W3C: HTML5 will be finished in 2014

Those curious about the final release date for the hotly debated HTML5 need wonder no more: The W3C (World Wide Web Consortium) plans to finalize the standard by July 2014, the organization announced Monday.
"This is the first time we've been able to answer people's questions of when it will be done," said Ian Jacobs, head of W3C marketing and communications. "More and more people from more and more industries are asking when it will be done. They require stability in the standard and very high levels of interoperability."
HTML5 is the next version of the HyperText Markup Language, a platform-neutral standard used worldwide for rendering Web pages. Concerns over when the standard would be finalized have escalated in recent years, as Apple, Google and Microsoft touted the still-unfinished standard as the basis for building Web applications.
Despite the enthusiasm of those companies and others, many have cautioned against using the standard before it is finalized. Because of its complexity, estimates as to when HTML5 would be finished have varied wildly, from a year or two to not until 2022.
The last call for feedback has already been announced, for May 22 this year.
From then until 2014, the HTML Working Group will have several tasks to complete before the standard is finalized, Jacobs said. The group has to review and address the comments submitted up to the May deadline. The feedback from this "Last Call" is expected to be quite considerable and could result in another revision of the document.
The group also has to design a test suite, one that can encompass the wide range of different browsers and platforms that will render pages and Web applications written in HTML5.
Such interoperability is crucial, given the expanding range of devices accessing the Web, including televisions, tablets and phones. "The target is broad interoperability," Jacobs said.
The W3C expects no new features to be added after the Last Call. From that point on the group will take feedback only from implementers and through trials of the test suite, said Philippe Le Hégaret, lead for the W3C Interaction Domain, which oversees the development of HTML, CSS (Cascading Style Sheets), SVG (Scalable Vector Graphics) and other Web standards.
As the working group finalizes HTML5 it will start considering new features and improvements for subsequent versions. While members of the working group have decreed they will do away with version numbering of the standard, neither Jacobs nor Le Hégaret would definitively state that there won't be future numbered versions, such as an HTML6 or HTML5.1.
For now, the organization will classify the work being done under the working title of "HTML.next," Jacobs said.
The W3C also announced on Monday that it has extended the charter of the HTML Working Group to 2014. The HTML Working Group is comprised of more than 400 members from browser vendors, software developers and other organizations reliant on the Web standard.
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Nokia CEO quashes talk of sale to Microsoft

