Explore topic-wise InterviewSolutions in .

A project to recreate a pioneering UK 1940s computer has hit a significant milestone as the first working parts of the restored machine are demonstrated.

Key elements of the restored Electronic Delay Storage Automatic Calculator (Edsac) were unveiled on Wednesday.

They were shown off at a Bletchley Park event marking the 100th anniversary of the birth of Edsac's designer, Sir Maurice Wilkes, who died in 2010.

The Edsac restoration project began in 2011 and should be completed by 2015.

Edsac, widely accepted to be the WORLD's first practical general purpose computer, first ran in May 1949.

It was created to do computational work for scientists at the University of Cambridge

Its design was copied for the Leo, the world's first computer to be used in business.

Restoration of the original machine has been tough as relatively few of the Edsac design documents from the 1940s have survived.

Early work on the project has gone into scrutinising pictures of the original to work out which bits go where and what they might do.

This has been a mammoth task as Edsac is built of 3,000 valves spread across 140 separate shelves.

Once complete, the machine will occupy a 20-sq-m (215-sq-ft) space.

Full story: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-23079905 Quote

This has been a mammoth task as Edsac is built of 3,000 valves spread across 140 separate shelves.

Haven't heard the use of "Valves" in electronics ( Electric Valves = Diodes, Triodes, and Transistors ) other than electro-mechanical physical valves in a long long time.. http://zipcon.net/~swhite/docs/physics/electronics/Valves.html   My first introduction to the term "Valves" for electronic components was on an old Heath Kit tube set in the early 1980s, and the kit was from the 1960s that I picked up at a yard sale.

To anyone young enough to have never heard of electronic valves, they may think of mechanical valves reading this like the ones in motors etc. Or maybe its just a USA thing to think this way to the statement of Valves since according to the site I linked they state it as a common term in Britain.

1000TB on a single Disc just seems far to far of a leap in breakthrough technology.

Nowhere did it say the DVD had to be made in a new way. It is the recording technology.

I am sure they mean a blank DVD that is later pressed, not burned.

The master is made with the new technology. The pressings use the same die as the other stuff. It is only the master that is different. The blanks are made from the same material as before.

If the article said the DVDs are a new technology, where did they say that?

...Some specifications for mechanical, physical and optical characteristics of DVD

Dual-layer recording (sometimes also known as double-layer recording) allows DVD-R and DVD+R discs to store significantly more data

I understood DVD to be a medium, not a specification.

If you have a disc that meets the above specs, but it has several orders more capacity, does it somehow violate the above specs?

What if it does have the same pit size and the same wavelength, but has more capacity, how does it violated the specs.

And why would  shorter wavelength violate a spec.

Wavelength is not a characteristic of a medium. And how is pit size a intrinsic  quality of a medium?

The article said they would use conventional materials for the discs and the playback lasers. Only the recording method is different.

They have electron-donating diakylamino groups and carbonyl groups as the electron-withdrawing (acceptor) group that also allows hydrogen abstraction for subsequent initiation of free radical polymerization.

It would violate the spec by being larger, for one thing. (The DVD specification references the Original Red-Book Standard for Audio CDs for the physical dimensions of the disc). the only way to store more data using the same pit size and the same wavelength would be by using more area.

Please do the math for me. What is the size of the usable surface area of the standard DVD. How many half wave spots could be on the entire surface without overlap.

120 nm — greatest particle size that can fit through a ULPA filter[citation needed]
120 nm — diameter of a human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) [3]
125 nm — standard DEPTH of pits on compact discs (width: 500 nm, length: 850 nm to 3.5 µm)
180 nm — typical length of the rabies virus
200 nm — typical size of a Mycoplasma bacterium, among the smallest bacteria
300-400 nm — near ultraviolet wavelengt

OK, I gave you a thank you.
But what wavelength will they use?
What base materiel will they use?

Going from about 8 gaga byte to hundreds of tetra bytes is BIG jump.
Are you saying it is only the wavelength?

I'm still not really sure how this new tech would work, being that I cannot get through a paragraph in the source article without my eyes glazing over.

Other news sites are repeating then story and having a hard time being serious. It is so absurd.
So then, instead of comparing DVDs, what if it were Ducks.
You have a duck, I have a duck. they look they same. Both waddle when they walk. Both quack and flap the wings. Th e main difference is what they weigh.
Yours is abut 25  pounds.
Mine is close to 25  tons. Try and pick up my duck.

Get the point here? going from about 10 giggle i byte to the next logical step should be, let;s say, maybe  one tetra byte. A two order magnitude expansion, would be possibly plausible. . But the article is talking about magnitudes so high it's hard to comprehend. Like a 25 ton duck.
If storage size were related to physical weight,  the Super 'DVD' would require a forklift to carry it. It is hard to say that with a straight face. 

There is something really missing in this story.
X-rays have a wavelength in the range of 0.01 to 10 nanometers. Are they going to use X-Rays? I don't think so.

The PREMIER League is to request a court order forcing internet service providers to block a popular football streaming website before the next season.

The League wants ISPs to cut off access to FirstRow1.eu, which operates from Sweden.

The BBC UNDERSTANDS none of the ISPs plans to challenge the court order.

If successful, the action will be the first sport-related site block in the UK.

The Premier League's move follows a precedent set by the BPI music industry body, which has been successful in having several piracy websites blocked in the UK, most notably the Pirate Bay.

In those cases, ISPs have stood firm and insisted they would only take action if ordered to do so by the courts.

The UK's major ISPs each received a letter from the Premier League outlining a possible court order, and were given a deadline of Friday to signal any intent to challenge the action.

When approached by the BBC, none of the ISPs would comment specifically on the Premier League's planned action, but all reiterated that blocking of sites would not be done voluntarily.

Full story: HTTP://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-23004880


For me personally I think they're going too far now. If BODIES like the BPI and FA have control over the UK internet then where do we stop? For me it just means I create a new video on how to get around this block but for others it's just more control over the 'free internet'. Quote from: Mulreay on June 23, 2013, 12:44:08 PM

If bodies like the BPI and FA have control over the UK internet then where do we stop?

A novel way of boosting data rates in optical communication using "twisted light" has been shown to work in optical fibres.

The light is effectively corkscrew-shaped, and more data can be encoded in differently twisted beams.

The concept had been shown off over "free space" but it remained unclear if it would work in fibres.

Now a team reporting in Science has demonstrated data rates of 1.6 terabits per second over 1km of optical fibre.

This is still short of the "over-the-air" rate of 2.5 Tb/s demonstrated by members of the same team in 2012. But it is a powerful proof of principle for adapting the technique to use with fibres in, for example, data centres.

The idea behind twisted light is based on the fact that photons, the most basic units of light, carry two kinds of momentum - a kind of energy in their movement.

"Spin angular momentum" is better known as polarisation. Photons "WIGGLE" along a PARTICULAR direction, and different polarisations can be separated out by, for example, polarising sunglasses or 3D glasses.

But they also carry what is called orbital angular momentum. This is best explained in analogy to the Earth-Sun system: our planet spinning around its axis manifests spin angular momentum, while the orbital angular momentum is seen in our revolution around the Sun.

"Twisted light" approaches use this orbital angular momentum, essentially encoding more data in varying degrees of twist.

The technique has DRAWN controversy when applied to radio-frequency waves, but its application at frequencies used in telecommunications has been going from strength to strength.

The problem is that these twisted beams get scrambled in standard fibres and LOSE their capacity to carry data. What was needed is a new design - that of report co-author Siddharth Ramachandran of Boston University, US.

Full story: HTTP://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-23096320Thank you Mulreay.
The topic is hard to understand, but important in Telecommunications.
Polarization is widely used in satellite communication to increase the number of data streams that can be sent inside the bandwidth limits of the equipment.
Just hard to understand.

Jun 23, 2013 -
Quote

Google has already RELEASED a MyGlass Companion app for ANDROID via the PLAY Store, and although a CORRESPONDING iOS version has yet to manifest itself  in the App Store, the company has already noted that iPhone users will not be neglected when it comes to the early 2014 public launch of Google Glass.

Google has been given 35 days to delete any REMAINING data it "mistakenly collected" while taking PICTURES for its Street View service, or face criminal proceedings.

But the UK Information Commissioner's Office did not impose a fine.

Its investigation into Google REOPENED last year after further REVELATIONS about the data taken from wi-fi networks.

During that inquiry, additional DISCS containing private data were found.

Google had previously pledged to destroy all data it had collected, but admitted last year that it had "accidentally" retained the additional discs.

The ICO has told the search giant it must inform it if any further discs of information are discovered.
'Serious lack of oversight'

"Today's enforcement notice strengthens the action already taken by our office, placing a legal requirement on Google to delete the remaining payload data identified last year within the next 35 days and immediately inform the ICO if any further discs are found," said Stephen Eckersley, the office's head of enforcement.

Full story: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-23002166

From the Mozilla Newsletter

Mozilla tells NSA to StopWatching.Us
Quote

Recently, the media reported that the US GOVERNMENT is ASKING for vast amounts of data from Internet and phone companies VIA top-secret surveillance programs. In response, Mozilla LAUNCHED StopWatching.Us — a campaign sponsored by a broad coalition of ORGANIZATIONS calling on citizens and organizations from around the world to demand a full accounting of the extent to which our online data, communications and interactions are being monitored.

This was posted on IndiaToday.in, a web site for India.

iPhone schemes doing well in India, sales up 400 per cent
New Delhi, June 4, 2013
...
In a country of over 1.2 billion people, discounts and easy installment plans have reportedly really PICKED up. Apple has been offering iPhone 4 and iPhone 4S with installment plans and cash BACK offers to the Indian consumers, which is seen as the main reason for spurt in the sales.
...
Read more at
  India TODAY.

With Xbox One you can game offline for up to 24 hours on your primary console, or one hour if you are logged on to a separate console accessing your library. Offline gaming is not possible after these prescribed times until you re-establish a CONNECTION, but you can STILL watch live TV and enjoy Blu-ray and DVD movies.

What does this mean to you?

By Mat Smith posted JUN 4th, 2013 at 2:10 AM
INTEL unveiled its first REFERENCE design for its new 22nm Merrifield smartphone processor. Intel at ,, Computex ... the new chip reportedly won't reach consumers TIL early 2014, .. The hardware itself is pretty unassuming..

Microsoft Office apps arrived on the iPhone TODAY in the U.S.
PC Mag JUNE 14Waste of time...
It's very limited and if i'm gonna work in Office i'm certainly not going to do it on a phone... Quote from: PATIO on June 14, 2013, 12:24:42 PM

Waste of time...
It's very limited and if i'm gonna work in Office i'm certainly not going to do it on a phone...

***sigh***

A laptop running both Windows 8 and Android; a 6in (15.2cm) smartphone; and a hybrid mouse-touchpad are some of the devices to have been unveiled ahead of the start of Computex.

The tech show in Taipei, Taiwan runs from Tuesday to Saturday.

Other launches included the first PCs to feature Intel's new processor, codenamed Haswell.

The event comes a week after researchers suggested PC sales were declining faster than had been thought.

IDC predicted that shipments of personal computers - including both desktops and laptops - would FALL by 7.8% over the course of 2013. The firm had previously forecast a 1.3% decline.

It added that it believed tablet shipments would grow by 58.7% over the same period, putting them on course to overtake PCs by 2015.

Full story: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-22751326Great link Mulreay,
Wish I GO go to the show. 
Whoever came up with the name "Phablet" should seriously consider their direction in life and perhaps REEVALUATE their desired impact on humanity.Probably the same guy that came up with Segway...Well, they might do worse. 
20 Worst-Named Phones and Tablets
Ainovo Novo7 Swordman
HP Veer 4G
Samsung Galaxy Tab 2 10.1
LG Lucid
T-Mobile myTouch 4G
Samsung Brightside
The new iPad
ASUS Transformer Pad Infinity TF700
Huawei Honor
eMatic eGlide XL Pro

That's just ten. Click on the link to see more. If you want to.
No thanx...

I found this article on ARS Technica.
http://arstechnica.com/security/2013/05/reporters-use-google-find-breach-get-branded-as-hackers/When creating an offline copy of a website a while back. HTTRACK accidentally FARMED some data off a website. Not sure how it farmed the data, since normal navigations through links etc couldnt get to the content, but at a website that I was ABLE to make an offine copy of there were family pictures etc that had nothing to do with the original website, but they must have been there at the webserver for HTTRACK to crawl and farm them. I deleted the 60mb of someones families photos since that wasnt what I wanted, I just wanted a static copy of the text content mainly.

There are many tools out there to farm data, and if data is not WELL HIDDEN or protected on the server side, STUFF like this happens.

Microsoft has confirmed that the new version of Windows 8 will have the start button again.
Full StoryEarth =SHATTERING news...Funny. It links to this... And the only thing saying the "Start Button" is COMING back is a comment. This is the entire reference:

Quote

We’ve IMPROVED the way you NAVIGATE to Start with the mouse by changing the Start “tip” to be the familiar Windows logo.

RMA Return Rate info for motherboards article ..seems as though Gigabyte is best at lowest return rate. Never knew anyone tracked this info myself. Found this article on my facebook wall today and found it interesting.

http://translate.googleusercontent.com/translate_c?act=url&depth=2&hl=en&ie=UTF8&prev=_t&rurl=translate.google.com&sl=fr&tl=en&u=http://www.hardware.fr/articles/893-2/cartes-meres.html&usg=ALkJrhj3Zg9gjLzxCK4wbBCKCNlaxZe3Pg


Here is the FB post I saw this from: https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=646655398681443&set=a.356650374348615.102156.246415092038811&type=1&theaterASUS a close 2nd...
I buy and use both.Shock as MSI returns are higher than the others .  I'm surprised to see Gigabyte leading Asus by such a large margin, also surprised Asrock follows Asus so closely.  Not encouraging to see Asus' top end board at the top of the returns list though!  Kingston storm ahead by an impressive margin in the memory returns, no surprise there.  Also no surprise that Corsair Vengeance is 3 out of the 5 most returned items.  Surprised MSI's graphics card return rate is so low, also surprised at Sapphire's rate shooting up to enarly 3x last year's, wow!  4 products over a 10% return rate, ouch.  Seems the 7870 on a whole suffers from a high return rate though judging by their figures.  SSDs - again, no surprise that OCZ leads the way with massively high returns, still rising year on year and with over a 50% return rate on one model.  Absolute joke of a company.  Corsair's previous reliance on Sandforce seems to show in their increase return rate, Crucial holding steady as I'd expect, and Samsung way ahead of the rest, be interesting to see what happens once the 840 series has been out in the wild for a good while.

I like seeing the regular articles from hardware.fr on return rates, it's very useful info although of COURSE it takes a while for the stats to catch up with the newest hardware.  Most, if not all, retailers will collect this info, though few make it public.  I knew the return rates on common items (mainly OCZ products) while I was at one of my previous jobs, and could always ask a former colleague for them if I was curious, but again they wouldn't be made public knowledge for fear of putting people off products.

Thanks for posting, I hadn't seen this latest one Hey Calum glad I was ABLE to link something you havent seen yet.

And in regards to knowing failure rates or potential for problems, I generally research before buying hardware and I am never one of the first to own anything that is cutting edge. I generally buy computer hardware etc after its been out for a few months or years minimum to let others be the test subjects and report their problems and RMA claims on newegg and other sites that have good feedback listings to examine before clicking BUY as well as buying these items without the crazy premium price tags with buying cutting edge parts. I am more of a value shopper buying on discounts that are too good to pass up etc.

I dont always check feedback though on INEXPENSIVE items and if I had I would have probably avoided a few purchases. One example recently was with a Rosewill mATX computer case without PSU that was marked down from $25 to $15 with free shipping at newegg. I had an older Pentium 4 build that I wanted to bring back to life and didnt have an empty case to put the hardware in that was in ESD baggies etc paired up with 60GB hard drive that was a matched OS activation from the prior build. I basically gutted this computer 2 years prior for its case for a newer build and saved the hardware off to the side to rebuild this system quickly some day. So I just needed to stuff all the guts into a case and turn it on. So for $15 I said its just a case nothing can go wrong with it and bought it without looking at feedback etc.

I got the case later that week and everytime I get a box in the mail it feels like christmas, I have to dig right into it and work on the project right then and there. I lifted up the cardboard box and heard stuff rattling inside but didnt think anything of it since its a cheap case and the baggy of screws probably opened up in shipping. I opened the box and reached in to pull out the Rosewill brand mATX case and the front plastic faceplate was disconnected. Thought to myself no problem just need to snap it back in. Went to snap it back in and found out that 5 of 6 locking tab snaps were snapped completely off. So this case arrived damaged. The rattling noise I heard was the pieces of broken plastic  floating around in the case, the baggy of screws were still sealed inside.

I figured that its not worth sending the case back RMA, so since the case was black with black plastic, I'd use electrical tape and while holding the cover/face onto the tower chasis with the side panel off, I wrapped electrical tape around the case at its seam between the METAL chasis and the black plastic faceplate. Electrical tape was just as good as duct tape, but didnt stand out. So I built this system back up with the guts I had and using this cheap case with band-aid due to shipping damages.

I went to leave feedback on newegg with 3 eggs/stars, and to my surprise there were like 60 other people complaining about the same problem with tabs busted in shipping. Looking at the dates on the feedback I realized that had I looked at the feedback prior to purchase I could have avoided buying a broken cheap case that needed to be fixed on delivery.Very interesting, glad Calum had already warned me about MSI!  Would be interesting to see the rates on lower end boards like Biostar, they could either fail more since they are cheaper or fail less since they aren't as likely to be pushed hard through overclocking.etc like the higher end boards.Yeah, customer reviews on retailers sites can be good for that sort of thing, they should always be taken with a pinch of salt but for that kind of issue they're very handy.
I always do my research and I'm lucky in that most of my friends still work at a major retailer, so I can always ask what the return rate is like, what kind of issues they get with a certain product, and so on.

Cameron - you're probably unlikely to see Biostar, ECS, and similar manufacturers on the list as the volume sold is much less than the ones in the article so there's not enough data to draw meaningful conclusions from.  It would be interesting if some more retailers were to join in and pool their findings, perhaps a UK based study would be interesting reading too.  As you say though, for some components the return rate will depend on other factors, the target audience being a major one.I have never seen an MSI MBoard that did not have issues...

Was there no lesson learned from the Sony rootkit?

Quote from: Emsisoft blog

Just a few days ago the “Commission on the Theft of American Intellectual Property” released their 84-page report. Amidst a large amount of rather naive ideas there is one idea that strikes us as particularly insane: The report proposes to use malware to figure out whether or not you are pirating intellectual property and in case you do, lock your computer and take all your files hostage until you call the police and confess your crime.

Absolutely ridiculous!  I don't pirate anything and I don't support piracy but why should I allow unauthorised code to run on my machine for whatever reason?

This post used the term 'Intel’s ARMageddon.'
http://www.adamalthus.com/blog/2011/01/07/intels-armageddon/
Nice play on words.
The NEWS is Intel is now turning to TV to win  the war.
Quote

Antone Gonsalves March 27th, 2013
Over the past dozen years or so, Intel has repeatedly demonstrated that it has a tin ear when it comes to consumer electronics. Despite a long trail of FAILURE, the tenacious chipmaker keeps coming back with one bad idea after another.

Its latest scheme has Intel going toe-to-toe with... wait for it... Comcast, Time Warner Cable and DIRECTV. Yes, Intel — Intel! — plans to launch an online pay-TV service delivered through its own set-top box.    ...
http://readwrite.com/2013/03/27/intel-tv-yet-another-desperate-lunge-at-consumer-electronics

Episode 7 of the new season of Arrested Development is called “Colony COLLAPSE.” Like most phrases in this wordplay-happy series, it has more than one meaning. It refers to the phenomenon of mass die-offs among bees (I won’t spoil anything as to how that figures in here). It refers to the collapse of a particular character’s entrepreneurial scheme/scam (which I won’t spoil EITHER).

It also seems to refer to the larger theme of this new, experimental season on Netflix and the three seasons that preceded it. Arrested Development is a comedy of entropy; it was always best when things were collapsing, as befit a show created in the time of the Enron and Iraq debacles. So many of its great scenes and stories involve things literally falling apart, shiny facades that cover decay and shoddy workmanship: think of Gob Bluth in front of a “Mission Accomplished” banner declaring a Bluth home “solid as a rock” (say it out loud) just before it goes to pieces.

Read more: http://entertainment.time.com/2013/05/29/the-new-arrested-development-is-dark-uneven-and-frustrating-can-we-have-another/#ixzz2UpINhkHI

'Arrested Development' a bust? Netflix laughs off the critics

The mixed critical response to 'Arrested Development' trips up Netflix's ambitions for buzz-worthy original programming, but it certainly isn't slowing down the company.

Netflix aired 14 new episodes of "Arrested Development" on Sunday.
When Netflix's "Arrested Development" landed this week, it was with more of a thud than, say, whatever sound would be produced by the catlike agility of a Tobias Funke.

"Arrested Development" succeeded in generating tremendous hype for Netflix, but the initial lukewarm reception suggests the show kicked the can down the road, rather than rocketing the company forward, in regard to its ambitions to become a high-profile source of original programming.

Original shows and films are en vogue now, with the likes of Hulu and Amazon investing in exclusive programs. The hope is that the companies behind the streaming services will grow beyond their catalog of older movies and television shows and evolve into an HBO or Showtime -- a must-visit destination for edgy shows and the stuff of water cooler chatter that ultimately
http://news.cnet.com/8301-1023_3-57586904-93/arrested-development-a-bust-netflix-laughs-off-the-critics/

I look forward to fresher content on Netflix as long as they dont demand more money ....
As far as this Arrested Development goes, I might check out a preview of it, but will likely not watch it all the way through. But I cant judge a book by its cover or a show by its title in this case, which to me already seems laim by the title!   

The Morley Fool, May 3, 2013 says -
Microsoft Should Kill the Surface

Quote

By Rick Munarriz | More Articles
May 3, 2013 | Comments (15)

The latest data out of industry tracker IDC is encouraging for the tablet industry, but not so encouraging for Microsoft's (NASDAQ: MSFT  ) role in this booming market.

There were a whopping 49.2 million tablets shipped during the first three months of this year, well ahead of the 20.3 million devices that shipped during the first quarter of 2012. However, Google's (NASDAQ: GOOG  ) ANDROID and Apple's (NASDAQ: AAPL  ) iOS combined for more than 96% of the market.

That is impossible. You cannot kill something that is already dead!

Consumer Ultra-Low Voltage (CULV) is a computing platform developed by Intel.[1][2] It has been estimated that this market could reach 10 million CULV laptops shipped within 2009.[3]...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Consumer_Ultra-Low_Voltage

Geek...with all due respect...you should stop believing and posting everything you read...
Most of it turns out to be nonsense.

With the name Silvermont, Intel earlier this month announced a new chip DESIGN that will give more performance will less power. The obvious target would be mobile DEVICES, like smartphones. No surprise.
Here is part of a recent report.
Quote

....
This time, it looks like they may very well be telling the truth – that is, of course, if Silvermont will provide a choice of three times the performance or one-fifth the power of the current-generation Atom compute core, as they claim.

And remember, when we say "low-power" market, we're not simply talking about smartphones and tablets – although those hot commodities are clearly key to Silvermont's FUTURE. Intel's new Atom compute-core microarchitecture will indeed appear in the Bay Trail platform for tablets ("scheduled for holiday 2013") and the Merrifield platform for smartphones ("scheduled to ship to customers by the END of this year"), but it will also find a home in the Avoton microserver platform and the Rangeley network-equipment platform ("both ... scheduled for the second half of this year"), and an as-yet-unnamed automotive platform.

Quote

Gmail launched nine years ago on April 1st, 2004. Since then you've been able to use hundreds of new features that push the BOUNDARIES of what email can do and make it easier to get things done.

Starting today, you'll get to experience the next big step for Gmail, Gmail Blue. Watch the video to learn more:

http://gmailblog.blogspot.com/2013/03/introducing-gmail-blue.html

Everyone should "get it" tomorrow...

Everyone should "get it" tomorrow...

Apple has been accused of being "among AMERICA's largest tax avoiders".

A Senate COMMITTEE said Apple had used "a complex web of offshore entities" to avoid paying billions of dollars in US income taxes. But it said there was no indication the firm acted illegally.

Apple chief Tim Cook will go before the panel on Tuesday. In prepared testimony Apple said it did not use tax gimmicks.

The Irish Republic, home to THREE Apple subsidiaries, SAYS it is not to blame for the firm's low tax payments.

The US Senate had said that Apple paid little or nothing on billions of dollars in profits placed in Irish subsidiaries.

"They are not issues that arise from the Irish taxation system," Deputy Prime Minister Eamon Gilmore told national broadcaster RTE when asked about the Senate committee report.

"They are issues that arise from the taxation systems in other jurisdictions and that is an issue that has to be addressed first of all in those jurisdictions."

FULL story: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-22600984

A US supercomputer called Roadrunner has been switched off by the Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico.

The machine was the first to operate at "petaflop pace" - the equivalent of 1,000 trillion calculations per second - when it launched in 2008.

It has been used to MODEL viruses and distant parts of the universe, as well as in nuclear weapons research.

It remains one of the fastest supercomputers in the world, but has been replaced by something even faster.

"Roadrunner got everyone thinking in new ways about how to build and use a supercomputer,'' said Gary Grider, from the Los Alamos National Laboratory high performance computing division, in a statement.

Full story: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-21993132 Quote

The huge machine includes 12,000 modified versions of the processor originally designed for the SONY Playstation 3, and 92km (57 miles) of fibre OPTIC cable, housed in 288 refrigerator-sized cases.

AOL to Offer Exclusive Mobile WEB Portal to VERIZON’s Smartphone Customers
NEW YORK--(BUSINESS WIRE)--AOL (NYSE: AOL) announced today a content distribution PARTNERSHIP that will bring the AOL.com portal to Verizon Wireless smartphones and certain tablets running the Android, WINDOWS Mobile and RIM operating systems. It is the first time that AOL will be the exclusive provider of the VZW Home mobile web portal on smartphones and tablets for the NATION’s largest wireless carrier.
...
Full Story

Today the AMD stock closed suddenly high at closing. This is fact. Why is the rumor. It is unlikely the sudden CLIMB is just a glitch. Somebody knows something.

Quote

Calls in to sell-side folks have at this point turned up a couple of rumors. One is a persistent rumor that Intel (INTC) will buy AMD, which, according to one source who could not be quoted by name, might suddenly be possible because the field of computing is now being defined more broadly than just the PC, which means “there aren’t as many anti-trust isues,” perhaps.

Intel Could Buy AMD as x86 Microprocessors Lose Share to ARM – Analysts.
AMD’s Shares Are Up on Intel Buyout Rumour
[05/01/2013 10:39 PM]
by Anton Shilov
As media tablets and smartphones are on-track to outsell personal computers in the coming years, the significance of x86 PROCESSORS, exclusively designed and made by Advanced Micro Devices and Intel Corp., is getting lower. As a result, long-rumoured Intel’s wish to buyout its only rival is getting more realistic, according to a source in the financial community. Due to the renewed ACQUISITION rumour and AMD’s gains in consoles and low-power computers, stock of the company is growing.

How many people in the world have Internet?   
A. 350 million  when new TV  season starts.
B. 1 Billion on the week end.
C. Anybody with electric power.
For a more ACCURATE ANSWER, Click on this image.
http://www.internetworldstats.com/images/world2012number.pie.png
Are you suppressed? The report was ISSUED earlier.
Here is a more up to date  stat.
http://internetstatstoday.com/
From the above site you will see that it is hard to know for sure how many there are. They hope to have full data  sometime this year.

Last year it was maybe worldwide 4.3 billion users. But that number is inflated. The real number is not yet known.Lots, give or take a few.Some people who have internet, have access to internet, but do not have their own connection from home.

The value is one that is always changing.

- You have people who have their own paid monthly ISP service
- You have the people who are tapped in on the NEIGHBORS open wifi claiming that as their own internet access.
- You have the people who refuse to pay for it and use wifi hot spots instead
- You have people in some countries where internet access is renting time on a computer by which they do not own, but they have accounts with a web IDENTITY, maybe even multiple identities for the same user.

Trying to figure out the exact count is one that is complex and ever changing. I cant think of any easy way to figure out the exact value. There is no unique identifier that can be used to create an exact count that is everchanging.

The ailing personal computer market is getting weaker

The latest evidence of the PC's infirmity emerged Wednesday with the release of two somber reports showing unprecedented declines in sales of desktop and laptop machines during the first three months of the year.

I also agree with everything BC stated in regards to the fact that people are getting more "mileage" out of their computers these days. I use to see systems decommissioned that were only 2 to 4 years old especially in the 10 year period from 1995 to around 2005 when the price for the PC dropped below the $1000 range for an entry level brand new home computer, the internet exploded in popularity, and video games evolved in graphical complexity needing more and more resources to play well. Then around the 2005 period on there seemed to be a continual slow down of systems being replaced. I use to get all sorts of free and inexpensive computers frequently as people were moving on to the next best thing and getting rid of their Celeron 900Mhz computers running Windows 98 and Me, for Pentium 4's with XP. That has dramatically slowed over the past 8 years to date. Pretty much the only freebee's I get these days have 'real' problems ( cracked laptop display, tower that was struck by lightning, and coffee dumped into laptop keyboard.) Also I know many people who are running on systems with hardware that is from 2004 on, that is still running healthy. Most of them running Windows XP happily, and it does everything they need it to do on a daily basis without troubles. Also as mentioned they are able to quickly set their computers back to factory and perform the 120+ microsoft updates for XP and they are back in business as long as they haven't lost their recovery set. And if they have, they are more likely to pay the $40 for a new set than buy a new computer.

I'm running Windows 7 on an HP Compaq d530CMT

Hoping yours doesnt have the same issue that all the d530's we had, had, which was bloated and leaky capacitors...

The personal computer is in crisis, and getting little help from Microsoft Corp.'s MSFT -0.75% Windows 8 software once seen as a possible savior.

IMHO, people just like the Apple products better.

Quote

The open nature of the Android platform means that for skilled users, the REMOVAL of the apps from the Google Play Store is more a nuisance than an actual deterrent. For example, AdAway, one of the popular applications, can still be obtained by following the instructions on the developer's page and switching to F-Droid, an open alternative to the Google Play store.

Full story: Google evicts ad-blocking software from Google Play store

Source: Breaking: Google Has Begun Purging Ad-Blocking Apps From The Play Store

Subscribers to the online adventure game World of Warcraft have dropped dramatically this year, publisher Activision Blizzard has said.

The company said 14% of users left the game between January and March - a fall of 1.3 million.

The majority of lost users were in the East, despite the company making efforts to appeal to those markets, with recent upgrades.

Activision told investors to expect subscriber figures to dip further.

Shares in the publisher fell by about 5% on Wednesday, following the news.

The California-based company blamed the rise of free-to-play games.

Uncertainty around new consoles due from Microsoft and Sony - and the "very slow start" of Nintendo's newest offering, the Wii U - had contributed to what will be a challenging 2013 for the company as a whole, chief executive Bobby Kotick said.

Full story: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-22464058Yah, I read this yesterday at WoWhead in which this was emailed to me with the URL to read further, which comes as no surprise. I actually thought a notice like this was going to hit the web sooner than later, but news like this Blizzard was probably trying to drag their feet on releasing to avoid shareholders to jump ship.

I have been with World of Warcraft SINCE the beginning. I tried out the Beta for the game before it was released since my younger BROTHER was able to get in on the beta, so we took turns on this single acct with the beta access. When Classic WoW hit, it was jaw dropping in how good it was, although there were lots of world crashes which got to be annoying until they smoothed it over. Blizzard released the game at the time that was about as addicting as a drug to anyone who played prior MMORPG games. Many people jumped ship from Everquest (aka EverCrack because of that games addictive nature ) to World of Warcraft. At the time that WoW launched, I was heavily into Diablo II, but as soon as I bought my copy and got playing Diablo II fell off the list of games to play daily. I got hooked into 4 to 8 hours a night of gaming and on my days off sometimes as much as 12 to 15 hours of gaming for the first month or so, then balanced out to 3 to 5 hours a night as well as 30 minutes of gameplay while on my lunch breaks at work, since my boss who was 48 years old at the time also played the game on his lunch breaks. We had a company guild started and lots of us would have a WoW Pizza Party on Fridays after work and run dungeons etc. Back in the days of Classic WoW aka Vanilla, there were so many people on, made so many friends, and the economy of the game was not as insane as it is today. I remember selling stacks of Copper Bars for 75 silver per stack of 20 and Linen Cloth stacks selling for 25 silver a stack. If you had 150 gold you felt rich.

Then as a result of having so many alts, my main toon was only level 46 when Burning Crusade Expansion came out, so I missed out on battling the original world boss dragons    , but now there was the push to stick with playing my highest level toon vs the 40 other toons and get my Human Rogue from 46 to 58 so I can walk through the Dark Portal as a level 58 and get to the new game content in Outlands. My problem was once again playing too many alts, but having fun. The addition of Dranei and Blood Elf brought whole new quest chains and playability, as well as introduction to so many more good friendly gamers to chat with and become IRL friends online with. The only draw back was that I ended up hitting level 70 with my main character rogue 3 days before Lich King Release on 11/10/2008. During this time there were so many people playing.

Lich King is released on 11/13/2008, and I anticipated this as being a BIG SELL to the millions of gamers, and I thought I might be able to make a good profit buying into Blizzard Activision Stocks prior to the sale of this expansion. Caught word the day after release that they had sold 2.8 Million copies of Lich King in the first 24 hours of release and thought I was going to make a good stock profit. Fact of the matter was that the shareholders didnt see squat from the success of Lich King. Shares stayed level, even with the great success of this expansion      Sold my shares and reinvested elsewhere since I dont like to keep my money in any investment that stays level. Everyone I knew took this as the most awesome expansion yet except for my youngest brother who is 13 years younger than me. He claimed that Lich King was the tipping point of when the game that use to be challenging and fun was then made too easy to get epics etc. And so he quit WoW. And he was trying to get me to leave and go to Age of Conan, but I couldn't and wouldn't break away from WoW. Many many good memories of great runs with so many good people, many of which were total strangers.

The only trouble I had with Lich King was that with the waypoint portals added, Dalaran became the new central hang out hub for both Alliance and Horde, and it would be so populated that my frame rates were down in the dirt and I then realized that I needed better than a Pentium 4 2.8Ghz with 256MB GeForce 7600GT video card. So I bought my current computer build in April 2009 to not have to deal with lag of my Pentium 4 in high populated areas.

Then everything was going awesome until Cataclysm was released on 12/7/2010. Prior to Cataclysm's release, Blizzard had hosted a Q&A session with the Blizzard Developers through a promotion that Bestbuy had going on. There was only 1000 seats to get in on this chat room and it was to start at 8pm that night. It took me a good 10 minutes trying to get in by repeated URL tries. Finally I got in probably due to someone on wifi losing their signal and screaming out choice words as a result of. The cool thing is that I was heard and I was answered by the WoW Developers. My question was, WHY destroy so much that people have been accustomed to, when you can just make a Southrend instead? The lead developer of Cataclysm answered my question with that the game prior to Cataclysm was lacking and unfinished. And that this was a facelift to the old content, but also with this face lift must come change, and we rolled this change in as Deathwings World Wide Destruction, instead of just a new area and facelift with no good storyline to go with the drastic changes to come. I knew there was no way I was going to be able to stop their plans in motion for this destruction to the old world, but I had to have this question answered and I was fortunate to have it answered by them.

Many of my friends INCLUDING myself did not like the drastic changes to not just the world, but also to the characters talent trees were no longer as diversified as before. You had to allocate so many talent points to one of 3 key character talent tree attributes before any remaining points could be chosen for the others. My Level 56 Super Priest which was a good mix of the 3 and use to be able to solo level 58 Elites would now die if I tried to kill those same elites that I was able to own in 3.3.5 Lich King. My pally, my hunter, and so many other toons were trashed as a result of the drastic changes. Most of them needing all new gear, especially my Hunter that had lots of Intellect to Volly Spam, and now Volley was gone as well as many other AOE's in the game, and I was extremely upset. As a result of being upset with this. I RAGE DELETED ALL MY TOONS and left the game in January 2011. By the time September 2011 rolled around, I tried other games out there and was missing wow greatly, but more than the game itself I was missing hanging out with my friends who stuck with WoW through this mess. Many friends did the same as me quitting wow and when RIFT was released in March 2011 many of us where there instead of WoW, but RIFT I had issues with. Some things were really cool, while so many restrictions in the world that WoW did not have annoyed me. I quit RIFT after just 2 months. Also tried LOTR online and couldnt stick with that either. By September 2011 there was lots of talk about all of us who left WoW giving it a try for a month and see what happens. So many of us came back. But not for long. In November 2011 one of our friends who was 58 years old IRL had passed away and they were in addition to a great friend, a key figure in our guild. Without her humor and her in the game, many of us felt that not just our good friend passed away, but also that the game itself feels like its dying and not evolving in the right direction. I decided not to quit completely and attempted to merge one of my main characters that I had Blizzard restore from the Rage Quit to my wifes account, and Blizzard stated that they no longer offer characters to move between 2 accounts because they could not tell if the character was being sold on ebay or privately. I told them to look at the billing information of both accounts and you would find out that I own both of them, so please allow for this character move from the one account to the other. They said that there are no exceptions to this rule. If I wanted to play this 85, I was going to have to pay my monthly subscription to the game and I couldnt consolidate all important characters to 1 account even if I was paying a 1 time fee of $25 per character. (They were likely doing this to avoid people CONSOLIDATING accounts so that those with multiple accounts such as myself, would be stuck with paying 2 or 3x the monthly subscription rate.)

I ended up then making a Death Knight on my wifes account so that I could game with friends and not pay 2x the subscription fee per month. BUT this became a problem as for I enjoyed the godlike abilities of my Frost Death Knight with Unholy Presence, and I was out DPS-ing many of the tanks according to recount, and my wife wanted to play the game and I was hogging it. So I had to reactivate my account and then have blizzard recover all my toons I rage deleted and then get new clothes for them and weapons etc and set up everything for about 20 characters on 3 realms.

At the last 2 patches for Cataclysm, I was finally over my anger of all the changes and I had adapted to the drastic change. Then my wife was able to get in on the MoP beta with her acct while I tried and never got the offer. So I tried out MoP under her beta and had fun with it playing with the instant 90 on the test realm. But I didnt invest any serious time into this character because nothing gained in this test realm would be kept, and didnt want to feel as though time was wasted when its over and nothing was gained from it to be applied to the real game.

The world populations were not as much as they use to be. Azshara where I had an active guild dried up in a matter on months as for people were paying to move to higher populated realms. Low and Medium populated realms were starting to become ghost towns and you could literally hear the crickets in the background.

Diablo 3 stole so many of my friends off of WoW to that game making the game even worse for populations of players. The only good thing was Realid friends being able to chat between battle.net of both games with 2 people playing 2 different games.

MoP launched and my wife and I bought MoP expansion for each other. And I switched from automatic monthly payment to game cards so that I could play off and on, since work was getting crazy and I didnt have as much time to game anymore. I liked most of the changes MoP brought, but still many many friends were missing from the game. I then went in search for a new guild, but the problem was that I found out that the drastic Guild changes which now ranked guilds between Level 1 and 25, had a bunch of people grouped together in level 25 guilds mainly for the perks and not necessarily to have any loyalty to their other members. I found myself in guilds that were no where near the structure of what guilds use to be, and this was upsetting. I then thought to myself that there must be others who feel the same way, they want the original guild feeling back with people who are all friends hanging out and having fun. Tried to get a guild going called Pandaren Pride, thinking that the name might be catchy to get a bunch of people with new Pandaren toons to join in. Problems I faced was that there were many people who wanted the old guild feeling back of a group of around 100 people or less who knew each other and played well together, but the problem was that the gamers who were high level raiders were all grouped with the level 25 guilds and these people in the level 6 guild felt left out of the end game content runs and large raids and we were not able to get people to show up to 1 or 2 nights a week to game.  We would get 14 signatures for a 10 man event and only 3 people would be on etc. Basically the lack of everyone in the guild able to commit to gaming lead to its failure. Everyone ran off to level 25 guilds for the perks and runs with strangers and many ninja's among them with no respect for others and only out for themselves. In addition to this I had always helped out lower level players in the game and there was a great shortage of people wanting to help out the lower levels. More and more people were out for themselves and who cares about others needs for help.

Then at some point due to the population on the realms declining greatly and people moving in swarms to the higher populate realms, blizzard added a merged realms. I created a new Deathknight on Sargeras prior to the merged realms. This is a PVP REALM, where occasional ganking is to be expected. When it happens and your body is camped and there is just 1 person waiting for you to get back you go back to graveyard and take the rez sickness and hearth as fast as you can. Well ever since blizzard merged realms, we now had a disproportionate number of Horde to that of Alliance, and the problem was that the majority of the problem was Illidan Realm Horde traveling in large groups and intentionally killing lower level alliance in low level zones and while a few of the group are killing all alliance in that zone, a few others are waiting at the graveyard for people to take the rez sickness and get ganked again.

