News

Quote

Several companies are pursuing techniques to make ethanol out of plants other than corn, which is how ethanol is made today in the United States. Cellulosic ethanol processes convert plant wastes, like wood chips and grasses, to ethanol. Range Fuels uses a thermal chemical process that turns the wood material into a synthetic gas that is then mixed with a catalyst to make ethanol.

Quote

The other major issue is that the current version of CableCard technology does not allow for two-way communication between the device and the cable network. This means that interactive services like video-on-demand and pay-per-view can't be enabled through a CableCard slot on a TV or a set-top box bought at a retail store. This is a major issue for companies like Digeo that want to sell their devices to high-end cable subscribers. Video-on-demand is one of the fastest-growing services that cable operators offer. At the end of the first quarter of 2007, roughly 30 million homes used video-on-demand, according to market research firm SNL Kagan. Operator Comcast said that roughly 75 percent of subscribers that could get VOD used the service. "Without two-way functionality that works, it negates some of the advancements that new set-top box makers can offer consumers," said Ian Olgeirson, senior analyst at SNL Kagan. "They could deliver over-the-top content via the Internet, but I think that market is still a long way off."

Quote

The video gaming industry is poised to overtake the music industry in the US, with global spending on video games surpassing music spending as soon as this year, according to consulting firm PricewaterhouseCoopers. PwC released the data in its annual "Global Entertainment and Media Outlook" report covering 2007 through 2011, which outlines expected growth in the entertainment, film, music, and video game industries, among others.

The information not only reflects the gaming industry's strong trajectory but also serves as a painful reminder that the music industry continues to suffer. EMI recently reported, however, that sales of its DRM-free songs and albums have been good since the launch of iTunes Plus, with CD sales of those same albums dropping during that time. If the gains made by selling DRM-free music online outpace the losses from CD sales, EMI's decision to go DRM-free will prove to be a good one, and the rest of the industry may follow suit.

Quote

The GNU General Public License is a free, copyleft license for software and other kinds of works.

The licenses for most software and other practical works are designed to take away your freedom to share and change the works. By contrast, the GNU General Public License is intended to guarantee your freedom to share and change all versions of a program--to make sure it remains free software for all its users. We, the Free Software Foundation, use the GNU General Public License for most of our software; it applies also to any other work released this way by its authors. You can apply it to your programs, too.

Quote

The Quick Search Box is your fastest way to do web and desktop searches; type a few letters or words into the search box and your top results pop up instantly. You can call up the Quick Search Box by pressing the Ctrl key twice, and hide it by pressing Ctrl twice again.

Quote

"I do have trepidation about switching from Verizon to AT&T, but I figure Steve Jobs wouldn't have made the deal if he couldn't back it up," she said. "Verizon has one of the largest networks, but AT&T has the iPhone." The 36-year-old, who owns a graphic design business with her husband, said she needs the iPhone for e-mailing, Web access, and sending and receiving files--all functions she could easily do with another device like a Treo or BlackBerry, which are already sold through Verizon Wireless. But as a Mac user for more than a decade, she admits she is drawn to anything created by Apple and Apple CEO Steve Jobs.

Quote

* Desktop sharing

NX 3.0.0 gives remote access to the local display of the Unix workstation where the server is installed, meaning that users and system administrators can now get quick access to all the computer's resources and remotely control any NX-enabled PC over the Internet.

* Session shadowing

Multiple users can now connect to a NX session at the same time, show and share files, demonstrate software and presentations, even chat with the other users on the server. Session shadowing is supported for all remote desktop protocols, including RDP (Windows Terminal Server) and VNC, opening NoMachine NX to a new range of collaboration applications.

Quote

"The re-engineering has mostly been done," said Linux leader Linus Torvalds of the new kernel. And for higher-level software, PowerTop has been "invaluable, he added. "A lot of people and (Linux) distributions are actually interested in this, so the user applications do seem to be getting fixed." There's more work to be done, but the progress has been measurable, said Arjan van de Ven, a longtime kernel programmer now working at Intel. "What we see in our lab today is that Linux on a laptop consumes 15 percent to 25 percent less power during idle than a code base of about three months ago," he said.

Quote

Mooij and co-workers created the quantum version of a basic building block of computer logic, called the controlled-not (CNOT) gate, which switches a bit from 0 to 1 or vice versa if a second bit is set to 1-or does nothing if that bit is set to 0. "You need something like a controlled-not gate to make every quantum algorithm you might need," Mooij says. Their gate, described in this week's Nature, consisted of two side-by-side loops of aluminum cooled to a few kelvins (nearly -459 degrees Fahrenheit). A current flowing around one loop created a magnetic field that influenced the current flowing around the second loop.

