BAD HARDWARE WEEK

Fujitsu has made a handheld computer called the iPad for use by shop assistants since 2002, and has an outstanding trademark application for the name.

Benevolent hackers poke holes in e-banking

For those of you that use voice encryption products on mobile phones the last thing you would expect is for it to be easily decrypted and intercepted.
Statistics show Government agencies on average conduct 50,000 legal wiretaps per year.

Another 150,000 phones are illegally tapped by private detectives, spouses and boyfriends and girlfriends trying to catch a potential cheater. Another estimate shows up to 100,000 phones are wiretapped by companies and private industry in some form of industrial espionage. It is happening and it is a big business.

BAD HARWDARE: How the hell court order can allow someone to tap your encrypted conversations? Except in case all that of them have installed back doors by default.

BAD HARDWARE: Mainly for 1000 km span metro area network.

THERE are few facets of society that have remained untouched by the internet. From business communication to leisure activity, the net has transformed the way we behave.
Yet at its heart the internet has stagnated. As a slew of bandwidth-hungry services come on-stream, the fibre-optic backbone that forms its trunk routes are at risk of becoming overwhelmed by too much data. It's due for an upgrade.
The first inklings of what the upgrade might look like can be seen in an ultra-fast 900-kilometre fibre-optic link between Paris in France and Frankfurt in Germany installed by telecoms firm Verizon. It is a foretaste of a high-speed internet backbone with enough capacity to satisfy bandwidth-hungry applications well into the future.
Today, the fastest throughput on most of the global telecommunications network is 10 billion bits (gigabits) per second - so sending the contents of a full DVD would keep a link tied up for around 4 seconds. It has been that way since 1996 - an era when users stepped onto the information superhighway via dial-up modems and the original Netscape Navigator browser.
Masses of optical fibre cables were added to the backbone during the dotcom boom a decade ago, initially producing a huge glut in capacity. Now new users and new services - social media, video downloads, streaming audio and video, file sharing and cloud computing - are filling up those fibre pipes. More capacity will soon be needed, but providing it poses considerable challenges.
In today's fibre-optic backbone, digital 1s and 0s are represented by switching a laser beam on and off. Lasers send dozens of separate signals down each optical fibre at slightly different wavelengths, which together can convey 10 gigabits of data per second. But this techniques has its limitations: trying to raise the data rate for each wavelength won't work, as the signals start to blur together. The problems of signal integrity are "100 times worse at 100 gigabits than they are at 10", says Dimple Amin of network equipment maker Ciena of Linthicum, Maryland.
The starting point for the new 100-gigabit technology was to ditch the off-and-on switching, and instead modulate the phase of the light waves - moving them ahead or behind by a fixed increment. The simplest approach is to shift the phase by 90 degrees - one-quarter of a wavelength - to distinguish a 0 from a 1. Higher data rates require a more elaborate process, called quadrature phase-shift keying, which has four possible shifts, +135, +45, -45 and -135 degrees, each representing a different pair of bits, 00, 01, 10 or 11.
The 100-gigabit system abandons on-off switching in favour of changing the phase of the light waves
That alone isn't enough to reach 100 gigabits. To achieve that goal requires signals with two different polarisations, which can be separated at the receiver, each carrying 50 gigabits.
Even then, after passing through hundreds of kilometres of fibre, the input signal must be processed with light from an internal laser to extract a clear signal. The receivers are equipped with powerful electronic circuits, which analyse the signal and minimise noise added along the cable, says Amin. "The end points got a lot smarter and can deal with everything in between."
Without this, "we could never have gotten into the ultra long haul" of 1000 to 1500 kilometres, says Glenn Wellbrock, Verizon's director of network backbone architectures.
The Canadian telecoms equipment company Nortel, which built the Verizon system, has shown it can transmit signals more than 2000 kilometres in a test on an Australian network owned by Telestra. "The 2000 kilometres was a bit of heroism. For most applications we're saying it's more like 1000 kilometres," says John Sitch, senior adviser on optical R&D at Nortel.
There are still some problems facing the ultra-fast backbone. Noise can be a killer if 10 and 100-gigabit channels are transmitted through the same fibre at closely spaced wavelengths. And the first generation of 100-gigabit systems can only stretch half as far as today's 10-gigabit systems before signals are lost, Wellbrock says.
"But you don't need to try 4000 kilometres," Wellbrock points out. "The majority of traffic in the US is 1500 kilometres or less, and it's less in Europe." As first steps go, a near 900-kilometre link isn't a bad effort.
When you can't afford to wait
The latest fibre-optic links boost internet speeds in more ways than one. As well as data capacity, they also improve a facet of data transmission which for some applications is even more important. That is the link's "latency" - the time lag between sending a command to a remote server and getting a response.
The round trip from your computer to a remote server takes time, and although light travels at 200,000 kilometres per second in an optical fibre, the delays can add up. For example, if the page you are accessing includes 100 discrete elements, retrieving each one is a separate operation. For a server 1000 kilometres away, the 100 round trips would add up to a full second's delay.
Existing 10-gigabit systems make matters worse by forcing the signals to travel a longer distance than they need to. To minimise the blurring caused by the interaction of light with long stretches of glass (see main story) additional lengths of fibre with subtly different optical properties have to be added - typically 15 to 20 kilometres for every 100 kilometres of transmission fibre. The new 100-gigabit technology does away with the need for extra fibre repeaters. That is exactly why it is Ethernet suitable.

