, and there is a downside to quitting Facebook; again I’m left making references to smoking. As an ex-smoker, I’m the worst kind of zealot (is there a good kind?). I’m always the first to complain about those smoking near my children and me, and I’m always on hand to offer advice on the best ways to quit. Likewise, I’m now the person eagerly telling anyone who will listen – whether it’s in the office or via a magazine column – that quitting Facebook is something you can do, and that it isn’t followed by the appearance of a giant chasm that sucks you into the bowels of the universe, where your witty updates will never be ‘Liked’ by another living soul. But hey, this kind of zealotry I can live with.

You will get a few people confused by the fact you’ve quit Facebook, and you will miss a few of those people in your Friends list, but I don’t regret my act of deletion one bit. And, if you’re really worried about people losing touch, you can do as a colleague of mine Chris Phin did, and set up a very basic new account that points to a website or Twitter account of your choosing. If people really want to get in touch, they’ll find a way, and you can rest safe in the knowledge that the various information and media you’ve shared over the years won’t be used in a way you never intended.

To find out how to liberate yourself and delete your Facebook account head to this wiki .

source: pcplus.techradar.com

Deluge: For All Your Torrent Needs

2009-07-04T19:31:00.000+07:00

Using torrents has become quite an everyday routine for most of us. Though eating up all your bandwidth in one bite, they surely can take the load off traffic-heavy servers. How? Each of us becomes a peer that "seeds" tiny bits of the download, leading to exponentially growing speed and availability. Most of the times, people associate the word "torrent" with piracy, which certainly doesn't come as a surprise, but there are a lot of other legal uses of this great technology.

But I'm not here to discuss ethics, I'm here to present you with June's application of the month: Deluge BitTorrent client. Residing in the "Internet" category, Deluge is quick to launch and provides a perfectly integrated GTK+ interface.

Besides the regular Menu items and the most used controls, Deluge's window is split into three sections: a left pane categorizing torrents to easily find what you're looking for, the bottom part showing in-depth details of the currently selected torrent and, of course, the "main" area, from where you can overview the current state of all your torrents.

Review image Adding a new torrent for Deluge to handle can be done in multiple ways. You can either choose "Add Torrent" from the interface and navigate to its location, drag & drop a torrent file from the file manager, or simply set Deluge to be the default BitTorrent client and use the trusty double-click. Whatever way you choose, the "Add Torrents" window will pop-up, letting you fine-tune the process. If there are multiple files in the torrent, you will be able to only select some of them from the "directory tree" view by checking or unchecking each file. The "Options" tab allows you to set download and upload limits, as well as the number of maximum connections permitted and whether you want to start the transfer immediately or "add it in paused state." There is also the possibility of prioritizing the first/last pieces. The "-1"s in the speed limit boxes shouldn't scare you, as they only mean that there is no set limit. You can play around with the settings as much as you like, because a handy "Revert To Defaults" button is there to help. Of course, from this same "Add Torrents" window, you can set the download location.

When opening multiple torrents at the same time, you won't be flooded with separate windows for each of them. Instead, they will appear as entries in a single window, from where you can still modify the settings per-torrent. Once you're done, click add and Deluge will begin torrenting. With your downloads in place and active, you can start changing priorities, set on-the-fly download/upload limits, pause or delete torrents. You can also easily add more trackers to improve the chances of having a large number of seeds.

If you want to quickly watch a YouTube video and need some extra speed, instead of restoring Deluge's window, you can access the tray icon menu with a right-click and pause all the torrents or set global download/upload speeds. You can either manually input specific limits, or choose from the predefined ones: 5, 10, 30, 80 and 300 KB/sec.

The full control panel can be accessed from the "Edit --> Preferences" menu. There are 10 categories: Downloads, Network, Bandwidth, Interface, Other, Daemon, Queue, Proxy, Notification and Plugins. From the first one, you can change the default download location and, more useful, set a "watched" folder, so whenever you download a torrent file from the Internet into that folder, Deluge will automatically start the transfer. Deluge also offers the possibility of moving completed downloads to a separate location. The Network tab is for advanced configuration, and, in most of the cases, you won't need to tweak these settings.

However, the stream encryption feature that "disguises" BitTorrent traffic to prevent ISPs from throttling your connection is worth mentioning. Moving on to the "Bandwidth" section, you'll be able to change the Global Bandwidth Usage Rules, such as: maximum connections, upload slots, download/upload speeds, number of maximum half-open connections and the number of maximum connection attempts. Ignoring local network limits and rate limit IP overhead are other options that can be switched on and off. Review image

There are times when you want your torrenting activities to remain hidden from curious eyes that might roam around your PC while you're away. Instead of shutting down the application altogether, you can simply minimize it to the tray and set a password, so, whenever you want to bring it back up, you'll have to provide Deluge with the password. Useful, indeed, but don't rely on it too much, as one can simply kill the process from the system monitor and start Deluge again, thus bypassing the password.

Queuing torrents and setting share ratio limits, as well as seed times and seed time ratio limits can be done from the "Queue" tab. For less than typical connection configurations, proxies can be set for Peer, Web Seed, Tracker and DHT. When a transfer finishes, you will want to know that it is complete, so Deluge offers quite a few options for that: blinking tray icon (the default behavior), pop-up or play a sound you choose. If you're away from home, you can also configure Deluge to send an email notification. Nice!

Deluge can also be extended with a few plugins: Blocklist, Label, FlexRSS, RemoteNotify (for extended notification capabilities) and Autoport. Moreover, as an optional package, Deluge comes with a Web interface.

Here's a quick look at Deluge's most important features:

· Web User Interface;

· BitTorrent Encryption;

· Mainline DHT;

· Local Peer Discovery;

· FAST protocol extension;

· UPnP and NAT-PMP;

· Proxy support;
Review image · Private torrents;

· Per-torrent speed limits;

· Password protection;

· Useful tray icon;

· Helpful notifications;

· Light on resources;

· Support for many distributions.

How do I install it?

If you don't find Deluge in your distribution's repositories, or want the latest version (currently 1.9), the Deluge team offers packages for a lot of Linux operating systems: Slackware, Ubuntu, Gentoo, Foresight, Fedora, OpenSUSE, Arch, Debian and PLD-Linux. Of course, you can always choose to download the source code and compile it yourself. Ubuntu users can also add the PPA in the software sources database and thus receive updates as they are made available. Whatever way you choose, you can download Deluge right now from Softpedia.

Deluge is, surely, one of the greatest solutions for managing torrents. It can perfectly be used as it is, without changing any of the default settings, but it can also be tweaked to maximize its performance in different network setups. It has a great interface, a lot of useful features and is light on resource consumption.

source: sofpedia.com

Lenovo Updates Pricing On Consumer Desktop, Laptops

2009-04-07T09:39:00.000+07:00

Lenovo on Friday updated pricing for a consumer desktop, a netbook, and laptops introduced at the International Consumer Electronics Show in January.

The IdeaCentre A600 entertainment desktop; the IdeaPad Y650, Y550, and Y450 laptops; and the S10 netbook are scheduled to be on store shelves and available online this month across the United States, the computer maker said. The retail outlets expected to carry the new systems include Lenovo.com, Amazon (NSDQ: AMZN).com, TigerDirect.com, Fry's, and Newegg.com.
The final manufacturer suggested retail prices are $999 for the A600; $800 for the Y650, Y550 and Y450; and $349 for the S10.

The A600 is an all-in-one desktop system with a 21.5-inch high-definition display. The PC is powered by an Intel (NSDQ: INTC) Core 2 Duo processor and ships with Advanced Micro Devices (NYSE: AMD)' ATI Mobility Radeon graphics card. The system also has a wireless keyboard and mouse.

The Y650 laptop is one of Lenovo's thinnest and lightest 16-inch laptops, measuring 1 inch thick at its thinnest point and weighing 5.6 pounds. The Y550 and Y450 are of the same product line and have similar designs. The Y550 has a 15.6-inch screen and the Y450 a 14-inch display. The Y series is powered by an Intel Core 2 Duo processor and is available with up to 500 GB of hard drive storage and 4 GB of DDR3 system memory.

Finally, the S10 is a mini-laptop with a 10-inch display. The system is 0.9 of an inch thick and weighs 2.4 pounds. Lenovo says the low-priced S10 is built for people looking for an ultraportable PC for light computing, such as e-mail and browsing the Web.

source: informationweek.com

AT&T, Labor Talks Continue As Strike Threat Looms

2009-04-07T09:37:00.000+07:00

AT&T (NYSE: T) continued to negotiate with union members whose contracts expired over the weekend as the company focused on several issues, including how to protect the job security.

The two sides are also trying to hammer out agreements related to the status of worker positions being lost because of the shift of subscribers from landlines to wireless.

Although AT&T -- the largest telecom company in the United States -- has nearly 300,000 employees, just 15,000 workers in one unit represented by the Communications Workers of America are at the center of attention in the negotiations. The workers have agreed to work on past the expiration of the contract. The union members already have approved a strike vote.
"AT&T stands ready to negotiate at any time in a continuing effort to reach an agreement," AT&T said in a statement.

In a reply, the CWA said: "This company takes care of executives and investors. It needs to set the right priorities and maintain quality jobs and quality benefits for workers."

Many of the issues at stake in the negotiations are similar to bones of contention at other telecommunications companies and even in other industries. For instance, the two sides have been trying to resolve issues over health care payments, which have been rising sharply in recent years.

Another major issue involves the fate of workers who are faced with losing their jobs as consumers increasingly drop landlines in favor of wireless phone service. According to media reports, the two sides have been exploring ways by which workers dropped from landline service rolls will be able to pick up employment in AT&T's wireless operation or in its growing cable programming unit. Earlier, AT&T said it plans to cut 12,000 jobs this year.

2009 marks the 12th year that InformationWeek will be monitoring changes in security practices through our annual research survey. All who complete the survey and provide their contact information will be entered into our prize drawing for a 46-inchSony (NYSE: SNE) Bravia V Series LCD flat-panel HDTV, valued at $1,800. Find out more, and take part by April 26.

source: informationweek.com

Facebook Quick Tip: Managing The Redesign

2009-04-07T09:33:00.000+07:00

With the advent of Facebook's design changes a couple of weeks ago, the News Feed suddenly got to be much more crowded and busier, filled with random comments and observations, links, conversations, photos, and other minutiae.
Some of us are noisier than others. Indeed, this article might also be headlined "how to get Mitch Wagner to shut up," because I am most definitely part of the problem. I just love to share on Facebook. How do you get blabbermouths like me to shut up and stop bothering you?
Well, you can un-friend them of course. I've done that with a few people who are active on Facebook, and whom I barely know. But un-friending people has consequences. As obnoxious as your cousin's political links might be, un-friending him could be awkward at the next family Bar Mitzvah.

Fortunately, there's a way to get rid of obnoxious people's updates without un-friending them -- and it's actually pretty simple.

3 Easy Steps To Silence

1. Just look for one of their updates in your news feed, and hover your mouse over it. You'll see the word "Hide" appear in the top-right corner of the update.

2. Click on the word "Hide." You'll see a couple of dropdown selections; one of them the word "Hide" followed by the name of the user -- if you're hiding me, it would say "Hide Mitch." If the noisy user posted using a third-party application, you also get a choice to hide that application.

3. Click on your choice, and you're done.

Remember, the word "Hide" won't show up unless you hover your mouse over an update posted by the person you want to hide.

So, go ahead, hide news items on Facebook from over-sharing motormouths, and enjoy the blessed silence.

Facebook spokeswoman Meredith Chin (who has wisely chosen to ignore my recent friend request) shares some additional tips.
"You can add [people you hide] back to your stream at any time by going to the bottom of the page and clicking on 'Edit Options' and then 'Add to News Feed' beside their names.

"In addition, you can create a special Friend List of the people you care about the most. That Friend List will appear on the left hand navigation menu giving you the ability to filter your stream by those friends and see only their updates. If you want that list to be the default every time you go to your home page, you can drag that list above the 'News Feed' filter. Whatever filter is at the top will be your default view."

She noted that Facebook is constantly tweaking its user interface, so what you see on your screen might be slightly different from what's described in these instructions and shown in the accompanying image gallery. But it should be close enough -- until Facebook does another radical redesign, that is.

Keep Your Friends Separate

And now, here's how to create a Friend List:

1. Click "Friends" on the blue horizontal bar at the very top of your Facebook page. Select "All Friends" from the dropdown.

2. Select an existing Friend List from the vertical sidebar on the left side of the page, or click the blue "Make a New List" button and create a new list.

3. Look for the text box near the top of the center column, labeled "Add to list." Start typing a friend's name in that box and then when the correct friend's name comes up on the list below the box, select that name by clicking it or hitting "Enter" on your keyboard. Alternately, you can click the "Select Multiple Friends" button, and see a list of all your friends, and click on the ones you want to include in your list.

I've created one list so far, called "Fav" for people who are actually my friends and family in real life.

New communications technology requires new forms of etiquette. When answering machines became popular, people argued about whether it was polite to screen calls. People argued over Caller ID. Now, we're starting to see arguments about appropriate of social media like Facebook.

I think in the future we'll see a consensus that you're not required to subscribe to your friends' Twitter feeds, or Facebook news, or blogs. That's what I already tell people who complain about my social media garrulousness, I say, "I realize my style isn't for everyone -- if you want to un-friend me, I won't be offended."

How do you handle people who talk too much on social media? Or are you the one who talks too much -- how do you handle complaints? Let us know.

PC Failures, PC Fixes: Troubleshooting Mysterious Problems (Last)

2009-04-07T09:00:00.000+07:00

Problems with video cards can show up for reasons that have nothing to do with gaming. On a system that shipped with a 375 watt power supply (low end, to be sure), I added a second display and within barely a week was experiencing all of the above symptoms in various combinations.

I shied away from upgrading the power supply -- which would have been a major hassle -- and sought other solutions. As it turned out, the software control suite for the video card (an ATI Radeon HD 4650) allowed the user to manually override the GPU and memory clock speeds, as well as the fan speed. I set all of these to the lowest possible settings (see the illustration), reattached the second display, and haven't had a problem since.
I should point out that other devices, such as hard drives and optical drives, typically don't draw all that much power. Removing them as a power-saving measure (as opposed to debugging, as described above) gives you back very little.

Stress-test

One common reason for random failure is issues with memory -- a bad memory module can appear even on the most high-end machines. The best way to determine if there's a memory issue with a given machine is to test it, rigorously and repeatedly. Vista has its own memory test application, but you can also download and run a program like Memtest86+ (http://www.memtest.org/), which sports a slightly broader set of test parameters.

The best way to run a memory test is to set it up and let it run overnight: not just one pass, but continuously, for hours on end. If the test program detects an error -- or, worse, if the machine locks up solid -- there's a good chance one of the DIMMs is defective. Sometimes mismatched DIMMs can cause problems; try pulling one and then the other, and see if things go south on you then.
Get Everything Up-To-Date

This means more than running Windows Update. Your PC manufacturer may have updates not offered through Microsoft (NSDQ: MSFT) -- BIOS patches, for instance, or device drivers not provided in the default Windows installation. Fortunately it's become that much easier to find these things and keep them current --Sony (NYSE: SNE) and Dell (Dell), for instance, both have applications that bring you directly to the relevant web page for your system. BIOS updates often go by undetected, both because they're generally not delivered automatically and because many people are still twitchy about applying BIOS updates. They shouldn't be: in the past, updating BIOS typically required booting a DOS disk or something similar, but today the vast majority of such updates can be done from within Windows, quite safely.

Have Patience

The single most important thing -- and the one hardest to remember for many people -- is to be patient and diligent. It's easy to succumb to the temptation to pitch the whole thing out the window and start anew, but that's also an expensive solution -- and brings with it the risk that you'll end up no better off than you were before. Solve a problem like this on your own (or with a little guru oversight), and you'll be that much better equipped to tackle something like this the next time it shows up.

PC Failures, PC Fixes: Troubleshooting Mysterious Problems (3)

2009-04-07T08:52:00.001+07:00

When you run AutoRuns (remember to run it in admin mode!), use the Options | Hide Signed Microsoft (NSDQ: MSFT) Entries menu option to show only files have been provided by other companies, which are more likely to be the problem. Pay specific attention to the entries in the Drivers and Services tabs, but a once-over in the Everything tab wouldn't be a bad idea if you're patient.

Another good way to get a complete summary of kernel-level objects is through Gabriel Topala's outstanding SIW utility, easily one of the best general-purpose system-information tools out there. The program can generate in stupefying detail, reports about a system's makeup, including kernel device drivers.
Run the program (again, in admin mode), look in Software | Drivers and sort by the "Type" column, then scroll down to "Kernel Drivers" (with "Running" in the Status column) to see a full rundown of what's currently running as a kernel driver. Right-click on any of those entries to change their running status -- but be very careful what you turn off here, as you could bring your system to a screeching halt if you're careless.

So how do you know what's needed and what's not? This part may require some research on your part, since it isn't always obvious. If you have a guru handy, dump the list out to a file (SIW lets you do this), send it his (or her) way, and have him (or her) peek at it. If your guru can't figure out what a given kernel driver is for, or feels it's creating more trouble than anything else, nix it.
Be Mindful Of Power Issues When Debugging

Electrical problems can be some of the toughest to diagnose because they don't seem to be related to anything happening on the PC itself. They just strike like, well, lightning.

I mentioned before, in passing, that electrical problems can take two forms. One is the power supplied to the PC itself, and if you live in an area with glitchy power you already know about this first-hand. I live on an island in the Atlantic Ocean, where even on less windy days the power to my house is fairly dirty. Consequently, UPSes for each computer and its associated peripherals are mandatory. I should also note that a UPS's power load should be distributed intelligently: don't plug laser printers, for instance, into the battery-backup sockets of a UPS, since there's little reason to give them power protection.

The second form is the power supplied within the PC itself -- the power that the PC's power supply distributes internally. Few people reading this need to be convinced of the wildly varying quality of computer power supplies. Anyone stuck with a low-wattage, no-name or third-tier power supply in their PC automatically has a good reason to drop a few dollars and upgrade to something a little more robust. 500 watts or more is a good margin of safety for most desktop PCs.

Also, be mindful of a common PC component with potentially high electrical consumption that can be a hidden source of problems: the video card. A gaming-quality video card can use up enough juice by itself to count as a compelling argument to upgrade the power supply. Problems with video card power draw can manifest in three ways: BSODs, hard freezes, and (most commonly) that frustratingly inconclusive "Video driver stopped responding and has been restarted" message. That error has caused no end of people to tear their hair out because it doesn't tell you why that happened.

