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Graphene ribbons respond very well to changes in voltage making them very nifty (possibly) for transistors. Great flow when you want it in a controllable way. The main issue being that they don't have a very good "off" state. So you get a nice curve of voltage v. current flowing across them, except for the middle part around 0V. That's what everyone is working on. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Graphene#Graphene_transistors http://www.geek.com/articles/chips/graphene-transistors-cant-be-turned-off-wont-replace-silicon-in-processors-20110124/

And BTW this is not new. MS did something similar with Corel more than a decade ago:
http://www.geek.com/articles/news/microsoft-buys-into-corel-2000103/
http://www.forbes.com/2000/10/03/1003corel.html
http://www.windowsitpro.com/article/news2/details-of-corel-microsoft-deal-revealed

It annoys me when certain admins feel that they are freedom fighters when operating their boxes, makes them incredibly annoying to work with.

That's ok, you're equally annoying to work with because you don't take security seriously enough. There are some other people that I know of that didn't take security serious enough, who was that? Oh yeah, the security folk at Boston Logan International.

And how about this guy from last month:

http://www.geek.com/articles/news/man-wrongly-accused-of-child-porn-learns-to-password-protect-wifi-the-hard-way-20110426/

I bet he takes network security a lot more seriously now. Sysadmins that take security seriously are important because most other people aren't, except the malicious hackers.

I don't think you had all the things shut off that you think you did. For example, did you turn off Ping (Apple's social network wannabe, not anything ICMP related)?

http://www.geek.com/articles/apple/how-to-shut-off-ping-and-increase-battery-life-with-ios-4-3-20110321/

There's many of these first-party services, and countless third-party that could be involved. I won't pretend to like it (I don't at all, I too want my devices to fully sleep). But I also won't pretend that it is worse. Especially as a ping (ICMP this time) is unable to transmit anything remotely close to what Microsoft's HTTP method of checking network availability could.

Yes.

http://www.geek.com/articles/news/man-wrongly-accused-of-child-porn-learns-to-password-protect-wifi-the-hard-way-20110426/

You don't think child porn consumers use their own connections do you?

Just the _risk_ of this happening, even if it's about the same as winning lotto, is enough for me. Just saying. I have a dog. They'd shoot her unless she was crated.

When friends and family, and my wife, asked me, after getting the dog killed and risking the lives of my kids, I'd sound like a Class A asshole if I started spouting off rhetoric about Freegan WiFi access. I assure you it's not worth the risk.

Do you think they would experience $700k in breakage and theft a month?

An article claims that GameFly makes 1.2 million shipments per month. If console games cost $50 each, then $700K a month is 14,000 copies. That equates to a 1.17% difference in theft or breakage. If a flimsier, easier to steal mailer would increase theft and breakage by more than 1.17% of all shipments, go with it. I lack access to the proprietary information on which GameFly made the decision to go with sturdier, harder to steal mailers.

They look like the "free" handsets you can get when you sign up for a contract. They're probably pre-owned and being purged of anything that isn't part of the vanilla handset. Perhaps it's a part of a refurbishing process, too. Loading newest firmware and preparing them for use as "like-new" phones.

But that would never be done in a data centre, that's a service centre activity. They must be signalling or something. I wonder if it's part of testing/monitoring - you can't be sure that your network is working without end-to-end testing from a handset.

You're right. My message was pure speculation; I noticed that someone had responded to a similar question about the same picture elsewhere in the discussion which stated that it was part of testing the network and included a link, the URL of which seemed to indicate that it referenced an explanation of cell phone network testing.

I didn't follow the link, but here is a link to that message and here is a clickable version of the link in that message, which I've now clicked--it contains a video and explains that a script tests the handsets "every couple of minutes" for SMS and wireless-broadband functionality, whereas mobile technicians have the job of testing the off-site network.

Sorry, just replying to my own post. Slightly larger version of the image here:

http://www.geek.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/03/verizon_superswitch_geek_01.jpg

Anybody else notice the array of cellphone on a rack in one of those pictures? What was that about? TFA didn't seem to say (I only skimmed it)

That's how they test their network.

That leaves ChromeOS, which I assume will use HTML5 or Flash. ... Google have Native Client which addresses these issues. http://www.geek.com/articles/games/google-shows-off-quake-clone-running-in-native-client-20100513/

Much cheaper - at scale I daresay you could get it below 100 USD given that it's price is already heading down. For reading purposes, the epaper display is simply unbeatable. On the other hand if you wanted to use it for various other (note taking, spreadsheets,etc.) purposes, then why not an Android tablet ? Australia has the Millenius Android tablet for about 200 USD. The specific advantage of this approach is that, if the school wants to develop custom apps (which in high likelihood it will), it is much cheaper and less cumbersome (app store policies) than the Apple SDK.