Where time is money, latency matters. Last year, the New York Stock Exchange bought a 100-gigabit system to transmit stock data in the New York and London areas, which it hopes will reduce latency by 60 to 70 milliseconds. It reckons this investment is worth making because the improvement will enable its staff to make trades ahead of competitors.

Microsoft releases slew of Windows 7 updates

Predicted taxes will have to rise to bring the federal budget into balance
"When you have a financial crisis like that, it's years of digging out," said Gates sagely.

BAD HARDWARE: Great Depression 2 Ahead ?

And WW3 after those recovery years ?
Wouldn't say for Microsoft shares after Bill's oh yeah Win 7 gesture, at the recent Sundance festival .

Britain’s gross domestic product grew 0.1 percent in the October to December period from the previous quarter

The First Tweet From Space and Other Twitter Firsts

That's a pretty secure system

Here.

More likely scenario will be the advent of EUV for production fabs for the 13-nm logic node in 2016, he said.

As you know 13nm is EUV's native wave length, so it will start only as direct lithography method.
If ever, because only 4 geometry shrinking steps are possible: 10nm, 8nm and 5nm.
After that, no further shinking at all, or forced complete change of used switching principles.
So, EUV is pretty unlikely.

The Linux world makes much of its community roots, but when it comes to developing the kernel of the operating system, it's less a case of 'volunteers ahoy!' and more a case of 'where's my pay?'"

Microsoft late yesterday issued its second advisory of the last week, warning users that a 17-year-old bug in the kernel of all 32-bit versions of Windows could be used by hackers to hijack PCs.
Virtual DOS is a hole.

Over 70% of IBM's employees, for instance, are based overseas; the company slashed its U.S. workforce by about 10,000 in 2009.

This trend has plenty of room to run, as Princeton University economist Alan S. Blinder estimates that up to 29% of all U.S. jobs could be offshored in the coming decades.

Japan Airlines Corp. filed for court-led restructuring with the Tokyo District Court Tuesday, a quasi-governmental turnaround agency said.

As you can see, both of them have their own weakness.

Regress standing against progress. That is the gut-conclusion we reach when shown the images of black-clad ultra-Orthodox Jews standing as a monolithic angry mob out to protest at the shiny Jerusalem offices of the mega-successful microchip maker Intel.

At issue is Intel's Jerusalem factory and its continuing work hours on Shabbat (Saturday)

The German government has warned web users to find an alternative browser to Internet Explorer to protect security.
Microsoft rejected the warning, saying that the risk to users was low and that the browsers' increased security setting would prevent any serious risk.

"This is a vulnerability that was announced in the last couple of days. Microsoft have no patch yet and the implication is that this is the same one that exploited on the attacks on Google earlier this week," he said."The way to exploit this flaw has now appeared on the internet, so it is quite possible that everyone is now going to have a go."

The market for 40G and 100G Ethernet transceivers will reach $545 million in revenues by 2014
Juniper, Cisco and Alcatel-Lucent have all announced 40G or 100G Ethernet router products for service providers, and all expect to ship this year.

In a 4 years. Not too much, but that wasn't the primary goal at all.

Add to that a bit of its duopoly, especially after Win7 success, that stunningly resembles to the 90ties deja vue.
And you will see PC sell increasing. MORE THAN 90 MILLION PCs were shipped in the last quarter of 2009 which is 22.1 per cent more than in the fourth quarter of last year.

Discussing the most impressive robots currently clanking about on two-legs (hello Asimo) and who's doing the most interesting things in UK robotics research (something involving crickets apparently). He also voices concerns about military use of robots — suggesting it won't be long before armies are sending out fully autonomous killing machines.

BAD HARDWARE: Asimov basic rule violation !

Cheers, Big Brother !

The recalled notebook computer models are the Acer AS3410, AS3410T, AS3810T, AS3810TG, AS3810TZ and AS3810TZG. The computer's screen size is about 13.3 inches measured diagonally. Not all units are affected. Consumers should contact Acer to determine if their unit is included in the recall.

According to Katz's model, the grounding line probably passed over the crest in 1996 and is now poised to enter a period of accelerated shrinking.

PC Shipments Surge 15% Globally

"More than 6.8 billion human beings are now demanding ever greater quantities of material resources, decimating the world's richest ecosystems, and dumping billions of tons of heat-trapping gases into the atmosphere each year," the report said. But making policy and technology changes while keeping cultures centred on consumerism and growth can only go so far.”

