Technology as a way of life

Inkjet-like device 'prints' cells over burns

noreply@blogger.com (RaduB.) — Sun, 11 Apr 2010 04:42:00 +0000

(Reuters) - Inspired by a standard office inkjet printer, U.S. researchers have rigged up a device that can spray skin cells directly onto burn victims, quickly protecting and healing their wounds as an alternative to skin grafts.

They have mounted the device, which has so far only been tested on mice, in a frame that can be wheeled over a patient in a hospital bed, they reported on Wednesday.

A laser can take a reading of the wound's size and shape so that a layer of healing skin cells can be precisely applied, said the team at Wake Forest University in Winston-Salem, North Carolina.

"We literally print the cells directly onto the wound," said student Kyle Binder, who helped design the device. "We can put specific cells where they need to go."

Tests on mice showed the spray system, called bioprinting, could heal wounds quickly and safely, the researchers reported at the Translational Regenerative Medicine Forumb.

"We were able to close the entire wound in two weeks," Binder said. Mice with plugs of skin removed that were not treated took five weeks to heal, he said.

The team will eventually seek U.S. Food and Drug Administration approval to test the device on humans, said George Christ, a professor of regenerative medicine at the school.

They are working with the U.S. Armed Forces Institute of Regenerative Medicine to come up with ways to help soldiers wounded in Iraq and Afghanistan. It could be used to close various types of wounds as well as burns.

Binder and colleagues dissolved human skin cells from pieces of skin, separating and purifying the various cell types such as fibroblasts and keratinocytes.

They put them in a nutritious solution to make them multiply and then used a system similar to a multicolor office inkjet printer to apply first a layer of fibroblasts and then a layer of keratinocytes, which form the protective outer layer of skin.

The wound on the mouse was completely closed by three weeks, they reported. Experts say victims of massive burns usually die of infection within two weeks unless they receive skin grafts, and normal grafting often leaves severe scars.

The sprayed cells also incorporated themselves into surrounding skin, hair follicles and sebaceous glands, probably because immature cells called stem cells were mixed in with the sprayed cells, the researchers said.
"You have to give a lot of credit to the cells. When you put them into the wound, they know what to do," Binder said.

The next step is to try the system on pigs, whose skin more closely resembles the skin of humans. Binder said it may also be useful for treating diabetic foot ulcers, a common problem.

Stress induced by slow computers? You are not alone!

noreply@blogger.com (RaduB.) — Sun, 11 Apr 2010 04:34:00 +0000

NEW YORK (Reuters Life!) - Stressed by waiting for your computer to update information or download photos, music or videos? You could be suffering from Hourglass Syndrome.

A survey commissioned by Intel shows that 66 percent of computer users are at least somewhat stressed by slow-poke technology and 23 percent described themselves as very or extremely stressed.
"We found that 41 percent of adults said they are waiting for the computer to catch up with them and they are stressing out while waiting," said Agnes Kwan, of Intel which develops processor technology, said referring to survey results.

Kwan added that so-called Hourglass Syndrome is a collective term for the frustration that stressed computer users are facing as they watch the little hourglass spin while waiting for the program to open or a website to load.
"In an extreme case, four percent of users said they had to wait one to three hours for the computer to catch up with them. During that wait it would create stress for them if they have limited time to do the task," she added.

With the advent of Facebook and Twitter, as well as video and music websites, consumers are using computers for many more applications than they did just a few years ago. Some aging computers cannot keep pace as quickly as their owners would like, leading to stress and frustration.

The findings are based on a Harris poll for Intel of 2,315 people in the United States. The average computer user spends about 13 minutes per day waiting for their technology to catch up to them, which equates to up to three days a year just waiting, according to Intel.

Windows 7 reached 10% market share

noreply@blogger.com (RaduB.) — Sun, 11 Apr 2010 04:29:00 +0000

Windows 7 fairing far batter than Windows Vista in early adoption.

Consumers and businesses are much warmer towards Windows 7 than they were towards Windows Vista – and the numbers are showing it.

According to data collected by Net Applications, relayed by Ars Technica, Windows 7 now has a greater than 10 percent market share amongst internet users.
While this it still represents the smallest piece of the current Windows pie, historical comparisons show that the uptake of Windows 7 is more than twice of what Windows Vista did in its first five months of availability.

iPhone finally gets multitasking

noreply@blogger.com (RaduB.) — Fri, 09 Apr 2010 18:02:00 +0000

CUPERTINO, Calif. – Apple Inc.'s iPhone and iPad devices will soon be able to run more than one program at a time, an ability that phones from Apple's rivals already offer and that iPhone owners have long sought.

The changes, coming this summer to iPhones and this fall to iPads, mean that users might be able to listen to music through the Pandora program and check a bank account online simultaneously. Currently, users must return to Apple's home screen, effectively quitting the open program, before starting a new task.
"We weren't the first to this party, but we're going to be the best," Apple CEO Steve Jobs declared Thursday, as bloggers,software developers and others in the audience greeted the news of such "multitasking" with applause.

The iPhone already permits some multitasking, but that's largely limited to Apple's own programs. Apple had not given users ways to seamlessly switch among all the software "apps" available from outside software companies, the way phones from rivals Palm Inc. and Google Inc. already do.
That will change with the updates known as iPhone OS 4. Apple generally makes such updates available for free, and often automatically, as a software download.

"It really changes the way you use the iPhone," Jobs said. "You're bouncing around the apps with tremendous fluidity."

Jobs said the company waited so long because it wanted to offer multitasking in a way that didn't drain the iPhone's battery or reduce the phone's performance.
In demonstrating the feature, Jobs double-tapped on the iPhone's main button while playing a game to reveal a row of icons for other programs that were quietly running in the background and accessible with a finger tap.

Multitasking could enhance the functionality of Internet phone services such as Skype. Currently, a call automatically ends if you exit the Skype app. With multitasking, that call could continue while you look up directions, or you could receive incoming Skype calls even if you're reading the news or a "Gossip Girl" blog instead.