I thought that youtu.be redirect to youtube.com was some kind of click-tracking scam at first. But whois says google run the dns servers for it so it's likely run by them[1]. Seems a bit absurd to save very few characters and probably makes the world a bit unsafer by using country code TLDs under false premises.

[1] confirmed: http://www.geek.com/articles/consumer/google-unveils-youtu-be-shortener-that-cuts-down-video-links-by-15-characters-20091222/

Why not also give them a wireless network with a distributed mesh network?

Here is my vision al la Vernor Vinge's military network takeover in Rainbow's end http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rainbows_End combined with TerraNet's peer to peer cell phones. http://www.geek.com/articles/mobile/terranet-creates-peer-to-peer-cellphone-network-20070912/

You have an event like Haiti or Egypt or the unthinkable and you fly a plane over the site and rain thousands of solar powered network nodes that can create a backbone, route voip, circuit switched voice, twitter, or what ever. The bandwidth, frequency processing power etc can all be cost driven but if you pre-seeded the society with network access points, cell phones, and the like with a compatible hardware model it would scale better.

Government tries to turn off cell phones? Fuck em. Government kills the ISPs? just link the chain to a satellite or a border. AT&T makes you contemplate suicide? Just route through your neighbor's link to the tower.

Now we through in computing power to boot. What do we get a ad-hoc, mesh peer to peer, internet with distributed computing. The only way Egypt could have blocked that is with some serious military jamming. LoS?

Hint: there's a reason Nokia had 7th largest R&D budget. No, not of phone or IT companies but ALL of them.

This is why:
http://www.geek.com/articles/mobile/nokia-experiments-with-bubbles-interface-on-symbian-cell-phones-2011024/

Just what their developers should be doing! Amazing! ..

Last I heard their stock has now dropped 14% since yesterday. Also a lot of workers have taken the day off in protest:

http://www.geek.com/articles/mobile/nokia-workers-walk-out-in-protest-20110211/

Then, everyone moved to the quiet keyboards that use the rubber sheet and the dielectric, and it had less of a tactical response.

They provided me with one of those at work and they're just plain awful to code with. I ended up ordering one of these:
http://www.geek.com/articles/games/review-filco-majestouch-keyboard-2010045/
Mechanical with Cherry MX brown keyswitches. Sooooo nice for coding and general typing.

Isn't the real root problem here ICANN?

Attorneys, police, and judges are always going to try and do questionable things. The international root of the internet should not be so beholden to the US government, Move it to Switzerland, and put in place clear rules about what does and what does not constitute valid cause for removing a domain.

Or follow Peter Sunde's suggestion, and move it all to p2p.

It's about how keyboards are more infected than toilet seats. If you thought about something else, it's your own fault.

huh?

Double huh?

It's rare to read someone post something both factually and subjectively wrong at the same time in so few words. Congratulations.

And so did the EC.

In the EU, they're not.

It might be interesting to retrofit these on laptops when regular hard drives die, but I wasn't sure how easily the SSD modules would fit. The picture makes them look rather long in one dimension and much narrower in the other two, but there's no scale to judge how big they are.

I found the dimensions at this site -- apparently 108.9x24x2.2mm for 64GB/128GB, and 108.9x24x3.7mm for 256GB (with chips on both sides). That compares to 100x7 to 15x69mm for 2.5" drives, so you can probably stuff one into the space for a regular 2.5" drive bay even though the SSD is almost 1cm longer. It's close enough that I'm sure it's possible to "make them fit" with a bit of ingenuity, or maybe stuff them in a crevice somewhere else inside a laptop case.

The more onerous restrictions legitimate services impose, the more people will be drawn towards services that don't impose such restrictions, like thepiratebay.

The Pirate Bay is nothing:

A few weeks ago, video delivery favorite Netflix made headlines with an amazing statistic: twenty percent of all downstream Internet traffic during peak home Internet usage hours in North America.
To put that amazing figure in perspective, that's more than what YouTube, iTunes, Hulu and even Bittorrent each individually manage.
Impressed? Now consider this: Netflix has managed to account for 20% of the North American internet's collective broadband without a streaming-only subscription service. Though one has just been introduced at a lower price, the 20% number was achieved without one...
Now consider this: that 20% of all internet traffic? It was accomplished by a mere 2% of Netflix's subscribers. Netflix's streaming growth might be too much for the Internet to handle

Netflix has 15 million subscribers. 2% of 15 million is 300,000.