Despite a sweeping deal with Microsoft on Windows Phone, Elop dispels rumors that a Nokia buyout is imminent
Microsoft won't be buying Nokia anytime soon despite a sweeping Windows Phone agreement announced by the vendors last week, Nokia CEO Stephen Elop told reporters Sunday.
"There was no discussion of acquisition" during negotiations of a pact that will have Nokia phones running Windows Phone 7, Elop said at a crowded press conference on the eve of the Mobile World Congress here.
"The best approach for Nokia was to enter into a deep partnership, but to respect that there's a huge chunk of Nokia that's not in [Microsoft's interest]," he added.
Several analysts have suggested that the Nokia-Windows Phone partnership could lead to Microsoft buying the Finnish company. Analysts said that despite the high cost of such an acquisition, the fact that mobile devices such as smartphones and laptops will play a central role in the emerging computing and communications landscape could make it successful.
Also, analysts noted Microsoft would capture Nokia's distribution and manufacturing capabilities, providing a huge boost to its efforts to increase its small share of the smartphone market.
Elop acknowledged he had heard the speculation that the cell phone maker might be an acquisition target.
Gartner said Microsoft had 3.4% share of the smartphone market in the fourth quarter of 2010, putting it in fifth place.
Symbian-based devices made by Nokia and others led the smartphone market with a share of 32.6%, Gartner said. Nokia's own devices had a 28.5% share of the smartphone market in the quarter, Elop said on Sunday.
While Elop didn't rule out a future purchase of Nokia by Microsoft, he said the focus of the partnership now is the "next billion" Windows Phone-based devices that will be produced by Nokia. "The opportunity for shared value was first priority," he said.
Elop also defended the plan to use Windows Phone on Nokia hardware at a time when few others, such as Samsung, HTC and LG, have committed to Microsoft. He suggested other device manufacturers will move in that direction and say, "We'll compete in the Windows Phone ecosystem."
He added that the first priority is to compete with Android devices. "We have shifted from a battle of devices to a war of ecosystems," he said.
Elop also introduced Jo Harlow, who was promoted last week to executive vice president of smart devices at Nokia. She previously held a chief marketing post.
Harlow said a Nokia device running Windows Phone will be available sometime this year, and she presented two slides of concept Nokia devices, including one slide that has already been widely seen on blogs.
"It's an exciting contemporary and modern platform," Harlow told reporters. "We are the partner that will bring innovative design and hardware to make great mobile products with Windows Phone."
She said teams from Microsoft and Nokia are already working together in Iceland on the first Windows Phone product.
Elop also sought to lessen fears of developers writing applications for Nokia's Symbian and Meego operating systems.
"You'll see volumes of Symbian devices in coming months and years ... which gives us the ability to carefully manage the transition of Symbian and Windows phones," Elop said. Nokia's plans for Symbian devices will provide "a huge opportunity for developers," he added.
Elop said that Meego devices will ship this year to take advantage of Qt, a cross-platform developer framework. But he added that Nokia has no plans to put Qt on Windows Phone. "It would confuse developers and consumers," he said.
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iPad to lead 400% surge in NAND flash use this year

12.3 exabytes of NAND flash expected to ship by 2014
Apple's iPad is leading an almost five-fold surge in NAND flash memory use this year as consumers gobble up tablets in increasing numbers, according to a report released today by HIS iSuppli.
The consumption of NAND flash memory chips, which are used to build solid-state drives (SSDs) used in mobile devices, is expected to soar to 2.3 billion gigabytes (2.3 exabytes) this year, up a 382.4% from 476.8 million gigabytes (or 476.8 petabytes) in 2010.
According to iSuppli, shipments of NAND for tablets shows no sign of slowing down, eventually hitting 12.3 exabytes of capacity shipped by 2014.
When measured against the total supply of NAND flash, memory in tablets will represent 11.8% of the supply this year, up from a 4.3% in 2010. By 2014, tablet memory will represent 16% of all NAND flash.
Ultimately, the NAND landscape appears to favor entertainment-focused tablets, like the iPad, over computing-oriented models that will soon be released using a Windows/Intel platform, iSuppli indicated. The high-density requirements for the latter category of tablets will mean higher prices for the devices, which could deter buyers.
Conversely, tablet makers will be pressured to keep prices down, which could serve to limit the amount of flash memory in each unit.
"The bump in NAND consumption among tablets is likely to come from devices such as Apple Inc.'s iPad as well as a raft of tablet devices powered by the rival Android operating system expected to hit the market this year," said Dee Nguyen, analyst for memory and storage at HIS iSuppli. "Together, the iPad and Android-based tablets form one strand of the tablet experience offered by manufacturers -- one centering on Internet-based media consumption. For such tablets, internal storage capacity is less an issue because the devices are intended to provide entertainment, not a full PC computing experience."
According to iSuppli, average flash memory densities will range from 27.1GB for non-iPad slates to 41.5GB in the iPad. Currently, NAND flash costs about $1.20 per gigabyte.
While still an order of magnitude more expensive than hard disk drives, solid-state storage is taking over the market in mobile devices, from smart phones to ultra-portable laptops, because of its greater performance and durability.
Soon there will be a second surge in tablet sales led by new products based on Windows/Intel platform. Those tablets will be sold by the likes of Lenovo, Samsung and Hewlett-Packard and will have solid-state storage with capacities ranging from 32GB to 64GB, Nguyen said.
The expected high volume of iPad and Android tablet sales will end up contributing significantly to NAND consumption by 2012, HIS iSuppli said.
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Google offers jobs to Nokia employees

Google seems all set to welcome with open arms employees of Nokia who are in the firing line, thus adding a new dimension to the new battle that started with the mobile major joining hands with Google's arch rival Microsoft.