Said By SmartHouse

Retailers are claiming that Microsoft has had to handle a failure rate of over 30% with their Xbox 360 console. More than 100 consumers have written to SmartHouse complaining of either poor service from Microsoft or total failure of their gaming console. One consumer was even given back a refurbished unit in exchange for their original Xbox console

Several months ago SmartHouse raised the issue of potential problems with the Xbox 360 after several readers wrote to us complaining of persistent failures. Even one of our testing Xbox 360 systems that we use to review software failed and had to be returned to Microsoft for repair. Other consumers have complained of sending off their Xbox for repair only to get a different re furbished unit back.

Quote

"Interoperability between the Windows and Linux world is important and must be dealt with, and anything that helps this interoperability is a good thing," wrote Bancilhon, adding that "the best way to deal with interoperability is open standards." "As far as (intellectual property) is concerned, we are, to say the least, not great fans of software patents and of the current patent system, which we consider as counterproductive for the industry as a whole," Bancilhon continued. "We also believe what we see and, up to now, there has been absolutely no hard evidence from any of the FUD (fear, uncertainty and doubt) propagators that Linux and open-source applications are in breach of any patents. So we think that, as in any democracy, people are innocent unless proven guilty, and we can continue working in good faith."

Quote

The RIAA has argued that it would suffer irreparable harm unless immediate discovery was allowed, but Judge Garcia didn't find that argument convincing. "While the Court does not dispute that infringement of a copyright results in harm, it requires a Coleridgian 'suspension of disbelief' to accept that the harm is irreparable, especially when monetary damages can cure any alleged violation," wrote the judge. "On the other hand, the harm related to disclosure of confidential information in a student or faculty member’s Internet files can be equally harmful."

Quote

Microsoft has launched a "fact rich" program to help customers understand why they should "proceed with confidence" in rolling out Vista across all their PCs. "Some customers may be waiting to adopt Windows Vista because they've heard rumors about device or application compatibility issues, or because they think they should wait for a service pack release," the company said in a newsletter. "To help partners and customers get the real story, Microsoft has created a comprehensive set of fact-rich materials illustrating how Windows Vista is ready today and tomorrow."

Quote

The real and associated costs of data breaches are staggering: In 2006, corporations that experienced a data breach spent an average of $5 million trying to recover data. Customer relationships suffer, too; among consumers that discovered their data had been lost, 20 percent terminated their relationships with the company, another 40 percent considered terminating their relationships, and 5 percent considered legal action.

Quote

The highly anticipated upcoming title, which casts gamers in the role of doctor Daniel Lam--who offers himself as a guinea pig for a neurological weapons project--was due to go on sale in the country on the Wii, PlayStation Portable, and PlayStation 2 on July 13. However, both the PS2 and Wii versions have been refused a rating by the British Board of Film Classification, meaning they cannot be legally sold in the UK.

Quote

Unlike the prevailing browsers on the Internet--Microsoft's Internet Explorer and Mozilla's Firefox--the Apple browser supports different ways of encoding images that can mean richer, deeper colors. With the beta version of Safari now on Windows, Mac OS X users aren't the only ones who'll be able to see the difference. However, Apple won't keep that edge for long. Mozilla's forthcoming Firefox 3 browser, due to ship in beta form this July, likely will include support for richer color, said Vlad Vukicevic, a technical leader at Mozilla and a photo enthusiast. Together, the moves could help boost the Internet beyond the orbit of the sRGB color scheme, a broadly supported but limited standard initially introduced by Hewlett-Packard and Microsoft. But it's not likely that Web photography will achieve sRGB escape velocity until the dominant Internet Explorer also follows suit.

Quote

In the speech predicting how Apple would grow its market share, Jobs showed a slide with Safari dominating almost a quarter of the market--a market shared only with a single other browser, Internet Explorer. Lilly says he doesn't believe that this was an omission or simplification, but instead an indication that Jobs is hoping to steal the users of Firefox and other smaller browsers in order to run a "duopoly" with Redmond. "This worldview that Steve gave a glimpse into betrays (Apple's) thinking: it's out-of-date, corporate-controlled, duopoly-oriented, not the-Web-thinking. And it's not good for the Web. Which is sort of moot, I think, because I don't think this two-party world will really come to be," Lilly said in his blog.

Quote

This is release 0.9.39 of Wine, a free implementation of Windows on Unix.

What's new in this release:
- Many MSHTML improvements.
- Several improvements to the sound support.
- A number of Winsock fixes.
- Several new supported constructs in the IDL compiler.
- Many Direct3D threading fixes.
- Lots of bug fixes.