The Netflix client is in your HDTV, Blu-Ray player, video game console and set-top box.

The HD video stream is seconds away from launch.

The point that $62,500 per song is excessively high seems to be something that everyone can agree on

Three juries were more than willing to hammer Jamie Thomas into the marble flooring. That ought to be wake up call to the geek who thinks he has the masses on his side here.

By the numbers:

A few weeks ago,video delivery favorite Netflix made headlines with an amazing statistic: twenty percent of all downstream Internet traffic during peak home Internet usage hours in North America.
Impressed? Now consider this: Netflix has managed to account for 20% of the North American internet's collective broadband without a streaming-only subscription service. Though one has just been introduced at a lower price, the 20% number was achieved without one... in the coming months, it'll doubtlessly grow more, especially as cheap devices like the $99 AppleTV make Netflix streaming mainstream.
Now consider this: that 20% of all internet traffic? It was accomplished by a mere 2% of Netflix's subscribers. Netflix's streaming growth might be too much for the Internet to handle

Nine whole days ?

except that was a well known hoax http://www.geek.com/articles/gadgets/pc-toaster-bay-dupes-bloggers-20080827/

How did users ever manage to transition from DOS to Windows 3.0 ?

Then to the totally-different Windows 95? (Not to mention WordPerfect to Winword.)

Then to NT with its Ctrl+Alt+Del "secure logon sequence"?

When people were shown KDE4, they just thought it was the next version of Windows with yet another interface that they had to learn.

Uhhhhh...(while grinding skull against pavement in insane rage) WTF are you taking about?

Can you tether with an iPhone?
No.
Can I tether with an unlocked phone Nokia e71, n97, or e61?
Yes.
Can you choose the network on an e71x?
No.
Can I choose the network on an e71?
Yes.

So in fact, the chance of AT&T disabling the good shit is 100%.
And on a side note, this
http://www.geek.com/articles/mobile/terranet-creates-peer-to-peer-cellphone-network-20070912/
is what I am looking for.

So, I do not own my copy of starcraft 2?

You know that little thing with the initials EULA? No, you do not own Starcraft 2. It is highly unlikely you own any software on any physical or virtual device in your possession or control. Modern digital rights management is merely an attempt to control rights we consumers have passively yielded for years. From what I've heard there's not much case law in the EULA area, especially where it comes to the doctrine of sale; but it'd sure be nice to know if (or when) the practice of asking the neighbor kid to come over and click accept is still recommended protection for one's immortal soul.

This is an example of price discrimination. Apple basically does the same thing with all their hardware when they offer iphones/ipods/ipads with different hard drive sizes. For example, "NAND flash chips on 16GB, 32GB, and 64GB iPads cost $29.50, $59, and $118, respectively". This means they're making an additional $70 and $82 profit on the higher priced items. I guess it's not as blatant as Intel but it's essentially the same strategy.

Didn't the Intel roadmaps from around 10 years ago predict 6 or 7 Ghz CPUs by now?

Try 10 Ghz, and even that was scorned at the time for being conservative. It was quite an amazing ride from the earliest CPUs, but alas, it did come to an end. The comments on that page, a blast from the past, are priceless.

I agree, my backlit LCD phone display is completely unreadable in direct sunlight, but what about a display that does both emmisive and reflective well?

For the home network there's Wi-Di.

1) http://blogs.pcmag.com/securitywatch/2010/08/unpatched_vulnerability_in_all.php
2) http://www.zdnet.com/blog/security/microsoft-warns-of-serious-unpatched-windows-7-flaw/6474
3) http://blogs.pcmag.com/securitywatch/2010/08/unpatched_vulnerability_in_all.php
4) http://www.computerworld.com/s/article/9176944/Microsoft_warns_of_bug_in_64_bit_Windows_7?source=rss_security
5) http://isc.sans.edu/diary.html?storyid=8023
6) http://news.cnet.com/8301-1009_3-10170962-83.html
7) http://www.geek.com/articles/chips/17-year-old-unpatched-windows-vulnerability-discovered-20100120/
8) http://arstechnica.com/microsoft/news/2010/03/exploits-of-unpatched-ie6-ie7-flaw-on-the-rise.ars
9) http://www.h-online.com/security/news/item/Several-known-vulnerabilities-to-remain-unpatched-on-forthcoming-Microsoft-patch-day-947191.html
10) http://www.myce.com/news/microsoft-confirms-windows-shortcut-zero-day-exploit-32107/?utm_source=myce&utm_medium=frontpage&utm_campaign=related_posts

There, 10 vulnerabilities, which either took Microsoft months after visibility to patch, or still aren't patched.