Though there is no official confirmation from the search engine giant yet, one of its leading recruiter has tweeted Nokia software engineers are welcome to apply.

"Any Nokia software engineers need a job? We're hiring: www.google.com/jobs," read the tweet posted by Google EMEA (Europe, the Middle East and Africa) recruiter Aidan Biggins.

The world's top mobile phone maker Nokia plans to significantly cut jobs as it transitions to a new strategy involving a partnership with software giant Microsoft, its chief executive had said on Friday.

"There will be substantial reductions in employment in various locations around the world and that too will affect Finland," Stephen Elop told reporters in London after the company announced major shake-up in the face of intense competition.

"We don't have any specific comments about who and what level of people will be hit," he had added in a webcast. In October 2010, the company had announced 1,800 job cuts.

Nokia had last week said it is adopting Microsoft's mobile phone platform as its primary operating system. Seemingly commenting on which Google vice-president of engineering Vic Gundotra, had commented via Twitter, "Two turkeys don't make an eagle."

Interestingly, he parroted what Nokia EVP Anssi Vanjoki had said in 2005 on BenQ buying Siemens's handset business to take on the might (then) of Nokia.
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Google Fights against Spam

During this time, google search engine accused of being a nest for spam that lies in their ads. The cyber criminals managed to get their spam because spam is paired using a free pass. This of course is directly contradicted by the California-based company. Not only denied a place spam, Google promised to fight against all spam hiding through ads posted on their services. Google in its attitude will be dealing mainly with the fields of content that was shallow, and of low quality.
Reported by PC Magazine, tactical step taken by Google is to launch two major algorithmic changes, to combat the fields of content that includes spam.
Google will take action against sites that violated the guidelines of our quality standards, explained Matt Cutts from Google. Some researchers found a number of spammers has proven to utilize the search engine giant Google as a tool to send spam to avoid tracking installed email filter.
Based on the latest reports MessageLa, found the number of blocked websites increased approximately 91 percent, from 2076 sites in June, and approximately 3968 in July, with the largest percentage of the website is exposed to SQL injection attacks.
Most of the spam that is found will be automatically downloaded by bringing a sort of anti-spyware program Antivirus XP 2008. Programs that look genuine but fake ask the user to buy a license.
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GM recalls 2,800 imported cars in China: Report

Shanghai General Motors is to recall 2,806 imported Cadillacs in China to repair faulty suspension , state media said Monday, citing a government statement.

The recall, due to begin on March 21, includes models of the Cadillac CTS produced between June 16, 2008 and April 20, 2009, the government's General Administration of Quality Supervision, Inspection and Quarantine said on its website, according to the Xinhua news agency.

The statement said the company would repair or replace rear suspension track bars of the recalled vehicles because some nuts on the bars are likely to loosen and cause worn screw threads.

This could lead to a loosened track bar under extreme conditions, which is unsafe when travelling fast, it said.

China's booming market has become increasingly important to US auto giant General Motors as demand weakens in the States. China, where GM's international operations are now based, overtook the US as the world's biggest auto market in 2009.

GM has several joint ventures in China including Shanghai General Motors, a partnership with China's largest auto maker SAIC Motor.