PC Failures, PC Fixes: Troubleshooting Mysterious Problems (2)

2009-04-07T08:32:00.000+07:00

We've become used to the idea that the modern PC can give us reasonably detailed information about what might be wrong when things go afoul. That hasn't made end-user detective work obsolete -- if anything, it's made it all the more valuable, since the user now has to diagnose what on the face of it might seem like something wholly undiagnosable. It's not -- it just requires a bit more tenacity and patience than normal.
Remove Or Disable Everything That's Physically Unnecessary

This is a textbook troubleshooting technique, but many people are loath to go to the lengths they need to make it thoroughly effective. A mouse, keyboard, display, and maybe a network connection are all you need to get things going -- and sometimes you can do without the network connection as well. If you have an extra display, unplug it, too -- a second display can be problematic for reasons I'll go into later.

It might able to be useful to go into the system BIOS and disable devices that are not in use if you have the option to do so. Examples: onboard audio or networking, unused bus controllers (e.g., FireWire), or devices that are enabled but never actually used.

Clean Up And Look Around

Now would be as good a time as any to break out the Q-tips and vacuum cleaner. Open up the PC and look around -- sometimes the problem may be something grossly physical that wouldn't come to your attention when the lid is on. Loose or severely bent cabling (especially for hard drives), dust clogs on fans or heat-exchange apparatus, and bulging capacitors should all be considered signs of trouble. This is another reason to run with as little hardware as possible: the less you have inside the system as well, the easier it is to spot problems like this.

Turn Off Unneeded Kernel-level Objects

Aside from hardware, disable any non-Microsoft drivers or components that aren't absolutely essential. One powerful tool that can be used to this end is Sysinternals's AutoRuns, a program that's something of a big brother to Microsoft's own MSCONFIG. AutoRuns covers a great deal more territory than MSCONFIG, and like that program, anything disabled through it can be re-enabled later on without a great deal of hassle; its effects are totally reversible and nondestructive.

PC Failures, PC Fixes: Troubleshooting Mysterious Problems (1)

2009-04-07T08:00:00.000+07:00

Has there ever been a truly trouble-free PC? We've gotten a lot closer to it in recent years, thanks to better diagnostics and improved software and hardware engineering -- but sometimes, every now and then, things fall apart and the center cannot hold in a big country way.

The worst problems of all are the ones that come without warning, maybe also striking again and again without warning, and leave little or nothing for you to analyze when they're done. That's when you need to call in a PC version of Gregory House, Fox TV's caustic but brilliant medical mastermind, or play a version of the role yourself, whittling down possible causes until the patient recovers. Or doesn't.
The good news is that you don't have to put up with them. Over time I've built up a repository of insights and strategies for dealing with these kinds of difficult-to-trace failures. They take time and effort to track down, but the effort is well-spent.

Note that most of the discussion here is aimed at a Windows-centric audience, but many of the same concepts apply to Linux or other OS users, too -- especially tips about hardware.

Types Of Failure

Most of the time, when something goes wrong, there's at least an error message or a warning of some kind, like the infamous Blue Screen of Death, to steer us in the right direction. This piece, though, deals with failures that have no warning at all -- no BSOD, no errors, nothing. The system may hang completely, reboot spontaneously, or even shut itself off without warning.

If there's no BSOD, then the system has been -- to use a euphemism employed by another of industry colleagues -- "mugged," meaning whatever happened was outside the realm of the operating system's ability to cope with it. Such things generally fall into a few basic categories: hardware failures, electrical problems, and untrappable OS issues.

Hardware Failures are anything from a component going bad to memory failing to a device being mistakenly disconnected. A fair number of hardware failures are "trappable," meaning the OS can anticipate disasters of that variety and warn the user about what went wrong (via a BSOD). But not everything can be trapped in this fashion, simply because there's no way to anticipate it.

Electrical Problems might normally be filed under hardware failures, but I'm breaking them out as a category of their own for a few reasons. For one, electrical problems can come from outside the PC entirely (a frayed power cable, a bad socket, a dying UPS battery) or from within it (a failing system power supply, a faulty soft switch). Also, they can typically be fixed without affecting the rest of the PC or its hardware.

Next iPhone May Feature Better Camera, Video Editing, 802.11n (2)

2009-04-07T07:54:00.000+07:00

Over the weekend, AppleInsider reported that the beta iPhone 3.0 SDK includes a resource file that lists support for a new Broadcom chip in Apple's third-generation iPod Touch, making the improved wireless chip likely to be included in the next iPhone, too.

The Broadcom BCM4329 supports 802.11n wireless networking, unlike its predecessor, which was limited to 802.11a/b/g. As observed on 9 To 5 Mac, this chip also includes FM reception and transmission, in contrast to the previous model, which only allowed FM reception.
Austrian Apple blog Benm.at, meanwhile, claims that the beta version of the iPhone 3.0 software includes references to a video editing application.

If Apple is indeed planning to add a video-capable camera to its iPhone -- which it must if it wants to keep up with the capabilities of competing mobile phones -- then it would make sense to include an application to handle basic in-phone video editing.

Last month, Apple made the 3.0 beta version of its iPhone SDK and iPhone software available for registered developers to download.

The software provides several expected and desired functions, such as copy and paste, MMS, and push notifications. And the iPhone 3.0 beta SDK gives developers more than 1,000 new application programming interfaces to create new applications.

Source: informationweek.com

Next iPhone May Feature Better Camera, Video Editing, 802.11n (1)

2009-04-07T07:50:00.000+07:00

An upcoming iPhone model may feature a new camera, a faster networking chip that both receives and transmits FM signals, and video editing capabilities, according to information buried in various online documents.

Though Apple has made no specific announcements about future iPhone releases, the company is widely expected to introduce at least one new iPhone model by June.
This would coincide with Apple's Worldwide Developer Conference, with the anticipated release of its iPhone 3.0 software, and with the expiration of the two-yearAT&T (NYSE: T) service contracts signed by iPhone early adopters following the original iPhone's release in June 2007.
Apple news site DigiTimes in Taiwan claims that Apple has contracted with OmniVision for 3.2-megapixel CMOS image sensors that will be included in Apple's next iPhone. Adding credence to that claim is a report from AppleInsider that the next iPhone will feature video capabilities.
What's more, as reported by InformationWeek's Alexander Wolfe, Apple in January filed a patent application describing a technique for videoconferencing on a mobile device.

In its current form factor, the iPhone would make a poor videoconferencing device because the camera is on the back of the iPhone while the screen is on the front, making it impossible to be recorded and view incoming video simultaneously.

Adding further weight to speculation about future iPhone video capabilities, AppleiPhoneApps.com on Monday reported that Apple's iPhone engineering group is seeking to hire "a Camera Engineering Project Manager (EPM) to drive the design, development, and integration of camera modules across iPhone and iPod."

The iPod Touch does not currently include a digital camera.

Kido (aka Conficker, Downadup)

2009-04-07T07:42:00.000+07:00

What is Kido?

Kido (aka Conficker or Downadup) was first detected in November 2008 as a worm which spreads across local networks and removable storage media. The latest generation of Kido is unable to spread by itself, but like earlier variants, it can update itself by downloading additional code.

Kido has created a powerful botnet of infected machines. It was programmed to update itself on 1st April 2009, and the latest generation of this program is designed to generate 50,000 domain names according to a random algorithm, and then choose 500 of these domains which it can potentially contact to update itself. Kido uses very sophisticated technology. It downloads updates from constantly changing online resources; uses P2P networks as an additional source of downloads; uses strong encryption to prevent interference with its command and control center; and prevents antivirus products from receiving updates.
It remains unclear why the Kido botnet has been created, and how it may be used in the future.
Why is Kido a threat?

The huge botnet formed by computers infected by Kido potentially provides cybercriminals with the means to conduct mass DDoS attacks on any Internet resource, to steal confidential data from infected computers and to distribute unsolicited content (e.g. mass spam mailings). It is believed that around five to six million computers around the world are infected by Kido.

Kido initially spread via local networks and removable storage devices. Specifically, it exploited the critical MS08-067 vulnerability patched by Microsoft back in October 2008. However, it’s believed that a significant number of PCs had not been patched by January 2009 when the spread of Kido reached a peak.

More detailed information on how Kido penetrates computers can be found here:

* http://www.viruslist.com/en/viruses/encyclopedia?virusid=21782725
* http://www.viruslist.com/en/viruses/encyclopedia?virusid=21782733
* http://www.viruslist.com/en/viruses/encyclopedia?virusid=21782749
* http://www.viruslist.com/en/viruses/encyclopedia?virusid=21782790

How can I prevent a Kido infection?

Kaspersky Lab products can protect systems from infection by all variants of Kido. Ensure you have enabled automatic product update (enabled by default) and conduct a full system scan. Although Kaspersky Internet Security protects unpatched computers from infection, you should still check that you have installed all the latest Windows security updates (especially MS08-067).
How do I know if my PC is infected?

If there are any infected computers on your LAN, the volume of network traffic will increase due to a network attack conducted by infected computers. Antivirus applications with an enabled firewall will report an Intrusion.Win.NETAPI.buffer-overflow.exploit attack.

If you suspect that your computer is infected, try to open your browser and navigate to your favorite search engine. If the page opens, try to open www.kaspersky.com or www.microsoft.com – if the page does not open, then the site has probably been blocked by a malicious program. The full list of resources blocked by Kido can be found here.
I am a LAN administrator. How can I contain and disinfect a Kido infection?

You can remove Kido with the help of a dedicated utility, KKiller.exe. To prevent workstations and network servers from becoming infected you should:

* Install patches for the MS08-067, MS08-068 and MS09-001 vulnerabilities.
* Make sure you have a strong administrator password – it should have a minimum of six characters, including upper case, lower case, numbers and non alphanumeric characters. Disable autorun for all removable media. Disable Task Scheduler.

If you are using KKiller.exe to remove Kido, you should run this application manually on all infected PCs.
How can I remove Kido if I am a home user?

Download KKiller_v3.4.1.zip and unpack it to a separate folder on the infected PC. Run KKiller.exe. When the scan is finished, a command line window may still be open; simply press any key to close it.

If you are running KKiller.exe on a computer which has Agnitum Outpost Firewall installed, you should reboot the computer once the KKiller utility has finished running.

Recommendations for removing Kido are also available on the Kaspersky Lab technical support site.

Comcast To Offer WiMax Service

2009-03-18T20:33:00.000+07:00

Comcast plans to launch a mobile Internet service in Portland, Ore., by the middle of this year by reselling Clearwire's WiMax service, the company said this week.

The cable company's chief operating officer Stephen Burke told The Oregonian it would purchase the mobile broadband service wholesale, and likely bundle it along with its cable, home phone, and residential Internet services.

WiMax is the next generation of mobile broadband service, and it offers users a theoretical 75 Mbps on the go. While the real-life speeds aren't as high, it does have higher mobile connectivity than existing options.

Comcast, along with Intel, Google, and Sprint, have invested in Clearwire, but the cable company is a potential competitor with the WiMax operator. Both will soon offer a high-speed home Internet connection as well as a mobile connectivity option. Clearwire charges about $70 for monthly Internet access at home and on the go, but it's unclear how much Comcast's service will cost.

Clearwire, which is still struggling to post a profit, recently announced a rollout plan for a national WiMax network that would cover 120 million people by the end of 2010. The company is hoping to press its time-to-market advantage before 4G networks based on Long Term Evolution technology are deployed.

Most of the major mobile operators have chosen LTE for its 4G network due to its higher theoretical speeds, and compatibility with existing network infrastructure. Verizon Wireless has already announced its aggressive LTE deployment plans, and it's aiming to cover 25 to 30 markets by the end of next year.

LTE Vs. WiMax won't be the typical winner-take-all showdown. Learn what each brings to the race (registration required).

VeriSign Sells Mobile Messaging Unit

2009-02-06T19:42:00.000+07:00

VeriSign continues to streamline its operations and has sold its European mobile messaging business to Sinon Invest Holding for an undisclosed amount.

VeriSign had purchased the mobile messaging company in 2006 from 3united Mobile Solutions for more than $65 million. The messaging business employs about 100 people, and it has been rebranding into Mobile Messaging Solutions, or MMS. The company said it will continue to work on mobile commerce, SMS, and mobile content products.

There also will be a strategic shift to target new markets, executives said. The messaging company has a strong footprint in Austria, but it will expand its presence to Central and Eastern Europe, Asia, and Africa. The company also will continue to target large communications and media companies, but there will be a stronger push to service smaller players.

"We will shortly be launching some special mobile applications to the market that will also appeal to smaller companies which previously had no access to the possibilities of mobile marketing and its adaption to consumers for reasons linked to costs or know-how," said Harald Weinberger, the CTO of MMS, in a statement.

This is the latest move by VeriSign to sell off its noncore assets, as the company said it wants to focus on its core businesses of Internet infrastructure, domain registry, online security, and identity protection. Last October, the company sold its remaining share of the mobile content company Jamba/Jamster to News Corp. for $200 million, and it's in the process of selling as many as 12 noncore divisions.

But that doesn't mean VeriSign won't be active with acquisitions if the right opportunity presents itself, as the company recently purchased security specialist Certicom for about $72 million.

Find out what else is happening in the mobile messaging space with an independent analysis from InformationWeek. Download the report (registration required).

source: informationweek

Microsoft Argues UAC Isn't A Vulnerability

2009-02-06T19:40:00.001+07:00

One of the criticisms of the User Account Control under Windows Vista is that its warning prompts are annoying.
Microsoft on Thursday moved to clarify what it characterized as "misconceptions" about its Windows User Account Control, a security feature introduced in Windows Vista to control the privilege level at which software can operate.

Last month, Microsoft published a blog post explaining changes to the way UAC will work under Windows 7. It said the company's forthcoming operating system would have fewer UAC warning prompts and offer users greater control over UAC.
One of the criticisms of UAC under Windows Vista is that its warning prompts are annoying.

In the past week, Windows bloggers Rafael Rivera and Long Zheng have published several posts claiming that UAC is flawed because the effort to make UAC less annoying makes it more vulnerable to being disabled by malware.

On Thursday, Microsoft's Jon DeVaan, senior VP of the Windows Core Operating System Division, published a blog post to address UAC's detractors.

"The first issue to untangle is about the difference between malware making it onto a PC and being run, versus what it can do once it is running," he said. "There has been no report of a way for malware to make it onto a PC without consent. All of the feedback so far concerns the behavior of UAC once malware has found its way onto the PC and is running. Microsoft's position that the reports about UAC do not constitute a vulnerability is because the reports have not shown a way for malware to get onto the machine in the first place without express consent."

DeVaan also tried to convey that UAC under Windows 7 will be more functional than under Vista because it will offer users more settings. In Vista, he said, there were only two choices: never being notified and always being notified. To avoid the annoyance of constant notification, Windows users couldn't dial down the volume; they had to set UAC to never notify them about system changes. And this prevented UAC from informing users about risks.

Because UAC in Windows 7 includes four notification options, DeVaan expects it will prove more functional.

DeVaan concludes his post with a plea for understanding. "While we cannot implement features the way each and every one of you might wish, we are listening and making a sincere effort to properly weigh all points of view," he said. "Our goal is to create a useful, usable, and secure Windows for all types of people."

source: informationweek

Ubuntu Gaining Corporate Credibility, Canonical Survey Finds

2009-02-06T19:38:00.000+07:00

Ubuntu appears to be gaining greater acceptance among both smaller and larger businesses as a growing number of IT shops are deploying the open source operating system as part of mission-critical applications.

In a joint survey conducted by Canonical, caretakers of Ubuntu, and market researcher RedMonk, approximately 7,000 respondents said they were using the server-based version of the operating system in many mission-critical applications involving the Web, databases, and mail.

Stephen O'Grady, principal analyst with RedMonk, said he wasn't particularly surprised that Ubuntu was gaining credibility among business users.

What was unexpected was the wide range of workloads it has become an integral part of.

Ubuntu "is far from being relegated to a niche role. The distribution is now being leveraged for a variety of enterprise tasks going all the way from the mundane to the critical," O'Grady said.

What has made the server-based version of Ubuntu more appealing to a wider range of business users, according to O'Grady and Ubuntu officials, is a broader mix of standard open source components and more widely popular components than its archrivals Red Hat and Novell. The fact Canonical has focused on making the installation of these components easier hasn't hurt either.

"I think we have pulled together some of the best components that are available out there and have worked on making them easier to install. Our goal is to have business embrace the best of open source at the core of their businesses while also having their choice of proprietary applications that can run on top of it," said Steve George, Canonical's director of corporate services.

While Red Hat and Novell remain the market-share leaders among server-based open source distributors, O'Grady believes Ubuntu is beginning to establish significant mindshare among users. He said the company will look to further strengthen its server-based offering sometime this spring, when it's expected to deliver an updated version, code-named Jaunty Jackalope, which will feature support for virtualization technologies.

source: informationweek

Google Latitude Spurs Privacy Backlash

2009-02-06T19:36:00.000+07:00

Google's new Latitude location-sharing service "could be a gift to stalkers, prying employers, jealous partners, and obsessive friends," Privacy International warned Thursday.

Google introduced Latitude on Wednesday. It's a new Google Maps feature that lets users share location data with friends, using either a mobile phone or Google Gears-equipped computer.

Google knows well that it has a privacy problem, exemplified by its quixotic campaign last summer to avoid adding a link on its home page to its privacy policy. It uses sensitive data to make its products better and to figure out how to personalize ads and search. Too much privacy threatens Google's business model.
Its competitors know this, too, which is why Microsoft and Yahoo have been engaged in a game of data-retention one-upmanship.

To dispel anticipated privacy concerns, Vic Gundotra, VP of engineering on Google's mobile team, tried to reassure potential Latitude users that Google designed the service so that users are in control. "Fun aside, we recognize the sensitivity of location data, so we've built fine-grained privacy controls right into the application," he said. "Everything about Latitude is opt-in. You not only control exactly who gets to see your location, but you also decide the location that they see."

Nonetheless, Privacy International said it had identified "a major security flaw in Google's global phone tracking system." The group's choice of such sinister terminology -- "phone tracking" sounds scarier than "location sharing" -- to describe Latitude hints at its history of antagonism with Google. In 2007, Simon Davies, director of the organization, wrote an open letter to Google CEO Eric Schmidt accusing the company of spreading rumors that the group was in the pocket of Microsoft and demanding an apology.

In the letter, Davies denies that Privacy International has a vested interest in attacking Google and says that the group has been critical of Microsoft, Amazon.com, and eBay, too. He speculates that Google's disparagement of his organization arose from its poor ranking in the group's 2007 Internet privacy survey.

Privacy International concedes that Google had made some effort to address privacy concerns. But it considers these safeguards useless "if Latitude could be enabled by a second party without a user's knowledge or consent."

