Tag: elegant-bride

Cisco to sell Linksys to Belkin, will exit home networking market

Belkin has struck a deal to buy Linksys from Cisco, bringing Cisco’s 10-year dalliance with the consumer networking market closer to an end. Cisco’s Linksys division sells routers and wireless access points to consumers, which is in line with Cisco’s overall focus on networking gear but diverges from the company’s core focus on selling to big businesses rather than home users. Cisco has been gradually stepping out of the consumer business—for example, by killing off the Flip camera line and  Umi home videoconferencing . Cisco recently engaged Barclays to help sell off the home networking division. Belkin’s purchase of Linksys is expected to close in March 2013, but the companies did not reveal the purchase price. Cisco bought Linksys in 2003 for $500 million. Read 6 remaining paragraphs | Comments

View article:
Cisco to sell Linksys to Belkin, will exit home networking market

Secret backdoors found in firewall, VPN gear from Barracuda Networks

A variety of firewall, VPN, and spam filtering gear sold by Barracuda Networks contains undocumented backdoor accounts that allow people to remotely log in and access sensitive information, researchers with an Austrian security firm have warned. The SSH, or secure shell, backdoor is hardcoded into “multiple Barracuda Networks products” and can be used to gain shell access to vulnerable appliances, according to an advisory published Thursday by SEC Consult Vulnerability Lab. “This functionality is entirely undocumented and can only be disabled via a hidden ‘expert options’ dialog,” the advisory states. The boxes are configured to listen for SSH connections to the backdoor accounts and will accept the username “product” with no Update: a “very weak” password to log in and gain access to the device’s MySQL database. While the backdoors can be accessed by only a small range of IP addresses, many of them belong to entities other than Barracuda. Read 4 remaining paragraphs | Comments

More here:
Secret backdoors found in firewall, VPN gear from Barracuda Networks

MP3 files written as DNA with storage density of 2.2 petabytes per gram

The general approach to storing a binary file as DNA, described in detail below. Goldman et al., Nature It’s easy to get excited about the idea of encoding information in single molecules, which seems to be the ultimate end of the miniaturization that has been driving the electronics industry. But it’s also easy to forget that we’ve been beaten there—by a few billion years. The chemical information present in biomolecules was critical to the origin of life and probably dates back to whatever interesting chemical reactions preceded it. It’s only within the past few decades, however, that humans have learned to speak DNA. Even then, it took a while to develop the technology needed to synthesize and determine the sequence of large populations of molecules. But we’re there now, and people have started experimenting with putting binary data in biological form. Now, a new study has confirmed the flexibility of the approach by encoding everything from an MP3 to the decoding algorithm into fragments of DNA. The cost analysis done by the authors suggest that the technology may soon be suitable for decade-scale storage, provided current trends continue. Trinary encoding Computer data is in binary, while each location in a DNA molecule can hold any one of four bases (A, T, C, and G). Rather than using all that extra information capacity, however, the authors used it to avoid a technical problem. Stretches of a single type of base (say, TTTTT) are often not sequenced properly by current techniques—in fact, this was the biggest source of errors in the previous DNA data storage effort. So for this new encoding, they used one of the bases to break up long runs of any of the other three. Read 9 remaining paragraphs | Comments

Continued here:
MP3 files written as DNA with storage density of 2.2 petabytes per gram