Quote

Studies show that computer keyboards have more bacteria than toilet seats. But it's hard to clean all those keys. So some people advocate an extreme solution: Throw your keyboard in your dishwasher. At first glance, this seems insane. But the computer-keyboard-in-the-dishwasher advice is all over the Internet. And don't we wish it were true? My keyboard is an old Hewlett Packard that's encrusted with a kind of mysterious black grime. I thought, "Well, why not try my KitchenAid?'" I ran the experiment one night. I put the keyboard on the top rack, cord and all, key-side down. I used a little soap, and hit "normal wash." (I didn't want to pots 'n' pans it.)

Quote

Wired News, with help from some readers, attempted to get real answers from the largest United States-based ISPs about what information they gather on their customers' use of the internet, and how long they retain records like IP addresses, e-mail and real-time browsing activity. Most importantly, we asked what they require from law-enforcement agencies before coughing up the data, and whether they sell your data to marketers. Only four of the eight largest ISPs responded to the 10-question survey, despite being contacted repeatedly over the course of two months. Some ISPs wouldn't talk to us, but gave answers to customers responding to a call for reader help on Wired's Threat Level blog.

Quote

But the main impetus for bringing Safari to Windows may be the fact that Apple is also pitching Safari and Web-based applications as the way to write programs that run on the iPhone. So given that it is already pouring resources into the browser, trying to get more return on that investment makes sense, analysts said. Gartner analyst Mike McGuire said the decision to move Safari to Windows is about the iPhone "as much as anything." McGuire said Safari has some interesting features but added that it is not clear whether that will get it a spot in the Windows Start menu of most PC users.

Quote

Once opened, the OpenOffice file, called badbunny.odg, launches a macro that behaves in several different ways, depending on the user's operating system. On Windows systems, it drops a file called drop.bad, which is moved to the system.ini file in the user's mIRC folder. It also executes the JavaScript virus badbunny.js, which replicates to other files in the folder. On Apple Mac systems, the worm drops one of two Ruby script viruses in files respectively called badbunny.rb and badbunnya.rb. On Linux systems, the worm drops both badbunny.py as an XChat script and badbunny.pl as a Perl virus.

Said By Kotaku

The new Playstation Portable will have a much slimmer design, thanks mostly to a new LED screen that will deliver an ultra-crisp image but take up far less space. That LED also helps pump up the battery life of this sexy new model, which can last as much as four times longer than the original PSP. While the new PSP still makes use of the UMD drive, it will be a faster version and to help speed up loadtimes and gameplay, the portable will come packed with 8GBs of internal flash memory.

Quote

The Ubuntu developers are moving very quickly to bring you the absolute latest and greatest software the Open Source Community has to offer. The Gutsy Gibbon Tribe 1 is the first alpha release of Ubuntu 7.10, and with this new alpha release comes a whole host of excellent new features. The feature list for 7.10 has been slowly growing more exact since Gutsy opened late last month. While looking forward nothing is completely certain, here are some of the new things that have already arrived, such as GNOME 2.19, a new 2.6.22-rc kernel, as well as a good look at the approved specifications for Gutsy.

Quote

"At the Computex trade show in Taiwan, the company announced particulars of a mobile version of Linux, Ubuntu Mobile and Embedded Edition. The first full release of the software, which will permit video, sound and full-featured Internet browsing, is due to arrive in October, Canonical said. The software is geared for use on Intel's Mobile Internet Device platform--minitablet PCs using low-power processors and tiny keyboards. Intel announced the Ubuntu MID work, as well as a similar partnership with Red Flag Linux, at its Intel Developer Forum in Beijing in April."

Quote

Using municipal waste to produce energy or reduce pollution is not an unusual practice. Landfill operators siphon off methane gas that is given off by decomposing organic trash. Incinerators burn garbage to produce steam that turns a turbine that makes electricity. Ze-gen's plant, currently under construction, is an attempt to demonstrate that different technologies--in this case gasification--can be used to convert waste to energy in a cost-effective and less polluting way.

Quote

Manufacturers pressure publications from all sides when attempting to secure headlines and positive reviews. No money actually exchanged hands during this analysis, and the working relationships lasted less than a week. There are approximately 150 circulated English-print technology websites; our team specifically targeted the 35 largest publications. We determined the size of these publications via Alexa’s online index and publication-supplied web statistics. DailyTech was included among this list. Of 35 online computer-related publications, 23 (66 percent) refused editorial influence in exchange for advertising. Of remaining 12, seven publications (20 percent, Fig. 1) agreed to editorial service in exchange for advertising or cash.

Quote

Over the next five years, the two companies said, they will work on improving interoperability between their servers to improve systems management. The pact calls for Microsoft to provide patent covenants for Xandros customers that ensure they are not infringing on Microsoft's intellectual property, according to the companies. Xandros will also ship software for desktop productivity applications that translates between the Open Document Format and OpenXML, which is Microsoft's own document format.