As the organization puts it, the "danger arises when a second party can gain physical access to a user's phone and enable Latitude without the owner's knowledge."

Broadcom Adds Wireless Drivers To Android

2009-02-06T13:31:00.000+07:00

Broadcom said Thursday it has included software to control its wireless combo chips in the standard Android platform.

Many smartphones have Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, and FM capabilities, but some still use separate chips to utilize these technologies. Broadcom has the largest portfolio of wireless chips that combine the three technologies on a single silicon die.

Integrating drivers for its chips directly into the Android platform should make it easier for handset manufacturers to have devices that feature strong multimedia and data applications.
The move also will give Broadcom an advantage over its rivals, as it could save cell phone manufacturers on integration costs.

"Two of the most exciting trends in the handset industry are the growing popularity of Android and the transition to combo chips for connectivity," said Chris Bergey, director of Broadcom's embedded WLAN line of business, in a statement. "As a founding member of the Open Handset Alliance, we are committed to advancing the Android platform by contributing our software and facilitating greater access to our combination chips in the open source community. We expect a plethora of products and applications to evolve from the connected Android platform in the not-so-distant future."

Future Android handsets could benefit from this move from a design perspective as well. While the T-Mobile G1 has been relatively well-received, many said the somewhat-chunky exterior wasn't very appealing. By using combo chips, cell phone manufacturers could create sleeker Android handsets that may appeal to the casual consumer.

While the G1 is the only Android-powered handset available now, there will be a plethora of smartphones utilizing Google's mobile operating system by the end of the year. Samsung, Motorola, Sony Ericsson, and HTC are all expected to release multiple devices on various carriers this year.

For enterprises, keeping mobile devices functioning without interruption and giving customers the service they expect are paramount. InformationWeek has published five important steps on this topic. Download the report here (registration required).

Fixing Linux: What's Broken And What To Do About It

2009-02-06T13:20:00.000+07:00

Despite the fact that it's been around since 1991, Linux remains a work in progress. It's not perfect, nor does anyone pretend it is. The places where it needs the most immediate improvement are also a matter of debate: what's crucially important to some is only marginally important to others.

Still, there's no question that there are key areas where Linux is lacking -- not just missing individual features, but things that are actively dysfunctional and which need immediate attention. I'm going to run down several major areas where Linux, as an operating system and as a platform, needs work.
The software that goes into a Linux distribution is dealt with in chunks called "packages" -- whole applications, support libraries for apps, programmer's tools, and so on. Firefox and OpenOffice.org, for instance, are present in most every Linux distribution's software repository as package sets.

Package Management

The way packages are managed within any individual distribution is entirely up to the maintainers of that distribution. Red Hat (NYSE: RHT) uses its own RPM system, the Debian distributions have their own .DEB format; and so on. Within the context of any one distribution, this isn't a problem: if you're using only Red Hat or Debian, odds are you obtain the software you need from that distribution's repository and are done with it.

This is one of the many fragmentation problems that makes it difficult for commercial software vendors to offer their products for Linux. No one package format will do the trick across distributions -- not without hassle, anyway.

To that end, potential program vendors have three choices: 1) devote time and effort -- and money -- to ensuring that their program installs, runs, and stays cohesive on a variety of distributions (maybe just Red Hat, Ubuntu, and SUSE to keep things simple); 2) make their programs available in a given distro's repositories; or 3) provide source-code packages so that the user can compile the code on any target platform.

Option #3 is pretty much out of the question for any proprietary software vendor. #1 multiplies the amount of work involved to get any given program out the door -- not to a degree that makes it wholly unfeasible, but it does add more work. That leaves #2, which has the advantage of making applications immediately available to the user of any given distribution, and cuts down on the amount of work needed by an end user to get something installed.

Because the demand for commercial apps on Linux is relatively slender right now, the problem isn't as pronounced: most people just get their offerings from their local repository. In the long run, though, if commercial apps take root on Linux, it will become that much bigger an obstacle to making Linux a platform for same, especially where downloading apps freely from the Web is concerned.

source: informationweek

HP Blurs Data Center Lines With Server/Switch

2009-02-05T16:07:00.000+07:00

Hewlett-Packard today released an embedded server blade that fits into higher-end ProCurve switches and a combined virtualization and network management technology. The new products blur the lines among the roles various vendors and devices play in the data center.

The server blade, the Open Network Ecosystem Services zl Module, is HP's answer to Cisco's Application Extension platform, which can run Cisco or third-party Linux apps on Cisco Integrated Services routers. ONE's initial apps include a co-developed Microsoft/HP network security and identity server, MacAfee network security, Avaya unified communications, F5 application acceleration, and Riverbed WAN optimization.

The program is open, meaning that anyone who wants to run an app on the services module (whatever the operating system) can do so. "ProCurve ONE is all about removing complexity," Matt Zanner, worldwide director of data center networking for HP ProCurve, said in an interview. "If the customer is interested in tying apps closer to the network infrastructure, they shouldn't be limited by whatever the vendor is offering or by the limited scope of the network provider's given partner program."

HP's been successful with low-end switches against Cisco in recent years, but its success here is predicated on HP's formidable data center sales team being able to sell IT managers on its higher-end switches partially by playing up HP's server expertise. HP may soon come up against another move by Cisco, which is expected to soon announce its own new server, code-named California, but HP hopes to push the envelope, too. "There's a lot of work going on between ProCurve and the other businesses within [HP's technology systems group] to make sure HP as a whole can deliver better, faster, stronger, more integrated solutions over time," Zanner said.

The ONE module isn't simply a repackaged HP server blade, but HP did leverage server components and expertise to build it. It includes an Intel Core 2 Duo chipset, 4 GB of memory, and a 250-GB hard drive. Future plans include introducing virtualization, new form factors, and closer coupling with management. The ONE module lists at $5,995 and fits into ProCurve's 5400zl and 8200-series switches.

HP's also announcing ProCurve Data Center Connection Manager, which automatically provisions network and server resources based on policies and helps data center managers and network managers work together on the deployment of networked computing resources. It's a smaller subset of some of the data center automation tools found in HP's Opsware products.

Data Center Connection Manager helps automate some of these policies and procedures that would typically be handled manually and separately by network and server admins through features like a digital inventory of defined network connections and the policies associated with those connections. "It ties together provisioning and managing," Zanner said. DCCM will be available in April.

source: informationweek

Google Claims Data Center Energy Savings

2009-02-05T16:02:00.000+07:00

Thanks to cool weather and ongoing efforts to optimize its data centers, Google reports that its data center energy efficiency improved during the fourth quarter of last year.

In October, Google claimed that its data centers use "nearly five times less energy" than conventional data centers to power and cool servers.

On Tuesday, Google announced further improvement in its data center efficiency metric -- Power Usage Effectiveness, or PUE.

PUE is a measure of total facility power usage divided by power consumed by IT equipment. With a PUE of 2.0, for example -- a typical industry figure -- for every watt consumed by servers, an additional watt is required to cool the equipment and to distribute power. Using less power for cooling and overhead brings the PUE number closer to 1, which represents perfect efficiency.

In the fourth quarter, "our average power and cooling overhead in these facilities was 16%, bringing the overhead for the trailing 12 months to 19% (down from 21% a quarter earlier)," said Urs Holzle, Google's senior VP of operations, in a blog post. "For comparison, a recent EPA report put the overhead of the average enterprise data center at 100% or higher" (PUE of 2.0 or higher).

Google's quarterly energy-weighted average PUE fell to 1.16 from 1.22 in the third quarter. As a point of comparison, Sun Microsystems in April said that its data center in Santa Clara, Calif., had achieved a PUE of 1.28.

Microsoft in December discussed plans for its Generation 4 Modular Data Center, which the company hopes will deliver an average PUE of 1.125 by 2012.

While Google's energy efficiency is widely admired, some see spin in the company's numbers. For instance, Google explains on its data center efficiency Web page that "we only show data for facilities with an actual IT load above 5MW, to eliminate any inaccuracies that can occur when measuring small values."

The author of the Tech Hermit blog, who doesn't identify himself but claims to have spent his career working in data centers, suggested in October that Google's statistical selectivity is a way to eliminate numbers that would make the company's average PUE worse. He argued that Google's numbers are further skewed by the company's decision not to include in its measurement of hardware power usage things like electrical losses in a server's power cord.

Google plans to disclose further information about its data center energy usage at the CeBIT Conference in Germany in March, Holzle said.

sourc: informationweek

Cisco Outlook Misses Expectations; May Cut Jobs

2009-02-05T15:59:00.000+07:00

John Chambers said the company would continue a cost-cutting process that could result in a loss of 1,500 to 2,000 jobs.

* Sees Q3 rev down 15-20 pct, below expectations
* May cut 1,500-2,000 jobs but no plans for mass layoffs
* Fiscal Q2 revenue $9.1 bln, market expected $9.0 bln
* Q2 EPS ex-items $0.32, beats market's view of $0.30
* Shares down 4 pct on Q3 outlook

NEW YORK - Cisco Systems Inc Chief Executive John Chambers forecast a far sharper drop in current-quarter revenue than Wall Street had expected, and said the network equipment maker may cut up to 2,000 jobs as economic weakness spreads.

The forecast Wednesday pushed Cisco shares down 4 percent in after-hours trade, overshadowing its stronger-than-expected quarterly results. It also dragged down Nasdaq and Standard & Poor's 500 index futures, suggesting some turbulence could hit the tech sector Thursday.

Chambers told analysts on a conference call that he expects revenue in the current, fiscal third quarter to fall 15 percent to 20 percent from a year ago. That compared with the average analyst forecast for a 10.5 percent fall to $8.8 billion.

He said economic weakness had spread beyond the United States and Europe, with revenue from emerging markets falling 11 percent in the fiscal second quarter ended Jan. 24.

Low visibility in the current economic environment meant it was one of the most difficult periods in his career for making financial forecasts, Chambers said.

He said the company, which ended the quarter with more than 67,318 employees, would continue a cost-cutting process that could result in a loss of 1,500 to 2,000 jobs.

Chambers said Cisco was not considering mass layoffs at this time, but he warned that it may become necessary depending on the economy. The CEO said he considered job cuts of 10 percent of workers as a mass layoff.

Cisco's results and outlook are closely watched as an early indicator of changes in technology spending. The company is one of the first in the tech sector to report results that include most of January.

LONG-TERM GROWTH

Tighter credit and a hazy economic outlook has made it harder for companies to invest in big-ticket technology items such as Cisco's routers. A Cisco CRS-1, for example, costs around $500,000 to $1 million.

Cisco and other network equipment makers have said until recently that growing use of the Internet, particularly online video, would help shelter them from the recession.

But sluggish consumer spending has hit U.S. phone and cable service providers much harder than many had expected. Top U.S. phone companies AT&T Inc and Verizon Communications Inc have said they are trimming capital spending in 2009.

Net profit in Cisco's fiscal second quarter fell to $1.5 billion, or 26 cents per share, from $2.1 billion, or 33 cents a share. Profit excluding items fell to 32 cents a share from 38 cents, exceeding the market's average forecast of 30 cents a share according to Reuters Estimates.

Revenue fell 7.5 percent to $9.1 billion, the first year-on-year decline since 2003, as the economic downturn forced companies to cut back on technology spending.

Wall Street analysts on average had expected revenue of $9.0 billion, according to Reuters Estimates. In November, Cisco forecast a 5 to 10 percent year-on-year decline.

Chambers said that assuming the economy returned to a normal growth rate, Cisco was keeping its long-term target for annual revenue growth of 12 percent to 17 percent.

Cisco shares fell 4.4 percent to $15.14 in extended trade after closing at $15.84 in regular Nasdaq trade. Before the quarterly outlook, its shares had risen nearly 2 percent on the stronger-than-expected results. (Additional reporting by Sinead Carew and Robert MacMillan; editing by Richard Chang and Tiffany Wu) (ritsuko.ando@thomsonreuters.com; +1 646 223 6084; Reuters Messaging: ritsuko.ando.reuters.com@reuters.net)

resource: informationweek

Vodafone Sees $14.9 Billion In Sales

2009-02-04T17:14:00.000+07:00

The world's largest cell phone provider has yet to be damaged by the staggering economy, as Vodafone said it had recorded about $14.9 billion in sales last quarter.

The mobile operator beat industry expectations with this revenue, and it was helped by exchange rates, the company said. Vodafone had good results in Italy, Germany, southern Africa, India, and the United Kingdom.

The company also saw service revenue rise 27.9% in the Asia-Pacific and Middle East areas, with record customer growth in India. The company said its 289 million customers were using their phones more, as there was a 10.3% rise in minutes used.

Verizon Wireless, of which Vodafone owns a significant portion, was also a bright spot as it saw service revenue rise 12.2% and data revenue go up 49.4%. The carrier is now the largest U.S. cellular phone service provider following the $28.1 billion acquisition of Alltel, and it continues to court smartphone users with the release of handsets like the Samsung Omnia.

Vodafone also benefitted from the release of the first touch-screen smartphone from Research In Motion, as the BlackBerry Storm sold well in the U.S. and U.K. markets. With its apt browser and multimedia capabilities, the Storm also drove data revenue.

"In the context of the current economic environment, we have continued to implement our strategy, with an emphasis on customer value, mobile data, enterprise, and fixed broadband," CEO Vittorio Colao said in a statement. "This has driven increased usage, 25% organic growth in data revenue, and over 280,000 fixed broadband additions in Europe."

Vodafone said it has made good progress in its cost-cutting measures, which should save the company more than $700 million by the end of the 2010 financial year. This restructuring will be widespread, and Vodafone said it would lead to an unnamed number of job cuts.

source: informationweek

IBM Offers To Move Laid Off Workers To India

2009-02-04T17:09:00.000+07:00

Big Blue wants to help redundant U.S. employees relocate to developing markets, according to an internal document.
The climate is warm, there's no shortage of exotic food, and the cost of living is rock bottom. That's IBM's pitch to the laid-off American workers it's offering to place in India. The catch: Wages in the country are pennies-on-the-dollar compared to U.S. salaries.

Under a program called Project Match, IBM will help workers laid off from domestic sites obtain travel and visa assistance for countries in which Big Blue has openings. Mostly that's developing markets like India, China, and Brazil.

"IBM has established Project Match to help you locate potential job opportunities in growth markets where your skills are in demand," IBM says in an internal notice on the initiative. "Should you accept a position in one of these countries, IBM offers financial assistance to offset moving costs, provides immigration support, such as visa assistance, and other support to help ease the transition of an international move."

The document states that the program is limited to "satisfactory performers who have been notified of separation from IBM U.S. or Canada and are willing to work on local terms and conditions." The latter indicates that workers will be paid according to prevailing norms in the countries to which they relocate. In many cases, that could be substantially less than what they earned in North America.

IBM has laid off more than 4,000 workers in the United States since the beginning of January, according to an employee group. The company has confirmed layoffs but won't comment on specific numbers.

A spokesman for Alliance@IBM, a workers' group that's affiliated with the Communications Workers of America but which does not have official union status at IBM, slammed the program. "IBM is not only offshoring IBM U.S. jobs but they want employees to offshore themselves through Project Match," said the spokesman.

An IBM spokesman said the program shouldn't be seen in that light. "It's more of a vehicle for people who want to expand their life experience by working somewhere else," said the spokesman. "A lot of people want to work in India."

In addition to India, China, and Brazil, IBM is offering to relocate redundant U.S. workers to a number of other developing markets, including Mexico, the Czech Republic, Russia, South Africa, Nigeria, and the United Arab Emirates, according to the notice, which was obtained Monday by InformationWeek.

source: informationweek

Dell Adding Virtualization Software To PowerEdge

2009-02-04T17:06:00.000+07:00

Dell will offer Xsigo Systems' input/output technology as an option for Dell PowerEdge servers and storage products.

The Xsigo I/O Director is a software dashboard that lets IT pros manage I/O resources across multiple servers and storage products. Configuration changes are executed in software rather than hardware, which the vendor says provides more flexibility than physical I/O ports by enabling the deployment of resources on an as-needed basis. Director operates over IP and Fibre Channel.

Xsigo claims its technology can help overcome I/O performance problems caused by running a lot of virtual machines on one server. Solving the weakness makes virtualization more useful for both production servers and end-user applications in the data center.

source: informationweek

Beyond I/O, security is an area that still needs improvement to make virtualization more valuable to businesses.

Nevertheless, virtualization has reached a "tipping point" in the data center. This year, slightly more than half of businesses are expected to have at least two years of experience implementing the technology, and 45% of servers are expected to be virtualized, according to Forrester Research.

According to Xsigo, its I/O infrastructure, when compared with traditional server I/O, offers 30% less power consumption; 70% fewer I/O cards, cables, and switch ports; and predictable I/O bandwidth to applications via hardware-enforced quality of service.

Pricing for the Xsigo system starts at $30,000. More information is available on Dell's Web site.

PHP Vendor Zend Names Co-Founder As CEO (2)

2009-02-04T17:05:00.000+07:00

The second-most-popular programming language on the Web is Microsoft's .Net, with Sun's Java third. Other scripting languages, now often called dynamic languages because they compile at runtime, come next, such as Perl, Python, and CGI.

Gutmans said he and Zeev Suraski took Personal Home Page, a simple scripting language created by Rasmus Lerdoff, and wrote a new parser for it, producing the 3.0 version of PHP in 1997. It would go on to become a language that was a favorite of Web site application developers. It powers 20 million sites and has a base of more than 5 million developers, according to information on the Zend Web site.

Gutmans has worked closely with Microsoft, Oracle, and IBM to make sure PHP interfaces to their databases and other products. PHP itself is in the hands of large and broadly based open source project at www.php.net. He's a member of the Apache Foundation and sits on the Eclipse open source programmers workbench board of directors.

"PHP development has always been very focused and Web-specific," Gutmans said. It's a language that can be used by both hobbyists and professional developers. Part of Zend's added value to PHP is the Zend Engine, which takes byte code from the PHP parser and runs it as compiled code, in a manner similar to the Java Virtual Machine. Compiled code runs faster than straight scripting language code, which must go through an interpreter at runtime. Scripting languages, including PHP, are able to deal with a wider variety of data types than Java and combine functions involving different types of data more easily than more structured languages.

PHP Vendor Zend Names Co-Founder As CEO (1)

2009-02-04T17:02:00.000+07:00

Zend Technologies, supplier of a PHP integrated development environment and a PHP application server, has turned to a company co-founder as its new CEO.

Andi Gutmans, formerly CTO and senior VP of R&D and negotiator of alliances, has agreed to take the top post.

