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The Serial ATA International Organization (SATA-IO) has ratified revision 3.2 of the SATA specification. The latest specification includes the SATA Express standard which enables the coexistence of SATA and PCIe storage devices, improves power management, caters for more new SATA form factors and contains optimisations for hybrid SSHD drives. The SATA Express specification was first introduced in January 2013 and the industry consortium that is SATA-IO ratified it as part of revision 3.2 of the SATA spec yesterday.Enabling SATA and PCIe storage solutions to coexist will bring significant benefits to users. The SATA-IO group spells out the benefits thus;...

<p>The next version of Windows is expected sometime this fall, but ZDNet’s Mary Jo Foley is narrowing the timeline down even further, reporting that the system will move to manufacturers this month and hit store shelves in October.</p> <p>That follows more or less the same timing as the 8.1’s predecessor, Windows 8, which went to manufacturers ahead of general distribution on Aug. 1 of last year. Windows 8 was available to general consumers on Oct. 26, of last year.</p>

Sandforce adds a working Shield and DVS to controllersLSI is talking about two new technologies in their Sandforce controllers that deal with space and error correction. One is really simple to explain while the other is a whole lot more complex in implementation and description.The complex technology is an error correction scheme that LSI calls Shield. This is a five layer software LDPC (Low Density Parity Check) scheme among other related error correction, detection, and mitigation technologies that they claim can both prevent many errors and extend the life of low write lifetime flash quite a bit. Shield fits between...

There are various things out there. But I could not find something to set this up. VoIP (Voice over IP) has been around for a long time. I would not mind just using headphones and a microphone to make the phone call. There is a website IPKall.com that will give you a Washington state telephone number. But I am not sure how you set up the VoIP part. I tried to see if there were any other threads on this. I guess using SKYPE is one way to do this, but not to call someone else who has a real...

On September 4, South Korean mobile phone maker Samsung Electronics should make official the next device in its popular Galaxy Note series (namely the Galaxy Note III), and some more info on what the handset will pack in terms of hardware specs has emerged. At least two flavors of the device will arrive on the market, featuring model numbers SM-N900 and SM-N9005, with different processors inside, and each targeted at various markets out there. According to a recent article on SamMobile, both Galaxy Note III iterations will arrive on the market with a 5.68-inch Full HD (1920 x 1080 pixels)...

A couple of weeks ago I wrote about the incredible spectacle of the European arm of the Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB) attacking Mozilla on the grounds that the latter had "lost its values" because it insisted on defending the users' rights to control how cookies were used on their systems. Now, given the barrage of mockery from all sides that this monumentally daft tactic has provoked, you might have expected wiser counsels to prevail, and for the IAB to have crawled into some quiet little corner in the hope that people would stop making fun of it, and just forget...

After a steep – 33% – decline in unit shipments in the second calendar quarter of the year, Acer Group now wants to shrink its Microsoft Windows-based offerings and expand product lines that utilize operating systems from Google, such as Android or Chrome. The company seems to be serious about the plan as it wants to grow its “non-Windows” business as quick as possible. "We are trying to grow our non-Windows business as soon as possible. Android is very popular in smartphones and dominant in tablets. I also see a new market there for Chromebooks," said Jim Wang, the president...

Display failing again, software issue. Jim, this is starting to become a reoccurring issue.

Sales of iPads jumped with the introduction of the iPad Mini, but are otherwise stagnant. Ritchie King/Quartz Apple sold 5.4 million fewer iPads in its most recent quarter than it did in the same three months a year ago. That’s despite having introduced a whole new iPad, the Mini, in the intervening year. The drop in iPad sales, from 17 million to 14.6 million, is all the more surprising because iPhone sales continued to grow, from 26 million to 31.2 million.Use of those iPads, however, is running in the opposite direction. Data just released from Adobe show that, as of...

