Three-year study shows phone masts 'safe'

A three-year study into the possible short-term health effects of mobile base stations has found that base stations are not associated with ill health.Some people have claimed that mobile phone masts cause symptoms like anxiety, fatigue and nausea.The investigation took place at the Electromagnetics and Health Laboratory at the University of Essex, established three years ago, with a multi-disciplinary team including cognitive psychologists, electronic and biomedical engineers and a doctor.Using a group of 'sensitive' individuals (44 people) and a control group (114 people), the study found that, in double-blind conditions (where neither the testers nor the tested knew whether the signal was on or off), the sensitive group reported increased symptoms regardless of whether a 3G or GSM signal was on or off.This led the researchers to conclude that any physiological responses were unrelated to the signals.Principal investigator Professor Elaine Fox said on Wednesday: "It is clear that sensitive individuals are suffering real symptoms and often have a poor quality of life. It is now important to determine what other factors could be causing these symptoms, so appropriate research studies and treatment strategies can be developed." View: Full Article @ Silicon Read full story...

 


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iPlayer faces petition pressure

An e-petition on the Downing Street website has called on parliament to stop the BBC launching its iPlayer to a Windows-only audience. More than 10,000 people have signed the petition which calls for the service to be made compatible with other operating systems such as Linux.The BBC's on-demand TV service launches as a trial version on 27 July and will only work with PCs using Windows XP. Other versions are in the pipeline, according to the BBC. A version for Apple Macs could be available in autumn, with versions for Window's Vista and mobile devices to follow, the BBC has said.It will go live to the general public in open beta on Friday, allowing the number of users to increase over the summer in a controlled manner, before a full launch in the autumn. Speaking at the launch of the service, director of Future Media and Technology at the BBC Ashley Highfield said: "I am fundamentally committed to universality, to getting the BBC iPlayer to everyone in the UK who pays their licence fee." View: Full story News source: BBC News Read full story...

 


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Home Server: The best kept secret ...

Windows Home Server was a secret for a long time. We had over 1,000 internal testers at Microsoft prior to announcing the product at CES 2007, some of these people used the product for over a year without leaking anything about it. I remember the early days when employees asked us - "What do I tell my family? How do I explain this to them without divulging Microsoft confidential information?"Today and tomorrow, the Windows Home Server team has a booth at the internal Microsoft company fair. Like our booth at CES, we are busy. The benefits are easy to understand, the simplicity is refreshing and the interest in un-ending. It is amazing how many people within Microsoft know so little about Windows Home Server. Yet, once they understand the product, its value, and see a demo, they are sold with the obvious next set of questions .... how much will it cost and when is it available?The product is winding its way through the manufacturing process and will soon hit the store shelves. It is a better product due to the 1,000 Microsoft employees that gave us feedback for over a year prior to our public unveiling. And it is even better due to the feedback from the 100,000+ beta testers!! View: Full Article @ Windows Home Server Blog Read full story...

 


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Cisco wants peace with Microsoft

Customer demand is driving Cisco to prevent a clash with Microsoft, but the networking giant seems uncertain about whether the firms can avoid a confrontation. Cisco chief executive John Chambers said in a meeting with reporters at the Cisco Networkers user conference in Anaheim, California: "My customers want me to work with Microsoft. They do not want to see us collide in a non-constructive way."But in admitting that it will be hard to prevent a market clash as both companies are expanding into each other's turf, Chambers pointed out that companies often have a poor track record in combined cooperation and competition."We will see if we can create a model that truly allows us to compete at times and partner at times, but nobody has ever done that well. It's called 'co-opetition'. But candidly, you do it only because your customers force you to," said Chambers.Microsoft is currently pushing into the unified communications market, where Cisco has been playing for a long time with its IP telephones. View: Full Article @ VNUNET Read full story...

 


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Get a hotfix -- without having to call Microsoft...

You now can obtain a hotfix without having to interact with a single soul ( no phone calls etc.. )  Easy and convenient.Take for example my previous post for the netlogon DCR - 928576  which doesnt even have a public article yet.  Try it...http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?...kb;EN-US;928576   It errors out - no such article.But - thanks to the Big Brainers ( seriously ) who think about our customers and really do care about their experience  .. you can now simply go to this URL and download most any fixhttps://support.microsoft.com/contactus2/em...;1410&WS=hotfixYou will get a form mail in response, and in it will be a link to the http site you can download the fix from. News source: ActiveWin Read full story...