He replaces Harold Goldberg, who came to Zend two years ago from a post as senior marketing manager with BMC Software. Goldberg was hired to lead Zend in a new, more business-oriented direction. He has left to pursue other opportunities, a company spokesperson said.

"Zend is at an inflection point, with its participation in Eclipse [an open source programmer's workbench] and its large customer base," Gutmans said in an interview. In today's economy, he said, Web site builders "are looking for a lower-cost solution. PHP is the less-expensive alternative to Java."

Mark Burton, a former executive VP of sales at MySQL AB, was named Zend's executive chairman. Cameron Lester, a Zend director, said in an announcement of the change: "Gutmans' vision and execution skills have played a key role in guiding the company's strategy and have supported HP's phenomenal growth. ... With Andi's appointment as CEO, we are now confident that Zend has the leadership team in place to accelerate the execution of its growth strategy."

Lester is a partner at Azure Capital Partners, a VC backer of Zend, along with Index Ventures. Zend is still privately held and doesn't report revenue. Gutmans said in an interview that if MySQL AB still existed as an independent company, Zend with 140 employees, would be "nipping at its heels" revenue-wise. "MySQL was a slightly bigger private open source company," he said. Sun Microsystems purchased MySQL for $1 billion last April.

Zend sells the $399 Zend Studio, an integrated development environment for PHP, and offers commercial support for the tool. It also sells by annual subscriptions starting at $1,500 the Zend Platform, an application server for PHP apps. Both generate revenue as PHP has become the most popular language in which to develop Web applications. Gutmans said more than one-third of all Web apps are written in PHP. "We call it the Visual Basic of the Web," he said. PHP applications run on a Web server, with the output generated as HTML Web pages.

source: informationweek

Google News Now Available For Any Web Site

2009-02-04T17:00:00.000+07:00

Despite the resentment many media companies feel toward Google for thriving while they decline, the search giant isn't deaf to the agony of dwindling ad revenue or of audiences migrating online.

In a move that may throw a bit more revenue toward distressed news organizations, Google on Tuesday said that stories culled from its news aggregation service, Google News, can now be embedded on any Web site.

"The world is a quickly changing place and it's getting harder and harder to stay on top of the news," said Google's Adam Feldman in a blog post. "With this in mind, we've just released a Google News-based element for Webmasters and developers. This makes it easy to integrate headlines and previews from Google News into any Web page, and for newspapers to reach new audiences across the Web."

Google is providing an online form that it's calling a NewsShow Wizard to help site owners generate the HTML code required to embed Google News on their Web pages. The generated code displays a slide show of Google News headlines based on chosen keywords. Here's an example of how it works using the keyword "teleportation".
Google News is one of the most popular news sites, along with Yahoo News and AOL News. Google does not generate revenue from Google News directly, but it generates revenue for the publishers of the stories that it aggregates by sending visitors who click through Google News links to their news sites. This makes Google News an important strategic partner for online news organizations. Though online publishers may dislike their growing dependence on Google News for referral traffic, they stand to gain if making Google News embeddable brings more visitors to Google News and thence to their sites.

Google has avoided placing ads on Google News in part to avoid claims that it's trying to profit from copyrighted content, a common complaint against a variety of Google's services. The company has maintained that any service that increases Internet usage benefits it indirectly, but syndicating Google News slide shows to Web site publishers also could increase visitor engagement, leading to more exposure for any Google AdSense ads on the site.

source: Informatinweek

NYSE and BIDS Trading Scan for Blocks in Light and Dark Pools (3)

2009-02-04T16:58:00.000+07:00

Tabb said the NYSE is trying to get the floor back into the business of matching trades. "The liquidity on the floor has been fairly block-oriented. The problem isbecause most of the flow now is algorithmic, they can't interact with the stuff," says Tabb. "So the floor brokers have to put orders into reserve and use algorithms. They wind up getting lots of little fills and they're not as effective as if they traded larger blocks," explained Tabb. "They're trying to make the floor more relevant," said Tabb, adding they're trying to reconstitute the block business on the floor of the exchange. "And in this environment, folks are looking for ways to reconstitute order flow. Now whether the genie is out of the bottle and algorithms will completely eliminate the desire for any type of block," is the question, Tabb said. "The question is will it succeed and I think we'll know that in a couple of months," said Tabb.

In a conference call reviewing dark pools trends in 2008, Joe Gawronski, president and COO of Rosenblatt Securities, an institutional broker dealer that is an NYSE member, noted that exchanges are interacting more with dark pools and he expects this trend to continue in 2009.

"A particularly intriguing example of this convergence is the New York Block Exchange," said Gawronski, noting that it integrates its own block orders with the public and reserve order books of the NYSE. "It's the first time anyone has delivered on the powerful concept of marrying block discovery with a primary market that discovers prices rather than executing everything at the midpoint of the NBBO." Gawronski added NYBX merits watching in 2009.

sumber: http://www.advancedtrading.com/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=213001260

NYSE and BIDS Trading Scan for Blocks in Light and Dark Pools(2)

2009-02-04T16:55:00.000+07:00

Instead of executing stock at the midpoint or at the inside, a key benefit is that NYBX is aggregating liquidity across multiple price points, said Mecane. This allows someone who might be willing to pay more to buy stock across several price points, he said. If someone is willing to pay up five cents to get 50 million or100 million shares done, NYBX could aggregate liquidity across multiple price points in an exchange environment. For example, if there was an order to buy 20,000 shares at 10.02, and the NYSE has sell orders of 10,000 at $10 and 10,000 at 10.02, NYBX would aggregate the two trades on the sell side in order to pair them off against the buy side, said Mecane. Under Reg NMS, NYBX has an obligation to first take out the best prices available on other exchanges, before it could print at any price level outside of the prevailing market.

Operated as a facility of the NYSE, NYBX is jointly owned by the NYSE Euronext and BIDS. Tim Mahoney, CEO of BIDS Trading, said that people should think of NYBX as a middleman or aggregator between either BIDS orders or NYBX orders and NYSE liquidity. "It's a fully electronic mechanism that keeps track of the liquidity that's available in both venues and decides when a stock should be traded," said Mahoney. In addition, traders can place criteria on the order, such as a minimize size known as the minimum triggering volume (MTV).

BIDS is open to all broker dealers, investment managers, hedge funds and algorithms, allows access to NYBX liquidity by allowing subscribers to opt-in on an order-by-order basis. But according to TABB, while BIDS was set up to be very block"oriented the majority of the flow became algorithmic. "They're trying to get back to the block focus," said the analyst.

Mahoney, a former buy-side trader, said the idea is to serve the portfolio manager whose point in life is to outperform the market or peers. He offered the example of a portfolio manager who has an idea to invest 3 percent of the assets in a particular stock and has to trade 10-to-15 million shares. "If the average size is 200 shares, it's very hard to act quickly and take advantage of an opportunity in the public market," said Mahoney. The industry's response has been to create dark pools, said Mahoney. In fact there are 40-plus dark pools and they account for only 9 percent of the volume. While the idea of controlling information is critical, said Mahoney, he suggested that what is missing is the ability of the floor brokers to expose their reserve orders to the public market.

source: http://www.advancedtrading.com/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=213001260

NYSE and BIDS Trading Scan for Blocks in Light and Dark Pools (1)

2009-02-04T16:50:00.000+07:00

A new block-trading venue launched by the New York Stock Exchange that links BIDS Trading's dark liquidity with the NYSE's public, reserve and hidden order flow, could boost the Big Board's share of large orders.

But the jury is still out since the system just launched last Thursday and brokers and institutions need to get connected and will need to be certified that certain order types work. "You have to have a system up and running before you'll get a specific user to pay specific attention to your system," said Tim Mahoney, CEO of BIDS Trading in an interview.

New York Block Exchange, known as NYBX, is a joint venture between NYSE Euronext and BIDS Holdings L.P., an alternative trading system (ATS), owned by 11 of the largest broker dealers.

"I think the unique aspect of it is linking the exchange to an independent dark pool, " says Larry Tabb, co-founder and CEO of TABB Group. While a lot of dark pools are connected to each others, said Tabb, "The way they are connected here is a little bit different. They're not trying just to match up dark flow. It's not all the algorithms linking the NYSE and BIDS together. It's not just the streaming order flow washing through BIDS' order book," said Tabb. "This is a way to link together reserve flow and hidden order flow, which tends to be bigger flow," said Tabb.

This is also part of a move to bring back the block trades to the NYSE. In the 80s and 90s, block trades of more than 10,000 shares were more than 50 percent of the NYSE's volume. "They were matched upstairs and crossed on the floor," notes Tabb. In recent years with the average order size shrinking to 200 shares, institutions have flocked to dark pools to seek anonymity and minimize the risk of moving the market. Today block trades are about 23 percent of the NYSE's volume, according to published reports.

"It's a way to increase the fill rates on the NYSE, encourage people to post more orders and to post larger orders and also create more block liquidity," said Joe Mecane, EVP for U.S. markets at NYSE Euronext referring to NYBX in an interview. One of the differences that NYBX may have over other darks pools is that "most dark pools are semi-insulated, said Mecane. They tend to transact within their own pool, though there is some activity between then," he acknowledged. "Second, they tend to be focused on the inside price and at the midpoint. Those two factors make it harder to actually line up the two sides of the trade, said Mecane.

Source: http://www.advancedtrading.com/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=213001260

Microsoft To Kill Windows 7 Beta On Feb. 10

2009-01-26T16:42:00.000+07:00

Computer enthusiasts who want to get their hands on the trial version of Microsoft's next operating system have just two more weeks to do so.

Windows 7 screen shot
(Click for larger image and for full photo gallery)

The company says it will end availability of Windows 7 Beta on Feb. 10.

There are a couple of loopholes, however. Users who started to download the OS before that date will have until Feb. 12 to complete the process. Also, Microsoft will continue to distribute product keys beyond Feb. 12 to users who have previously downloaded Windows 7 Beta but have yet to obtain a key.

"We are at a point where we have more than enough beta testers and feedback coming in to meet our engineering needs, so we are beginning to plan the end of general availability for Windows 7 Beta," said Brandon LeBlanc, Microsoft's in-house Windows blogger, in a post Friday.

Microsoft will post warnings on its Web site that the download program for Windows 7 is about to end starting Tuesday. A final version of Windows 7, Microsoft's follow-up to Windows Vista, is expected to be available in late 2009 or early 2010.

Perhaps due to Vista's unpopularity, computer users have been downloading Windows 7 Beta in droves. Microsoft dropped limits on the number of available copies of the software after a crush of download requests for the new operating system brought the company's servers to a halt during the first weekend of availability earlier this month.

Windows 7 offers numerous new features, including native support for touch-screen interfaces and more than 20 hotkey combinations designed to simplify use.

Microsoft needs Windows 7 to be a hit. Vista has failed to catch on with mainstream computer users and businesses have shunned it outright. Many users have complained about Vista's hardware requirements, intrusive security measures, and lack of compatibility with older applications.

Dissatisfaction with Vista has allowed Apple to gain share against Microsoft in the computer operating system market in recent months. Windows' market share in November fell below 90% for the first time in years while Mac OS is now flirting with the 10% mark, according to market watcher Net Applications.

It's all taking a toll on Microsoft's bottom line. Last week, the company said second quarter profits tumbled 11%. It also announced a restructuring plan that will see it lay off 5,000 full-time employees and an additional 5,000 contract workers.

Google, Now With 58% More Ads

2009-01-14T00:59:00.001+07:00

Google on Monday said it would announce its fourth-quarter fiscal results on Jan. 22, and at least one search engine market research firm expects strong results.

In a report planned for release Tuesday, Chicago-based AdGooroo says that search advertising data for December "continues to support our thesis that Q4 will prove to be the strongest quarter on record for Google (NSDQ: GOOG) and Microsoft (NSDQ: MSFT) Live Search."

According to AdGooroo, Google led the competition during the fourth quarter with 58% growth in the average number of ads it showed on the first search results page per keyword (4.01 in 4Q vs. 2.54 in 3Q).

Google ran an average of 4.84 ads per keyword in December 2007, but it also has run fewer ads since then in an effort to improve ad quality and in response to seasonal cycles.

Microsoft Live Search came in second, with 3.37 ads per keyword, representing 42.3% growth.

Yahoo (NSDQ: YHOO) came in third with 3.01, representing growth of only 8.8%.

Microsoft continued to close the gap in advertiser share with Yahoo, AdGooroo observed, noting that if the company decided to acquire Yahoo, the number of large advertisers on the Live Search network would increase by 157%.

"This would have a dramatic effect on network CPC [keyword prices] due to increased competitive bidding pressure," the report states. One reason for this, the report speculates, is that "Live Search is widely reported to generate higher ROI for advertisers than Google, in part due to lesser competition for key terms."

IBM Develops MRI With 100 Times More Detail

2009-01-14T00:56:00.000+07:00

Researchers at International Business Machines have developed a medical imaging tool that provides doctors with 100 times more picture detail, or resolution, than conventional equipment.

IBM's breakthrough magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) technology relies on the detection of "ultrasmall magnetic forces," according to the company. The process, called magnetic resonance force microscopy, allows physicians to see below tissue surfaces without disturbing sensitive biological materials.

"This technology stands to revolutionize the way we look at viruses, bacteria, proteins, and other biological elements," said Mark Dean, VP of strategy and operations at IBM Research.

IBM developed the technology in collaboration with the Center for Probing the Nanoscale at Stanford University in California.

"MRI is well known as a powerful tool for medical imaging, but its capability for microscopy has always been very limited," said Dan Rugar, manager of nanoscale studies at IBM.

Unlike conventional MRI machines, which use imaging and gradient coils to scan the body, IBM's device detects minute magnetic forces while the sample rests on a microscopic cantilever—a small sliver of silicon that's shaped like a diving board.

Magnetic spins in the sample's hydrogen atoms interact with a nanoscopic magnetic tip, causing vibrations in the cantilever that are tracked by laser interferometry. "Our hope is that nano MRI will eventually allow us to directly image the internal structure of individual protein molecules and molecular complexes," said Rugar.

In the lab, IBM applied the technique to a sample of tobacco mosaic virus and achieved resolution down to four nanometers, the company said. IBM published the results Tuesday in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

10 Things That WON'T Happen In 2009

2009-01-14T00:55:00.000+07:00

As we ease into the new year, everybody and his brother has predicted what will happen in 2009. But that wasn't good enough for the folks at bMighty.com -- we decided to buck conventional wisdom and tell you about 10 important things that won't happen this year.

So, what can you expect NOT to happen in 2009? You'll have to check out the entire bMighty.com slideshow for the complete list, but here's a teaser:

For one thing, DON'T expect Internet Explorer to lose its role as king of the browsers. Sure, Firefox, Chrome, Safari, and Opera are gaining ground, but don't hold your breath -- reports of IE's demise have been greatly exaggerated. For every blissful migration to an alternative browser, there are still plenty of users clinging to IE. The statistics don't lie: IE's market share remains almost 70% and it's not going to slip below 50% this year. No way, no how.

And here's another teaser: DON'T expect blogging to be replaced by Twitter and Facebook and Flickr. There was a lot of talk in late 2008 about how blogging had become bloated, passe, corporate, and overrun with flame wars and spam. (True enough, I guess, except for this blog.) And that Facebook and Twitter and the like are faster, more direct and more personal. Also true enough, at least in some cases. But reports of blogging's death have been greatly exaggerated. If anything, 2009 will see even more blogging than 2008, even as alternative platforms grow even faster. The death of blogging will have to wait.

Want more hints? Well, how about an operating system that WON'T ship, free lunches that WON'T stop, a bailout that WON'T happen, and a sun that WON'T come out.

The New York Times On Ubuntu: Half-Right

2009-01-14T00:49:00.000+07:00

When an article about Mark Shuttleworth, Canonical and Ubuntu begins with the words "They're either hapless pests or the very people capable of overthrowing Windows. Take your pick", then I'm fairly sure I'm not about to read a good article about any of the above. But that's the first line of a piece in, incredibly, the New York Times about them.

Part of me remains unsurprised by the continually quizzical tenor of mass-media coverage of open source, for the same reason that their coverage of most anything technology-related tends to be lousy. Finer nuances get scrubbed down or ignored entirely, and hard-won distinctions are blurred.

The article in question -- "A Software Populist Who Doesn’t Do Windows " -- at least gets many of the facts reasonably straight. But that doesn't excuse the way the tone of the whole thing slides into needless snark here and there: "Linux zealots have failed in their quest to make Linux mainstream on desktop and notebook computers. The often quirky software remains in the realm of geeks, not grandmothers." (Left unanswered is the question of whether or not Linux needs to be "mainstream" to be successful, which I think is a big part of the problem right there, but never mind.)

And then there were statements that just made me blink: "Ubuntu [as opposed to Red Hat (NYSE: RHT) or Novell (NSDQ: NOVL)] emerged as a sort of favored nation for those idealistic software developers who viewed themselves as part of a countercultural movement" -- which is a little like saying the only reason people ride bicycles is because they're trying to cut down on greenhouse gas emissions.

There's also some mention of others within the industry (Matt Asay, namely) who don't feel Mark's model for doing things is sustainable without someone like him at the helm and perhaps a ton of cash in the reserve, too. But more than anything else, reading the piece gives one a very strange funhouse-mirror sense of how the whole issue of open source and free software must seem to people who aren't elbow-deep in it every day.

Microsoft Offers Unlimited Windows 7 Downloads

2009-01-14T00:46:00.000+07:00

Microsoft has dropped limits on the number of copies of the Windows 7 beta it plans to make available to PC enthusiasts after a crush of download requests for the new operating system brought its servers to a halt over the weekend.

"Due to an enormous surge in demand, the download experience was not ideal so we listened and took the necessary steps to ensure a good experience," Microsoft Windows communications manager Brandon LeBlanc wrote in a blog post Saturday.

"We have clearly heard that many of you want to check out the Windows 7 Beta and, as a result, we have decided to remove the initial 2.5 million limit on the public beta for the next two weeks," wrote LeBlanc, who said the limitless download period would extend through Jan. 24.

"During that time you will have access to the beta even if the download number exceeds 2.5 million," LeBlanc added.

Last week at CES 2009 in Las Vegas, Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer raised expectations around Windows 7.

"We are on track to deliver the best version of Windows ever. We're putting in all the right ingredients -- simplicity, reliability and speed, and working hard to get it right, and to get it ready," said Ballmer. Compared with the widely maligned Vista, Windows 7 "should boot more quickly, have longer battery life, and fewer alerts," Ballmer said.

Ballmer also touted Windows 7's improved support for networking and multimedia content, as well as its touch-screen capabilities.