The MinnowBoard community website reports that Intel is now shipping its MinnowBoard bare-bones PC. It's a bit heftier in price than the Raspberry Pi, costing $199 USD, and can be purchased at Digi-Key, Farnell, Mouser Electronics and Newark. Additional outlets will be added soon. Intel's MinnowBoard sports an Atom E640 SoC clocked at 1 GHz, integrated GMA 600 graphics, 1 GB of DDR2 RAM, and 4 MB of SPI flash for system firmware memory. The I/O portion contains one microSD card slot, one SATA 2 (3 Gb/s) port, two USB host ports, one microUSB-B port, a serial (UART 0)...

I don’t know when it became OK for people to be so open about the weird stuff they are into. I have always lived by the code whatever you do is fine as long as I don’t have to see it. It’s been a mantra for decades. However, since the dawn of the internet people have been very happy to share things about themselves that not everyone wants to know and most of it is downright obscene.

I have an upcoming discussion I want to document, risked 11 bucks on one of the little thumb drive recorders from Ebay. The durn thing is clear as a bell, not hifi of course but clear and strong enough for the mission ahead!Next I will get my super spy camera!!

Looks like Wells Fargo Bank is experiencing computer glitches. I contacted them on a transaction which I did not make and they insisted I close all my accounts. However, after talking with numerous WFB reps I found out that no web login activity for my account was logged for date in question for the transaction of interest - which was verified by WFB rep to be an on-line transaction. So how can an on-line transaction be processed/requested when their logs indicate no login to request any such transaction. And I made no such request in any form. Either WFB has...

Just watch....Linky Here

1993 vs. 2013

What good is a social media site that punishes people for communicating with each other? That's what a growing number of users are asking after being punished and banned from Facebook for making innocuous comments in posts to others. One of the most egregious examples happened Friday when Examiner.com's Joseph L. Parker thanked someone for liking an article he wrote. On Friday, Parker sent Examiner a screenshot of the message he received telling him his message of thanks was considered "spam" and informing him he was temporarily blocked from posting comments. This kind of complaint is not unusual, but has...

Edit One of the biggest retailers in the world is rumored to be making an Android gaming console.Website GameInformer reports that Amazon is readying an Android console for release by year's end. The console will be bundled with its own controller, and Amazon will be making use of the Android apps already available on its Appstore.On Twitter, Kotaku columnist Superannuation isn't a hundred percent sold on this rumor, but writes that Amazon has apparently been hiring game talent to build up the platform's game library. For instance, Superannuation points out that the executive producer for Gears of War 3 and...

6:15 PMIf Windows Phone really does start to take off, it will be in large part thanks to the efforts of Nokia, the Finnish device manufacturer that has come under withering criticism from both analysts and investors for choosing Microsoft’s mobile platform over Google’s Android. Seeking Alpha has posted a compilation of charts showing that Nokia has been slowly increasing its market share in many key markets, which is helping Windows Phone gain a foothold in its efforts to become the world’s No. 3 mobile operating system.As you can see from the chart, which is based on numbers from Kantar...

This Martha Trowbridge thread has been pulled. Pulled on 08/05/2013 4:02:08 PM PDT by Admin Moderator, reason: Do not post from sources requiring registration. Okay What, you mean? Like Traitor Republic?

Police say woman's body found after man went to police station and admitted to shooting herSouth Miami Police are investigating after a man showed up at a police station and said he shot and killed his wife Thursday. Police said they discovered the woman inside a townhouse in the 5500 block of Southwest 67th Avenue after 31-year-old Derek Medina showed up at the station and said he killed his wife during an argument. A child was also found unharmed at the scene. Medina posted a photo of his wife after the shooting on a Facebook page belonging to him. The...

Police say woman's body found after man went to police station and admitted to shooting herSouth Miami Police are investigating after a man showed up at a police station and said he shot and killed his wife Thursday. Police said they discovered the woman inside a townhouse in the 5500 block of Southwest 67th Avenue after 31-year-old Derek Medina showed up at the station and said he killed his wife during an argument. A child was also found unharmed at the scene. Medina posted a photo of his wife after the shooting on a Facebook page belonging to him. The...