Now, STFU.

Bethesda doesn't have a partner publishing program like EA and THQ do. That implies it will be a more traditional, "We own the IP" publisher/developer relationship. That's especially worrisome for smaller independent studios. Larger studios can possibly have the clout to maintain their IP. But, most large studios are not independent, they're owned by publishers that compete with Bethesda.. There's no way an EA, Activision, THQ, TakeTwo, or Ubisoft studio will use idtech5. Along with that liability on the engine there are no shipped games to prove the engine is viable, it's not known what the dev support will be like, and there is no one outside of Id that has experience with it.

Unreal rules the roost right now. There's no publisher lock-in, there are hundreds of games to prove it's viability, the dev support is all online, easily referenced, and complete, and the widespread use of it means that it is easy to find programmers, designers, and artists that have experience on the toolset. idtech5 has to not only be as good as unreal in all of those areas, it arguably has to be better. A studio that knows how to make games with Unreal would have to dump all of their institutional knowledge if they went with idtech5. That's a huge loss of competitive advantage.

Idtech5 might do amazingly well. Given the long timespan since choosing an id engine to make a game was commonplace, the explosion of Unreal as the defacto engine middleware, a decent number of other competing engine middleware packages (Gamebryo, Crytek, Unity, etc...), and the Bethesda lockin I am not expecting idtech5 to be a disrupting force in the game development industry.

Late April fool's joke according to http://www.geek.com/articles/gadgets/pc-toaster-bay-dupes-bloggers-20080827/

This has been covered over and over again since at least the mid 90's. The times are changing and the consoles are different but it is the same concept.
http://www.geek.com/articles/games/black-hat-dreamcast-is-choice-console-for-information-warfare-2002082/

erm...

http://www.geek.com/articles/chips/from-sand-to-hand-how-a-cpu-is-made-2009079/

Not only are they binned according to faults and so on, but as the manufacturing process improves the more likely it may be that chips have components disabled and be sold as cheaper parts simply to meet market demand.

...this ground-breaking invention. Granted, it is from Nepal, and not India, but it is close enough.

Are you sure about that?
http://www.geek.com/articles/mobile/iphone-being-used-to-develop-military-apps-20091222/
http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2009/dec/17/iphone-apple
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-10724344
http://www.trendhunter.com/trends/bullet-flight-100-the-next-iphone-killer-application
http://singularityhub.com/2009/08/18/commanding-military-drones-now-iphone-has-an-app-for-that/

Who wrote 2.6.20? (Feb 2007)

The Linux Foundation details who contributes to Linux development

Besides, I've run into some pretty big egos in the corporate IT world over the past 22 years, some of them well-justified (IMO), and I've also known more than a few open source contributors who were simply fixing issues or scratching itches and who don't care about getting credit. The end goal was to write, fix, or improve something they're using.

Pieces of software are tools. Some folks just like sharpening tools. :-)

Perhaps you missed this part: "...most of which..." Nokia has made many, many phone models, orders of magnitude more in number than Apple has. I believe his point was that Nokia has much more experience in antenna design than Apple so it isn't wise to completely discount their opinions, especially when their track record overall is pretty good.

Hence Nokia sueing apple for their "unlawful use of Nokia innovation": geek.com

It is the opinion of some people that Nokia legal action was the driver for Apple to invest in their own antenna designs - Apple are apparently convinced they will lose (can't remember where I read that) which implies they were actually just using Nokia designs until now. Of course Nokia have made a few mistakes along the way, but they - and others, like Ericsson, LG, Motorola, etc have much more experience in these areas, and know what works and what doesn't. And they don't put form before function.

http://www.geek.com/articles/mobile/verizon-we-rule-the-air-and-dont-need-no-iphone-20100628/

I understand your qualms, but, I just don't share them.

Yes, Apple maintains control over the app store. But, generally it's intended (at least, in theory) to ensure that the user doesn't have a crappy experience. I have a new iPad, and from just the free apps that are available for download, it largely does everything I need it to do.