Microsoft needs Windows 7 to be a hit. Vista, the current version of Windows, has failed to catch on with mainstream computer users and businesses have shunned it outright. Many users have complained about Vista's hardware requirements, intrusive security measures, and lack of compatibility with older applications.

Dissatisfaction with Vista has allowed Apple to gain share against Microsoft in the computer operating system market in recent months. Windows' market share in November fell below 90% for the first time in years, while Mac OS is now flirting with the 10% mark, according to market watcher Net Applications.

Microsoft is hoping that Windows 7, which is expected to be released in its final form in late 2009 or early 2010, will stem the tide.

AMD Updates Its ATI Mobility Radeon Graphics Chips

2009-01-11T17:39:00.000+07:00

By Antone Gonsalves
Read the Original Article at InformationWeek

The 4000 series includes a number of advanced capabilities, such as support for Microsoft's DirectX 10.1, the graphics technology available only in Windows Vista.
Advanced Micro Devices on Friday introduced a line of mobile graphics processors designed for laptops ranging from low-cost models to the high-end gaming machines.

AMD launched the ATI Mobility Radeon HD 4000 series at the International Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas. The series includes a number of advanced capabilities, such as support for Microsoft's DirectX 10.1, the graphics technology available only in Windows Vista, and technology for delivering high-quality digital surround sound.

In general, the HD 4800 line is designed for gaming laptops, the 4600 series for more mainstream laptops that need to balance performance and energy efficiency, and the 4500 and 4300 lines for thin and light laptops. All the processors are aimed at standard-size notebooks, and not mini-notebooks, often called netbooks.

The 4800 series supports AMD's ATI CrossFireX technology, which enables a system to run two Radeon HD 4870 or 4850 graphics processors to break the 1-teraflop speed barrier. A teraflop is equal to a trillion scientific calculations a second.

In addition, the 4800 series supports GDDR5 memory, which is nearly twice the memory bandwidth of previous generations, for better game performance, AMD said.

Overall, the latest chip series is the second generation of GPUs built with AMD's 55-nanometer manufacturing process. The products include a number of energy-efficiency technologies, including AMD's ATI PowerPlay, an activity-based power management system that conserves energy at idle.

The 4000 series is expected to ship in this quarter in laptops from a number of manufacturers, including Asustek and MSI, AMD said.

The latest chips are low-power versions of the ATI Radeon HD 4000 series AMD launched six months ago for desktops.

Apple: 10 Things It Needs To Do In 2009 (part5-End)

2009-01-11T17:26:00.000+07:00

7. Clarify Policies In The App Store.

The iPhone App Store is a smash success. Introduced in the summer, the App Store opened the iPhone and iPod Touch to sanctioned third-party applications for the first time. Until then, users who wanted to add additional applications to their iPhones and Touches had to either use limited, JavaScript apps that ran in the device's mobile Web browser, or hack their devices by "jailbreaking" them, a risky process which Apple fights with every firmware update.

But the App Store opened the iPhone and Touch, and users and developers responded in a stampede. By December, users had downloaded 300 million apps out of the 10,000 available in the App Store, according to ads placed in the Wall Street Journal and New York Times by Apple.

The App Store is a trade-off for developers. On the one hand, developers get access to Apple's sophisticated online sales and distribution system. No need to set up their own Web stores and provide installation instructions, Apple handles all that. But that access comes at a price; Apple takes a 30% cut of sales off the top.

And Apple places restrictions on the kinds of applications it will distribute. For example, Apple rejected Podcaster, an app for automatically downloading podcasts wirelessly, saying it duplicates the functionality of the desktop version of iTunes, according to the developer writing on his own blog. He added:

Apple had nothing in the terms prohibiting developers from duplicating features currently available on desktop application. I followed all the guidelines and made sure everything is in the correct place. Yet Apple denies me because I allow users to download podcasts just like iTunes.

The developer noted that Apple allows many other applications that duplicate functionality available in the iPhone -- calculators, weather apps, even other applications that download podcasts -- and accused Apple of being unfair and inconsistent.

Likewise, Apple rejected MailWrangler, a dedicated Gmail client for the iPhone, because it duplicated functionality available in the built-in Mail client.

The seemingly-arbitrary rules for screening apps makes it a gamble for professional developers to work on software for the App Store, said John Gruber at his Apple blog Daring Fireball. Developers can't trust Apple, he said.

I believe that a closed, controlled App Store can work, but by definition that requires developers to place trust in Apple. The problem is that Apple is managing the App Store in certain untrustworthy ways. And I mean trust more in the sense of stability than honesty — like in the way you need to trust a ladder before you'll climb it.

Here is a complete list of what Apple must do to increase developers' trust in the App Store system:

1. State the rules.
2. Follow the rules.

Apple changed controversial developer policies at the app store before, in October, when it dropped an NDA requirement that developers said prevented them from sharing tips even with other developers bound by the NDA.

The company has done a fantastic job with the App Store, so much so that competitors Research in Motion, Microsoft, Google, and Palm are imitating the strategy. But success carries with it a unique risk -- that you'll think you're perfect, you're doing everything right, and resist change and new ideas. Apple needs to make the policies at the app store fair and transparent to developers.

8. Improve Enterprise Support

Apple isn't an enterprise company -- it's a company that happens to sell a significant amount of product into the enterprise. Welch, the Apple enthusiast, IT manager, and blogger and journalist, lays out the strange-bedfellows relationship between Apple and the enterprise.

IT managers demand that their vendors are predictable. They demand to be able to sit down with their vendors and get detailed briefings on product plans, months and years ahead. IT managers demand that vendors never stop supporting features once supported, and they demand to collaborate with vendors on designing upcoming products

That's not how Apple works. Apple likes to surprise and dazzle customers, keeping products secret until they're ready to ship. Apple drops features immediately when the company feels those features are obsolete, from the missing floppy drives on the first iMac, a decade ago, to the missing optical drive on the MacBook Air last year.

Apple will never go along with the changes needed to become a true enterprise company.

This month, Apple took a big step, announcing that it's eliminating DRM from its music store. But that still leaves video and audiobooks. And for consumers who've already bought DRMed music, upgrading is costly -- Apple will collect a $1.8 billion music tax if consumers upgrade all the DRMed iTunes music that's been sold -- and it's a hassle.

Apple needs to take a stand and eliminate DRM from its products, and provide people who've already bought DRMed products a cheap and easy way to upgrade.

What does Apple stand to gain from it? They'll give up the cost of developing and supporting cumbersome and useless DRM technology, and the time, money and hassle spent on having to update the technology when the inevitable bugs appear.

And they also avoid a potentially catastrophic customer-service problem. For now, only a tiny fraction of the public cares at all about DRM. Why should they? Apple has a monopoly on the media market, which makes Apple's DRM mostly invisible. "But if somehow the iPod ever falls out of favor with the general public there will be an outcry like no other when they realize they can't play any of their songs on the new player of choice," writes MG Siegler in a FriendFeed discussion.

He adds that Apple is doing whatever it can to kill DRM. They need to keep it up.

10. Stay Classy, Apple

Apple's products beats the competition on quality across the board. Even as the economy slid downward Apple reported profits rose to $1.14 billion in the fiscal fourth quarter ended Sept. 27, as sales increased 27%, driven primarily by iPhone and Mac computer sales, according to an October earnings statement. The company also said that it had surpassed during the quarter its goal of selling 10 million iPhones this year. While overall Mac sales fell behind sales of PCs running Windows in November, MacBook sales outstripped Windows notebooks, increasing 22% year-over-year, compared with 15% for Windows.

The iPhone alone is a smash it, the most popular phone in the US, according to market researchers NPD.

To be sure, the outlook for 2009 is sober for Apple -- but what company doesn't have a sober outlook for 2009?

Apple's success comes from a couple of defining characteristics.

The company often succeeds by defying popular opinion and expert wisdom -- things that "everybody knows" Apple needs to do. The blog CounterNotions has a list of 10 blunders Apple avoided over its history, decisions that made the company great. Many of the mistakes required Apple to defy expert advice, including avoiding licensing Mac OS X to clone vendors, and refraining from selling a Tablet PC before its time.

Another defining characteristic of Apple: The company embraces change -- indeed, it's afraid of not changing, Daring Fireball's Gruber writes. "Where other CEOs can't bring themselves to do something different, Jobs can't bring himself to keep doing the same thing," Gruber says.

So the final bit of advice for Apple is to continue to trust its own judgment, and prosper by selling great products.

Apple: 10 Things It Needs To Do In 2009 (part4)

2009-01-11T17:24:00.000+07:00

5. Establish A Clear Path Of Succession.

Following his cancer treatment in 2004, rumors of Jobs's impending death pop up every few months. The latest round of rumors were kicked off by Jobs's announcement in December that he planned to skip this year's Macworld. Later on, Jobs disclosed that he is sick after all, but it's apparently not life-threatening).

Last summer, a hoaxter posted a report that Jobs had had a heart attack, and the stock price plummeted.

So far, most of the talk about Jobs's health has been rumor and speculation. However, one thing is for certain: Everybody dies. Including you, me, and Steve Jobs.

Also, Jobs might simply decide to retire one day. What then?

Every business needs a plan of succession for its leadership. That's especially true of Apple, which as a company is an extension of Jobs's vision. Apple needs to publicize a plan for what the company will do when -- not if -- Jobs is unable, or unwilling, to lead.

Jobs's decision to step aside from this year's Macworld keynote might be the first signal that Apple is drawing up a succession plan, says Vijay Rakesh, a ThinkPanmure analyst, according to Wired. In Jobs's place, Philip Schiller, senior vice president of marketing, delivered the keynote. Rakesh says there'll be a transitional period of six months until the new team takes over.

Jobs's life work is a great American success story. It would be tragic if it failed to survive him. Apple needs to disclose a clear plan of succession for Jobs.

6. Develop Low-power, High-performance Processors For Portable Devices.

Apple bought PA Semi, which makes low-power PowerPC processors that could be used in an iPhone or iPod, for $278 million in cash in April. Later in the year, Apple hired Mark Papermaster, a top IBM microprocessor engineer, to head up iPhone and iPod development at Apple, a move that got bogged down in court. Apple followed up in December by buying a $4.8 million stake in mobile chip maker Imagination Technologies Group, roughly a 3.6% stake in the UK company. Apple licenses Imagination's technology for making semiconductors for multimedia and communications devices.

What's Apple doing with all that microprocessor intellectual property and brainpower? Developing a high-performance, power-efficient, ARM-based system-on-a-chip, says the Apple blog 9to5 Mac. The chip would power a netbook, or similar device, with enough performance to run full-scale Mac OS X and with enough power to run for days on a charge. It could also find a home in the AppleTV.

Power consumption, and the need to recharge frequently, are obstacles to getting the most from mobile computing. A new line of homebrewed mobile processors could help Apple get a bigger place in users' pockets and gear bags.

Apple: 10 Things It Needs To Do In 2009 (part3)

2009-01-11T17:22:00.000+07:00

A few other features seem a little trickier to implement, but competing products have them, so why doesn't the iPhone?

* The iPhone needs to be able to run applications in background. Right now, only certain Apple-built apps run in the background, including Mail and the iPod app. For everything else, when you switch between apps, the first app you were running shuts down. I find this most inconvenient when I'm updating an app that synchs to data on the Internet or on the desktop; I need to remember to make sure the application synchs before switching to something else.

* The iPhone probably limits multitasking applications to enhance stability and improve battery life; a misbehaving app could slow down or freeze up the iPhone, and drain power. But a little careful support for multitasking would have a huge payoff for iPhone users. Apple has reportedly test-released tools for updating apps in background, but those tools have never made it into production software.

* The iPhone needs to support real-time, spoken-out-loud, turn-by-turn directions in its mapping software. Right now, I carry my iPhone and a Garmin Nuvi 350 GPS on driving trips to unfamiliar places; I'd like to ditch the 350 and just carry the iPhone. Real-time, spoken turn-by-turn directions might be too demanding for the present-day iPhones, and I expressed skepticism in October that they'd ever materialize on current hardware. But Apple just needs to prove me wrong on this.

Finally, the iPhone needs better battery life.

The iPhone does so many difficult things so well, why does it fall down on these apparently easy things?

4. Come Out With A Netbook

The iPhone demonstrates the value of a relatively inexpensive device that's easy to carry with you and gives you wireless access to the Internet and productivity and entertainment apps. It would be an even better device if the screen were a few inches bigger, and if it had a 10-finger hardware keyboard. It'd probably cost a few hundred dollars more than the iPhone, but it would be worth it for the added usability.

The machine we're describing here would be an Apple netbook. It'd be bigger and heavier than an iPhone, but smaller and more lightweight than the MacBook Air (which has a 13" display and weighs in at 3 pounds). It would have a 7-10" display, touchscreen and hardware keyboard, and be about the size and weight of a hardcover book. It'd be the kind of thing you could tuck into a gear bag and take with you everywhere you go.

The price would be between the iPhone, which sells for $299 maximum, and the $1,000 low-end MacBook. That relatively low price would be a factor in the device's portability. It would be priced low enough so that if it got lost, stolen, or run over by a truck, you'd be disappointed but you wouldn't have a heart attack, and therefore you'd be more likely to take it with you more places.

Jobs seemed to dismiss netbook plans in October, saying, "We don't know how to make a $500 computer that's not a piece of junk, and our DNA won't let us do that." But that statement leaves wiggle room. A netbook doesn't have to be $500 or less.

And a netbook doesn't have to be junk -- although it is, by most definitions, underpowered compared with a conventional notebook computer. A smartphone, like the iPhone or RIM BlackBerry, is underpowered compared with a notebook, but smartphones aren't junk. Like a smartphone, a good netbook trades performance for low cost and portability.

The Mac community has been buzzing with rumors and speculation about an upcoming netbook. Apple analyst Gene Munster of Piper Jaffray said he thinks Apple would do well to release an 11" MacBook Air priced at $800-$1,000 in 2009, followed by a similarly priced tablet Mac in 2010. Technology Business Research analyst Ezra Gottheil predicted that Apple will introduce a netbook at Macworld in January, although that prediction seemed unlikely, and turned out to be wrong.

A netbook would fill a hole in Mac users' gear bags, and in Apple's product line. Its relatively low price would be especially attractive in this tight economy. Apple needs to come out with a netbook this year.

Apple: 10 Things It Needs To Do In 2009 (part2)

2009-01-11T17:16:00.000+07:00

2. Give Users Something Shiny In Snow Leopard

Apple plans this year to introduce its next significant operating system update -- "Snow Leopard," a follow-up to the Mac OS X 10.5 "Leopard" operating system introduced in fall 2007. Apple's been making a big deal about how Snow Leopard won't have new features. Instead, they're focusing on performance and connectivity.

Snow Leopard will endear itself to IT managers by including out-of-the-box support for Microsoft Exchange 2007 built into Mail, Address Book, and iCal. It supports new standards for multicore processors, increased memory, and faster performance of media and Web applications. And Snow Leopard is designed to be slimmer than previous versions of Mac OS, creating more room on hard drives for documents, photos, music, and other data.

But performance improvements are boring. Fast performance is impressive for about a week. Then we just take it for granted.

Users don't just want performance out of an OS upgrade -- they want features. New, bright shiny things to play with.

Fortunately, I expect that Apple will include new features in Snow Leopard. Sure, they're saying now that Snow Leopard is just a performance upgrade. But this is exactly the kind of little white lie that Jobs loves to tell -- he'll go on and on about how Snow Leopard is just a performance upgrade, end-users will be bored by it, nothing to see here, move along, move along ... and then on the day of the announcement, he'll say, "One more thing..."

And if Apple can't deliver new features, at least it can cut down on the bugs. In the months following the Leopard upgrade, Mac users got hit with the "blue screen of death" and "green screen of death." When Apple upgraded to 10.5.6 in mid-December, users reported widespread crashes and blue-screens of death.

Mac OS X upgrades seem to be like Let's Make A Deal' -- sometimes you get a valuable prize; sometimes you get a live chicken. You run the "Software Update" utility and hope for the best.

3. Add Basic Features To The iPhone

The iPhone is like a brilliant genius who can perform calculus in his head but can't tie his own shoes. I like my iPhone a lot -- it lets me access most Web pages, do e-mail, keep up with Twitter and other social networks, take notes, keep a calendar, manage to-dos, take pictures, read magazine articles, manage my passwords, check the weather, listen to music, and watch videos. It's a pocket-sized miracle device.

It does all those amazing things really well -- so it's amazing that there are simple things it can't do.

The iPhone needs a clipboard, so you can cut and paste text and images between documents.

It needs

* A to-do list that synchs with iCal

* To support multimedia messaging(MMS)

* The ability to synch text memos between the iPhone and desktop. (The free Evernote application provides this capability and a lot more -- but the iPhone needs native memo synching.)

* Better email handling. The iPhone's Mail app needs to provide a unified view of multiple mail accounts -- all new mail in one folder, rather than separate folders for each account. And the iPhone Mail app needs to be support messaging flagging.

Apple: 10 Things It Needs To Do In 2009 (part1)

2009-01-11T17:12:00.000+07:00

Like the rest of the business world, Apple is embarking on treacherous times in 2009. But Apple faces special challenges: It sells boutique products that cost more than the competition.

However, Apple also has special strengths: Those same products cost more because they're better, and Apple has a fiercely loyal customer base.

To help Apple successfully navigate the turbulent financial waters, here are 10 pieces of advice on what the company needs to do with its operating system, iPhone, App Store, hardware, marketing, and more.

1. Build A Moat Around Apple Headquarters, Fill It With Crocodiles

Apple set off a bit of a foofaraw in December when it announced it was pulling out of the Macworld conference. The decision set off a wave of theorizing why they were doing it. But the real reason is pretty simple.

CEO Steve Jobs's role model is Willy Wonka. He wants to lock himself up in Apple's Cupertino headquarters and not have to talk to people anymore.

Macworld Expo is expensive, and Apple just wasn't getting the payback for it.

More importantly, Macworld Expo is outside of Apple's control; it's run, not by Apple, but by International Data Group (which competes with InformationWeek's parent company, United Business Media). The Apple community expects a big announcement out of the conference, and Apple would rather roll out announcements on its own schedule.

Moreover, Macworld gives customers and developers Uncontrolled communication with Apple, and Apple hates that, says John Welch, an IT manager, blogger, and sometime InformationWeek contributor, in a profanity-laced blog post. Apple "HATES unmanaged random customer contact," Welch says, and clarifies: "Apple doesn't want to talk to you. Apple has never wanted to talk to you."

Apple wants to limit its contact with customers to the Internet and to the Apple Stores, which are as orchestrated as Disneyland, Welch says. Developers get access to Apple at the Apple-run Worldwide Developers Conference in the summer.