GM said on Wednesday last week its sales in China jumped 22.3 percent year-on-year in January to set a new monthly record.
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Facebook News Feed filtering can make friends vanish

If some of your friends seem to have become unusually quiet on Facebook, it may not be their fault.The social network quietly changed the settings that govern what updates appear in the News Feed.
Before, clicking the "Most Recent" link atop that list of updates would give you exactly that: the most recent updates from your friends, instead of the automatically edited selection available under "Top News." Now, however, the Most Recent list can itself be filtered: Facebook can hide some updates by friends if you haven't interacted with them on the site recently.
(In a similar move, Facebook now sorts posts on pages from fans by their perceived relevance, not the order in which they were posted.)
To check, click the Most Recent link (twice if you're now viewing the Top News list) and select "Edit Options..." from the menu that appears below it. You'll see a dialog pop open, as seen above; its "Show posts from:" menu will offer a choice of "Friends and pages you interact with most" or "All of your friends and pages." The latter will restore things to their prior working, showing everything from your friends (and the companies, organizations and public figures whose pages you've endorsed with a click of their Like buttons).
In fairness to Facebook, it's tackling one of the harder problems in computing: finding out what's important to a user and hiding what's not. This challenge comes up in one category of application after another and has spawned solutions as diverse as Gmail's "Priority Inbox" and the smart playlists that music programs offer to ensure you can keep rocking along to 2003's greatest hits.
But this sort of change requires better documentation than Facebook has provided so far. More choices in News Feed filtering would also help. Here are a few options that I'd like to see the site add:
* Hide politically themed updates from friends I tolerate despite their reactionary/pinko leanings.
* Hide politically themed updates from friends of similar political views who just can't shut up about them.
* Hide really syrupy Valentine's Day greetings and other public displays of digital affection.
* Hide all updates from Facebook games.
* Show only the first four copies of a joke, link, photo or video once it starts to go viral across the site.
* Hide status updates that a friend has cross-posted from Twitter, but show all other posts by that friend.
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Brazil great Ronaldo confirms retirement

SAO PAULO: Three-time FIFA World Player of the Year Ronaldo, whose goalscoring genius led Brazil to the 2002 World Cup title, confirmed his retirement on Monday at the age of 34.

The tearful Corinthians striker announced his decision at a press conference in Sao Paulo.

"I'm stopping my career as a professional footballer," he said, his voice breaking. "It's been a beautiful, emotional, marvellous career.

"These last two years, I've had a long series of injuries, from one side to the other, one leg to the other, one muscle to the other. The pain pushed me to think about the end of my career."

Ronaldo also revealed that he suffered from a thyroid problem that had made it difficult to control his weight.

"Four years ago, in Milan, I discovered that I suffered from an under-active thyroid that slowed down my metabolism and that to control it, I had to take hormones that weren't authorised in football as they were considered a form of doping," he said.

"Lots of people must regret having made jokes about my weight. But I feel no anger towards anyone."

Having earlier indicated that he hoped to play on until the end of the year, injuries and Corinthians' early elimination from the Copa Libertadores prompted him to bring forward his retirement.

During a glittering 14-year spell in Europe, Ronaldo scored goals at a prolific rate for PSV Eindhoven, Barcelona, Inter Milan, Real Madrid and AC Milan, before returning to Brazil in 2009.

He won the World Cup with Brazil in 2002 and became the leading scorer in World Cup finals tournaments when he scored his 15th goal at the 2006 tournament in Germany.

He was twice named European Footballer of the Year, in 1997 and 2002, and finished his international career with 62 goals in 97 appearances.

Widely regarded as one of the greatest players of all time, 'El Fenomeno' (The Phenomenon) won the World Cup with Brazil for the first time in 1994, though on that occasion the 17-year-old was part of the squad and did not play.

In 1998, he was among the losing finalists, beaten 3-0 at Stade de France by a rampant French side that included the inspirational Zinedine Zidane.

Brazil's star striker suffered a convulsive fit on the eve of the match and was removed from the starting line-up.

In a dramatic changing-room re-shuffle, he was reinstated just before kick-off but was a shadow of the intimidating forward who had scored four goals in the run-up to the final.

But the 2002 tournament was where he made history.