 


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Shift Linux Needs Developers

Neowin's own Shift Linux is in desperate need of developers and community members who can assist with the final phase of this project. Unfortunately our primary developer cannot continue at this time, thereby stalling the project until we have new members who are willing to devote time to get our final public version out the door. We have many talented graphics and web design members who have spent a good amount of time creating the vehicles to deliver a quality distribution.Because this is a community project, and so many of our community members have contributed to it already, we would like to complete this project as soon as possible. However, since this is a Linux distribution that represents the Neowin community, we do not want to deliver an inferior product. Our distribution has been licensed by LMI as well as picked up by websites such as Distrowatch, so we have gained some exposure and attention that we would like to see through to its fruition. For that reason we're asking our Neowin community to help us get this distribution finalized.If you have the time, motivation, and desire to help us with this project, please PM Barney for further details. Read full story...

 


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AMD claims memory controller breakthrough

AMD has unveiled a new memory controller system which it claims will double the memory capacity on its high-end server and workstation systems. The G3MX technology will target memory intensive systems such as virtualisation servers and large databases when it becomes available in 2009. In conventional systems, Ram modules connect directly to a memory controller on the motherboard or are built into the CPU.In larger systems requiring more memory, a buffer must be used between the memory module and the controller to avoid a decrease in performance. The current choice for this is fully-buffered Ram modules which contain a built-in buffer. But the problem with fully buffered Ram is that it is expensive and power-hungry, and hampers performance, explained Nathan Brookwood, principal analyst at Insight64.  "Fully buffered Dims were thought to be a big thing, and they turned out not to be," Brookwood told vnunet.com. "Every memory chip paid a price in terms of latency."  View: The full story News source: vnunet Read full story...

 


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Intel Claims Breakthrough With 40Gbps Optical Chips

Intel Corp. researchers are a step closer to creating chips that transmit data at high speeds using light instead of electrons, but products based on the technology appear to remain over the horizon. On Wednesday, a team of Intel researchers unveiled a laser modulator made of silicon that is capable of encoding data at speeds up to 40G bits per second (bps), a significant increase in speed for the company.The new modulator, which converts electrical data into light, opens the door to high-speed optical interconnects for computers and, when combined with 25 hybrid silicon lasers on a single chip, could be capable of transmitting terabits of data per second, wrote Ansheng Liu, principal engineer at Intel's Corporate Technology Group, in a blog post. Optical interconnects are desirable because fiber optics offer more bandwidth and carry data farther than copper, which is currently used to connect chips and move data inside a computer. Because they use laser light to transmit data, optical interconnects also eliminate the heat created by resistance as electrons pass through a copper trace. View: The full story News source: PCWorld Read full story...

 


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VIA to launch new processor architecture in 1Q08

VIA Technologies is scheduled to launch its new processor core, dubbed Isaiah, in the first quarter of 2008, with the new architecture entering EVT (engineering validation test) stage in the fourth quarter of 2007, according to market sources. The Isaiah core (engineering codename CN) will replace VIA's Esther processor architecture, which was introduced in 2004. Isaiah features a 64-bit architecture and will be manufactured on a 65nm process, as compared to 90nm for Esther. Other features include a V4 Bus speed of 1333MHz, up from 800MHz previously, and support for ECC (error checking and correction) memory and virtualization technology. The L2 Cache will also increase to 1MB from 128KB previously.Although Isaiah's core frequency will not see any obvious increases and power consumption will be higher compared to Esther, its performance so far has been measured to be twice as fast as that delivered by the Esther architecture, and the floating point unit performance is four times greater, according to makers that are testing the new architecture. With the lower cost and better performance, the new processor has a chance to boost VIA's revenues, added the sources. News source: DigiTimes Read full story...

 


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What will Windows 7 look like?

By now, everyone has heard how Microsoft plans to release the next Windows client OS, Windows 7, in 2010. But what the company is not making clear is what new features the OS will have, a topic that has become fodder for educated Windows 7 speculation. Analysts said Microsoft probably is keeping tight-lipped about what Windows 7 will look like because at this point, company engineers and executives don't even know. "They don't want to commit because they don't have a good idea what's in it," said Michael Silver, an analyst with Gartner. "We're three years out, so you can't really expect that much detail." Michael Cherry, an analyst with Directions on Microsoft, said that with so many people still in the midst of upgrading to the latest client OS, Windows Vista, he's hesitant to speculate on what might be in the next OS. "We barely know the features of the one we just got," he said with a laugh.  View: The full story News source: InfoWorld Read full story...

 


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OLPC's XO Laptop Is No Lightweight Toy

When you first see the XO the thought that immediately jumps to mind is "kid's toy." With its bright green color, built-in carrying handle, funny rabbit ears and rubber membrane keyboard, it looks like something that Fisher-Price might produce. But when you pick it up, you realize how sturdy and well built the XO is. And when you turn it on, you discover that you are connecting wirelessly to the Internet and to other XO users that are creating a local network. You find lots of software designed for kids but also find some groundbreaking collaboration tools that let you work with others in ways that outshine some of the best corporate groupware.Oh yeah, even though bright sunshine is beating down upon the laptop screen, you're having no trouble reading the display. But the sunlight is OK since it's powering your system through a small, low-cost solar cell. And the XO doesn't need much power since it runs at a fraction of what laptops that are considered "green" run at. This is the XO, a system that was born when MIT legend Nicholas Negroponte set out to build a $100 laptop, in order to make it possible to deliver computers to kids and schools in developing countries. And while the XO didn't make the $100 target price (instead it's currently coming in at around $175), it does now sit nearly ready to be deployed around the world. View: The full story News source: eWeek Read full story...

 


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Is Lexmark Spending Enough On R&D To Beat HP?

Lexmark Chairman and CEO Paul Curlander Tuesday defended his company's spending on research and development compared to rivals like Hewlett Packard. Curlander's comments came as he acknowledged Lexmark suffered a "disappointing" second quarter, during a conference call with Wall Street analysts to talk about Lexmark's earnings. Richard Gardner, an analyst with Citigroup, New York, questioned Curlander sharply over Lexmark's R&D compared to rivals and even asked whether the company had to make some "tough decisions" about its flagging inkjet business. "I was wondering if you would acknoweldge a big problem in (Lexmark's) inkjet (business) is lacking print-head technology," Gardner said. "Given that your competitors are spending five and 10 times as much on inkjet R&D technology as you are, I'm wondering how you can atch up at this point, cost-effectively, and, as you say, spend as much as you need to spend on R&D to get back to where you'd like to be in the consumer segment?"  View: The full story News source: CRN Read full story...

 


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Facebook site faces fraud claim

Social networking website Facebook could be closed if legal action in the US by a rival site's founders succeeds.Three founders of ConnectU say Facebook creator Mark Zuckerberg stole their idea for the site while at Harvard.Facebook has become a global phenomenon with about 31 million users, compared with ConnectU's 70,000.A Federal case accuses Mr Zuckerberg of fraud and misappropriation of trade secrets, and asks for ConnectU to be given ownership of Facebook.Last year, Facebook turned down a $1bn offer from Yahoo.Facebook has asked a judge at a Boston district court to dismiss the case. The ConnectU founders claim that while at college Mr Zuckerberg agreed to finish writing computer code for them, but that he stalled and eventually created Facebook using their ideas. View: BBC News Read full story...

 


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Mozilla admits Firefox is flawed just like IE

In a public mea culpa, Mozilla Corp.'s chief security officer acknowledged today that Firefox includes the same flaw that the company called a "critical vulnerability" in Internet Explorer during a two-week ruckus over responsibility for a Windows zero-day bug. "Over the weekend, we learned about a new scenario that identifies ways that Firefox could also be used as the entry point," said Window Snyder of Mozilla. "While browsing with Firefox, a specially crafted URL could potentially be used to send bad data to another application. "We thought this was just a problem with IE," Snyder continued. "It turns out, it is a problem with Firefox as well." The argument over responsibility for a flaw that involved both IE and Firefox began two weeks ago, when Danish researcher Thor Larholm argued that IE contained an input validation bug that passes potentially malicious URLs to other applications. Larholm called out Firefox's "firefoxurl://" protocol as one that IE mishandled. He staked out the position that IE was to blame, while other security experts said it was Firefox's fault. As fingers pointed, Mozilla patched the IE-Firefox interaction bug by releasing an update, Version 2.0.0.5. Even so, Snyder and others continued to argue that IE was the problem. "Microsoft needs to patch Internet Explorer," Snyder said last Wednesday. That same day, Asa Dotzler, director of community development, contrasted what he said were the differences between Microsoft and Mozilla on the bug. "We think it's Firefox's job to ensure that users are protected from malicious Web sites when they're surfing the Web in Firefox. Apparently, Microsoft doesn't think the same for IE," Dotzler said then.  View: The full story News source: ComputerWorld Read full story...

 


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