Welch is right -- but I don't think he goes far enough. Apple doesn't just want to control contact with customers and developers, it wants to eliminate that contact entirely -- except for the contact involving customers handing over their credit cards and walking off with merchandise.

Indeed, Steve Jobs doesn't want contact with anyone -- not even Apple employees.

And that's the real reason Steve Jobs didn't attend Macworld this year. He hinted he skipped it for health reasons. But the real reason is that he's on an overseas excursion, looking for Oompa Loompas he can replace Apple's employees with.

Then, Jobs can build a big, wrought-iron fence around Apple's headquarters and chain and padlock the gate shut. After that, nothing will ever be seen going into Apple headquarters, and the only things that'll come out are Wonka Bars and Everlasting Gobstoppers Macs, iPhones, and iPods. Forever.

Macworld Expo Rumors, Predictions, Expectations

2009-01-06T16:55:00.001+07:00

Leave it to Apple to steal headlines by doing nothing. The big talk leading up to Macworld Conference & Expo, which kicks off today in San Francisco, was all about Apple's abrupt announcement late last month that Steve Jobs will not deliver his traditional keynote address this year, and that Apple won't exhibit at the conference beginning in 2010.

The announcements set off a tidal wave of speculation and rumors. Many people wondered whether Jobs is pulling out because he's too sick to participate. Jobs survived serious cancer treatment in 2004, and since then there have been several waves of rumors about his failing health. Nobody, however, has presented a single scrap of evidence that Jobs is actually sick. It's all a bunch of gossip.

In the latest round of speculation, the gadget blog Gizmodo last week claimed to have an inside source who says Jobs's health is rapidly declining. Apple's stock price dropped more than three points within minutes of the report. CNBC columnist Jim Goldman said the report is unfounded, noting that if Apple is misrepresenting or withholding information about Jobs's health, "someone -- indeed a lot of people -- could be going to jail." The sharp drop in stock price is an indication of Apple investors being "skittish" and having "little conviction" in Apple, Goldman said.

Kara Swisher, writing on the Wall Street Journal blog All Things Digital, scolded the rumormongers in her grandmother's language, calling them "crepe-hangers." Crunchgear suggested Goldman and Gizmodo settle the dispute with a "slapfight."

But blogger Robert Scoble settled the question: "I'm in Palo Alto. Just had yogurt at shop that Steve Jobs eats at frequently. They said he was in a couple of days ago and is in great health," he wrote on FriendFeed on Tuesday.

Good investigative reporting there, Robert. But what flavor yogurt does Jobs like?

[Update: Jobs announced Monday, 1/5, that he lost weight throughout 2008 due to a hormonal imbalance. He said he is undergoing treatment, is staying on as CEO, and expect to regain his lost weight by spring. ]

Yet another wave of speculation surrounded the future of the conference. Macworld Expo is the big annual reunion for the Mac family, where the most committed users, and vendors large and small, get together to network, communicate, and make deals. Apple's big, sprawling booth and the traditional Jobs keynote are like the anchor stores at a mall. Can Macworld survive without Apple? If it does, it'll be a different show than it was before.

But business continues as usual for the Apple community. This time of year, that means speculation, leaks, and rumors about what the company is likely to announce at Macworld. Philip Schiller, Apple's senior VP of worldwide product marketing, will deliver the keynote in Jobs's place. Let's take a look at what he's likely to unveil.

Fixing Linux: What's Broken And What To Do About It

2009-01-06T16:52:00.000+07:00

Despite the fact that it's been around since 1991, Linux remains a work in progress. It's not perfect, nor does anyone pretend it is. The places where it needs the most immediate improvement are also a matter of debate: what's crucially important to some is only marginally important to others.

Still, there's no question that there are key areas where Linux is lacking -- not just missing individual features, but things that are actively dysfunctional and which need immediate attention. I'm going to run down several major areas where Linux, as an operating system and as a platform, needs work.

The software that goes into a Linux distribution is dealt with in chunks called "packages" -- whole applications, support libraries for apps, programmer's tools, and so on. Firefox and OpenOffice.org, for instance, are present in most every Linux distribution's software repository as package sets.

Package Management

The way packages are managed within any individual distribution is entirely up to the maintainers of that distribution. Red Hat (NYSE: RHT) uses its own RPM system, the Debian distributions have their own .DEB format; and so on. Within the context of any one distribution, this isn't a problem: if you're using only Red Hat or Debian, odds are you obtain the software you need from that distribution's repository and are done with it.

This is one of the many fragmentation problems that makes it difficult for commercial software vendors to offer their products for Linux. No one package format will do the trick across distributions -- not without hassle, anyway.

To that end, potential program vendors have three choices: 1) devote time and effort -- and money -- to ensuring that their program installs, runs, and stays cohesive on a variety of distributions (maybe just Red Hat, Ubuntu, and SUSE to keep things simple); 2) make their programs available in a given distro's repositories; or 3) provide source-code packages so that the user can compile the code on any target platform.

Option #3 is pretty much out of the question for any proprietary software vendor. #1 multiplies the amount of work involved to get any given program out the door -- not to a degree that makes it wholly unfeasible, but it does add more work. That leaves #2, which has the advantage of making applications immediately available to the user of any given distribution, and cuts down on the amount of work needed by an end user to get something installed.

Because the demand for commercial apps on Linux is relatively slender right now, the problem isn't as pronounced: most people just get their offerings from their local repository. In the long run, though, if commercial apps take root on Linux, it will become that much bigger an obstacle to making Linux a platform for same, especially where downloading apps freely from the Web is concerned.

Windows 7 Revealed: 24 Screen Shots Of Microsoft's Next Operating System

2009-01-06T16:43:00.000+07:00

Microsoft on Tuesday took the wraps of the preview version of Windows 7, which will be the successor to Vista. Julie Larson Green, Microsoft's vice president for Windows experience, hosted a demo in which she walked attendees through the features of the operating system.

At first glance, Windows 7 maintains the streamlined look of Vista, but appears more muted -- even Windows XP-like. Mostly, Microsoft seems to be focusing more on functionality, possibly in a bid to put some distance between Windows 7 and the criticisms which have dogged Vista.

The press release touting the Windows 7 preview, Microsoft framed those functionality issues in general terms. As the release words it, Windows 7 will enable users to "work the way you want," "make everyday tasks faster and easier," and "make new things possible."
Regarding that last bullet point, Microsoft explains this means Windows 7 will be easier to connect to cameras, phones, and printers. That's handled in the OS by Windows 7's new Device Center.

Most obviously, a quick tour through Windows 7 reveals its new taskbar, which is sparser than in previous iterations of the OS. From the screen shots, it's clear that Microsoft has listened to criticism and tuned many features, including search and access to security controls. The look and feel of the user interface is also highly customizable.

The version of Windows 7 previewed at PDC is technically a pre-beta release. The official shipment of the final version is expected in about a year's time.

Coalition Aims To Lower DTV Licensing Costs

2009-01-06T16:42:00.001+07:00

An effort to trim digital TV patent licensing fees has been launched by flat panel TV manufacturer Vizio and an organization called Cut Fatt -- an acronym for the Coalition to Terminate Financial Abuses of the Television Transmission.

Vizio and Cut Fatt maintain that "excessive patent charges for DTV" have already totaled more than $1 billion for TV sets that comply with FCC standards for digital television. Cut Fatt representatives said the group is planning to file a petition Monday with the FCC with a goal of reducing costs of TV sets. The issue takes on new importance as millions of the nation's TV owners will see their TV transmission switch from analog to digital reception on Feb. 17.

"This is the great untold story of the transition to digital television," said Amos Snead, spokesman for Cut Fatt, in a statement. "Since 2007, American consumers have been paying more than 20 to 30 times what consumers in Europe and Japan pay in royalties for basically the same technologies."

Vizio and Cut Fatt maintain that patent holders, whom they did not name, bundle "allegedly essential technology with worthless patents" and end up charging consumers as much as $30, compared with a $1 charge leveled in Europe and Asia for similar technologies.

The issue has slowly gathered traction since July 2007 when the FCC ordered digital tuners to be included in all TVs sold in the United States. Vizio, which has become a leading supplier of flat-panel TVs in recent months, said it favors the FCC declaring a violation of FCC rules for royalty demands for fees higher than comparable international fees.

"We believe that any patent holder seeking higher fees should be required to provide to the FCC that their license fees are reasonable and non-discriminatory," said Laynie Newsome, Vizio's co-founder and VP of sales and marketing communications, in a statement. "We also believe the FCC should initiate a rule-making proceeding in order to create a set of basic rules that apply to the licensing of all patents that are required to implement the FCC-mandated DTV receiver standards."

The issue adds another wrinkle to the coming switch to DTV, which has been shaping up as a major telecommunications and broadcasting event as millions of Americans seek to prepare for Feb. 17. Already there are widespread complaints of poor DTV reception, a shortage of converter boxes, and confusion among consumers. Consumer groups have complained that some cable and satellite operators are taking advantage of consumer confusion and apprehension to sell unneeded services.

Facebook Draws Record Holiday Traffic

2009-01-06T16:40:00.000+07:00

Facebook users visited the social networking site in record numbers on Christmas Eve, according to Hitwise.

Hitwise reported that traffic rose, bringing Facebook 2.18% of all U.S. Internet visits the night before Christmas. That's up from the social networking site's 1.42% average share of U.S. Internet visits in November. The site ranked fifth among all Web sites, up from its ranking of eighth in November.

Hitwise said it uncovered similar patterns in the United Kingdom and with Facebook's chief competitor, MySpace. Heather Hopkins, senior online analyst for Hitwise, reported the trend. Hopkins said she is unsure what seems to motivate users to turn to social networking sites on the holidays, but she proposed several theories.
She said that winter storms could have helped drive traffic in Chicago and several Northeast cities, which drove more traffic to Facebook than other areas.

However, last year, Facebook traffic peaked on Christmas, so users may just be reaching out to friends because they are bored and "stuck home with family," she said. Hopkins said she believes that the most likely scenario is that member traffic rose because people want to send holiday wishes to friends.

Metrics showing an increase in visits to Web sites that offer online greetings, as well as a rise in visits to e-mail providers, seem to support that theory, she said.

Last year, Facebook traffic declined from the holiday peak during the first quarter, only to return to those levels in midsummer and surpass them as the holidays approached.

Israel-Gaza Conflict Spills Over Into Twitter

2009-01-06T16:38:00.000+07:00

Twitter's been in the news repeatedly recently for its emergence as a news source of sorts. It exploded on the scene during the Mumbai bombings in India after simmering during the election and the earthquake in China earlier this year.

Now, it's making waves again, this time as Israel and those sympathetic to its cause wage the battle of words against Hamas and those not so sympathetic to Israel's course of action in Gaza.

Last Tuesday, the Israeli consulate in New York held a question and answer session on Twitter (from the screen name israelconsulate) that was open to anyone with a Twitter account. During the Q&A, Israel was subject to -- and answered or at least dodged -- tough questions about the effectiveness of military action, whether the conflict was tied to upcoming Israeli elections, Hamas' role as an elected government, conditions for a cease-fire, and even pointed attacks accusing Israel of Nazi-like tactics.

From another point of view, Al Jazeera has set up a Twitter account called AJGaza and is affixing text topic identifiers, called hashtags, that are marked #Gaza, to all of its posts. Recent posts highlight President-elect Barack Obama's reaction to the crisis, near real-time reports on explosions and fighting around Gaza, and updates on the Gaza death tolls.

Another account, QassamCount, tallies Qassam rockets fired into Israel by Hamas. Overall, tweets labeled with the #Gaza hash are flowing in at a blistering pace with viewpoints and news updates from all sides in the conflict.

Twitter is only one of several social media sites tracking the conflict beyond the view of television and print media. Social media search engines like WhosTalkin and Social Mention turn up reams of online conversation about the conflict.

NASA Releases Final Report On Columbia Disaster

2009-01-03T17:29:00.001+07:00

NASA has released details of the deadly space shuttle Columbia accident in 2003 and completed a report on what went wrong and how similar accidents can be prevented.

NASA said Tuesday that it had finished a comprehensive study of crew safety equipment and procedures during the accident and issued recommendations to improve safety for future flights.

The agency said the final report on the Columbia accident, with 30 recommendations for spacecraft design and crew safety, represents the first in-depth study on surviving a spaceflight accident. No one survived the Columbia disaster, which left thousands of pieces of debris scattered in mostly remote areas of Texas, Louisiana, and Arkansas.

NASA plans improved training, procedures, and restraints; enhanced equipment; new spacecraft design recommendations; and new accident investigation procedures. Some of the recommendations are already in use in the Space Shuttle Program and the Constellation Program.

A team of NASA employees and outside experts collaborated on the study at NASA's Johnson Space Center.

"The members of this team have done an outstanding job under difficult and personal circumstances," Johnson Space Center director Michael Coats said in a prepared statement. "Their work will ensure that the legacy of Columbia and her heroic crew continues to be the improved safety of future human spaceflights worldwide."

The report, a fact sheet explaining the recommendations that NASA has already implemented, and records from a teleconference regarding the report, are available on NASA's Web site. The teleconference took place Tuesday with officials and investigators from the Johnson Space Center.

Microsoft Windows, IE Usage Declined In 2008

2009-01-03T17:28:00.000+07:00

et share suffered in 2008 while competitors' products thrived.

According to statistics provided by Net Applications, Microsoft Internet Explorer's global market share fell from 78.58% in December 2007 to 68.15% in December 2008.

During that same period, the 10.43 percentage points lost by Microsoft accounted for almost all the gains among competing browser makers. Mozilla's Firefox market share rose from 14.95% to 21.34%, an increase of 6.39 percentage points. Apple's Safari market share rose from 4.85% to 7.93%, a gain of 3.08 percentage points. Google's Chrome browser, introduced in September, reached the end of 2008 with 1.04% market share.

Microsoft Windows remains the dominant operating system among the Internet users tracked by Net Applications, but it's a bit less so now than a year ago. The metrics company reports that the global market share for Windows fell to 88.68% in December 2008, down from 91.79% in December 2007.

Windows Vista use grew 16.06 percentage points during this period, from 5.06% in December 2007 to 21.12% in December 2008. Windows XP, however, lost 16.27 percentage points, dropping from 81.49% in December 2007 to 65.22% a year later. Windows 2000 went from 3.9% to 1.47%.

Apple's Mac OS X, meanwhile, gained 3.23 percentage points over the same period of time, rising from 6.4% to 9.63%. Simultaneously, the company's iPhone -- which, like the iPod touch, runs a version of Mac OS X -- saw its market share rise from 0.04% to 0.44%, taking Mac OS X as a whole past the 10% mark.

In terms of its share of the U.S. search market, Microsoft also fared poorly, declining from 9.8% in November 2007 to 8.3% in November 2008, according to ComScore. Yahoo's search share also declined over the same period, from 22.4% to 20.4%. Google saw its search market share grow from 58.6% to 63.5% over the same span of time.

iPhone 3G Gets Unlocking Software

2009-01-03T17:26:00.000+07:00

A group of iPhone hackers has released software that makes it possible to use Apple's touch-screen smartphone on nearly any GSM carrier.

As promised, the iPhone Dev Team released an unlocking software for the iPhone 3G on the first day of the new year. The software, dubbed "Yellowsn0w," requires the user to have a jailbroken iPhone with a baseband of 02.28.00, which is provided in the latest 2.2 firmware from Apple.

Yellowsn0w works by launching a payload injector during the boot, or when the baseband is reset. It's describe as a "small program" that's unobtrusive, and the end user won't notice anything other than the third-party SIM card working. The Dev Team said the software can be easily removed and the software makes no permanent changes to the handset.

But the software is definitely still a beta, and gadget Web sites likeGizmodo and CrunchGear have reported varying degrees of unlocking success.

"The iPhone 3G is used all over the world with all sorts of SIM cards, and we almost certainly will see untested and unexpected situations," the Dev Team wrote on its blog. "If the soft unlock doesn't work for you on day 1 (literally day 1, of 2009!) then please don't panic or be impatient. This is new territory for everyone, so enjoy the ride as much as you can."

In the United States, the unlock means iPhone 3G users can use wireless services from GSM providers other than AT&T. But the touch-screen smartphone still uses 3G frequencies that are unique to AT&T, so unlocked iPhones using T-Mobile's voice network would only be able to access the slower EDGE data service.

The unlock may have more appeal for globe-trotters because voice and data networks are more standardized in other countries. For example, an unlocked iPhone 3G owner could forgo international roaming rates when traveling by popping in a local SIM card.

But the unlocking software carries some risks, as it voids the warranty and Apple could potentially disable the device with a software update.

200X: Year Of The Linux Argument

2008-12-22T08:19:00.001+07:00

In no less than two days I've read a flurry of articles pooh-poohing the Linux desktop as a veritable delusion and a fairy story -- something to tell young GTK+ coders before you tuck them in at night. It isn't the year of the Linux desktop; it's the year of the Linux catfight.

One such declaration comes courtesy of, oddly enough, Matt Asay -- open source blogger for CNET. In "Yet again, desktop Linux won't claim a year", he insists that it's the cloud, the Big PC In The Net, that will be our next "desktop":

... we already have the Linux desktop: it runs in the cloud and is called Facebook, Google (NSDQ: GOOG), etc. There is little need to have Linux running on my local laptop when the real game is in the cloud now.

It's time to move on. Next year won't be the year of the Linux desktop anymore than 2010 will be. Why? Because we don't need a Linux desktop. We need to accelerate efforts toward the cloud, which is open source's game to lose.

All of this is true, but only up to a point. The cloud -- or Cloud, I guess we should call it -- is only of importance to people who need such a thing, and at the moment they need it. I'm not particularly interested in a cloud when I'm trying to work in a six-layer image in Photoshop; I want a good, responsive GUI and a logically-designed workflow. I am interested in the cloud the minute I publish my finished work to Flickr, though. Both experiences demand radically different kinds of engineering, and if Linux can give me good experiences in both camps, bully for Linux.

Alex Zaharov-Reutt's article "2009: Year of the Linux Delusion" for iTWire is even more venomous. The title alone tells it, but he goes on to slam the whole concept of Linux-powered netbooks as productivity devices:

... when you want to get some real work done, you’ll certainly be turning to a real desktop, notebook, or netbook, not one of these "web" devices with little processing power that relies on a non-flaky Internet connection.

He leaves it to us to define what "real work" is (as opposed to, what, all that "fake" work going around?). From what I've seen, there's more than enough "real work" that can be accomplished through one's e-mail clients or word processors, two applications that don't exactly require devastating amounts of CPU or graphics power to be usable.