In formal responses to antitrust lawsuits filed by federal and New York authorities, Intel claims government investigators based their allegations on a serious misunderstanding of the microchip industry and the Santa Clara company's internal e-mails.

One of Intel's responses was aimed at the U.S. Federal Trade Commission, which accused the company in a Dec. 16 suit of engaging in a campaign to discourage computer makers from using microprocessors from Sunnyvale-based Advanced Micro Devices and graphics chips from Nvidia of Santa Clara. Although posted on the FTC's Web site Friday, Intel's document had escaped media attention until the company alerted a reporter to its existence Tuesday.

Analysts expect AMD to guide for first quarter revenue of about $1.38 billion.

Google found that more than 20 large companies had been infiltrated and dozens of Chinese human rights activists' Gmail accounts had been compromised.

BAD HARDWARE: How and why the hell, Google headquarter knows who are these Chinese human rights activists? Big Brother must know everything? Hahaha.

What was the word of the previous decade? Word !?
Seems we have a switch from words to words search in a decade.
What is the next? Picture!?

Body scanners can store, send images in the test mode, group says.
Now, if already has been taken in some in data base, your scanned body can be compared with your stored body in that data base. Big brother thus can know for example are you becoming fatter or bodily different in any kind.
Especially, it can notice first rank details like are you hidden Jew or Muslim. Ha.

However, I like this part the most: The TSA says, the machines are not networked and cannot be hacked . We finally got unhackable machine that even not networked can send scanned images, as the link above states. Haha.

The new radio would be fitted on helicopters, airplanes, ships, submarines and ground stations. The system, which uses secure, Internet-like communication, is intended to allow U.S. forces to communicate by voice and video and exchange data.
Of the major “transformation” programs designed to network different weapons platforms that were started by former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, the radio system is the only one that has survived the Obama administration.

Including its built-in Basic Assembly Language, Gates and Allen might not have had such an urgent need to create Microsoft BASIC. Similarly, because the first machine had a disk operating system (DOS), which was compatible with IBM computers, Big Blue might not have gone in search of a DOS for its IBM PC.


BAD HARDWARE: Well, IBM wouldn't like to lose its mainframe monopoly in 1972. Or someone from IBM (say Bill Gates mother) itself gave to Bill God's gift: DOS requirement in year 1979.

By 1982, when IBM asked Microsoft to release a version of DOS that was compatible with a hard disk, PC-DOS 2.0 was an almost complete rewrite of DOS, so by March 1983, very little of QDOS remained.

Thus we see, first PC in 1972 was obviously too complex, too weak, to expensive for the next 10 years.

Steve is not faitffull, as we know from the IBM case.

"It could happen almost any time now. We now have the technological capability to identify Earth-like planets around the smallest stars."
Avatars will follow.

Earth has not been center of the Universe since then.

Mobility Radeon HD 5800 series	Mobility Radeon HD 5700 and 5600 series	Mobility Radeon HD 5400 series
Transistors	1.04 billion	626 million	242 million
SPs	800	400	80
Max. core clock	700 MHz	650 MHz	750 MHz
Peak shader arithmetic	1.12 TFLOPS	572 GFLOPS	120 GFLOPS
Max. memory rate	4 Gbps (GDDR5)	3.2 Gbps (GDDR5)	3.2 Gbps (GDDR5)
Memory bus	128-bit	128-bit	64-bit

With the Terminator like the strongest Ghost? Judging to 80 000 empty homes in Atlanta GA, seems so.
You can't export production to China and fill new homes, even keep the old ones filled.
Ghosts in Palo Alto and Mountain View:

Ken roamed the Deitsch home for 17 years. At times, the family talked to him, asking him to leave."He wasn't invasive. He just let us know he was there," Irene said. After extensive remodeling, he disappeared. "He didn't have his old haunts anymore."

Bitter truth is of course just opposite: Previous unsubstantiated Investment inflation triggers skyscraper building frenzy.

A 2010 software bug has left millions of German debit and credit card holders unable to withdraw money or make payments in shops, and thousands stranded on holiday with no access to cash.

After buying Singapore's Chartered Semiconductor Manufacturing Ltd., Abu Dhabi's Advanced Technology Investment Co. (ATIC) is now looking at buying a stake in Taiwan's United Microelectronics Corp. (UMC)., according to reports.

If you used static IP address for Internet Access under Win7, syndrome of sudden connection death is the ultimate unpleasant experience you have had ever.
If you switch to DHCP connection, problem should vanish. Why?. Windows 7 has an option to make order of IP stack awaking. BY default, Wireless id the first, and if a problem there the whole connection goes down in unpredictable way. Remedy is to push wired connection at the stack top. And that is all.

Sony is constructing a 3D technology center in California, as well as a grand "3D experience" in MGM Grand Las Vegas. 


The latest official word is that it'll roll out sometime in February, and run between $499 and $599
Thanks VR-Zone for the link.