Shrugging off injury in the tournament, which was hosted by Japan and South Korea, he played a key role in helping Brazil to the trophy, scoring both goals in his country's 2-0 win over Germany in the final in Yokohoma.

At the 2006 World Cup in Germany he took his World Cup tally to 15 goals, surpassing the previous record held by Gerd Mueller by one goal.

Ronaldo, who began his career with Cruzeiro, had to fight back from three career-threatening knee injuries over the course of his career.

He was sidelined while playing for Inter by a knee injury in 1999 only to damage the same knee in his comeback for the club in February 2000, effectively keeping him out of action until March 2002.

In February 2008 he ruptured a tendon in his right knee playing for AC Milan against Livorno, an injury that ended his career in Europe.

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Adobe Launches E-form Service

Adobe Launches E-form Service
Adobe has launched a service for conducting online surveys that the company says should ease the process of setting them up and analyzing their results.
"Form and survey management is traditionally a very time-consuming process, often times involving IT," said Mark Grilli, Adobe director of product marketing. "You'd use one mechanism for retrieving information, and another for doing analysis. We thought having an end-to-end solution would give knowledge workers the tools they need to get their jobs done."
The hosted service, called Adobe Forms Central, allows organizations to develop a customized survey form that would be accessible from the Internet. Adobe has endeavored to make the service easy enough to use so that the task of conducting surveys can be done without the intervention of IT staff, Grilli said.
With Forms Central, the user creates a form online at the Adobe site, either using a set of templates or by designing a form from scratch. The forms will be based on HTML, making them accessible from any Web browser on any platform. Forms can be customized for each participant, with personalized name and message. Adobe provides a Web address for the finished form, which then can be mailed to possible participants.
The service will also compile the results into an online spreadsheet, which can be analyzed or embedded in another Web page. A dashboard shows a summary of the results. The administrator tools are accessed by a Web browser, using Adobe Flash.
With this offering, Adobe is entering a mature and highly competitive market, as FormsCentral will compete against similar Web survey services offered by SurveyMonkey, Zoomerang, FormStack and others. Nonetheless, the company is confident this service will stand apart from competitors.
"We have a unique approach to analysis. Many other solutions abdicate analysis to an internal tool," Grilli said.
Instead of downloading the resulting survey data to a spreadsheet, a user can search, sort and filter the response data directly in Adobe's service. Multiple participants are allowed to analyze the data at the same time, bringing a collaborative feeling to the service. The service also allows multiple participants to collaborate in the design of the form as well.
FormsCentral is not Adobe's first foray into the world of electronic and digital forms. The company's PDF format, of course, can be used as a digital form that allows the user to fill information into data fields. And the company's LiveCycle suite of workflow tools features a set of electronic-form design and analysis capabilities.
As an Internet-based hosted offering, however, FormsCentral is suited for surveying a more geographically dispersed set of participants than can be easily accessed with the enterprise-focused LiveCycle.
The service will initially be offered only in English, though the company plans to offer additional languages in the near future.
Pricing for the service, available Monday, comes in three tiers. A free trial includes the ability to post one form and receive up to 50 responses. The "Basic" subscription service, priced at US$14.99 a month, includes the ability to post five forms and allows up to 500 responses per form. The "Plus" service, for $199, allows unlimited forms, with 5,000 responses per form.
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Adobe Patches 42 Bugs in Reader, Flash

Adobe yesterday patched 29 vulnerabilities in Reader, it's PDF viewer, and 13 more in Flash, the popular Web media browser plug-in, as part of an even larger quarterly security update.

It was the first time that Adobe patched Reader X, the upgrade it issued last November that includes a "sandbox" anti-exploit technology in the Windows version.

Nearly all the Reader bugs were rated "critical," meaning that they could be exploited by attackers to plant malware on an unpatched system, although for several, Adobe wasn't certain that remote code execution was possible. Two of the 29 could lead to cross-site scripting (XSS) attacks, a common tactic by identity thieves who target browsers.