Each of these two arguments seems to only encompass half the issue. There is as much a need for a robust local desktop as there is a slimmed-down, nothing-extra desktop, as there is for a desktop-in-the-cloud. I have found myself using any one of these things, or some combination of them, at any given time. To assume that any one of these will rise to the top and lord it over the rest is myopia.

I don't believe for a second that Microsoft (NSDQ: MSFT) or Windows will go completely off the map, whether due to their own incompetence or because of open source making something as good or better for less. I do believe that Windows will no longer be the de facto choice, that having competition from everything from Linux to the Mac to the Cloud will be and is exactly the kick in the rump it needs. And vice versa, too -- that future editions of Windows ought to have the same effect on those concerned with desktop experiences.

Here's another way to put it: 2009 will be the year of choice on the desktop. Better?

Is Microsoft's IE Patch A Retroactive Brand Fix??

2008-12-22T08:18:00.000+07:00

Microsoft (NSDQ: MSFT) reacted to the latest IE flaw with an emergency patch earlier this week, but does fixing the software retroactively repair the damage to its brand?

The flaw was a doozy, by most accounts, opening a hole in memory space that let a mere visit to a malicious site trigger hacker access to keystroke records and passwords. Another venue of attack came via an exploit code buried in Word documents. Zillions of computers could have been compromised.

I think events such as this create a constant state of orange-level alert for IE users.

Every security scare and subsequent download is the software corollary of a pat-down in an airport security line. We all know that we should be worried, and that powers-that-be are being powerful and checking. But we also know that the evil-doers are working just as hard to outsmart them...so we are wary, and are forced to endure long waits and smelly feet (and we're supposed to be thereby reassured).

There are similar impacts on PC users experience, both for those of us unlucky enough to have our computers violated and phished, as well as the larger group of unaffected users who get feel the effects of problems caused by repeated software downloads (the unanticipated impact of fixes that break other bits of device performance, like resetting drivers, changing disk labels, or whatever).

Ultimately, the fixes are retroactive, so we really have no protection, per se; like the airport analogy, Microsoft is always chasing yesterday's news, while tomorrow's headlines stay hidden. I'm sure it has legions of reformed hackers working to discover exploits, and trolls Internet chat like the CIA to find/assess evidence of hacker chatter, but we never hear about that stuff. Most of our interactions with the Mother Ship are about bad things that have already happened.

Does this situation help or hurt the Microsoft (or IE) brand? Is security, whether in software or airline travel, something you can fix retroactively?

Two Predictions 2009

2008-12-22T08:17:00.000+07:00

As 2008 comes to a close, I'd like to share three predictions for the technology space in 2009. The predictions are: more utility-based web applications will launch and mobile usage will grow but content won't be monetized.

Utility-based Web Applications Will Be Visible
I've been reviewing utilities for a long time now and while they aren't as "sexy" as Twitter or Facebook, these utilities can provide more usefulness than any social network. Many of these utility applications generate real revenue and have more opportunities for revenue than just running ads. Some examples of utility web applications include:

GoMobo - provides a way to order food online from local fast food establishments and have the food ready when you arrive so you don't have to wait on line
ZocDoc - check out doctors, read reviews from other patients, make appointments
37Signals - offers a variety of web-based productivity applications
BeenVerified - run background checks on potential employees along with the ability to use verified credentials across the Web
Zoho - offers a suite of online office applications

Most early adopter and Web 2.0 review sites shy away from reviews of utilities because they typically don't drive massive traffic and it's harder to push the reviews to social news sites including Digg or Slashdot. I do believe we will see these review sites starting to cover more utilities in 2009 because of the multi-tiered revenue approach that many of the utilities exhibit. This visibility will help to push developers into creating more utilities.

Mobile Usage
As more people move to "smart" mobile devices, mobile usage will continue to grow and will rapidly accelerate in 2009. Developers will continue to build applications for the iTunes App Store. These applications will provide a stream of mobile monetization for both the developers and for Apple. As for mobile content, usage will also have a rapid growth curve. Sadly though, monetizing content will be more difficult than monetizing mobile applications.

Most smart mobile devices have great Web browsers but in my tests, users only engage with the content and not the ads (even less than in a traditional Web environment). The new Skyfire mobile browser can actually resize a page so you can scroll through the content without any of the sidebars where the advertising typically is placed. Traditional display andGoogle (NSDQ: GOOG) AdWords ads just won't work on a mobile device. The first company to figure out how to actually monetize mobile content will do very well in the market.

Google Bakes A 'Cupcake' For Android

2008-12-22T08:16:00.000+07:00

If you're wondering when Android is going to make the next leap in functionality, wonder no longer. A new update to the Android platform, called "cupcake," brings with it more than some simple bug fixes. New features galore will be baked into the OS, as well. Guess what, Apple? Android is getting cut-and-paste and video recording before the iPhone!

The list of new features is astounding. The changes being made are currently not ready for release. The "cupcake" branch of Android is for developers only. But peeking at what will be included in a hopefully-not-too-distance version of Android is exciting nonetheless.

Here's the rundown:

• MMS sees bug fixes as well as the new ability to save attachments.

• E-mail gets a large list of significant bug fixes including: new-mail notifications for POP3 accounts; new accounts are now set to check every 15 minutes (instead of defaulting to "never"); and there's also a fix to IMAP manually-created accounts so deleting messages works properly.

• The music player will now fade playback back in after suspending for a phone call. It also has a new media search function that allows for third-party apps to launch or respond to media searches based on artist, album, or title.

• The browser is seeing some significant updates, as well. Some of the new capabilities include: updated WebKit browser core; support for new, optimized JavaScript engine (SquirrelFish); copy / paste is enabled in the browser; find is enabled in the browser; and drawing has been sped up substantially. Pages with animations will load five times faster.

• With cupcake, Android will now support stereo Bluetooth.

• With respect to the camera software, Android will now support video recorder mode, allow for the sharing of videos, offer a list of video thumbnails, and permit local file playback.

Those are the big new features. There also are dozens of other new features and under-the-hood fixes. You can read all about them here

AT&T, Nokia Announce Belt-Tightening Measures

2008-12-07T07:31:00.000+07:00

AT&T and Nokia each announced severe belt-tightening measures this week, but each laid out different approaches to address market share issues.

Suffering from the loss of landline subscribers, AT&T announced Thursday that it will cut its employment base by 4%, or 12,000 employees. The company, however, said it plans to increase staff in broadband, wireless, and video. AT&T has been riding its exclusive deal with Apple's iPhone, and the telecom company expects to gain market share in the mobile phone category next year.

At its annual Capital Markets Day, this year in Brooklyn, N.Y., Nokia again cut its estimates for handset deliveries and indicated that it, too, will make staffing cuts. Nokia is also lining up for increased market penetration in the United States. The Finnish company has a single-digit market share in the United States, versus its nearly 40% global share.

According to a report from Avian Securities, Nokia is said to be preparing to launch its highly anticipated E71 touch-screen smartphone in the United States next year through AT&T. Verizon is likely to get the 2605 clam-shell mobile phone.

Olli-Pekka Kallasvuo, Nokia's chief executive, recently said the company plans to make a renewed effort to crack the U.S. market. Comments this week by AT&T executives that they could move to Nokia's Symbian operating system indicate that a closer Nokia-AT&T alliance could be in the works.

As for belt-tightening, Nokia's CFO Rick Simonson said at the Brooklyn investment meeting that there is great urgency to cut costs at Nokia due to the deteriorating global economic situation and there will soon be some announcements that address that situation.

Nokia surprised attendees at the gathering with the comment that it will be the world's largest manufacturer of touch-screen devices in a year.

resource: http://techweb.com

Hands-Free Calling No Safer For Drivers

2008-12-07T07:24:00.000+07:00

American drivers who believe talking on a hands-free cell phone while driving is safer than talking on a handheld handset are fooling themselves, according to the American Automobile Association.

AAA said this week that studies of crash-involved cell phone records show that the use of cell phones makes drivers four times as likely to be in a crash.

"Evidence shows that using a hands-free phone while driving impairs your reaction time to critical events and increases your crash risk about the same as if you were using a hand-held phone," said AAA Foundation CEO Peter Kissinger in a statement. "Too many Americans are driving with the false sense of security that hands-free devices are somehow safer, which would be a deadly mistake."

AAA Foundation surveys also have found that drivers generally look down on cell phone use while driving, but then in a "do as I say, not as I do" example, they talk on cell phones when they drive. Even worse, nearly half of drivers between 18 and 24 said they occasionally text while driving. In one AAA survey, 60% said they use handheld phones when driving, while 34% use hands-free handsets.

AAA surveys produced interesting data on teen drivers, the group often singled out as being most likely to talk and text on cell phones. AAA noted that 18 states and the District of Columbia ban all cell phone use while driving by teens.

"Given the trouble new teen drivers have managing distractions and making safe driving decisions, AAA encourages all states to enact laws banning teens from using any wireless device while driving," said Kathleen Marvaso, AAA's VP of public affairs, in a statement. "Texting while driving poses even greater safety concerns." AAA has proposed that texting be banned for all drivers.

In reviewing regulation of cell phone use while driving, AAA said no U.S. state or jurisdiction currently bans all cell phone use in moving vehicles, but there is a rising trend toward introducing legislation to stem cell phone use considered to be dangerous. Where states have failed to act on the issue, local jurisdictions have sometimes stepped in, banning hand-held use of cell phones. Included in this group are Chicago; Santa Fe, N.M.; Detroit; and Brooklyn, N.Y

Resource: http://www.techweb.com

AMD Faces 25% Revenue Drop Due To Weak Demand

2008-12-07T07:17:00.000+07:00

Advanced Micro Devices on Thursday said revenue in the fourth quarter would be 25% lower than the previous quarter, because of weaker-than-expected demand for its products.

AMD's warning came about three weeks after rival Intel lowered its fourth-quarter earnings forecast. Both companies said they were experiencing lower-than-expected sales across all geographies and businesses. AMD said sales were particularly weak in the consumer market.

AMD said it expected revenue, excluding process technology license revenue, to be a quarter less than the $1.585 billion reported in the third quarter, when the company reported its eighth consecutive quarterly loss. The loss, however, was significantly narrower than the same quarter the year before, and the company said it reached its goal of operational profitability.

Nevertheless, chipmakers are struggling within an economic downturn that has taken a serious toll. The global semiconductor industry this year is projected to see its first revenue decline in seven years, brought on by lower spending on PCs and other electronic devices by consumers and businesses, according to iSuppli. Gartner also lowered its revenue projection for the industry, as well as the World Semiconductor Trade Statistics, an industry trade group.

AMD has taken steps to reduce expenses. The company has said it would cut its workforce by 3% and plans to spin off its manufacturing operations in a joint venture with Advanced Technology Investment Co., formed by the Abu Dhabi government. ATIC would have a 55.6% stake in the company, but AMD would have equal voting rights. The deal is expected to close in the beginning of 2009

Resource: http://www.techweb.com

Symbian's Move Toward Open Source Gathers Steam

2008-12-07T07:15:00.000+07:00

The momentum to turn Symbian into an open source mobile operating system is strong, and developers can expect to see a preliminary version in the first half of 2009, said Lee Williams, nominated executive director of the Symbian Foundation.

Symbian is the dominant mobile operating system, with nearly 50% of the global market. But it has faced increased competition from entrenched players like Research In Motion, Microsoft's Windows Mobile, and relatively new players like Apple and the Google-backed Android platform. In June, Nokia announced plans to purchase the remaining stock in Symbian and spin it into a royalty-free operating system under the Eclipse Public License. The goal was to harness the innovation of the open source environment to increase market share, as well as to attract application developers.

The Symbian Foundation was created to steward that transition, and it includes industry heavyweights such as AT&T, Nokia, Samsung, Sony Ericsson, and T-Mobile. During a roundtable event at the Symbian Partner Event in San Francisco Thursday, executives from AT&T, Nokia, Symbian, and Visa discussed the progress and obstacles of moving to open source.

Williams said the foundation has hit or surpassed many of its internal milestones regarding operations and processes, and it will begin recruiting and hiring soon. Foundation members are still in the process of "code bashing" Symbian with Nokia's S60, DoCoMo's Mobile Oriented Applications Platform, and UIQ to create the new platform.

Symbian and S60 in particular have been optimized around the "scroll and select" input method. This makes devices like the Nokia E71 easy to use one-handed, but it has also led to a somewhat stagnant user interface, particularly in comparison to the iPhone 3G and even the Android-powered G1. Williams said the foundation has the opportunity to blend the functionality of the existing Symbian with advanced touch and sensor methods that could ultimately lead to a more usable and visually pleasing UI.

Applications and developers will be crucial to the success of the new Symbian, and a developer relations program is being set in place. One knock on Symbian has been that it's a powerful operating system, but developing for it can be costly and difficult. Williams said the foundation wants to ensure that developers of all kinds will be able to create content with programs they are familiar with such as Flash. He also praised how Apple and Google have made creating applications for their mobile platforms easy, particularly for small companies, hobbyists, and content providers.

While popular across the globe, Symbian devices have not been able to capture a large market in North America. The United States is behind many other advanced countries in smartphone adoption rates and 3G networks, but it remains one of the largest potential markets. One major factor in the paltry U.S. adoption rate of Symbian phones is the relatively weak carrier support. That could change as AT&T appears to be taking a large role in the foundation.

Roger Smith, director of next generation services for AT&T, said the mobile operator is looking to standardize on as few mobile platforms as possible over the next few years in order to avoid fragmentation. With its rich history in the mobile space, Symbian is a "credible candidate" to be one of the few operating systems that AT&T backs, Smith said.

"If done well and done right, this can be a game-changing event," Smith said of the open source Symbian.

Being involved with the mobile operating system potentially lets AT&T play a larger role in the ownership of the customer experience. For example, the iPhone 3G has been a big hit for AT&T, but users have virtually no contact with the carrier besides billing and customer service. Smith said a percentage of its customers may want the experience that the iPhone or BlackBerry provides, but there is a large chunk of its subscriber base that isn't being addressed.

"We're going to take more control over our destiny in the mobile operating space," Smith said.

resource: http://www.techweb.com

Opera Offers Sneak Peek At Next Browser

2008-12-07T07:12:00.000+07:00

Opera Software on Thursday offered the first look at Opera 10, which the company is touting as much faster than previous generations.

The alpha version of the Web browser, available for download at the Opera site, gives people a sneak peek at the browser's Presto 2.2 rendering engine, which will be the foundation of all future Opera 10 products. The new engine delivers a 30% faster browsing experience as compared with Presto 2.1 introduced in Opera 9.5 in June, the company said.

Along with the new engine, Opera 10 has improved standards support and better technologies for building and viewing Web sites. Other new features include spell-checking as a person types and auto-updating to the latest versions as they become available.

"My favorite development in this release is the support for new Web technologies, which allows people to explore new ways of using the Internet," Johan Borg, VP of consumer engineering for Opera Software, said in a statement.

The Opera 10 alpha release follows last week's introduction of the latest version of Opera Mini, a mobile browser that the company claimed also is faster than previous generations. Opera also added to Mini 4.2 support for T-Mobile's Android-powered G1 phone, which ships with the "Chrome light" browser. G1 users would have to download Opera Mini from the Android Market.

Opera Mini is designed to provide fast access to the Internet no matter what device or network speed the user has, and it's available on handsets such as the Samsung Instinct, Windows Mobile smartphones, and BlackBerry devices. The Java ME-based browser works by rendering pages on a server and then sending them to the device, thus easing the connectivity demands of the phone. Opera said it has been able to improve speeds in the United States by 30% thanks to a new server park.

As of the end of November, the Opera browser was the fifth-most-used browser for accessing the Web, with a 0.71% market share, according to the Web metrics firm Net Applications. Microsoft Internet Explorer led the market, followed by Firefox, Safari, and Chrome.

Systems

2008-11-15T23:00:00.000+07:00

Welcome to a journey in the realm of systems. The journey is still unfolding as this web site continues to evolve over time. Yet, even with the endless changes, there continues to be a connection, in one fashion or another, with systems. And, I continue to find that the lens which provides a systems perspective is the most revealing of understanding found to date.

The real intent here is not to study systems as a discipline, though more an intent to study lots of things and employ a systems perspective to foster understanding. Agreed, this requires some understanding of systems. As such, information is provided to enable one to develop a level of understanding sufficient to delve into the rest of what resides at this web site.

Every attempt will be made to avoid the major failing of "system science." In the words of Ludwig von Bertalanffy, "The student in 'system science' receives a technical training which makes systems theory -- originally intended to overcome current overspecialization -- into another of the hundreds of academic specialities."

Welcome to a journey in the realm of systems. The journey is still unfolding as this web site continues to evolve over time. Yet, even with the endless changes, there continues to be a connection, in one fashion or another, with systems. And, I continue to find that the lens which provides a systems perspective is the most revealing of understanding found to date.

The real intent here is not to study systems as a discipline, though more an intent to study lots of things and employ a systems perspective to foster understanding. Agreed, this requires some understanding of systems. As such, information is provided to enable one to develop a level of understanding sufficient to delve into the rest of what resides at this web site.

Every attempt will be made to avoid the major failing of "system science." In the words of Ludwig von Bertalanffy, "The student in 'system science' receives a technical training which makes systems theory -- originally intended to overcome current overspecialization -- into another of the hundreds of academic specialities."

Enjoy the journey!
System

The word system probably has more varied meanings than any other word in use today. The definition I have become comfortable with I owe to the late Austrian Biologist Ludwig von Bertalanffy.

A system is an entity which maintains its existence
through the mutual interaction of its parts.

The key emphasis here is "mutual interaction," in that something is occurring between the parts, over time, which maintains the system. A system is different than a heap or a collection, mostly.

This definition of a system implies something beyond cause and effect. Rather than simply A affects B, there is an implication that B also affects A. Examples of systems are particle, atom, molecule, cell, organ, person, community, state, nation, world, solar system, galaxy, and universe, in increasing levels of complexity. In truth there is only one system, "the Universe," and all other systems are really just sub-systems of this larger system. The relevant question has to do with where one chooses to draw boundaries.
Emergence

Associated with the idea of system is a principle called emergence. From the mutual interaction of the parts of a system there arise characteristics which can not be found as characteristic of any of the individual parts.

Stumbling across this as I did was most enlightening. It was probably in high school that I was first acquainted with the idea of synergy; the idea that the whole was greater than the sum of its parts. And, for all the examples ever used, emergence never really hit me until I ran into the right example. The right example just happened to be water! Amazing it took so long since there's so much of it around.

One could study hydrogen and oxygen in isolation from each other forever and never discover the characteristic of wetness. Wetness is an emergent characteristic of the mutual interaction of hydrogen and oxygen when combined to produce the molecular form called water. One has to study the system to get a true understanding of wetness. Studying the parts will not provide an appropriate understanding.