Wires smaller in diameter than light waves boost solar cell efficiency

Electron micrograph of indium phosphide (InP) nanowires. Each is 180 nanometers in diameter; this diameter allows them to capture more light, making them effective in a photovoltaic solar cell. Wallentin et al. In the continuing quest to create solar cells, researchers seek new materials, use clever techniques, and look for novel physical phenomena to extract the maximum electricity out of sunlight for the lowest cost. One method of extracting more power at a lower cost relies on creating arrays of nanowires that stand vertically on inexpensive substrates. In contrast to the material in ordinary solar cells, nanowires use less material, can potentially be built with less costly materials, and in principle trap more light thanks to the geometry of the arrays. However, most nanowire solar cells are currently outperformed by their conventional counterparts. A new effort used indium phosphide (InP) nanowires with diameters smaller than the wavelength of the light they were trapping. That trick enabled Jesper Wallentin and colleagues to reach comparable efficiencies and slightly higher voltage than a conventional InP solar cell. While the wires only covered 12 percent of the surface area, they exploited a principle known as resonant trapping to extract over half as much current as a full planar cell of InP. This approach could lead to even greater efficiency at lower cost for solar cells. Many candidates for the next generation of photovoltaic (PV) solar cells are being investigated. Research in this area has two goals that don’t always overlap: maximizing the efficiency of converting sunlight into electric current, and reducing cost per unit of electricity. The advantage of nanowire-based cells lies in using a lot less material, since the entire surface need not be covered in PV material. Additionally, the wires themselves can be fabricated from relatively inexpensive semiconductor materials. Read 7 remaining paragraphs | Comments

Originally posted here:
Wires smaller in diameter than light waves boost solar cell efficiency

New features, new fixes: OS X Server’s six-month checkup

It has now been roughly half a year since the release of Mountain Lion . If Apple sticks to its new yearly release cadence for new OS X versions, that means we’re probably about halfway to OS X 10.9. That doesn’t mean the OS has stood still, though—two point updates have since tweaked the operating system’s functionality and stability, and this is even more true of OS X’s buttoned-up cousin, OS X Server . While Windows Server rarely picks up major new features outside of service packs, OS X Server is like the client version of OS X in that it sometimes takes a couple of point updates for its features to stabilize. Since July, we’ve received two point updates for OS X Server, and they’ve changed things around enough that it merits revisiting our original guide and pointing out what has changed. We’ll be focusing on the major user-facing changes here, but for a complete list of everything that has been changed and fixed you may also want to look at the complete release notes for OS X Server 2.1.1 and 2.2 . Read 14 remaining paragraphs | Comments

Continued here:
New features, new fixes: OS X Server’s six-month checkup

Is Dell looking to kill PCs with “Project Ophelia”?

Dell’s Project Ophelia: an Android-based thin client that you can put in your pocket for around $50, eventually. Dell Dell is reportedly investigating a move to take the company private in a leveraged buy-out to clear the decks for a radical repositioning of the company. And according to a report from Atlantic Media’s Quartz , that includes relaunching Dell’s desktop and mobile business around a brand-new product: a computing device the size of a thumb-drive that will sell for about $50. Dell announced its pocket client PC, called ” project Ophelia ,” on January 8, and demonstrated it at CES. Developed by Dell’s Wyse unit, Ophelia uses a Mobile High-Definition Link (MHL) to draw power to boot from an HDTV display, or it can be powered off a USB port. It has integrated Bluetooth and Wi-Fi capability for connecting to a keyboard, a mouse, and the network, and it runs the Android 4.1 (Jelly Bean) operating system with all of the functionality of a tablet. It can also be used to power virtual instances of other desktop operating systems on a remote server or in the cloud. In other words, it’s a fusion of Wyse’s thin client technology modeled after the capabilities of a Google Chromebook—except it can be carried in a pocket. The main drawbacks are that few HDTVs currently support MHL—though such support can be found in a number of Dell flat-panel displays. Read 2 remaining paragraphs | Comments

Read the original post:
Is Dell looking to kill PCs with “Project Ophelia”?

Amazon AutoRip: How the labels held back progress for 14 years

Michael Robertson Gabe Lawrence When Michael Robertson heard news of AutoRip , the new Amazon service that automatically adds high-quality MP3s to Cloud Player when you buy a CD, he must have had a sense of deja vu. After all, the entrepreneur introduced a similar service way back in 1999. Unfortunately, it wasn’t licensed by the recording industry, and they sued it out of existence. He tried again with a licensed service in 2007, but only one label would cut a deal and the company failed to gain traction. In a Friday interview with Ars Technica, Robertson told us that the major labels’ decision to license AutoRip represents a sea change in their attitudes toward cloud music services. Until the last couple of years, the labels were relentlessly hostile to the idea that consumers should have the freedom to store DRM-free music online. But a series of business failures and legal defeats forced the labels to face reality. And so fourteen years after Robertson first floated the concept, consumers finally have the freedom to instantly get an MP3 when they buy a CD online. Robertson’s first company, MP3.com was one of the hottest startups in Silicon Valley when it launched what we would now call a cloud music service, My.MP3.com, in 1999. The service included a feature called “Beam-It” that allowed users to instantly stock their online lockers with music from their personal CD collections. Read 11 remaining paragraphs | Comments