People use Reddit to discuss all sorts of topics. Many discussions are lighthearted, others are serious, and some are dark. A recent post by Redditor Pilot94 falls into the latter category. Posting to the r/OffMyChest section of the site, Pilot94 wrote a post titled “I should be in prison.� As noted by Gawker, the post starts with some background information: the author was a military child who’d moved all around the world. His family then settled in a small Texas town. The author reconnected with his fifth grade crush, and they started to date. After three months, she cheated on...

Total Available PC Gaming Hardware Market to Shrink to $17.791 Billion This Year In a challenged PC market one user group is standing firm against the winds of change blowing many casual computer users to the "good enough" mindset behind sales of tablets and cloud computing devices – PC gamers. PC gamers continue to buy and build with a fervency that could be compared to motorcycle, 4x4, and sports car enthusiasts, always looking for more speed, power, utility, and handling."Not only is gaming becoming an even more important purchasing influence of PC sales due to the offloading of more basic...

Any idea why FR is only displaying about 25% of page. What's the solution?

Intel Initiates Construction of D1X Module 2 Development Facility in Hillsboro, Oregon Intel Corp. on Friday confirmed the beginning of construction of the fab D1X module 2. The new facility will be the world’s first semiconductor manufacturing factory processing 450mm wafers, which will be used primarily for development purposes and which will lead the way for the whole multi-billion dollar industry.“Construction of D1X module 2 has begun,” said Chuck Mulloy, a spokesman for Intel, during a brief conversation with X-bit labs.Mr. Mulloy did not produce any more details about the project that is supposed to cost Intel about $2 billion only...

Crossbar RRAM: 20 Times Faster, 20 Times More Energy Efficient Crossbar, a start-up company pioneering a new category of very high capacity and high-performance non-volatile memory, unveiled its Crossbar resistive RAM (RRAM) technology. This new non-volatile memory will be capable of storing up to 1TB of data on a single 200mm2 chip, enabling massive amounts of data to be stored on an IC smaller than a postage stamp. Crossbar also said it has developed a working Crossbar memory array at a commercial fab.“Non-volatile memory is ubiquitous today, as the storage technology at the heart of the over a trillion dollar...

Hardware makers often sing the praises of their latest and greatest flash memory, but the folks at Crossbar are ready to show them up with resistive RAM (RRAM) that they've been quietly working on. Compared to NAND, RRAM comes in at half the size and boasts 20 times faster write speeds (140MB/s), reads data at 17MB per second, guzzles 20 times less power and has 10 times more endurance. Since RRAM is non-volatile memory, it can keep data even when it's powered off, á la NAND. As if that weren't enough, 3D stacking construction allows for several terabytes of storage,...

As I was settling in to read a 500 post thread, the gremlin came back.

On a day when terror threats continued to dominate the U.S. headlines, the Secret Service -- a division of the Homeland Security Department since 2003 -- tweeted the following message: "Contact your nearest field office with time-sensitive or critical info or to report a tweet," said one message.

It doesn't matter if you're a saint or a frequent sinner, a sailor with a potty mouth or a monk who took a vow of silence. If you own a computer, then at some point you've belted out a line of obscenities that would make Andrew Dice Clay wince in astonishment. PCs have a way of bringing out the worst in us when things go wrong, and according to a recent nationwide survey conducted by Harris Interactive on behalf of Crucial in June 2013, some even tend to get physical. Out of over 2,000 U.S. adults ages 18 and older...

Mozilla uploaded a few hours ago, August 6, the final packages of the Mozilla Firefox 23.0 web browser for all supported platforms, including Linux, Mac OS X and Windows. The brand-new Mozilla Firefox 23 web browser will be officially announced by Mozilla later today, but you can download the final version right now (see download link at the end of the article) from the official Mozilla FTP servers. Among the highlights of Mozilla Firefox 23.0 we can mention that mixed content blocking has been enabled to protect users from eavesdroppers and man-in-the-middle attacks on HTTPS pages, the about:memory's functional UI...