Full multitasking had been high on many people's wish lists. Because Apple's new iPad runs the same software as the iPhone, changes would apply to that larger gadget as well. Some people have held off buying one because of its inability to run more than one program at once.
Other updates include the ability to have messages from multiple e-mail accounts land in a single inbox and a way to connect an iPhone with a regular keyboard using Bluetooth wireless technology.

But Apple still won't support Flash technology, even though many Web sites require it for displaying video. Flash was alongside multitasking at the top of many wish lists.
Although Apple is making the updates available to all iPhone, iPod Touch and iPad models, some features will only work with newer versions. The multitasking function, for example, won't work with the original iPhone or the iPhone 3G — only the 3GS versions that came out last summer. For the iPod Touch, you'd need the models that came out late last year.

Jobs also announced an advertising platform called iAd in which Apple will sell and host ads to run on apps made by outside developers; those developers will get 60 percent of the ad revenue. Jobs said users shouldn't find the ads annoying because Apple will make it easy for people to navigate back to what they were doing before clicking.

He admitted that Apple is still "babes in woods" when it comes to advertising, though the company is learning fast through Quattro Wireless, a mobile advertising company that Apple bought in January for an undisclosed amount. Jobs said the company had wanted to buy mobile advertising service AdMob, but lost out to Google. That deal is undergoing regulatory review.

Jobs also said the company has sold 450,000 iPads since its launch Saturday. The company earlier said it delivered more than 300,000 iPads on the first day, though that included pre-orders and units shipped to retail stores such as Best Buy but not necessarily purchased right away.
The iPad models currently on sale connect to the Internet using Wi-Fi, at prices that start at $499.
Shares of Apple fell 65 cents to close Thursday at $239.95.

The console is dying according to Japan visionary

noreply@blogger.com (RaduB.) — Fri, 09 Apr 2010 17:33:00 +0000

TOKYO (Reuters) – Hideo Kojima, one of the world's most famous video game creators, sees a future for digital entertainment outside the box -- outside any box.

Kojima, whose "Metal Gear Solid" games have sold more than 27 million copies, says the future of video gaming is on networks that will free players from consoles supplied by the likes of his long-time partner Sony Corp.

"In the near future, we'll have games that don't depend on any platform," Kojima said at a news conference announcing the latest installment in a game saga that began in 1987.

"Gamers should be able to take the experience with them in their living rooms, on the go, when they travel -- wherever they are and whenever they want to play. It should be the same software and the same experience," he said.

Kojima was speaking at an event in Tokyo to detail plans for the late April launch of "Metal Gear Solid: Peace Walker," a video game he developed and directed and Konami Corp is launching for Sony's portable PSP device.

The prediction of a future without game machines from a figure regarded as both creative maverick and commercial dynamo appeared to rattle a Sony executive on hand for the event.

"It's a bold prediction," Sony Computer Entertainment Japan President Hiroshi Kawano told reporters with a nervous smile. "We hope he continues to develop for platforms, but we deeply respect his sense of taking on a challenge."

"Metal Gear Solid: Peace Walker" goes on sale in Japan at the end of April and the United States and Europe in June.

Kojima, 46, is known for sneaking pacifist themes into a game series that features stealth combat and elaborate plot lines that often reflect on the dangers of technology.

The latest installment features Metal Gear's mercenary hero, Snake, as he and a group of soldiers of fortune set off to save Costa Rica from invasion in 1974 by a mysterious army.

Kojima said players are rewarded for cooperating and encouraged to stun and capture -- not kill -- enemy soldiers they encounter in order to put them to work.

"This is software that develops management skills," Kojima said. "You can even fire workers, something that you can't really do in real life. In the game, I couldn't stop doing it."

Kojima has said he hopes to develop movies as well as video games. Like recent Hollywood productions, his latest game is packed with product placements to bring in additional revenue, including AXE body-wash from Unilever and Doritos corn chips and Mountain Dew from PepsiCo.

Kojima said he hoped the release of the new game on Sony's PSP device would give his development team a sense of what works in portable gaming in preparation for his vision of gaming on demand over the Internet.

"I looked at this in part as an experiment aimed at the future," he said.

Signs of recent lava flows on Venus

noreply@blogger.com (RaduB.) — Fri, 09 Apr 2010 15:37:00 +0000

For the first time, scientists have detected clear signs of recent lava flows on the surface of Venus.

The observations reveal that volcanoes on Venus appeared to erupt between a few hundred years to 2.5 million years ago. This suggests the planet may still be geologically active, making Venus one of the few worlds in our solar system that has been volcanically active within the last 3 million years.
The evidence comes from the European Space Agency's Venus Express mission, which has been in orbit around the planet since April 2006. The science results were laid over topographic data from NASA's Magellan spacecraft. Magellan radar-mapped 98 percent of the surface and collected high-resolution gravity data while orbiting Venus from 1990 to 1994.
Scientists see compositional differences compared to the surrounding landscape in three volcanic regions. Relatively young lava flows have been identified by the way they emit infrared radiation. These observations suggest Venus is still capable of volcanic eruptions. The findings appear in the April 8 edition of the journal Science.

"The geological history of Venus has long been a mystery," said Sue Smrekar, a scientist at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif., and lead author of the paper describing the work. "Previous spacecraft gave us hints of volcanic activity, but we didn't know how long ago that occurred. Now we have strong evidence right at the surface for recent eruptions."
The volcanic provinces, or hotspots, on which Smrekar and her team focused are geologically similar to Hawaii. Scientists previously detected plumes of hot rising material deep under Venus' surface. Those plumes are thought to have produced significant volcanic eruptions. Other data from the planet suggest that volatile gases commonly spewed from volcanoes were breaking down in its atmosphere. The rate of volcanism will help scientists determine how the interior of the planet works and how gases emitted during eruptions affect climate.

Something is smoothing Venus' surface, because the planet has only about 1,000 craters, a relatively small amount compared to other bodies in our solar system. Scientists think it may be the result of volcanic activity and want to know if it happens quickly or slowly. The Venus Express results suggest a gradual sequence of smaller volcanic eruptions as opposed to a cataclysmic volcanic episode that resurfaces the entire planet with lava.