Hackers could exploit one of the vulnerabilities -- a Windows-only flaw -- to gain additional privileges on a machine.

Almost half of the bugs were in Reader's font-, image- or 3-D file-parsing code, Adobe said in the advisory issued on Tuesday.

The updates brought Reader to versions 8.2.6, 9.4.2, an 10.0.1 for Windows and Mac OS X. Linux users must wait until Feb. 28, however, when Adobe will follow with fixes for the Reader edition that works on that operating system.

All but three of the bugs affected Reader X, the upgrade Adobe launched to some fanfare three months ago.

The Windows version of Reader X includes a sandbox, technology that isolates the application from the computer to stop, or at least hinder, attack code from escaping Reader to wreak havoc on the system as a whole.

Reader X's sandbox is based on technologies used by Google and Microsoft. The former sandboxes its Chrome browser, for example, while the latter uses similar defenses to protect Internet Explorer and Office 2010 on Windows.

None of the 26 bugs that impact Reader X are in its sandbox and so cannot be used to bypass its protection, an Adobe spokeswoman confirmed today.

Adobe last updated Reader in mid-November to patch a bug that was had been in play for several weeks prior.

The company also updated Flash Tuesday to patch 13 different vulnerabilities, all labeled critical because they could be exploited to execute attack code. Adobe said eight of the 13 were memory corruption flaws, while others were library loading, integer overflow or font parsing bugs.

Flash reached version 10.2.152.26 with yesterday's security update.

As has been the case for nearly a year, users of Google's Chrome received the new version of Flash in an update to the browser , which Google also issued Tuesday.

Adobe delivered security updates to ColdFusion and Shockwave as well. ColdFusion is Adobe's enterprise-grade Web application server software, and Shockwave remains a popular player for animated Web content.

"It almost seemed like Adobe had their patch cycle for a change," said Andrew Storms, director of security operations for nCircle Security, in a Wednesday interview conducted via instant messaging. "I was surprised by the coordination."

That coordination may have been a one-time deal, Adobe said, because only Reader, and its for-a-fee cousin Acrobat, are patched on a regular schedule.

"That said, we try to schedule security updates for other products on Patch Tuesdays whenever possible, said Adobe spokeswoman Wiebke Lips. "In this case, the Patch Tuesday timing worked for Flash Player, ColdFusion and Shockwave Player as well."

But while Storms applauded the one-day update for several Adobe lines, he pointed out that the company continues to offer only all-or-nothing security updates, unlike Microsoft, which separates its patches into numerous bulletins that users can deploy, or not, as they see fit.

"It's a take it or leave kind of thing, it's very black and white," said Storms. "Pretty much everything is remote code and we have no details to provide insight or decent mitigation if you have to hold off for some reason or another."

In that regard, Adobe's security updates are more like Apple's than Microsoft's.

"The only difference is that with Adobe we know when the lunch lady is going to be serving it up," said Storms, referring to Adobe's practice of scheduling regular updates, something Apple doesn't do.
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Nokia's Microsoft Pact: Why Apple And Google Won't Blink

