Vigile writes "While few would argue with the performance advantages of solid state drives, the relative cost compared to spindle-based disks still make them a luxury item. The promise of hybrid storage solutions is to combine the benefits of both — large capacities with standard drive technology and performance advantages of solid state. PC Perspective published an article comparing several different solutions that vary in their approach to hybrid storage. The OCZ RevoDrive Hybrid combines a standard 2.5-in drive with a PCI Express-based SSD that offers the best overall performance and largest cache size. Seagate's new Momentus XT 2.5-in solution embeds the cache on the PCB of the drive, allowing notebook users to install this solution easily. Finally, the Intel chipset-based caching option combines either a 2.5-in or mSATA SSD with a standard hard drive on either desktop or mobile platforms, allowing the most flexibility of any other hybrid solution. All three have advantages for specific consumers, though, and varying performance levels to go along with them."
jfruhlinger writes "One of the great banes of election season is that any politician can shell out a few pennies per voter and phone-spam thousands of people who'd rather not hear a recorded pitch. But turnabout's fair play, and now a service called reverse robocall will deliver your recorded message to elected officials as often as you'd like for a nominal fee. If there's a representative you'd like to call repeatedly, check them out."
ananyo writes "Nano-sized flakes of graphene oxide can be spun into graphene fibers several meters long, researchers in China have shown. The strong, flexible fibers, which can be tied in knots or woven into conductive mats, could be the key to deploying graphene in real-world devices such as flexible batteries."
An anonymous reader sends this excerpt from a report at Al Jazeera "The administration of U.S. President Barack Obama has launched a virtual embassy for Iran in what it said was a bid to promote dialogue with the Iranian people in the absence of formal diplomatic ties. The web-based embassy went online on Tuesday in English and Farsi, offering visitors what it described as 'another perspective' for Iranians who 'remain hungry for information about the United States.' 'This website is not a formal diplomatic mission, nor does it represent or describe a real U.S. embassy accredited to the Iranian government,' the U.S. state department said in an introductory note. 'But, in the absence of direct contact, it can work as a bridge between the American and Iranian people.'"
Velcroman1 writes "A security hole in Facebook allowed almost anyone to see pictures marked as private, an online forum revealed late Monday. Even pictures supposedly kept hidden from uninvited eyes by Facebook's privacy controls aren't safe, reported one user of a popular bodybuilding forum in a post entitled 'I teach you how to view private Facebook photos.' Facebook appears to have acted quickly to eliminate the end-run around privacy controls, after word of the exploit spread across the Internet. It wasn't long before one online miscreant uploaded private pictures of Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg himself — evidence that the hack worked, he said."
New submitter Geist3 writes "Forbes has an article by Venkatesh Rao asserting that the safest investment for both corporations and individuals is in software developers. Throwing money at talented coders now — even on random projects — will build relationships that are likely to pay off big in the future. 'In what follows, I am deliberately going to talk about the developers like they are products in a meat market. For practical purposes, they are, since the vast majority of them haven't found a way to use their own scarcity to their advantage.'"
Many scientists (mainly Japanese and Russian) have dreamed of cloning a mammoth over the years. When the mammoth genome was partially reconstructed in 2008, that dream seemed a bit closer. Besides the millions of dollars needed for such a project, the biggest hurdle was the lack of a good sample of mammoth DNA. That hurdle has now been cleared, thanks to the discovery of well-preserved bone marrow in a mammoth thigh bone. Russian scientist Semyon Grigoriev, acting director of the Sakha Republic's mammoth museum, and colleagues from Japan's Kinki University say that within 5 years they'll likely have a clone. From the article: "What's been missing is woolly mammoth nuclei with undamaged genes. Scientists have been on a Holy Grail-type search for such pristine nuclei since the late 1990s. Now it sounds like the missing genes may have been found."
Harperdog points out this article "about the Bay Model in Sausalito, California, which was built in 1959 to study a (terrible) plan to dam up San Francisco Bay. The model was at the forefront of research and testing on water issues that affected all of California; its research contributions have been rendered obsolete by computer testing, but there are many who think it could contribute still. Now used for education and tourism, the model is over 1 1/2 acres and replicates a 24-hour tidal cycle in just 14 minutes. Good stuff."
Trailrunner7 notes that some dedicated hackers who've been working on jailbreaking RIM's PlayBook tablet have now "posted a detailed walkthrough of how users can accomplish the same task on their own. The technique requires the use of a custom tool, but otherwise is fairly straightforward. One of the researchers, known as Neuralic, posted the walkthrough to Pastie.org Tuesday morning. In order to begin the process, a PlayBook user need to first install the beta 2.0 version of the PlayBook software and then install the Dingleberry tool, which exploits a weakness in the PlayBook architecture which stems from the fact that the backups the device takes aren't signed."
Shipud writes "Holland was recently in the news when a psychology professor in Tilburg University was found to have committed large-scale fraud over several years. Now, another Dutch psychologist is suggesting a way to avert these sort of problems, namely by 'sharing early and sharing often,' since fraud may start with small indiscretions due to career-related pressure to publish. In Wilchert's study, he requested raw data from the authors of some 49 papers. He found that the authors' reluctance to share data was associated with 'more errors in the reporting of statistical results and with relatively weaker evidence (against the null hypothesis). The documented errors are arguably the tip of the iceberg of potential errors and biases in statistical analyses and the reporting of statistical results. It is rather disconcerting that roughly 50% of published papers in psychology contain reporting errors and that the unwillingness to share data was most pronounced when the errors concerned statistical significance.'"
First time accepted submitter bushx writes "A little over a month ago, I assumed the position of programmer and sole IT personnel at a thriving e-commerce company. All the documentation I have is of my own creation, as I've spent most of my time reverse-engineering the systems in place just so I can understand how everything works together. Since I've started, I've done everything from network and phone upgrades to database maintenance with Perl, and thus far it's been immensely rewarding. But as I dig deeper, I notice the alarming number of band-aids applied by my predecessor, and it seems like the entire company's infrastructure is just a few problems away from a total meltdown. The big question now is, how do I, as a single person, effectively audit the network, servers, databases, backups, and formulate a long-term plan that can be implemented by one person? Is it possible? Where do I begin?"
An anonymous reader writes with this news from Network World: "Dell has yanked the Dell Streak 7 tablet computer from its online stores, quietly acknowledging the failure of the Android device to catch on with consumers as the company redirects its tablet focus to combination work/play products. Word of the Streak 7's disappearance follows by a few months the death of the Streak 5, which debuted in summer 2010. The dual-core processor-powered Dell Streak 7 became available in January, marketed as a 4G wireless tablet via T-Mobile's network. Now Dell is directing would-be Streak buyers to Android and Windows Phone smartphones, and pushing a line of Windows Phone tablets for business."
TechCrunch features an article (the first of three, actually) outlining the development of a clever hardware keyboard for the iPad. It's hard to write about Kickstarter projects, because there are so many cool ideas that seem to deserve funding it's simply overwhelming. The TouchFire keyboard is one of those cool ideas, too, but it's far surpassed the founders' original funding goals and is nearing production. The TouchFire isn't wired, but it isn't wireless, either, in the conventional sense, because it provides no signal of its own: it's a transparent overlay that provides a tactile interface to the iPad's on-screen keyboard, and — the tricky part — is thin enough to actually swipe through when you're not using it for text-entry. The keyboard takes advantage of the iPad 2's built-in magnets for stability, though it works with the original iPad, too. (Hopefully an Android version will come soon, but the variety of screen resolutions and on-screen keyboard shapes makes that harder.) I talked with co-creator Steve Isaac (it's his account at TechCrunch, too) a few weeks back, and he said that the hardest part of the development work has been producing the complex mold shapes that form each collapsible key. The resulting tablet-with-keyboard reminds me superficially, and pleasantly, of the TRS-80 Model 100. (The Tandy actually had much better battery life than an iPad, but could do far less. It also weighed 3.1 pounds and cost more than a thousand dollars in 1983, which means nearly $2400 today; such is progress.) Prototypes are tight (and I don't have an iPad), but I hope to give an in-person report on the TouchFire soon.
nk497 writes "The European Commission is investigating Apple and five publishers regarding ebook pricing, after raiding ebook firms earlier this year. 'The Commission will in particular investigate whether these publishing groups and Apple have engaged in illegal agreements or practices that would have the object or the effect of restricting competition,' the watchdog said."
First time accepted submitter iZarKe writes "Version 11.60 of Opera Browser for Desktop was released today. Significant changes: the inclusion of their new HTML5 rendering engine "Ragnarök", a revamped address bar, full ECMAScript 5.1 support, support for CSS3 Radial Gradients (finally), and a very revamped Mail panel. Originally, these features were set to be released with their next major version, 12.00. However, due to more work needed for the hardware acceleration feature also to be included in Opera 12, the 11.60 intermediary release came to be, as they didn't want to hold back the other new features for that long a time."
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Michael Copps, a longtime member of the U.S. Federal Communications Commission, will resign effective Jan. 1, or earlier, depending on Senate action, he...
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A Facebook security hole allows anyone to see pictures marked as private including images of the Facebook co-founder Mark Zuckerberg.
Adobe reports that a zero day flaw is being exploited in the wild with targeted attacks against some version of Adobe Reader for Windows.
A proposal in the U.S. House of Representatives would set up a new semi-independent organization allowing the U.S. government and private companies to share...
CRM data corruption: It's not just for SysAdmins anymore. Check out this list to find out how your users and their policies may be polluting your data.
Second-generation tablets introduce new screen size and new design.
Red Hat has updated its flagship operating system, Red Hat Enterprise Linux, with new technologies designed to cut the cost and improve performance of enterprise...