Smrekar and her team also discovered that several volcanic features in the regions they studied show evidence of minerals found in recent lava flows. These mineral processes correspond to the youngest volcanic flows in each region, giving scientists additional support for the idea they formed during recent volcanic activity. On Earth, lava flows react rapidly with oxygen and other elements in the atmosphere when they erupt to the surface. On Venus, the process is similar, although it is more intense and changes the outer layer more substantially.

Scientists call Venus Earth's sister planet because of similarities in size, mass, density and volume. Scientists deduce that both planets shared a common origin, forming at the same time about 4.5 billion years ago. Venus also is the planet on which the runaway greenhouse effect was discovered. The planet is cloaked in a much less friendly atmosphere than that found on Earth. It is composed chiefly of carbon dioxide, which generates a surface temperature hot enough to melt lead, and a surface pressure 90 times greater than that on Earth.
The small group of worlds in our solar system known to be volcanically active today includes Earth and Jupiter's moon Io. Crater counts on Mars also have suggested recent lava flows. Scientists are studying evidence of another kind of active volcanism that involves ice-spewing volcanoes on other moons in our solar system.

NASA sponsored Smrekar's research. The European Space Agency built and manages Venus Express. JPL is managed for NASA by the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena.
To view the spacecraft data and images, visit: http://www.nasa.gov/topics/solarsystem/features/pia13001.html

Intel testing experimental 48-core CPU

noreply@blogger.com (RaduB.) — Fri, 09 Apr 2010 15:26:00 +0000

Intel will ship computers with an experimental 48-core processor to researchers by the end of the second quarter as the company tries to reshape its future chips.

Limited quantities of the processor will be sent primarily to academic institutions, said Sean Koehl, technology evangelist with Intel Labs, during an event in New York on Wednesday. The chip may not become commercially available as it is part of a research project, but features from the processor could be implemented in future chips.

Development of the processor is part of Intel’s terascale computing research program. A focus area of the program is to put more cores in a single processor to enable faster computing in devices ranging from mobiles to servers.

The 48-core chip operates at about the clock speed of Atom-based chips, said Christopher Anderson, an engineer with Intel Labs. Intel’s latest Atom chips are power-efficient, are targeted at netbooks and small desktops, and run at clock speeds between 1.66GHz and 1.83GHz. The 48-core processor, built on a mesh architecture, could lead to a massive performance boost when all the chips communicate with each other, Anderson said.

Adding cores to processors is considered a power-efficient way of boosting chip performance. The traditional way of boosting performance was by cranking up CPU clock speed, but that led to excessive heat dissipation and power consumption.

Intel and its rival Advanced Micro Devices last week announced new server chips with their highest core counts to date. Intel announced Xeon 7500 and 6500 processors for high-end servers, which included eight-core chips, while AMD announced Opteron 6100 chips with 12 cores.

The 48-core processor’s architecture includes improvements that cut memory and communication bottlenecks that affect current x86 chips. For faster data exchange, the chip topology organizes the cores with multiple points to receive and transfer data. Routers between cores facilitate faster data exchange and the architecture is expandable as cores are added. The 48-core chip has 24 small routers between cores, Koehl said.
Each core has on-chip buffers that can instantly exchange data in parallel across all the cores, Koehl said.
Some features in the 48-core chip that may be applicable in the short term are related to power management, Koehl said. The processor draws between 25 watts and 125 watts of power, and the chip can shut down cores to reduce clock speed and power consumption.

The chip has better on-die power management capabilities than current multicore chips and works with software to help lower consumption depending on the processing power needed, the researchers said. The cores can vary voltage and frequency of the clock speed, and software switches cores on and off to change performance levels. When running a financial application during a demonstration, sets of cores were deactivated and the power consumption went from 74 watts to 25 watts in under a second.

FCC plans to get broadband plan started

noreply@blogger.com (RaduB.) — Fri, 09 Apr 2010 15:08:00 +0000

WASHINGTON – The Federal Communications Commission said Thursday that it intends to move forward quickly with key recommendations in its national broadband plan — even though a federal appeals court this week undermined the agency's legal authority to regulate high-speed Internet access.

The FCC needs that authority to push ahead with many parts of the broadband plan, which it released last month. Among them: a proposal to expand broadband by tapping the Universal Service Fund, which subsidizes telephone service in poor and rural areas.

The FCC laid out its 2010 "broadband action agenda" without indicating how it will proceed in light of the court ruling. But the agency says it will ensure it has the legal authority it needs for its sweeping plan to increase broadband usage and Internet speeds.

"Does the FCC still have a mission in the Internet area?" FCC General Counsel Austin Schlick wrote in a blog post following Tuesday's court decision. "Absolutely."

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia ruled Tuesday that the FCC lacks authority to impose so-called "network neutrality" obligations. Those require broadband providers to give equal treatment to all traffic flowing over their lines. Comcast Corp., the nation's largest cable company, had challenged the rules in court after the FCC ordered it to stop blocking its subscribers from using an online file-sharing service called BitTorrent.

Although the FCC could appeal the decision or ask Congress to give it the authority it needs, many public interest groups are instead calling on the agency to impose "common carrier" regulations on broadband providers. Those rules, which have traditionally applied to phone companies, prohibit carriers from discriminating against certain types of traffic, among other things.
But even as the agency contemplates its next move on that front, it made clear Thursday that the broadband plan remains a top priority. The FCC said it will focus on a number of major proposals in the plan this year.

Those include:
• reforming the Universal Service Fund by phasing out subsidies for phone service and instead using the program to pay for broadband.
• freeing up more wireless spectrum to deliver mobile broadband services, with much of those airwaves potentially coming from television broadcasters.
• establishing a nationwide wireless network for public safety that will help firefighters, police officers and other emergency workers communicate.
• seeking ways to drive more competition in the market for network connections used by business customers, cellular towers and other big bandwidth users.