Diablo Disrupts Latency and Performance Metrics for the Enterprise with Memory Channel Flash Solution Diablo Technologies, an innovator in advanced memory system interface products, has introduced memory channel storage (MCS), a transformational new storage and system memory solution, resetting the bar for latency and throughput for enterprise applications. MCS technology is essentially a solid-state drive plugged into a DIMM [dual in-line memory module] slot."Performance in storage and density in DRAM have massively fallen behind the curve of CPU capability and growing data capacity needs, which ultimately reduces application performance and increases TCO for users. Flash is the key to a...

Resistive NVRAM provides a cornucopia of advantages over NAND, Crossbar claimsMemory-making start-up Crossbar came out of stealth mode on Monday, announcing that it has developed what it characterizes as "very high capacity and high-performance non-volatile memory" based on a new approach to resistive RAM (RRAM) technology, and capable of storing one terabyte of data on a single-layer 200mm2 chip.That's terabyte, not terabit. "With our working Crossbar array, we have achieved all the major technical milestones that prove our RRAM technology is easy to manufacture and ready for commercialization," said Crossbar CEO George Minassian when announcing his company's new NAND flash...

Scorching speeds shootout, if you've money to burnReview Earlier this year we took a look at SSD caching, an alternative way of getting some SSD performance added to a system without too much strain put on the finances. So how about a gander at the other end of the spectrum – huge capacity and performance and a total disregard for the budgetEnter the KingSpec Multicore MC1S81M2T, a 2TB PCI-Express SSD costing a mere three-and-a-half grand. KingSpec Multicore MC1S81M2T 2TB PCI-E SSD KingSpec may be a new name to a lot of people, but it has been producing flash-based drives since...

Spinning rust merchants eye up flashy future Seagate has invested in a bespoke chip designer that can whack new interfaces to the hard disk giant's products.The silicon slinger is privately-held eASIC, which was tapped up for its "expertise in fast time-to-market, low-cost and low-power" custom chip knowhow, we're told. The draw for Seagate seems to be the ability to add new interfaces to its hybrid flash-disk and flash products at a faster clip; interfaces such as NVMe and SoP (SCSI over PCIe).Ronnie Vasishta, eASIC CEO and president, was bullish about the deal: "Using our eASIC Nextreme-3 28nm single via configuration...

WeChooseTheMoon.org was designed to celebrate the Fortieth anniversary of the Apollo 11 Lunar landing by developing an interactive recreation of the event. The site uses Flash to mesh archival video, audio, & photos into an experience that will make you feel as if you too had walked on the moon that day.

Google joins consortium along with Nvidia, Mellanox, Tyan With its embedded Power chip business under assault from makers of ARM and x86 processors – and to a lesser extent MIPS chips – and having lost the game console business to AMD, IBM had to do something dramatic to expand the addressable market for its Power processors. And that something, which Big Blue has just rolled out, is called the OpenPower Consortium. which takes a few pages from the ARM Holdings playbook to breathe some new life into the Power architecture.Search and infrastructure giant Google has joined the OpenPower consortium, as...

I have an old laptop connected to my TV to share my network and wifi. Is there a set top box that would allow me to access my network and internet with surfing ability? The boxes I see seem to be limited to Hulu and Netflix but not able to look at my hard drive in the other room. If I wanted music or films stored on the bed room puter, is that possible with a set top box? I wouldn't do away with my laptop unless I could get the same service as the laptop. Also, what if I...

I have literally lost hundreds of pages, threads and posts this way.

The latest state-of-the-art color 3D printing technology is used to bring your digital sculpture back into the real world. Voxel by voxel, layer by layer, the three-dimensional portrait grows into the (almost) final product as if by magic.