New Linux Foundation data reveals hiring trends by skill area, job type, and location.
A usability expert says the Kindle Fire is too heavy and that its interface has some trouble spots.
XXX domains are live, but unless you are actually in the adult entertainment industry there is really no need to buy an XXX domain just to protect your brand reputation.
H1siri hack that promises Siri for the iPhone 4 and iPod Touch actually uses illegal software, bricks devices, and could steal your data.
Despite such grand predictions for Amazon's device, the Kindle Fire isn't expected to make a huge dent in Apple's market lead.
Global spam fell to the lowest level in three years in a sign that spammers may be getting a better rate of return by hitting social-media websites instead...
Intel underwent a complex patching process in order to fix a recently discovered flaw in the SINIT ACMs (Authenticated Code Modules) that allowed for the TXT...
More people than ever will be doing holiday shopping from smartphones and tablets this year. Follow these tips to shop safely and securely and not have your holidays ruined by malware or phishing scams.
I had to file an amended 2009 return but Intuit recently dropped the data files for the 2007, 2008 and 2009 tax years from its site.
LG ups the ante when it comes to Ultrabooks with it's latest offering that is just a hair smaller than MacBook Air.
Consumers are being misled about online behavioral advertising and what happens to their data says Europe’s biggest consumer rights organization.
The .XXX domain is meant to safely filter adult content on the Web under one domain name that also gives users an advanced heads-up over what they will find once a site has loaded.
The wireless carrier will introduce its first devices on the high-speed network in the latter part of 2012 instead of its original target of mid-2012.
The lawsuit is the third to be filed since the privacy controversy started last week.
Apple’s ebooks business is to be investigated by the European Union’s top antitrust regulator. The computer giant is accused of operating a cartel with five...
Teradici has upgraded the firmware for PC-over-IP-based zero clients to provide smoother authentication, improved USB performance and support for Internet...
Galaxy Nexus users will be offered Isis, Verizon's forthcoming NFC payment system, a joint partnership between AT&T, T-Mobile and Verizon.
StumbleUpon's new layout focuses on smarter stumbling.
The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) has asked the U.S. Copyright Office to exempt tablet and video game console jailbreaking from Digital Millennium...
Cloud-based human resources software vendor SuccessFactors said Tuesday it is acquiring Jobs2web for US$110 million, just days after SAP announced it would buy...
Microsoft's Xbox 360 dashboard switch-out happens today, radically changing the way you'll interface with the system once again.
The Dutch competition Authority NMa raided the offices of Vodafone, T-Mobile and KPN on Tuesday morning as part of an investigation into price fixing, the...
Japanese mobile game provider Gree said Tuesday it would launch a new gaming platform next year as it looks to take on heavyweights like Facebook and Zynga.
Hewlett-Packard has acquired the German company Hiflex Software to advance its Web-based printing business, it said on Tuesday.
India's reported plans to ask Internet companies to filter objectionable content may overstep the country's own laws, according to legal experts.
Intacct is hoping to build on its stake in the cloud ERP (enterprise resource planning) market via a three-way integration with Salesforce.com's CRM (customer...
Facebook has hired the team at Gowalla, a mobile location service in Austin, Texas, but the service will be shut down by January, the companies said Monday.
Check out an Earth twin far away and one of the coolest LED structures you could see in GeekTech's daily news roundup.
Here, in detail, are the reliability measures and the service measures that we included in our 2011 survey.
Clearwire plans to raise as much as $345 million in stock transactions to help fund its LTE (Long Term Evolution) network deployment and other activities.
Intuit's addition to SimpleStore will allow you to add a shop to your Facebook business page so customers can buy things there directly.
PhoneFactor, an authentication system that uses mobile phones as a second factor for improved security, is now available as an app for Apple's iPhone and iPad.
The Computer History Museum launched an online exhibit about Apple co-founder Steve Jobs on Monday.
Got a new BlackBerry PlayBook tablet? Or planning to pick up a discounted PlayBook for a friend or loved one this holiday season? CIO.com's Al Sacco offers up six quick and easy PlayBook troubleshooting tips that all RIM tablet owners should know.
Millions of smartphones have secret rootkits embedded on them. Gibbs thinks this is a bit of a problem.
While most wireless carriers take every opportunity to overcharge their customers, Ting wants to be different.
This Instructables guide will show you how you can use an Arduino to control your TV, DVD player, VCR, and countless other home electronics.
Got nothing better to do? Go online! According to Pew Research, that's what more than half of America already does.
Windows 8 isn't even in beta yet, but IDC is already predicting that very few PC owners will upgrade from Windows 7 to it. And that's just for a start -- the company also predicts that Windows 8 tablets look to be a bust as well.
There was frightening news from Indonesia ten days ago, when a BlackBerry launch event turned into first a riot, and then a dangerous stampede.
If you think cloud computing is a disruptive force within the enterprise, just imagine what the cloud is doing to the vendor landscape.