CERN created 10 million mini-Big Bangs in a week

noreply@blogger.com (RaduB.) — Fri, 09 Apr 2010 15:00:00 +0000

(Reuters) - Physicists at the CERN research center said on Wednesday they had created 10 million mini-Big Bangs in the first week of mega-power operations of their marathon probe into the secrets of the cosmos.
Spokesman James Gillies said the subterranean Large Hadron Collider (LHC), in which tiny particles of matter are smashed together at a fraction of a second under the speed of light, was functioning extremely well.
"It's all looking pretty good. We are getting a mass of data for the analysts in laboratories all round the world to get their teeth into, even if it could take months or years for anything really new to emerge," said Gillies.
Officials at CERN, the European Center for Nuclear Research, are keen to get through the first two weeks at high power, recalling that in 2008, an earlier launch of the LHC at a lesser power was halted by a major coolant leak after 10 days.
Scientists keeping watch over the LHC's 27-km oval-shaped ring under the Swiss-French border near Geneva said collisions were now being recorded at 100 per second, twice as many as on the first mega-power day last week.
Particle beams were first injected into the LHC and then collided at a previously unattained total energy of 7 tera -- or 7 million million -- electron volts (TeV) on March 30 in what scientists said was a huge step forward in cosmic research.
PRIMEVAL FIREBALL
The collisions create simulations on a tiny scale of the Big Bang, the primeval fireball 13.7 billion years ago out of which the entire cosmos -- galaxies, stars, planets and eventually life as well as the universal laws of physics -- emerged.
By tracking how the particles behave after colliding, CERN researchers hope to unveil secrets of the cosmos such as the make-up of dark, or invisible, matter, why matter gained mass, and if there are more dimensions to the four already known.

There could also be clues, but not before the middle of the decade after collision impact energy is doubled to 14 TeV in 2013, on whether ideas even more reminiscent of science fiction like parallel universes have any basis in reality.
This, like the additional dimensions proposition, figures marginally in the postulates of string theory -- which suggests the basic ingredients of the cosmos are tiny strings of matter -- over which scientists have argued for some years.
The theory also proposes the idea of supersymmetry, under which every particle has a massive unseen or shadow particle -- a phenomenon that could explain why dark matter makes up nearly 25 percent of the universe while visible matter accounts for around only 5 per cent.
Proponents say string physics, if shown to be correct, could provide the long-sought "general theory of everything" which would resolve contradictions between modern quantum theory and Einstein's general theory of relativity.

Nokia buys MetaCarta

noreply@blogger.com (RaduB.) — Fri, 09 Apr 2010 14:54:00 +0000

(Reuters) - The world's largest cellphone maker Nokia said today it had bought U.S. geographic technology firm MetaCarta, as a part of its strategy to offer local navigation services to its customers.

It did not disclose the deal price, but said the Massachusetts-based company employed more than 30 people.
MetaCarta's technology combines geosearch and geotagging allowing users to find written content about any place.

In January Nokia announced it would offer free navigation on its cellphones and would also make available local applications and services to its mobile phone users.

The move was seen as an attempt to serve a blow to Satnav makers such as TomTom and Garmin as well as Google, which offers free navigation on Motorola' Droid smart-phones in the North America market.

UK passes Digital Economy Bill

noreply@blogger.com (RaduB.) — Fri, 09 Apr 2010 13:02:00 +0000

The controversial Digital Economy Bill has passed its third reading and will pass into law, after just two hours of debate in the Common.
The bill passed with a majority of 189 votes to 47. Under the legislation, ISPs will be forced to send letters to alleged file-sharers threatening to suspend their internet connections. It also grants the secretary of state for business the power to block "a location on the internet which the court is satisfied has been, is being or is likely to be used for or in connection with an activity that infringes copyright".

The power replaces Clause 18 which granted the Government wide-ranging powers to deal with future methods of copyright infringement without the need for further legislation.
However, Labour MP John Hemming protested that the power could still prove a danger to sites such as Wikileaks - the whistle blowing website that hosts copyrighted material.

"A recent example is the US air force video, which it published," argued Hemming. "Copyright exists with the US Government, who under the Bill could, and would want to, apply to ban WikiLeaks from the UK. That provision is clearly in the Bill."

The objection was waved aside by Digital Britain Minister Stephen Timms who claimed it was important the bill did not impede freedom of speech, but offered no guarantees on the future of sites such as Wikileaks.
While a number of MPs complained that the bill was too big to be dealt with in "wash up", the most damning sentiment came from former Cabinet Office minister Tom Watson who wrote on Twitter "First time I've ever broken the whip in the chamber. I feel physically sick."

3D TV debuts with Soccer World Cup

noreply@blogger.com (RaduB.) — Fri, 09 Apr 2010 12:57:00 +0000

(Reuters) - Hundreds of thousands of soccer fans are likely to get their first taste of live 3D viewing during this year's World Cup, the vast majority of them in cinemas rather than at home, according to football body FIFA.

Together with partner Sony, FIFA plans to supply 25 World Cup matches in the immersive 3D technology made popular in cinemas by blockbuster movie Avatar and expected to spread to living rooms around the world this year.
Viewers with 3D television sets who live in a country where the broadcaster with World Cup rights also has 3D capabilities will also be able to watch live in 3D at home -- if they are not put off by the need to wear special glasses.
Currently, Disney's ESPN in the United States, Prisa's Sogecable in Spain and Korea's SBS have live 3D rights. More such deals are expected to be announced "shortly," FIFA's TV Director Niclas Ericson said.
In some countries, home 3D viewing will not be an option. For example, in Britain only BSkyB will have a 3D channel by the start of the World Cup in June, but the rights are held by ITV and the publicly-owned BBC.
Asked at a London media event on Thursday how many viewers were likely to watch World Cup games live in 3D, Ericson said: "We hope it will be at least a few hundred thousand per match," adding that most of the audience was likely to be in cinemas.
Rights for cinemas and entertainment venues are being managed by Swiss-based Aruna Media AG, which plans to broadcast live to about 26 countries and is in advanced discussions with several major markets, FIFA and Sony said.
Sony hopes the tournament will whet viewers' appetite for 3D, an industry still in its infancy, with several competing technologies and very few TV sets in homes. It plans to show 3D promotional trailers in thousands of retail stores worldwide.
The Japanese electronics giant will start selling its own 3D TVs in early June in Japan. Rivals LG, Panasonic and Samsung have all also recently unveiled 3D offerings.
Technology research firm iSuppli expects about 4.2 million 3D TV sets to be sold worldwide this year at an average price of $1,768. That should rise to 78 million sets by 2015, worth a total of $64.4 billion, iSuppli forecasts.
Much is at stake for Sony, which will need to show it can translate its expertise in 3D hardware and film content to the very different environment of sports, where fast-moving action can mean blurry images and even induce nausea in viewers.
"It will be a much richer experience, there's a lot of depth to it. It won't be similar to the Hollywood experience where there's a lot of in-your-face Wow! type of effects," David Bush, Marketing Director of Sony Professional," told Reuters TV.
"What we expect to replicate is the experience of being in the stadium."
The World Cup runs for a month from June 11 in South Africa.

File-Sharer Says “No” to RIAA’s $25k Offer To Settle

noreply@blogger.com (RaduB.) — Sun, 31 Jan 2010 06:45:00 +0000

Last year Jammie Thomas lost her retrial against the RIAA and was ordered to pay $1.92 million in damages for sharing 24 songs using Kazaa.

Just days after a judge reduced the $1.92m damages bill handed down to Jammie Thomas to a slightly more sensible $54,000, her legal team have turned down an offer to settle for $25,000.
Outrage at the huge damages eventually resulted in Judge Davis lowering the damages last week to $54,000.
To try and bring the whole sorry episode to an end, yesterday the RIAA made an offer to Thomas to settle the case for $25,000, if she agreed to ask the judge to “vacate” last week’s decision, which means removing it from the record.
Her lawyers immediately rejected the offer, indicating they would only accept a settlement which means Thomas has to pay nothing.
The RIAA said that this rejection means that they will now challenge the judge’s decision last week to lower the $1.92m damages.
Will this ever come to an end? What a complete waste of money.
(Source:FreakBits.com)

uTorrent Users Double to 52 Million in a Year

noreply@blogger.com (RaduB.) — Tue, 29 Dec 2009 04:53:00 +0000

Earlier this year several publications claimed that P2P and BitTorrent were dying because of the increased popularity of streaming sites. In reality, BitTorrent is about to close a record year in terms of traffic and usage.
The misleading reports all based their conclusions on data supplied by a network-management firm, which showed that of all Internet traffic, the percentage consumed by P2P has slowly declined. However, those who take a closer look at the data will find that in absolute traffic, P2P continued to grow, with bandwidth used by streaming just growing a little bit faster.
BitTorrent is by no means dying, nor is there a decline. Quite the opposite. All the major BitTorrent sites saw a significant increase in visitor numbers over the past months. TorrentFreak asked Simon Morris, BitTorrent’s VP of Product Management, if this growth is also reflected in the usage stats of uTorrent.
“Probably the emergence of things like Hulu and continued growth of Youtube make it seem like Bittorrent is not the only thing driving demand for consumer bandwidth. But we see no evidence whatever that BitTorrent clients are any less popular,” Morris told TorrentFreak.
Around this time last year uTorrent had 28 million unique users a month, and by November 2009 this figure had almost doubled to 52 million monthly users. And things have been going equally well for uTorrent’s little brother, BitTorrent Mainline.
“In addition to this, at the start of this year we saw almost 5 million monthly users of BitTorrent Mainline,” Morris said. “In November 2009 we saw over 10 million.”
These statistics show that despite the legal setbacks The Pirate Bay, Mininova and isoHunt have faced in court, the number of people who are using BitTorrent has continued to grow significantly. There is no indication that this growth will slow, let alone stop, in 2010.
The uTorrent development team also has some major improvements in the pipeline. Last week streaming support was added to the client, and in the coming year it will add file security features and the option for torrent site owners to promote their content within the client.
(Source: TorrentFreak.com)

Memory chip shortage seen in H2 2010

noreply@blogger.com (RaduB.) — Tue, 29 Dec 2009 04:48:00 +0000

LONDON (Reuters) - Memory chips for computers are likely to be in short supply by the second half of next year as consumers demand more capacity and companies embark on a delayed drive to replace PCs, industry tracker DRAMeXchange believes.

Prices for DRAM chips, the most common type of computer memory, have stabilized over the past two months after rising for most of the year as recession-struck chipmakers slashed capacity and capital spending, causing shortages.
DRAMeXchange forecast on Thursday that shipments of PCs would rise 13 percent next year, driven by notebooks, with 22.5 percent growth to 160 million units, and pared-down netbooks, set to rise 22 percent to 35 million units.
"DRAM will likely face a serious shortage in 2H10 triggered by the hot PC sales," DRAMeXchange said. "The DRAM price decline will likely be eased in 2Q10. That is, DRAM vendors will have a great opportunity to remain in profit for the whole year." Top U.S. memory chipmaker Micron on Tuesday delivered its first quarterly profit in nearly three years as rising prices lifted sales beyond expectations.
DRAMeXchange forecast that 2010 capital expenditure by DRAM vendors would rise 80 percent from this year's record low to $7.85 billion, rising to $10 billion to $12 billion by 2011 or 2012.
Industry leader Samsung would spend $2.6 billion, it predicted. Fellow Korean chipmaker Hynix said on Thursday it planned 2.3 trillion won ($2.2 billion) in capital expenditure next year.

AT&T approves VoIP for iPhone

noreply@blogger.com (RaduB.) — Wed, 07 Oct 2009 15:12:00 +0000

(CNN) In a press release Tuesday AT&T announced it will now allow iPhone VoIP apps, like Skype, to run on the cellular network.
AT&T previously restricted all VoIP apps, which transmit voice calls over a data network, for use only when an iPhone was on a Wi-Fi network. With these restrictions dropped, iPhone customers can now use AT&T’s 3G data network to make calls without using their wireless minutes.
AT&T claims this change was due to customer demand:

In late summer, AT&T said it was taking a fresh look at VoIP capabilities on iPhone for use on AT&T’s 3G network, consistent with its regular review of device features and capabilities to ensure attractive options for consumers.
“iPhone is an innovative device that dramatically changed the game in wireless when it was introduced just two years ago,” said Ralph de la Vega, president and CEO, AT&T Mobility & Consumer Markets. “Today’s decision was made after evaluating our customers’ expectations and use of the device compared to dozens of others we offer.”

Recent FCC scrutiny over Apple’s rejection of the Google Voice app, as well as a congressional push for net neutrality are likely also responsible for AT&T’s change of heart.
New VoIP (Voice over Internet Protocol) apps that take advantage of 3G capabilities should be available soon. However, AT&T’s 3G network where I live in Atlanta is about as reliable as the Detroit Lions, so I doubt I will be dropping my traditional voice service any time soon.

Scientists discover massive ring around Saturn

noreply@blogger.com (RaduB.) — Wed, 07 Oct 2009 15:05:00 +0000

(CNN) -- Scientists at NASA have discovered a nearly invisible ring around Saturn -- one so large that it would take 1 billion Earths to fill it.

NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope has spotted a massive, nearly invisible ring around Saturn.

The ring's orbit is tilted 27 degrees from the planet's main ring plane. The bulk of it starts about 3.7 million miles (6 million km) away from the planet and extends outward another 7.4 million miles (12 million km).
Its diameter is equivalent to 300 Saturns lined up side to side. And its entire volume can hold one billion Earths, NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory said late Tuesday.
"This is one supersized ring," said Anne Verbiscer, an astronomer at the University of Virginia in Charlottesville.
Verbiscer and two others are authors of a paper about the discovery published Wednesday in the journal Nature.
The obvious question: Why did it take scientists so long to discover something so massive?
The ring is made up of ice and dust particles that are so far apart that "if you were to stand in the ring, you wouldn't even know it," Verbiscer said in a statement.

Also, Saturn doesn't receive a lot of sunlight, and the rings don't reflect much visible light.
But the cool dust -- about 80 Kelvin (minus 316 degrees Fahrenheit) -- glows with thermal radiation. NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope, used to spot the ring, picked up on the heat.
One of Saturn's moons, Phoebe, orbits within the ring. As Phoebe collides with comets, it kicks up planetary dust. Scientists believe the ice and dust particles that make up the ring stems from those collisions.
The ring may also help explain an age-old mystery surrounding another of Saturn's moons: Iapetus.
Astronomer Giovanni Cassini, who first spotted Iapetus in 1671, deduced the moon has a white and dark side -- akin to a yin-yang symbol. But scientists did not know why.
The new ring orbits in the opposite direction to Iapetus. And, say researchers, it's possible that the moon's dark coloring is a result of the ring's dust particles splattering against Iapetus like bugs on a windshield.
"Astronomers have long suspected that there is a connection between Saturn's outer moon Phoebe and the dark material on Iapetus," said Douglas Hamilton of the University of Maryland in College Park -- one of the three authors reporting on the findings in the journal Nature.

"This new ring provided convincing evidence of that relationship."

Record labels sue Guns N' Roses for copying songs

noreply@blogger.com (RaduB.) — Wed, 07 Oct 2009 08:26:00 +0000

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Two independent record labels sued U.S. rock band Guns N' Roses for $1 million, claiming the group used portions of two songs by a German musician on their last album "Chinese Democracy."
Guns N' Roses and Universal Music Group's Interscope-Geffen A&M label were sued by British label Independiente and the U.S. arm of Domino Recording Company, who own the licensing rights to songs by German electronic musician Ulrich Schnauss.
Singer Axl Rose and Guns N' Roses band members and album producers copied portions of two of Schnauss' songs -- "Wherever You Are" and "A Strangely Isolated Place" -- for a song used on the band's last album called "Riad N' the Bedouins," according to the lawsuit.
The lawsuit, filed on Friday but made available on Monday, seeks $1 million in damages. A spokesperson for Interscope-Geffen A&M, owned by Vivendi's Universal Music Group, was not available for comment.
"Chinese Democracy," the band's first new album in 17 years that was released last November, resulted in disappointing sales.
Besides Rose, the only original member in the band, the other current and former band members named in the suit include guitarist Brian Carroll, better known as "Buckethead," bassist Tommy Stinson, and Robin Finck, who currently plays lead guitar with rock act Nine Inch Nails.

Google creating device to monitor home energy

noreply@blogger.com (RaduB.) — Wed, 07 Oct 2009 08:21:00 +0000

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - Google Inc is partnering with privately held Energy Inc to provide households with free energy management software, bypassing utilities' smart meters and potentially boosting energy efficiency, the company said on its blog on Monday.
Google launched in February a Web tool called PowerMeter, which lets consumers monitor how much electricity they use at home. The catch was that they had to have a smart meter installed by their utility. For the past few months, a few hundred customers have tested the software.
Now, consumers can buy Energy Inc's power-usage measuring device, called TED 5000, costing about $200, and use Google's software on top of it, without ever needing a smart meter.
The partnership between Energy Inc and Google's philanthropic arm is intended to expand the consumer market. While more and more utilities are moving to install smart meters, they still account for a small percentage of all U.S. electricity meters.
The partnership is nonexclusive and does not include financial terms, the company said. Google will continue working with its partner utilities, which include Sempra Energy's San Diego Gas & Electric and Germany's Yello Strom.
Internet behemoth Google is widely known for its online advertising and search engine, but it is also making forays into clean technology.
Its projects include ways to write software to connect plug-in hybrid vehicles to the power grid and a mirror technology that could reduce the cost of building solar thermal plants by a quarter or more.

Technology companies like Google and IBM Corp are shifting into the world of building a smart grid, envisioning a more efficient electricity grid that uses more renewable energy and powers up 'smart' appliances.