A systems view is somewhat in contradiction to the concept of analysis, which is breaking things down into smaller pieces to simplify the study. Analysis brings with it the risk of potentially loosing the most relevant characteristics of the system, and possibly developing a less than complete understanding. Yes, analysis is an important technique, and at the same time another method of study is also warranted, something I have seen called anasynthis. Anasynthis being the study of the whole, and the parts, in the hopes of developing an appropriate level of understanding.

Dynamic Modeling

2008-11-15T22:38:00.000+07:00

Models are the things we build to help us understand things better. When dealing with concepts of reality we have as the only alternative those abstractions we develop as models, or in situations where it is simply to costly to build the real thing, we build models to help us understand. In short models are simplifications, or abstractions, of reality intended to promote understanding. Whether the models we create are good models or poor models depends on the extent to which they aid us in developing the understanding we seek. As to whether a model is correct or incorrect is probably something which will only become evident in time.

The difficulty, or I should say limiting characteristic, of most of the models we build is that they are static in nature. That is, they are models that represent a snapshot of something at a particular point in time. Yet, reality is not static. Reality is constantly changing through our interactions with it, and the interactions between all of its parts, reality is dynamic in its nature. The question arises as to how we can believe that it is possible to build static models of dynamic reality and expect them to aid our understanding to anything more than a very limited extent.

The answer to this question is provided by something call Dynamic Modeling, or as it was probably better known in a prior incarnation, Simulation. Reality operates "in" time, real time. Dynamic Modeling operates "on" time, serving to compress it in such a way that it provides us with a view of the evolution of our constructions through time.

As an example consider the interpretation we have of a bank savings account. We know that if we put money in our savings account the bank will periodically pay us interest on the money in the account. This may be represented by the following very simple model.

Figure 1

This diagram, a very simplistic model, says if I give Money to the Bank then the Bank will give Interest to Me. Pretty simple, yes? Yet what does this model tell us about how things change over time? Not much.

Now consider the following diagram.

Figure 2

This is what is typically called a Systems Thinking, or Causal Loop, Diagram. The intent is to add a bit more information than is found in Figure 1. If you're not familiar with these diagrams don't let it get to you. They're not as difficult to read as you might think. For addition information on reading diagrams see: Introduction to Systems Thinking.

What the diagram indicates is simply influences between various parts of the system, with indicators as to the nature of the influence being either the same (S) or opposite (O).

Figure 2 reads as follows: Money and Interest both serve to increase the Principal. Principal, acting in conjunction with Interest Rate, both serve to increase Interest. This Interest then feeds into Principal serving to increase it even more. The snowball rolling down hill at the center of the diagram indicates this is a reinforcing structure, reinforcing in that it feeds upon itself.

Figure 2 gives some additional information over what was provided in Figure 1. Some additional information in terms of how the parts of the system influence each other, yet Figure 2 still gives us little information about how the system operates "in" time.

Suppose we consider the following scenario. If I put $100 in the bank and the bank pays an interest of 6% quarterly, how much money will I have in 8 years? Yes, there is a mathematical formula by which you can calculate this. In most dynamic systems the formulas are of such complexity as to become completely unmanageable.

Figure 3

Figure 3 is the result of associating, or embedding, equations into the model and running it with quarterly calculations. As a result, the model indicates you would have $161.03 at the end of the 8th year.

Now suppose the bank was paying 8% interest as opposed to 6%. How would this change the result? This is presented in Figure 4, which compares the result with Figure 3. This would result in $188.45 at the end of 8 years.

Figure 4

Now suppose I also put another $10 in the account every quarter.

Figure 5

Figure 5 indicates that simply adding $10 a quarter to the account will produce $630.72 at the end of 8 years. A substantial increase, when compared with the result of Figure 3 and Figure 4, for a small ongoing addition to the principal.

In each of these examples the static model of the system has not changed, yet the dynamic result is markedly different in each of the examples cited.

Now let's consider an example which isn't quite as simplistic as the Interest and Principal one.

Consider a rather high profile consulting company with 120 employees. Of these 120 employees 60 are professionals and 60 are rookies in training to be professionals. The company bills their clients at a rate of $15k per month for professionals and $5k per month for rookies. Also, it takes 6 months to train a rookie to be a professional. Currently the company wants to remain at 120 employees, and since there are 5 professionals that quit each month, the company hires a new rookie for each professional that quits. Figure 6 is a systems thinking diagram of this description.

Figure 6

The overall result of this system is that it is in a steady state. The 120 employees of this company will generate $1.2 million a month in revenue, if they're all on billing, which I understand is a somewhat far fetched assumption.

Now, what happens if the Pro Quits rate jumps from 5 to 7 per month beginning in the 4th month? I don't think you're going to find a straight forward mathematical formula which will provide an indication of the implications of this change in the system operation. Plugging this change into the model in Figure 6 and running the simulation produces the following operational changes in the system.

Figure 7

What Figure 7 portrays is that in month 4 Pro Quits jumps from 5 to 7. This one time change sets off a 12 month transition in the system where the number of Pros declines from 60 to 48 and the number of Rookies increases from 60 to 72. While this transition is in progress revenue drops accordingly from $1.2 M per month to $1.08 M.

This example should provide a foundation for the value of Dynamic Modeling in terms of providing a capability for seeing the time compression of reality.

Discrete Simulation

2008-11-15T22:35:00.000+07:00

Discrete simulation is a technique where the simulation is advanced from event time to event time rather than using a continuously advancing time clock as in continuous simulation.

Suppose we consider the example of the interaction of the principle and interest associated with a savings account. This can be represented by a systems thinking diagram as follows:

This diagram indicates that Deposits increase the Principal and Withdraws decrease the Principal. Also, the Principal interacts with the Interest Rate on some periodic basis to create Interest. The Interest then serves to increase the Principal.

If we then turn this into a 10 year simulation with the assumptions that the Principal is initially $100, there are no Deposits or Withdraws, and an Interest Rate of 5% is paid once a year it might look like this in Extend.

In the above diagram the Generator function schedules events, which in this particular example just happen to be once a year. When the event happens Interest is computed based on the Principal and the Interest Rate and is tacked on as a value for the event. The event value is extracted in the Get Value function and added to the Principal. The event itself then exits the system.

The above graph show the result of running the model for 10 years. Note that the Interest is computed and added to the Principal at the end of each year and the discrete nature of the simulation is very evident.

Updating Blog Offline

2008-11-15T22:32:00.000+07:00

Blog writing has become a habit and hobby many people nowadays. I also like, who also have the desire to have their own blog. But because of bandwidth limitations (it can be said that the lack of) the gold Viko I can update this blog regularly. I also realize many other bloggers also the same boat, following my serve in the way I overcome this limitation.

Required in writing this blog offline computer is offline at home, online at the school, to bring> 128 MB, and perseverance in writing a blog should be the main capital to develop the blog. With equipment in the combat you are ready to follow this tutorial.
actually there are many blogging software is a good offline at once free, the following list.
1.Windows Live Writer

Microsoft blogging software is made (if I know the new Microsoft would also make a good free) that made with other softaware windows live. Many fans and the people users. This software is actually a portable, but with the help of good people in the virtual universe, make the launcher .

Until now, the author can not make a portable (not yet Live Writer, which can be downloaded directly portable, so should make their own) nginstall portable who said I should update said. I love the original, to create a portable install must be first in the company. If there is a successful to make it portable please help and tell me yes!

2.Post2Blog

Applications include rival weight of WLW, the application is so sophisticated it. used this application is an application service, but then digratiskan and portablenya version prepared by the author. To create a portable, you must first installing (but this is easy, like kayaking WLW) continued from the start menu you can create portablenya.

3.ScribeFire

ScribeFire is addon (progaram additional) on broeser Mozilla Firefox (the browser, so this one mad drama). To portablenya problem we can akali using FirefoxPortable. Information about the addon and Portable Firefox, and you can see the link.
Back to ScribeFire, compared to two rivalnya Scribefire is very minimal but also very powerfull.
features that play other blogs are: QuickAds, QuickBlogging and save drafts.

4.BlogDesk

As ScribeFire, Blogdesk is also a blogging tool that simple. Blogdesk must also "make it portable" own and the author has not been successful to do it.

Because of personal experiences that the author can only use ScribeFire then I also write ScribeFire. to make it then you should install FirefoxPortable in Flashdisk, can be a long and the new firefox 3. Close Firefox "ancient" and then you open the FirefoxPortable to feel the grandeur portabilitas (Lifestyle Portable). After that, please go to this address addon ScribeFire. Downloadnya right-click button and select save as. Select a location to save the download.

After you finish downloading the file and drag it to your portable cell phone, click install and waiting until there is a command to restart Firefox. Close Firefox, and you run again so that ScribeFire installed.

Now there should be a key note at the bottom of the firefox bar, click the image. In a bizarre and the supernatural will be out of the frame where you can write your blog.

Congratulations you can now write a blog in Offline.

ScribeFire easy to use, note the tab-tab on the left, and learn the settings.

Okay, please experiment with this new toy, and safe Berblogging

10 ethical computer

2008-11-15T21:58:00.000+07:00

From time to time the use of computers and the Internet continues to increase at the current estimate is 150 million people worldwide who use the internet facilities and the growth of the Internet is estimated to reach 10% per month. Goals and behavior also different indeed. Generally, adults use the Internet as part of the job and to get information, while the children access the Internet for entertainment needs such as gaming, music, hanging out with other people, finding pictures, song lyrics, writing an email, and others. With the number of internet users this can be ascertained there is always positive and negative side. Cyberbullying (harassment or behavior disrupt the cyber world) is one of the negative impact that often occurs and the behavior of this survey have the mental teenage children. Therefore we must learn how to have good ethics in using the computer. Here are ten ethical computer use, if implemented by young people and IT professionals would negatively impact from the use of the Internet will be reduced and the level of security and convenience in accessing and using computers and the Internet will become more enjoyable.

10 ethical computer use:

1. Do not use a computer to harm other people

In using a computer we can not harm other people, for example, use a computer to break the bank, using a computer to create a virus, using the computer to damage a security system

2. Do not violate the rights of the computer or another person or the
work other people's computer

For computer users, is not expected to disrupt and use the computer for the rights of others, such as piracy of works to do other people, meginstal a program that is not legal.

3. Do not see the files - files that are not our rights

Snoop, spy and to take other people's data is not right, it should not be done by computer users because it is very harmful, and other activities is usually done by the cracker and Hacker is not responsible.

4. Do not use a computer to steal

This is normally used by the hijacker, a thief and a plunderer of using computers to break a bank's security system, and is used by the terrorists to look for funds with a target break personal identity.

5. Do not use a computer to give false testimony

Using a computer to spread false news and not in accordance with the facts, and interfaces information about someone that all forms of lies, and tend violations of law that is damaging the good name of a person.

6. Do not duplicate or use illegal software

It is possible that the public is usually not a sin to show duplicate the software or data sources to include someone without a capture

7. Do not use the computer resources of others without the owner's
computer

If we want to open a computer with other people, we expected to ask permission from the owner first.

8. Do not steal the intellectual property of others

Like duplicating a software and then commercialize it.

9. Consider the consequences of the program that created or computer
system designed

In creating a program should we assess the positive and negative, if we make the program more impact on the poor better we stop making that program.

10. Always consider and put to respect each other when using the
computer

In using the computer we must consider every side of good or bad, until we do not harm others. If each user's computer and the Internet, applying the 10 ethics in berkomputer in using computers or the Internet, we can be sure that the security and comfort for the user and the computer or internet user can be more fun.

resource: www.beritanet.com

Launch Jack Audio Connection Kit daemon with realtime scheduling

2008-11-14T00:56:00.001+07:00

Today, it is very simple to launch the Jack Audio Connection Kit daemon with realtime
When Jack Audio Connection Kit is installed, it adds specific "limit" to jackuser group, into Pluggable Authentication Modules (pam).
Cf. the /etc/security/limits.conf file.

So the only need is to add the user which must need to launch the Jack Audio Connection Kit daemon with realtime scheduling into the jackuser group:
/usr/sbin/usermod -G jackuser "username"

Then, use the -R option when launching Jack Audio Connection Kit daemon:
jackd -R ...

N.B.: those instructions have been performed (at least) under Fedora 8 scheduling, with a no-root user.

Data, Information, Knowledge, and Wisdom

2008-11-13T23:23:00.000+07:00

There is probably no segment of activity in the world attracting as much attention at present as that of knowledge management. Yet as I entered this arena of activity I quickly found there didn't seem to be a wealth of sources that seemed to make sense in terms of defining what knowledge actually was, and how was it differentiated from data, information, and wisdom. What follows is the current level of understanding I have been able to piece together regarding data, information, knowledge, and wisdom. I figured to understand one of them I had to understand all of them.

According to Russell Ackoff, a systems theorist and professor of organizational change, the content of the human mind can be classified into five categories:

Data: symbols
Information: data that are processed to be useful; provides answers to "who", "what", "where", and "when" questions
Knowledge: application of data and information; answers "how" questions
Understanding: appreciation of "why"
Wisdom: evaluated understanding.

Ackoff indicates that the first four categories relate to the past; they deal with what has been or what is known. Only the fifth category, wisdom, deals with the future because it incorporates vision and design. With wisdom, people can create the future rather than just grasp the present and past. But achieving wisdom isn't easy; people must move successively through the other categories.

A further elaboration of Ackoff's definitions follows:

Data... data is raw. It simply exists and has no significance beyond its existence (in and of itself). It can exist in any form, usable or not. It does not have meaning of itself. In computer parlance, a spreadsheet generally starts out by holding data.

Information... information is data that has been given meaning by way of relational connection. This "meaning" can be useful, but does not have to be. In computer parlance, a relational database makes information from the data stored within it.

Knowledge... knowledge is the appropriate collection of information, such that it's intent is to be useful. Knowledge is a deterministic process. When someone "memorizes" information (as less-aspiring test-bound students often do), then they have amassed knowledge. This knowledge has useful meaning to them, but it does not provide for, in and of itself, an integration such as would infer further knowledge. For example, elementary school children memorize, or amass knowledge of, the "times table". They can tell you that "2 x 2 = 4" because they have amassed that knowledge (it being included in the times table). But when asked what is "1267 x 300", they can not respond correctly because that entry is not in their times table. To correctly answer such a question requires a true cognitive and analytical ability that is only encompassed in the next level... understanding. In computer parlance, most of the applications we use (modeling, simulation, etc.) exercise some type of stored knowledge.

Understanding... understanding is an interpolative and probabilistic process. It is cognitive and analytical. It is the process by which I can take knowledge and synthesize new knowledge from the previously held knowledge. The difference between understanding and knowledge is the difference between "learning" and "memorizing". People who have understanding can undertake useful actions because they can synthesize new knowledge, or in some cases, at least new information, from what is previously known (and understood). That is, understanding can build upon currently held information, knowledge and understanding itself. In computer parlance, AI systems possess understanding in the sense that they are able to synthesize new knowledge from previously stored information and knowledge.

Wisdom... wisdom is an extrapolative and non-deterministic, non-probabilistic process. It calls upon all the previous levels of consciousness, and specifically upon special types of human programming (moral, ethical codes, etc.). It beckons to give us understanding about which there has previously been no understanding, and in doing so, goes far beyond understanding itself. It is the essence of philosophical probing. Unlike the previous four levels, it asks questions to which there is no (easily-achievable) answer, and in some cases, to which there can be no humanly-known answer period. Wisdom is therefore, the process by which we also discern, or judge, between right and wrong, good and bad. I personally believe that computers do not have, and will never have the ability to posses wisdom. Wisdom is a uniquely human state, or as I see it, wisdom requires one to have a soul, for it resides as much in the heart as in the mind. And a soul is something machines will never possess (or perhaps I should reword that to say, a soul is something that, in general, will never possess a machine).

Personally I contend that the sequence is a bit less involved than described by Ackoff. The following diagram represents the transitions from data, to information, to knowledge, and finally to wisdom, and it is understanding that support the transition from each stage to the next. Understanding is not a separate level of its own. (look the pictures above)

Data represents a fact or statement of event without relation to other things.

Ex: It is raining.

Information embodies the understanding of a relationship of some sort, possibly cause and effect.

Ex: The temperature dropped 15 degrees and then it started raining.

Knowledge represents a pattern that connects and generally provides a high level of predictability as to what is described or what will happen next.

Ex: If the humidity is very high and the temperature drops substantially the atmospheres is often unlikely to be able to hold the moisture so it rains.

Wisdom embodies more of an understanding of fundamental principles embodied within the knowledge that are essentially the basis for the knowledge being what it is. Wisdom is essentially systemic.

Ex: It rains because it rains. And this encompasses an understanding of all the interactions that happen between raining, evaporation, air currents, temperature gradients, changes, and raining.

Yet, there is still a question regarding when is a pattern knowledge and when is it noise. Consider the following:

Abugt dbesbt regtc uatn s uitrzt.
ubtxte pstye ysote anet sser extess
ibxtedstes bet3 ibtes otesb tapbesct ehracts

It is quite likely this sequence represents 100% novelty, which means it's equivalent to noise. There is no foundation for you to connect with the pattern, yet to me the statements are quite meaningful as I understand the translation with reveals they are in fact Newton's 3 laws of motion. Is something knowledge if you can't understand it?

Now consider the following:

I have a box.
The box is 3' wide, 3' deep, and 6' high.
The box is very heavy.
The box has a door on the front of it.
When I open the box it has food in it.
It is colder inside the box than it is outside.
You usually find the box in the kitchen.
There is a smaller compartment inside the box with ice in it.
When you open the door the light comes on.
When you move this box you usually find lots of dirt underneath it.
Junk has a real habit of collecting on top of this box.

What is it?

A refrigerator. You knew that, right? At some point in the sequence you connected with the pattern and understood it was a description of a refrigerator. From that point on each statement only added confirmation to your understanding.

If you lived in a society that had never seen a refrigerator you might still be scratching your head as to what the sequence of statements referred to.

Also, realize that I could have provided you with the above statements in any order and still at some point the pattern would have connected. When the pattern connected the sequence of statements represented knowledge to you. To me all the statements convey nothing as they are simply 100% confirmation of what I already knew as I knew what I was describing even before I started.

References:

Ackoff, R. L., "From Data to Wisdom", Journal of Applies Systems Analysis, Volume 16, 1989 p 3-9.
Gadomski, Adam Maria, Information, Preferences and Knowledge, An Interesting Evolution in Thought
Sharma, Nikhil, The Origin of the Data Information Knowledge Wisdom Hierarchy

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Data, Information, Knowledge, and Wisdom

References: