THE TECH TOWER

Technology and education.

2012-05-09T12:37:00.003-07:00

Whether you like it or not, technology had, in just a few years, made an immense and immeasurable impact on our lifestyles. As much of a geek as I am, I have to admit that some of these changes had a negative influence on human society (even though they were aimed at bringing more convenience into our lives) - but then again, technology has built bridges that connect the entire world, created opportunities and achieved feats otherwise impossible.

A great example of the opportunities technology has created for some people is it's use in education.

It has brought new, richer, multimedia content into universities and schools worldwide, which allows a much greater depth of understanding than classes did before. It's brought online education into our society - taking online courses that offer classes which would otherwise be unavailable is becoming more and more popular with each day. Hundreds of universities worldwide are noticing this - and are introducing an option to study and graduate online, without even leaving your home.

Today, one can exchange valuable information with his fellow students and classmates without even leaving his computer. Going from library to library to find what you need (if you lived in a small town without a comprehensive enough library for your needs as a college student, you were pretty much screwed) has become a thing of the past. When you look past the funny videos of cats and video game trailers, you'll find that the internet has a lot of potential for learning, as well as information on everything anyone would ever need to know. Even better; you get to learn anytime, anywhere. Online materials are available to you at every single moment of the day; while you get to learn in a classroom only during a particular 45 minutes of the day. You also get to dig deeper in what you find interesting, or repeat difficult lessons without wasting valuable class time for others.

Applying technology in education isn't only useful; technology has become so widespread that it's almost necessary. In my opinion, the only way to truly prepare for a life in a world of technology is to introduce it in an early stage of learning.

The Avengers and piracy.

2012-05-08T20:08:00.002-07:00

It's kind of funny to me, that with all the laws the government's been trying to pass, all that fuss the leading corporations are making about piracy, all that talk about how it's supposedly killing the movie business - a movie still managed to gross over $200 million dollars in a single weekend, and beat all records in the history of cinema - that's right, no movie ever made has managed to make such an amount during the first two days prior to it's release.

Now, it's not as if a pirated version of the movie was unavailable to the public - roughly ten days before the US premiere of The Avengers, a camera recording of the motion picture was leaked on the internet.

Why didn't this impact the massive profits that this movie is making? Simple; new technologies available in theaters today (3D), give cinema a whole new experience - the experience that most of us can't have at home; it is because of this that even those who have pirated a movie don't always count as a lost sale.

The second reason for this is the fact that piracy isn't nearly as distributed to dent the movie industry's armor - I know that the big companies are saying a different story, but let's just take a look at some numbers - the pirated version of The Avengers was downloaded 500.000 times in twelve days, while ten million people bought the ticket during a single weekend.

Which leads me to my next point: Is a low quality camcorded version of a movie even comparable to the full experience a theater can offer? No. Does a buggy, ripped version of a video game even come close to the original? No. So why invest millions and millions of dollars in systems that detect camcorders in movie theaters? It seems like a waste of both money and time, as this form of piracy is negligeble and minor.

Your thoughts?

Apple releases iOS 5.11.

2012-05-07T11:39:00.001-07:00

The new iOS for Apple iPod, iPad and iPod Touch has just been released, and one of the updates includes a fix of the notorious "Unable to purchase" bug. It can be downloaded by all users with an iOS 5.0 or higher, and it's updates include:

"This update contains improvements and bug fixes, including:
• Improves reliability of using HDR option for photos taken using the Lock Screen shortcut
• Addresses bugs that could prevent the new iPad from switching between 2G and 3G networks
• Fixes bugs that affected AirPlay video playback in some circumstances
• Improved reliability for syncing Safari bookmarks and Reading List
• Fixes an issue where ‘Unable to purchase’ alert could be displayed after successful purchase
For information on the security content of this update, please visit this website:
http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1222"

As someone who's experienced more than one of the listed issues, I'm very glad that this new iOS build came out.

Users are now able to download iOS 5.1.1 from iTunes, or as an over-the-air update.

Firefox about to release a new plugin that'll increase your security while browsing the internet.

2012-05-06T09:43:00.001-07:00

The newest feature for Firefox 14 - called "click to play", will basically work as a built-in Flashblock plugin - if you're not familiar with what it is; I'll explain: if you choose so, plugins like Flash or Java will no longer load by default - you'll have to manually launch the plugin.

Doesn't sount that useful? Well, if you thought that, I have to tell you that you're wrong.

Plugins have certain vulnerabilities - and can easily be exploited, which results in malware being installed without the user even knowing what's going on. Some websites can "plant" files on your computer via these plugins - all you need to do is open their page. That's why having to run plugins manually (instead of having them run automatically as soon as you visit a page) is a much more secure way to go.

I, for one, am very glad to see that the guys at Mozilla actually care about the safety of their users. A large portion of people browsing the internet isn't educated enough on the potential dangers to their privacy, and aren't even aware of what a plugin like Flashblocker does.. Making something like this a default option for all users will definitely increase your security on the internet.

Good job Mozilla!

Facebook blocking "irrelevant" comments from now on. Wait, what?