Saints Row 4 has been denied a rating by the Australian Classification Board under its Guidelines for the Classification of Computer Games.

A luxury toilet controlled by a smartphone app is vulnerable to attack, according to security experts... the Pin code for every model is hardwired to be four zeros (0000), meaning that it cannot be reset... An attacker could ... cause the unit to unexpectedly open/close the lid, activate bidet or air-dry functions, causing discomfort or distress to [the] user."

Just a heads up, if you're stuck with Windows 8 there is a free program called "CLASSIC SHELL" which gives you a start button. You can even choose to simulate XP.I'm stuck with this rig, but that doesn't mean I'm gonna put up with it!

Summary: When it comes to low latency and high-bandwidth the memory bus is hard to beat. But a terabyte? Diablo Technologies has announced one. In-memory computing is all the rage. But there are problems with large memory servers: DIMMs use a lot of power and board space; and, DIMMs are expensive.But when it comes to low latency and high-bandwidth the memory bus is hard to beat. But a terabyte? Diablo Technologies has announced one.The secret is using flash instead of DRAM. Flash is much denser, lower-cost and uses much less power. And cheaper too.As a result you can put...

My daughter's XP desktop computer crashed, and I am replacing it with another XP box. The old main drive is a slave drive on the new machine, and I can get all the document and picture files. Firefox is being a bear, however....is there any way to recover the Bookmarks file from the old disk and merge it onto the new one? If I had exported a bookmarks.htm file BEFORE the crash, I would be fine...but even running Firefox from the old drive won't seem to let me grab the bookmarks.

Depressing news for those of us who appreciate great prices on computer gear and component parts. The Geeks website now displays a simple page explaining that all ordering has now ceased. Competition appears to be the overriding reason, and a general unwillingness to have been forced to this point is quite apparent. I, for one, will miss all the great deals they offer, and have offered for many years.

Gilroy police and agents from the Department of Justice Thursday night raided what they are calling an illegal online casino posing as an Internet cafe, taking boxes of computers, slot machines and other items within the shop. On Friday morning, Liberty PCS is on First Street in a strip mall in the southern part of Santa Clara County was closed, a sign on its door announced that it had been shuttered by authorities. Calls to Liberty PCS were not immediately returned. Gilroy Police Sgt. Joseph Dears told NBC Bay Area that an investigation was launched this spring with undercover agents...

Dell Initiates Shipments of Ophelia HDMI Sticks to Testers Dell, one of the largest suppliers of personal computers in the world, has begun to ship its credit-card-sized device that can turn any screen with an HDMI input into a personal computer running Google Android operating system to beta testers. The product should cost around $100 and will eventually compete with gadgets like Google’s Chromecast device.Code-named project Ophelia, the device looks like a big USB drive, but it packs much more than just NAND flash storage. Project Ophelia functions as a multipurpose Citrix or VMware thin client, a web client for...

Just over a month after making available a mobile version of its Office suite for iPhone users, Microsoft is doing the same with an Android version of Office Mobile. And just like it did with the iPhone version, Microsoft is tying the Android version of Office Mobile to Office 365. Users who want to use the mobile versions of Word, Excel and PowerPoint on their Android phones will need to have an Office 365 subscription, such as Office 365 Home Premium, Office 365 ProPlus or these other SKUs to get them.Office Mobile for Android phones (known officially as "Office Mobile...

Commentary: Easy to watch anything on the Internet on your TV*****************************************************Thinking of C-SPAN from their Archives.*********************************By Carol Kopp Here’s what all the noise was about on Monday morning. At Netflix headquarters, people were cheering. At the big cable companies , they were shaking in their boots. At Amazon , one executive might have been trying to explain what went wrong. At Google , they were just quietly smiling. It was all about a thumb-size, $35 gadget called Google Chromecast that came out last week with little fanfare, almost as an afterthought to the announcement of a new version of its...