NOW... THIS I WAS REALLY STEAMED ABOUT!!!! 

I opened up a ticket to blizzard support telling them that the merging of the realms for PVP Realms has become a serious problem for lower levels. Anyone trying to quest in PVE content on these realms are not just seeing the occasional gank as was in the past. Now there are troves of horde groups intentionally killing lower levels, and it is seriously pointless that they are doing this because there is no honor points gained from killing others who are 60 levels lower than yourself. I said that this is ruining the PVE game play in the PVP Realms and that they should make characters with greater than a 7 level gap untargetable targets so that people can quest chain and level up without getting frustrated. Also there should be a 10 second period while within the boundary of the graveyard so that you could hearth out if you wanted to upon accepting rez sickness vs getting 1 shotted the second you come back to life with rez sickness within graveyard. My response from blizzard was that if you dont like the changes you can move your characters to a PVE realm and avoid this, but that would be $25 per character move! 

So as a result of this, I know of 8 people who quit the game because of all the changes and blizzards disregard for the gamer. Everyone who has quit is (upset) for the lack of the actual words they stated that I cant share here that Blizzard does not listen to the player base. They make changes and we all have to live with them. Why cant they host realms dedicated locked to the other content so they could go back to Lich King, BC, or Vanilla. And my one friend stated that Blizzard is just a money hungry machine that does stuff to make people react and spend money, of which some of the things they do are almost designed to force people to have to spend money via character moves if you dont like the imbalance of Horde to Alliance on a particular realm that is now merged etc, as well as PVP Vendors moved to MoP, so those who are still playing the locked to cataclysm content are forced to have to buy MoP if they want to access this vendor to turn in their honor points for gear etc.

Since September 2012, i have been buying the game cards off and on for 60 days of play at a time. I have also created a FREE account called a World of Warcraft Starter Account which allows for unlimited period of free play, but it comes with many restrictions. This allows me to play the game for free when paying $15 a month is not realistic with limited time to play. This also allows me to chat with the remaining 4 people who are good old friends of the over 100 that once were and of which over 96 of them left never to return.

I also continue to stay in contact with 12 of them through facebook ect as for we have become long term IRL friends. Of the 12 many are playing Guild Wars 2, no one is playing RIFT anymore, and a few including myself are playing AION which is free to play through NCSoft.

In addition to this, I am friended with EmberIsolte on Facebook and one of her friends who also was a gamer since Vanilla decided to leave the game, but they hosted a going away party, and so everyone who attended including myself playing a level 4 toon in northshire starting area as ChuckNoaris (since the correct spelling was reserved by blizzard and not available), joined in on a going away party which was a bunch of quick runs and then at the end of the event she gave away all her companions to all these strangers who attended. She had everyone stand around her character and then she spun around and which ever character she was facing after spinning around got the next companion traded to them, she also did this for epic gear that was not BoP etc that she had. She gave everything away and then in the end flew away on her flying mount and thanked everyone for attending. Later I found out that this event was recorded and placed onto youtube LOL.

With so many other games out there competing these days, Blizzard needs to understand that they are no longer king of the hill, and they really need to shape up and make changes that the gamers want vs changes that they feel is a good IDEA in a developers board meeting!

The biggest complaints these days is that Blizzard has copied other games. Examples being Farmville and now having Farms and planting junk in the game, and PokeMon used for battlepets. Back before MoP came out many people were upset that Blizzard was copying / getting in on the Kung Fu Panda movies success by making MoP as an expansion. And the graphics are lacking and outdated and cartoonish from that of other competing games that are MMORPGs and more realistic.

Whether Blizzard is copying others ideas or not, they are no longer king of the hill and personally I can only see the game getting worse from here on. All I can say is that I have many great memories and they cant be relived in the game. I myself as well as many others are feeling that need to move on from WoW. And I am doing that slowly, but I feel its going to happen eventually. After Rage Quitting, I never thought I'd be back, but my friends were the lure to come back. With almost all of them moved on, there is no need to really go back at this point!

WoW....

                      LOL... yah probably one of the longest posts I ever made here. But 8 years of WoW experience to share.

Without a start button...
A PC becomes an over sized Smartphone. 

Geek just wants everything to be a smartphone now...

No! It is MS that wants every PC to be a smartphone lookalike.

http://hothardware.com/News/Confirmed-Windows-81-Will-Bring-Back-The-Start-Button/
I found over a dozen posts like the above.
Which goes to show many others believe that it is only that start button that makes a PC different from other devices.

A Canadian man is hoping to be the first person to sell his house for virtual currency Bitcoins.

Entrepreneur Taylor More listed his two-bedroom Alberta bungalow, asking 405,000 Canadian dollars (£261,000; $395,000) - or the equivalent in Bitcoins.

He says the first reaction of his family was that of a shock.

Bitcoins are now a WIDELY used alternative payments system and one Bitcoin is currently worth about £37.

"Bitcoins are really hard to get your hands on if you want to get them in large quantities," Mr More told the BBC.

"I have a couple projects that I want to get started, and they will take a lot of Bitcoins."

He did not get into detail on his new venture, only saying that it should "get Bitcoins more mainstream".

Full story: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-21863593Wonder if Canada is like the USA regarding sales of a home in relation to taxation? Can you pay the tax on the sale in BITCOINS?  I agree with the Family...he needs his head examined.Bitcoins are a sham currency. I don't know why people even try to use them. Quote

one Bitcoin is currently worth about £37.

Did you know this month thee sis a new Holifay?
It is to be:
World Backup Day  (Insert sound of French horn here.)

Quote

The last Saturday of March is World Backup Day

But take my word for it.

Pioneers of the internet are the first recipients of the Queen Elizabeth Prize for Engineering.

Sir TIM Berners-Lee, Robert Kahn, Vinton Cerf, Louis Pouzin and Marc Andreessen will share the £1m award.

The citation panel said the five men had all contributed to the revolution in COMMUNICATIONS that has taken place in recent decades.

The UK government initiated the QE Prize as a companion to the Nobels to raise the profile of engineering.

It is endowed by industry and administered by an independent trust chaired by Lord Browne, a former chief executive of BP.

The award was announced at the Royal ACADEMY of Engineering in central London.

Sir Tim may be the best known of the winners, certainly in the UK. Working with others in the late 1980s, he HELPED develop the world wide web, which radically simplified the way information could be shared on the net.

Robert Kahn and Vinton Cerf provided the engineering insights that actually made the internet work. Their TCP/IP protocols define the way data travels around the internet.

Louis Pouzin helped work out how data should be labelled so that it reached the right destination.

Marc Andreessen is the man who developed Mosaic, the first popular browser for the web.

"The prize recognises what has been a roller-coaster ride of wonderful international collaboration," said Sir Tim.

Full Story: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-21831916

A report published by the European Commission Joint Research COMMITTEE claims that music web piracy does not harm legitimate sales.

The Institute for Prospective TECHNOLOGICAL Studies examined the online habits of 16,000 Europeans.

They also found that freely streamed music provided a small boost to sales figures.

The International Federation of the Phonographic Industry (IFPI) said the research was "flawed and misleading".

"It seems that the majority of the music that is consumed illegally by the individuals in our sample would not have been purchased if illegal downloading websites were not available to them," wrote the researchers in their report, Digital Music Consumption on the Internet: Evidence from Clickstream Data.

"Although there is trespassing of private property rights (copyrights), there is unlikely to be much harm done on digital music revenues," they added.

Full story: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-21856720 Quote from: Mulreay on March 20, 2013, 03:01:42 PM

"It seems that the majority of the music that is consumed illegally by the individuals in our sample would not have been purchased if illegal downloading websites were not available to them," wrote the researchers in their report, Digital Music Consumption on the Internet: Evidence from Clickstream Data.

"Although there is trespassing of private property rights (copyrights), there is unlikely to be much harm done on digital music revenues," they added.

Would anyone like to suggest that piracy, to a degree, promotes sales of copyrighted music?
Consider: For many years radio stations received 'free' copies of new releases to play on the air as promotional material. But nowadays in many plates rite radio is no longer the place to hear new music. People hear it over the internet. How can you decide you like a song by herring  20second sample? Like on Amazon.