2012-05-05T20:12:00.003-07:00

In all honesty, 99.9% of the comments and posts I see on my facebook feed are completely and unarguably irrelevant and half of them are far from positive, so Facebook's criteria on what's appropriate or not remains unclear to me.

Since yesterday, this enormous social network started preventing some users from making certain replies or comments - even though those same replies and comments didn't contain any profanities or even suggestive language!

This has outraged many users of the popular website, because they consider that it's unnecessary censorship of their personal interactions with their friends.

While the internet was screaming the words "censorship" and "liberty of speech", Facebook addressed the public and said that this is simply a new, incredibly advanced spam filter that's made several mistakes, and that they've fixed the filter in the blink of an eye - users are, however, still reporting this issue even though they're not being offensive nor are they using profane language.

Follow us on Facebook and Twitter!

2012-05-04T17:16:00.001-07:00

The Twitter and Facebook pages have been completed! Many thanks to the hundreds of followers that joined us during our very first week.

You can now follow us and get instant updates - be the first to find out about the latest hardware components, new software releases, and the current news from the world of technology!

If you haven't already, come be a part of our readership and join us! (You'll get a delicious cake if you do.)

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Top 3 technology universities in the world.

2012-05-02T10:07:00.002-07:00

If you want to get the very best education in engineering and technology, you should probably go to the US. The States dominate the scene, with the top five technology universities in the world being located there (three of which are in California).

UK takes the second place, with three of the top ten technology universities.

The number one on the dream-university list of 2011/2012 is the California Institute of Technology. Founded in 1891, it's campus stretches over 125 acres. 31 California Institute alumni have won the Nobel Prize, and 66 have won The National Medal of Technology.

A well-known university, and Caltech's long-standing rival: the Massachusetts Institute of Technology shares the first place with their competitor. Founded in 1861, this university is located in Cambridge, Massachusetts. It's an university with a very high amount of research activity, and hundreds of millions of dollars are being invested in it's researches annually by NASA, the Department of Defense, and the National Science Foundation, to name a few.

Princeton University is the number three on the list. Located in New Jersey and founded in 1746, this university is known for it's very low admission rate (roughly 7%), even when compared to it's very selective rivals. It is one of the wealthiest universities in the world, with an endowment of over 17 billion dollars. Whoa.

Supercomputers

2012-04-29T09:41:00.002-07:00

I won't elaborate on what a supercomputer is - the term used for these devices says enough by itself. But how powerful is a supercomputer, exactly?

To make a comparison between your computer's processor and a supercomputer, multiply your computer's power by 1000... Then imagine a room completely filled with such computers, all stacked one atop another, linked through an incredibly fast network. A software that would take years to process certain data on a home computer would take mere seconds to perform the same task on a supercomputer.

If you weren't familiar with them until now, this should create a fairly vivid picture of how fast a supercomputer actually is.

Even though somehow running Crysis 2 on such a machine would be every gamers dream, these devices are used for serious business - they perform climate analysis, energy analysis, run nuclear explosion simulations, are used for human genome research; basically, everything that requires handling enormous amounts of data in a very short amount of time.

At this moment, the fastest of the fastest - a giant among giants, is Roadrunner, developed and operated by the Los Alamos National Laboratory. It operates at one petaflop per second - that's tens of thousands of trillions calculations done in a single second.

IBM designed the system for this machine - let's just hope that they don't plan to give it an AI.

AMD Radeon HD 6990

2012-04-28T11:19:00.001-07:00

AMD has really done it this time; their new AMD Radeon HD 6990 has surpassed all expectations and is, without question, the best and fastest graphics card currently on the market.

Even though the runner-up, the currently best Nvidia has to offer - Nvidia GeForce GTX 590 - stays far behind AMD in performance.

- This beasts main advantage are it's dual GPUs, which give it unparalleled speed.

- Even though it's two CPI slots wide, the card easily fits into a single CPI slot.

- 4GB of GDDR5 memory.

- Includes a microswitch that allows you to automatically overclock the device.

- It's core clock speed of 830 MHz (880 MHz in it's overclocked setting) sweeps the floor with Nvidias 607 MHz.

- It has a memory speed of 2.5 GHz - also outshining Nvidia, whose very best (at the moment) has a memory of 1.7 GHz.

- The card is rated up to 375 W (415 W if overclocked) - but don't let this worry you - this card has a much more improved cooling system than it's predecessors - handling up to 450 W.

So far, the only cons I can find for this piece of hardware are the price and the noise; although worth the $700 if put to good use, it stands out as the most expensive graphics card currently on the market. As for the noise, it's definitely loud, especially while under heavy use, although this is not that big of an issue, since the noise is under bearable limits.

Welcome!

2012-04-27T08:46:00.003-07:00

Welcome to The Tech Tower - a website with news, tips and information from the exciting world of technology. Here, you can find articles on newest tech equipment, well-known people from the world of technology, computer configuration comparisons, information on technology jobs, universities, and much, much more!

Several times throughout the month, we will be answering tech-related questions from our readers in the form of a post; send us your tech-related question at blogger776@gmail.com - and we will try to respond as soon as possible.