See the original post:
Amazon AutoRip: How the labels held back progress for 14 years

Samsung’s new eight-core Exynos 5 Octa SoC promises not to hog battery

Not to be outdone by Nvidia’s Tegra 4 announcement and Qualcomm’s Snapdragon 800-series announcement, Samsung took to the stage today to announce the next processor in its Exynos 5 lineup: the Exynos 5 Octa is an eight-core SoC destined for tablets and high-end smartphones. Not all of these CPU cores are created equal: four of them are high-performance Cortex-A15 cores, the very same found in the Exynos 5 Dual that powers the Nexus 10 and Samsung’s ARM Chromebook . The other four are Cortex-A7 CPU cores—these have the same feature set and capabilities as the A15 cores, but are optimized for power efficiency rather than performance. This makes the Exynos 5 Octa one of the first (if not  the first) products to actually use ARM’s big.LITTLE processor switching technology, something we outlined back in October of 2011 . The SoC is designed to dynamically split the workload between the high-performance and the high-efficiency CPU cores based on the task at hand—less strenuous activities like browsing an app store or checking e-mail might be done on the A7 cores, for instance, while gaming and number crunching could be handed off to the A15 cores. Read 3 remaining paragraphs | Comments

View original post here:
Samsung’s new eight-core Exynos 5 Octa SoC promises not to hog battery

Adobe almost does something amazing by accident

It seemed like an intriguing deal. An old version of Adobe Creative Suite—the 2005 vintage CS2, to be precise—became freely downloadable from Adobe, with nothing more than a free-to-create Adobe ID required from users. Although basically useless for Mac users, as CS2 is only available for PowerPC, for Windows users this is a powerful, if not quite cutting edge, suite of graphics apps. This looked like a clever move from Adobe. Photoshop is widely held to be one of the most routinely pirated applications there is. In making an old but still servicable version of the software it appeared that Adobe was offering a good alternative to piracy: instead of using a knock-off copy of CS6, just use CS2. A free CS2 would also go some way toward starving alternative applications of oxygen. Given the choice between a free copy of CS2 and downloading, say, the GIMP, one imagines that many users would plump for the commercial application. It’s more of a known quantity, with a more polished user interface. And Photoshop is, frankly, the gold standard of bitmap image editing. Even an older version has a prestige that GIMP doesn’t. This is not to say that CS2 is necessarily superior to the GIMP; it may or may not be. It doesn’t really matter; Photoshop has a reputation and respect that the GIMP doesn’t have, and even if some might argue that it was undeserved, it influences the decisions users make. Read 11 remaining paragraphs | Comments

Visit site:
Adobe almost does something amazing by accident

Satellite Internet: 15Mbps, no matter where you live in the US

billrdio America is a land of haves and have-nots when it comes to broadband Internet. While many of us enjoy downloads speeds of 50 or even 100 Mbps, 119 million Americans lack broadband access (defined as 4Mbps down and 1Mbps up). Out of those 119 million, 19 million live in areas where there is no option to buy a wired broadband connection, according to government data. Wouldn’t it be great if we could provide broadband speed to nearly every American, without costly construction projects to bring cables to the home? Apparently, we already can . At least that’s what providers of satellite broadband Internet services said today in a panel at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas. Latest-generation satellites operated by HughesNet and ViaSat offer 10 to 15 Mbps down and 1 to 3 Mbps up to nearly any home in the US, representatives of those companies said. They believe the industry simply suffers from an awareness problem. Previous-generation satellite products offered only a fraction of that speed, and even people who realize satellite is available to them may not know that the latest products are as fast as they are. Read 20 remaining paragraphs | Comments

Link:
Satellite Internet: 15Mbps, no matter where you live in the US