"If a large proportion of illegal downloaders do not buy any music (and yet consume, in some cases, large amounts of it), it cannot be logical that illegal behaviour stimulates legal download sales and inflicts no harm."

If there are people who will download a free copy of a song and then buy it if they like it, I have yet to meet them.

This is how i've been buying my music for years...

If there are people who will download a free copy of a song and then buy it if they like it, I have yet to meet them.

Would anyone like to suggest that piracy, to a degree, promotes sales of copyrighted music?
Consider: For many years radio stations received 'free' copies of new releases to play on the air as promotional material. But nowadays in many plates rite radio is no longer the place to hear new music. People hear it over the internet. How can you decide you like a song by herring  20second sample? Like on Amazon.

Several BBC Twitter accounts, including its weather, Arabic and Radio Ulster feeds were hijacked by a group calling itself Syrian Electronic Army earlier.

A series of tweets about fake weather conditions in Middle Eastern countries began appearing on Thursday afternoon.

The accounts are the latest in a series of large corporate Twitter feeds to have been breached.

The BBC said that it now has control of all three accounts and all inappropriate content has been deleted.

A BBC spokeswoman said: "We apologise to our audiences that this unacceptable material appeared under the BBC's name."

The attacks began in the early afternoon on Thursday. At the same time, BBC staff were alerted to a phishing email that had been sent to some BBC email accounts. It is not yet clear if the two are related.

The email contained a link that if clicked on could expose password details.

The BBC weather Twitter feed, which has 60,000 followers, was among those affected.

Alongside the standard tweets from the weather feed such as "'last night was chilly" some more bizarre comments began emerging.

They included: "Saudi weather STATION down due to head-on collision with camel."

Another read: "Chaotic weather forecast for Lebanon as the government decides to distance itself from the Milky Way."

The group CLAIMING responsibility has PREVIOUSLY spread messages in support of Syrian President Bashar-al-Assad.

The BBC's Arabic and Radio Ulster feeds were also affected.

Full story: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-21879230Interesting that the S.E.A decided to make the BBC and world aware of their access to the Twitter accounts like this through humorous posts. Seems as though they just wanted street cred as their group achieving this, while a smarter group would have held onto the keys to the ACCTS longer possibly having access and not making it known to anyone for a different purpose. After all the best hackers are the ones who are UNSEEN and dont brag!They're not real bright...
Probably not even that nationality...teen rookies.

Poetic justice?

Music Companies Won't Play Ball With Apple - Gee, I Wonder Why?

Quote

Once Bitten...

So unpleasant was Apple as a partner that the media business even invented a VERB for what Apple did to the music companies - they CALL it "GETTING iTuned," and they've vowed not to let it happen to them again.

I suspect the same thing is what's holding up Apple's push into TV, as movie and TV guys saw what Apple did to the music business and would like very much to AVOID that happening to them, thank you very much.

As many others have pointed out, once you start using Spotify (in my case) or any of the other new music-streaming services, you don't really want to go back to iTunes. And you don't need to.

Rather that iTunes, I would rather just load my MP3 albums onto the iPhone. How do I do that?
I though best not to ask  Apple.

This isn't the first instance of self-healing ELECTRONICS that we've seen. In December, researchers at the UNIVERSITY of Illinois developed circuitry that COULD restore conductivity by releasing liquid metal onto the board

Liquid metal
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Liquid metal consists of gallium-contained alloys with very low melting points. (Tetraamminelithium (Li(NH3)4) is a conductive GOLD bronze colored liquid, has a melting point of 89K, 150K below that of Mercury, and is classified as an expanded metal.) These low melting point alloys are liquid at room temperature.[1] The standard used to be mercury but gallium-based alloys are being used as a replacement in various applications. Mercury has a high vapor pressure at room temperature.[2] These alloys have reduced toxicity and a lower vapor pressure than mercury.

Electronics Arts has apologised for the shambolic launch of the latest version of town-planning title SimCity.

Gamers have reported long queues to play, bugs and other glitches since SimCity launched on 5 March.

The company said the way it had set up the launch had been "dumb" and that it "really feels bad" about the way gamers had suffered.

As compensation, all those who bought SimCity will be offered a free Electronics Arts PC game this month.

Since the game launched, the online computers that co-ordinate play have been regularly overwhelmed.

Many gamers reported waiting 30 minutes or more before they could start to construct a city and said the game was sluggish once they were playing. Others said it often crashed or was slow to respond to changes.

The troubles led online store AMAZON to briefly suspend sales of the download version of the game.

In a blogpost, Lucy Bradshaw, general manager for SimCity, said the way Electronics Arts (EA) and Maxis, the studio that created the game, had set up the servers had contributed to the problems.

Unlike all other versions of SimCity, the latest requires gamers to remain online while they play, as each city they construct sits on a chunk of virtual territory shared with other players.

These regions share certain over-arching CHARACTERISTICS such as crime levels, resources and pollution.

However, said Ms Bradshaw, the way people played the finished game was very different to what EA and Maxis had seen during early, or beta, testing.

She wrote: "A lot more people logged on than we expected. More people played, and played in ways we NEVER saw in the beta."

"OK, we agree that was dumb, but we are committed to fixing it," she added.

Full story: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-21741528

I dislike EA.. everything that is wrong with gaming these days. Murry, you are in the minority.
One PUBLISHED survey says only 41% of the respondents hate EA.
Maye the other 59 % were bound  and gagged?  Quote from: Geek-9pm on March 11, 2013, 12:26:16 PM

Murry

Geez, how long have I been coming here?

As compensation, all those who bought SimCity will be offered a free Electronics Arts PC game this month.

One published survey says only 41% of the respondents hate EA.
Maye the other 59 % were bound  and gagged? 

Online information storage firm Evernote has asked all users to reset their passwords, following a security breach by hackers.

The California-based company, that allows people to store and organise personal data on an external server, is thought to have about 50 million users.

It said user names, email addresses and encrypted passwords were accessed.

But it insisted there was "no evidence" that payment details or stored content was accessed, changed or lost.

Evernote acts like an online personal organiser, with users able to save data such as video clips, images, web pages, notes and ITINERARIES in an external shortage system commonly known as the Cloud.

In a statement on the company's website, the firm said its security TEAM discovered and blocked "suspicious activity on [their] network that appears to have been a coordinated attempt to access secure areas of the Evernote service".

It added: "While our password encryption measures are robust, we are taking additional STEPS to ensure that your personal data remains secure.

"This means that, in an abundance of caution, we are requiring all users to reset their Evernote account passwords."

The firm apologised "for the annoyance" caused by the breach, which it said is becoming "far more common" at other "large SERVICES".

Full story: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-21644317

Gigabytes of junk data could be dumped onto PCs via a loophole in web code, a developer has found.

The loophole exploits a feature of HTML 5 which defines how websites are made and what they can do.

Developer Feross Aboukhadijeh found the bug and set up a demo page that fills visitors hard drives with pictures of cartoon cats.

In one demo, Mr Aboukhadijeh managed to dump one gigabyte of data every 16 seconds onto a vulnerable Macbook.
Clever code

Most major browsers, Chrome, Internet Explorer, Opera and Safari, were found to be vulnerable to the bug, said Mr Aboukhadijeh.

While most websites are currently built using version 4 of the Hyper Text Markup Language (HTML), that code is gradually being superseded by the newer version 5.

One big change brought in with HTML 5 lets websites store more data locally on visitors' PCs. Safeguards built into the "local storage" specification should limit how much data can be stored. Different browsers allow different limits but all allow at LEAST 2.5 megabytes to be stored.

However, Mr Aboukhadijeh found a way round this cap by creating lots of temporary websites linked to the one a person actually visited. He found that each one of these associated sites was allowed to store up to the limit of data because browser makers had not written code to stop this happening. By endlessly creating NEW, linked websites the bug can be used to siphon huge amounts of data onto target PCs.

Only Mozilla's Firefox capped storage at 5MB and was not vulnerable, he found.

Full Story: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-21628622 Quote from: Mulreay on March 02, 2013, 07:01:49 AM

one gigabyte of data every 16 seconds

I wish I had an Internet connection that fast: using binary gigabytes, that's 537 megabits per second in round numbers. Even if my connection was that good it would have to be a bloody good server connection to dump that much that fast. I have a 60 Mbit/sec connection and there are not many internet resources that can max it out (my own ISP's Usenet server can)

I am on Virginmedia

Note: the data is not actually being downloaded at all.