Hotmail accounts passwords leaked

noreply@blogger.com (RaduB.) — Wed, 07 Oct 2009 08:18:00 +0000

SEATTLE (Reuters) - Microsoft Corp said on Monday that passwords belonging to some users of its Hotmail email service were exposed on an Internet site, but had since been taken down.
The company did not say how many users were affected, but some reports suggested that passwords to more than 10,000 accounts were exposed.
"We are aware that some Windows Live Hotmail customers' credentials were acquired illegally by a phishing scheme and exposed on a website," a Microsoft spokesman said.
Phishing is a scam whereby fraudsters get hold of personal information by sending out emails under the guise of a bank, IT department or some other trustworthy source.
Microsoft said the passwords had been removed from the offending website, which it did not identify, and said it had blocked access to all affected accounts and was helping users to reclaim their Hotmail accounts.
The software company said the exposure of the passwords was not a breach of any Microsoft servers.

The Pirate Bay Relocates to a Nuclear Bunker

noreply@blogger.com (RaduB.) — Wed, 07 Oct 2009 08:14:00 +0000

I knew they would be back as this article from "TorrentFreak" explains it in detail:

The Pirate Bay is going on a road trip through Europe, one they hope to end today in a former NATO bunker. After a move from Sweden to the Ukraine, The Pirate Bay has now arrived at CyberBunker, an ISP that can provide them with a facility that can resist a nuclear attack as well as electromagnetic pulse bombs.

After being chased by various anti-piracy groups, The Pirate Bay returned a few hours ago. “Nobody puts The Pirate Bay in a corner,” they say on their frontpage, referencing Patrick Swayze’s famous line in Dirty Dancing. Not in a corner, no, but what about a bunker?
Last Friday we reported that The Pirate Bay was forced to move outside of Sweden, and that the world’s largest BitTorrent tracker had found a new home in the Ukraine. Unfortunately this was a short-lived solution, with TPB now moving to Cyberbunker.
CyberBunker is located in a former military nuclear warfare bunker in The Netherlands. The facility was built by NATO in the 50s to survive a nuclear war, but after the nuclear threats were over it was sold to its current owners. The bunker is now used as a webhosting data center.
The bunker is equipped with Electromagnetic Pulse (EMP) shielding and Nuclear/Biological/Chemical (NBC) air filtration to guarantee that the servers they host stay up no matter what happens. As of this week it is also the new home of The Pirate Bay.

CyberBunker: The Pirate Bay’s new home

According to Sven Kamphuis, one of the owners of CB3ROB/Cyberbunker, there were some initial troubles with setting up The Pirate Bay in its new location as several carriers refused to pass on the relay information after they received threats from the entertainment industry led by the Dutch anti-piracy outfit BREIN.
Despite these troubles the site is now accessible again in most locations, and Cyberbunker will continue to host the site and does not intend to cave in to the threats of the entertainment industry.
“I don’t expect BREIN to do pretty much anything at this point. The last conversation we had with them was about some mp3 site they wanted to have shut down somewhere in 2001/2002. It took around 3 hours at 2am at night and the end result was that both parties agreed not to agree,” Kamphuis told TorrentFreak.
Whether The Pirate Bay is actually located in one of the server racks at the bunker or another hideout was not confirmed.

Google working on "smart" plug-in hybrid charging

noreply@blogger.com (RaduB.) — Fri, 02 Oct 2009 04:18:00 +0000

SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - Google Inc is in the early stages of looking at ways to write software that would fully integrate plug-in hybrid vehicles to the power grid, minimize strain on the grid and help utilities manage vehicle charging load.
"We are doing some preliminary work," said Dan Reicher, Google's director of Climate Change and Energy Initiatives. "We have begun some work on smart charging of electric vehicles and how you would integrate large number of electric vehicles into the grid successfully."
"We have done a little bit of work on the software side looking at how you would write a computer code to manage this sort of charging infrastructure," he said in an interview on the sidelines of an industry conference.
Google, known for its Internet search engine, in 2007 announced a program to test Toyota Prius and Ford Escape gasoline-electric hybrid vehicles that were converted to rechargeable plug-in hybrids that run mostly on electricity.
One of the experimental technologies that was being tested by the Web search giant allowed parked plug-ins to transfer stored energy back to the electric grid, opening a potential back-up source of power for the system in peak hours.
Google has pushed ahead in addressing climate change issues as a philanthropic effort through its Google.org arm.
Reicher said Google has been testing its fleet of plug-in hybrids "pretty intensely" for the last couple of years.
"One of the great things about plug-ins is this great opportunity for the first time to finally have a storage technology," he said
Reicher said the company is trying to figure out how to manage the impact of having millions of future electric vehicle owners plugging in their vehicles at the same time.
"We got to be careful how we manage these things," he said. "On a hot day in July when 5 million Californians come home, you don't want them all plugging in at the same moment."
Reicher laid out a scenario where power utilities, during a time of high demand, could turn on or off the charging of electric vehicles. The owner of these vehicles, who have agreed to such an arrangement, would get a credit from the utility in turn.
"The grid operators may well be indifferent to either putting 500 megawatts of new generation on or taking 500 megawatts off," he said. "The beauty of plug-in vehicles is that with the right software behind them, you could manage their charging."
Apart from plug-in hybrids, Google also is working on other green technologies such as developing its own new mirror technology that could reduce the cost of building solar thermal plants by a quarter or more, and looking at gas turbines that would run on solar power rather than natural gas.
The often-quirky company also said in late 2007 that it would invest in companies and do research of its own to produce affordable renewable energy -- at a price less than burning coal -- within a few years, casting the move as a philanthropic effort to address climate change.