Heck, I seem to recall seeing an app which basically a stripped down browser that operated in safe mode, and chucked all of the data when it was done. So you had "private" browsing such as it is. One could surf porn using that if they so chose, but Apple doesn't want to sell or be associated with porn.

However, I'd point out that only just last week or so, Microsoft said they'd not be allowing porn on the Windows Mobile devices, so it's not like Apple is doing anything different there. I'm betting that under most circumstances, most fortune 500 companies don't want to be associated with porn.

As to the products ... between using my iPods (I have four accumulated over a decade), my iPad, and iTunes, I've come to appreciate the very integrated experience, it "just goes" -- your mileage may vary, but people using Apple products are actually kind of happy for the rubber-bumpers and safety rails. I'm acutely aware of the fact that they've covered up the sharp edges and made sure to put safeties in all of the outlets. But, I really enjoy it for that fact, and, IMO, it actually contributes to the overall experience. If I want to operate with complete freedom, I have Linux, FreeBSD, XP, and Vista boxes I'm free to do anything on I want.

As far as the whole carrier thing, I would go so far as to say that every cell phone I've ever owned has been tied to the carrier who sold it to me, and the exclusive deal Apple originally did with AT&T kept that business model going. I also understand they're going to start selling unlocked iPhones, so one could be unchained and not need to jailbreak.

I guess if you think your freedom is being restricted, their products aren't for you. If you actually feel like they've just set you up with good choices that work and do what you need, you don't see it that way. And, it's apparently a completely binary position from what I've seen lately on Slashdot. It doesn't seem to be possible for their to be a middle ground.

To me, I like their products because they strip out all of the fiddly bits and focus on what it is you want to do with them. Having my iPad controlled by my existing iTunes actually simplified things for me. Far more so than a netbook, which I think would both require more care and feeding, and still be beholden to the keyboard and mouse model. Checking my email in my backyard while playing iTunes and then going back to my e-book ... well, that alone was worth the price of admission. Same goes for taking some documents I need to review away from my desk, and sitting in a comfy chair. I'd rather review a whole slew of technical stuff not sitting bolt upright in a chair, and not with a laptop sitting in my lap. This is more like a hardcopy.

And, really, for defending Apple, recent stuff shows me I'm more likely to get modded down than you are. On a lot of threads is seems mindless Apple bashing gets modded up, and actually trying to discuss the issue and defend Apple gets one modded as Troll. Because everyone has some pet crusade that, for them, makes any and all Appler products completely EVIL ... and people seem unwilling to acknowledge the point that their point of view doesn't match that of the people who actually choose to use, and enjoy, Apple's stuff.

Cheers

I hope you were joking.

This kind of shit is par for the course today, and it's the reason it is hard to trust journalists these days. Most so-called reviews out there - especially larger sites - are essentially paid-for ads. It's a rare day that a bad game or bad product gets panned like it deserves, because the editors are always worried about (a) the company pulling their ad dollars, (b) the company pulling product support away, or (c) the company launching some frivolous lawsuit just to burn up cash.

Remember the Kane & Lynch Eidos/Gamespot fiasco? Ever watched Farhad Manjoo at Slate change his tune to whatever Apple/Google want him to say on a given day, even if they were saying the opposite last week?

How about Rockstar's bullshit recently at a reviewer who didn't like Red Dead Redemption? I wonder how many people Rockstar paid off to get the "critical acclaim" for their boring western sandbox... er litterbox gameplay.

A federal Jury seems to think novell does own the copyrights.

http://www.geek.com/articles/news/jury-says-novell-owns-unix-copyright-20100331/

It's against the law in Germany to have unsecured wireless networks. Since Google has already collected all this information for the German government they simply want to start handing out fines based on it. "Google, helping any way we can (TM)"

It is not against the law to have an unsecured wireless network there so far as I know. You can however be fined if someone else uses your unsecured wireless to download copyrighted materials.

From the above:

A recent German court ruling states that if someone downloads illegal movies, music, or other media using an unprotected WiFi connection, the owner of the WiFi source could be fined up to 100 Euros (about $126)

Excellent hardware

So I take you never heard about stuff like this

Quake 3 (Arena) works fine one tier up, though. Runs playable (50+fps) on a (clocked down) 800MHz C2D with that GMA X3100. (:

At this rate, mobile phone performance is likely to surpass the platform I'm on very soon. Just recently, Intel demo'd a 100fps Q3A on their prototype mobile phone.