Ongoing problems with the latest version of SimCity led Amazon to briefly stop selling the game.

The web retailer stopped sales late on 7 March as players reported continued problems with the city building title.

The latest version of SimCity was launched on 5 March and, like many current GAMES, demand players stay online as they play.

EA has also taken steps to fix login delays by TURNING off some features to lighten the load on game servers.

Prior to this latest release, SimCity was a stand-alone game, but EA has added the online element to infuse the title with more realism.

Now player cities exist as part of online regions and share some characteristics of those virtual environments such as pollution, crime and essential resources.

The online requirement is also seen as an attempt to curb piracy of the title as a web connection is required even if a player shuns the chance to connect their cities to others.

However, the requirement for all players of the game to be connected has led some to wait 30 minutes or more to play. The server problems have led to sluggish response times, crashes and other bugs.

Full story: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-21712910Unfortunately this is no surprise coming from EA. They use to be great and have gone down hill with actions to pull the carpet out from older titles and poor planning on launches. The last game I bought through them was Need for Speed Carbon which luckily operates without issues, but I have seen people complain about other game titles that EA fumbled.

My biggest concern with games requiring an internet connection to their servers is that come say 6 years from now when I want to play this game requiring server handshake, will they SUPPORT the handshake to be able to play the game or force planned obsolescence by killing off support for older titles. By shutting off support to be able to play these titles is when you would find game cracks out there so that you can play your stand alone game that requires a handshake, and with the game being out there for this long there is no doubt that a server mimic service would be available to be able to still play your legally owned title by which they killed support for and are forced to use an illegal TOOL to be able to play your $40 game if you are determined to do so!

Games like this requiring a server handshake should legally be able to operate with a 3rd party server mimic service when the original software manufacturer washes their hands of supporting it and dont provide a patch to do away with the handshake requirement. It should be CONSIDERED abandonware, but legally its not abandoned under current laws that I know of.

I have games that date back to the late 1970's, and its great that I can still play these anytime I want to. But games like this requiring a handshake are games that are not meant to last the test of time without breaking the rules under current law!

One million dollars are being sought on Kickstarter for a sequel to the long-running Ultima series of video games.

The cash is being sought by legendary British developer Richard Garriott who created the original titles which helped define the fantasy gaming genre.

Ultima gave rise to Ultima Online which was one of the first significantly popular massively multiplayer games.

The PC game, called Shroud of the Avatar, is scheduled to be ready to play in October 2014.

Mr Garriott is expected to make a formal announcement about the game and the funding push at the SXSW festival arts and media festival currently under way in Austin, Texas,

In an INTRODUCTORY video on the Kickstarter webpage Mr Garriott, often known by his in-game alias Lord British, said the current crop of fantasy video games had become too formulaic and scripted.

Instead, he said, Shroud of the Avatar would be a much more open experience in which players were free to follow their own path. It would be more about playing a useful role in an online world than just RACKING up KILLS and loot to make a character more powerful, he said.

Full story: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-21714906Hope he does well...
He'll not SEE a farthing from me...just on principle. Quote

Instead, he said, Shroud of the Avatar would be a much more open experience in which players were free to follow their own path. It would be more about playing a useful role in an online world than just racking up kills and loot to make a character more powerful, he said.

Hope he does well...
He'll not see a farthing from me...just on principle.

The full title is:
AT&T slams T-Mobile over network speeds in full page newspaper ad

Quote

by Jared Peters on Mar 1st 2013, 10:02pm
tagged ads, AT&T, T-Mobile
It wasn’t too long ago that AT&T attempted to buy out T-Mobile, before backing out after a 9 month pursuit. Alas, business is business, and AT&T isn’t letting would could have been affect their marketing strategies. Their latest, full-page ad ran in three popular newspapers, The New York Times, WALL Street Journal, and USA Today, and went after T-Mobile without pulling any punches. The ad claims T-Mobile’s network suffers from twice as many dropped CALLS as AT&T and only offers HALF the download speeds. That’s some pretty harsh marketing.
...

Full TITLE is :
Seven jailed in counterfeit DVDS bust at Marysville Flea Market.
Marysville, pop 12000 is 40 miles north of Sacramento. So you would think it'was very small town bust. Wrong!
Quote

The hi-tech task force seized about 50,000 counterfeit CDs, 30,000 DVDs and nearly $26,000 in cash believed to be a portion of the profits from the operation.

An enforcement operation conducted by the Sacramento Valley Hi-Tech Crimes Task Force over trafficking counterfeit goods resulted in seven arrests on Sunday at the Marysville Flea Market — and two trucks filled with allegedly pirated copies of movies and music.

A judge in the US has ordered $1bn (£660.4m) in damages awarded to Apple last year against Samsung be cut by 40%, and set a new trial to assess the LEVEL of damages.

Last year's award was the biggest in a series of global legal fights between the two companies over patents.

The ruling, in California, means the two are set to meet again in court.

The judge SAID the jury, which set the $1bn original award, had incorrectly calculated part of the damages.

The $450.5m ordered to be removed from the payout will be reassessed, and could be increased or lowered.

At the trial, Apple convinced the jury that Samsung had infringed its iPhone and iPad patents.

The patents case encompassed 14 products that Apple said Samsung had used Apple patented designs in.

The jury found that some Samsung products illegally used Apple ideas such as the ``bounce-back'' feature.

This comes into action when a user scrolls to the end of an image. The case also centred on the zoom function activated by touch.

The two companies have court cases in EIGHT other countries, including Samsung's homeland South Korea, Germany, JAPAN, the UK and Australia.

Samsung and Apple are locked in a battle for the smartphone market that currently Samsung is winning.

Full story: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-21638825

A transparent computer that allows users to reach inside and touch digital content has been unveiled at the TED conference in Los Angeles.

TED fellow Jinha Lee has been working on the SpaceTop 3D desktop in collaboration with Microsoft.

Allowing PEOPLE to interact with machines in the same way they do with solid objects could make computing much more intuitive, he told the BBC.

He can see the system coming into general use within a decade.

The system consists of a transparent LED display with built-in cameras, which track the user's gestures and eye movements.
HUMAN touch

The design was inspired by what he SEES as a human need to interact with things.

"Spatial memory, where the body intuitively remembers where things are, is a very human skill," he said.

Translating this to the digital world will enable people to use computers more easily as well as complete more complex tasks.

"If you are working on a document you can pick it up and flip through it like a book," he told the BBC.

Full story: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-21603323I can't remember where i put my car keys so this PROBABLY isn't for me.... Quote from: patio on February 28, 2013, 07:08:23 AM

I can't remember where i put my car keys so this probably isn't for me....

The High Court has ORDERED the UK's major internet service providers to block three websites offering links to pirated material.

The ISPs must stop their users from accessing Kickass Torrents, H33T and Fenopy.

MUSIC industry group the British Phonographic Industry (BPI) said the sites infringed copyright on a "significant scale".

Opponents have argued that blocking sites in this way was ineffective.

The block follows a similar ruling last year involving The Pirate Bay, a much larger site founded in Sweden.

Data seen by the BBC suggested that the blocking of The Pirate Bay had only had a short-term effect on the level of pirate activity online - with levels of peer-to-peer sharing returning to normal soon after.

However, a recent report from market research firm NPD suggested that there had been a LARGE reduction in the number of users illegally downloading music, with fans instead favouring legal options like streaming site Spotify.

Speaking of Thursday's decision, BPI chief executive Geoff Taylor said: "The growth of digital music in the UK is held back by a raft of ILLEGAL businesses commercially exploiting music online without permission.

"Blocking illegal sites helps ensure that the legal digital market can grow and labels can continue to sign and develop new talent."

Loz Kaye, the leader of Pirate PARTY UK, which had offered UK users a workaround for the ban on The Pirate Bay, said the BPI was "out of control".

Full story: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-21601609

Goodbye Hotmail. See the article here.They certainly go big when they decide something huh Dave ? ?...

I won't miss it a bit...I SWITCHED it over this morn. Much preferred, PRIMARILY because it's actually E-mail, and not PRETENDING to be some dumb social NETWORK thing LIKE "Windows Live" was.Hotmail email addresses still read [email protected]  I've also switched to the new format and prefer it.