EU launches free satellite system to fine-tune GPS

noreply@blogger.com (RaduB.) — Fri, 02 Oct 2009 04:16:00 +0000

BRUSSELS (Reuters) - The European Union launched a free satellite navigation network on Thursday that could help pilots, drivers and blind people by fine-tuning the accuracy of the U.S. global positioning system (GPS) to around 2 meters.
The EGNOS system will use three satellites and 34 ground stations to narrow the horizontal accuracy of GPS from around 7 meters previously and improve its vertical accuracy to help pilots during landings.
The "Safety-of-Life" service for aircraft navigation could be in place next year, the EU executive said in a statement.
Farmers could also benefit from improved precision for spraying fertilizers, and new applications could emerge on roads, such as automatic tolling and pay-per-use car insurance.
"It will make all personal navigation applications much more precise, giving birth to new possibilities like guiding aids for blind people," the Commission said.
The system was pioneered by the Commission, the European Space Agency and aviation safety authority Eurocontrol.
It paves the way for the better known Galileo project, a European satellite system which will rival GPS and could be up and running in 2014.

The 4 billion euro ($5.8 billion) Galileo project, Europe's biggest single space program, has been plagued by delays and squabbling over funding that ended only when the EU agreed to fund it from the public purse.

Hollywood warming to Internet as DVDs begin to fade

noreply@blogger.com (RaduB.) — Fri, 02 Oct 2009 04:14:00 +0000

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - Higher margins, the ability to collect and use information about customers, more revenue and greater willingness to share content with Internet operators is prompting Hollywood to join forces with the likes of Google's YouTube or set up its own Internet portals.
Online video streaming and digital downloads should nearly triple to a $753 million North American market in 5 years, still a 5 percent sliver of DVD sales in 2008. But, analysts said, with disc sales dwindling and online viewing exploding, that gap will shrink.
"I don't think that studios are looking at online to save the home entertainment business, but I think they want to avoid what happened to the music business and try to come up with alternative modes of distribution before physical media goes away," said Stephen Prough, founder of Salem Partners, which advises investors in the film business.
The Walt Disney Co is developing a subscription service to sell premium content like movies and TV shows. And YouTube has reportedly held talks with Lions Gate Entertainment Corp, Sony Pictures and Time Warner Inc's Warner Bros about online movie rentals.
But some analysts argued that encouraging a migration online would sap higher-margin DVD revenue, now accounting for more than half of any single film's viewership revenue and the main way studios make money on their investment.
INEVITABLE SHIFT, BIGGER PROFITS
Other analysts said the migration was inevitable as viewers moved online, much as they did with music.
In the first half of 2009, DVD and Blu-ray sales fell 13.5 percent, a decline that has made it harder to finance films.
"What has driven a big part of the (DVD) market in the past has been people building their libraries. That phase seems to be over," said Larry Gerbrandt, principal at consultancy Media Valuation Partners.
As more people turn to online viewing, Hollywood stands to enrich itself, especially through rentals.
Studios get more than 70 percent of the price of an online rental at websites such as iTunes, compared with a third of that price in a store, said Tom Adams, founder of Adams Media Research.
And even though online sales of movies and TV shows bring studios some $15 on a typical title compared with about $18 for a physical sale, the Internet offers vastly lower overhead and distribution costs, Adams said.
In any deal between Hollywood studios and YouTube, YouTube would likely charge consumers $3.99 per rental, in line with Internet rental outlets such as Apple Inc's iTunes store and Amazon.com.
"You can actually turn that $3.99 into much more value," said Mike Kelley, a partner at the consultancy PricewaterhouseCoopers.
"It's not just pulling them into the movie and streaming it, but forming a relationship that lasts a lot longer than that two-hour window."
For instance, customers who show a preference for science fiction become marketing targets for other sci-fi content.
Disney's chief executive Bob Iger recently said he was "pretty bullish" on direct Internet marketing to consumers.
In the next five years, online subscription rentals are expected to nearly double to 9 percent of overall revenue for the North American filmed entertainment sector, which include box office and DVD sales, PricewaterhouseCoopers said.
In contrast, for North American filmed entertainment sector, PricewaterhouseCoopers expects physical home entertainment video to account for 53 percent of overall revenue in 2013, compared to 70 percent in 2004.
"We're in an accelerated period where technology and the consumer is outpacing the studios' current business model," Kelley said.

Run a Free BitTorrent Tracker on Google

noreply@blogger.com (RaduB.) — Fri, 11 Sep 2009 08:33:00 +0000

With both the Pirate Bay and OpenBitTorrent trackers down at the moment, many people are unable to download torrents unless they enable DHT. Luckily there are a few backup trackers that people can use, and thanks to Google’s free App Engine, everyone can setup a tracker of their own in a few minutes.

In their defense, operators of BitTorrent sites often argue that they do nothing more than Google does. They offer a search platform for people to find content on the web, specifically torrent files. To a certain extent they are right, Google can be used to find torrent files in several ways.

For example, the mother of all search engines has a special search command that allows you to find torrent files scattered across the Internet.

Google’s custom search also allows everyone to create their own torrent search engine, and Google’s App Engine enables users to start a free torrent search engine for free by using Google’s servers.

It is quite clear that there are several ways to find torrents through Google. However, just finding torrents is not enough. In order to download content through BitTorrent successfully, one also needs a working tracker in order to locate those all-important peers. Luckily Google can help here too.

By using Google’s App Engine, everyone can run a tracker without having to invest a single dime in hardware or bandwidth. The only problem is making the tracker compatible with the App Engine, but thanks to the newly released Atrack software it is a piece of cake to set one up.

The Atrack Bittorrent tracker is designed to run on Google App Engine and its main goals are a minimal memory use, speed, low bandwidth usage and efficient CPU use. On top of this the tracker wont store any data at all, making it as secure as possible for its users.

“Atrack also aims to respect your privacy: other than what is needed for the most basic tracking, Atrack gathers no information whatsoever. Beyond that no aggregate statistics are kept of anything, and nothing is stored permanently anywhere, not even hashes and ip/ports,” the Atrack team writes.

So now everyone can set up a standalone BitTorrent tracker at no cost aside from the the time it takes to set things up. The Atrack software is released into the public domain, and a test tracker is up and running on Google’s App Engine.
Source: TorrentFreak