Nokia's cell phone software has been compared to a turkey, a rotting corpse, and, by the company's own chief executive, a "burning platform" about to be consumed by the "blazing fire" set by its competitors.
These are hardly the analogies one would expect for a company that has been the largest mobile-phone maker in the world for over a decade. Nokia sold nearly 10 times as many phones last year as Apple, that darling of Main Street, Wall Street and Silicon Valley -- 453 million units to the Cupertino company's 47.5 million.
But Nokia's dwindling market share, which dropped 10 percent in a year to 28.9 percent, tells a different story: that of an established company hemorrhaging customers to innovative, nimble rivals who are upending the balance of power more quickly than ever before. According to the research firm Canalys, 2010 saw Google's Android operating system surpass Symbian, Nokia's mobile platform, to become the top smartphone software in the world.
Desperate times call for desperate measures. Early Friday, Nokia announced a deal with Microsoft to abandon its own cellphone software in favor of Microsoft's Windows Phone operating system. The alliance, amicable but not exclusive, marks a strategic effort by both companies to reverse their sagging fortunes in the mobile marketplace.
Yet analysts suggest Nokia still has more to worry about than either Google or Apple.
By allowing Symbian to die off, the Finnish company effectively intends to kill one arm of its business in order to focus almost exclusively on hardware. Turning its back on its software ventures has two major consequences: first, it means Nokia will be forced to rely on third-party companies to supply the brains to its smartphone bodies. Second, it forces Nokia to compete directly with companies like Samsung and HTC that have years of experience focusing solely on developing competitive hardware for choosy consumers who expect ever-sleeker, smarter, faster devices.
"Nokia no longer defines its own destiny and that's a loss," said Sascha Segan, a lead analyst for PCMag Mobile. "Nokia put its destiny in hock to Microsoft. For first time, Nokia's success is very dependent on how often someone else puts out their software platform."
While the move away from software is likely to shrink the company and significantly alter the makeup of its business, experts say such a shift was crucial to Nokia's survival.
"It's probably the best choice among bad choices," Gartner analyst Michael Gartenberg said. "But again, when you're standing on a burning platform, your options are limited. You have to get off and get off quickly."
Though teaming up with Microsoft was a drastic measure for Nokia, analysts say Apple and Google will barely blink. Neither Redmond nor Espoo has unveiled a secret weapon: Nokia and Microsoft's Windows Phone are both known quantities, neither of which have thus far stood in the way of Android or the iPhone. And while Nokia and Microsoft are powerful brands with distinguished legacies and still-robust market share, they lack momentum in the marketplace. Windows Phone 7, Microsoft's bold attempt to reinvent its mobile offering, was a critical success that wowed reviewers but has failed to spur an influx of consumers. It's an iPhone rival, not an iPhone killer.
"My guess is that it's business as usual in Cupertino," Gartenberg said of Apple's reaction to the Nokia and Microsoft announcement. "Apple tends to say, 'here's our strategy, we're going to execute against it.'"
That Nokia picked Windows Phone over Android is a loss for Google -- Google executive Vic Gundotra griped about the "two turkeys" in a tweet -- though not a crippling one. And after all, there is still a chance Nokia may turn to Google to power a future line of phones.
"This will not cause either [Apple or Google] to worry more than they were already. These companies are on their toes," Segan said. "You could even say this is better for Google and Apple because there is no disruptive surprise to deal with. For a while now, Symbian has been a rotting corpse Google and Apple are taking bites out of."
Ultimately, the products of the new partnership are what will determine whether "Nokiasoft" will be able to upset the balance of power in the ever-more-important smartphone market.
"They have to ship something that is interesting, compelling and that captures the hearts and minds of consumers," Gartenberg said. "Nothing more, nothing less."
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Fleeting fluctuations in superconductivity disappear close to transition temperature

As part of an ongoing effort to uncover details of how high-temperature superconductors carry electrical current with no resistance, scientists at Johns Hopkins University and the U.S. Department of Energy's Brookhaven National Laboratory have measured fluctuations in superconductivity across a wide range of temperatures using terahertz spectroscopy. Their technique allows them to see fluctuations lasting mere billionths of a billionth of a second, and reveals that these fleeting fluctuations disappear 10-15 Kelvin (K) above the transition temperature (Tc) at which superconductivity sets in.
"Our findings suggest that in cuprate superconductors, the transition to the non-superconducting state is driven by a loss of coherence among the electron pairs," said Brookhaven physicist Ivan Bozovic, a co-author on a paper describing the results in Nature Physics online, February 13, 2011.
Scientists have been searching for an explanation of high-Tc superconductivity in cuprates since these materials were discovered some 25 years ago. Because they can operate at temperatures much warmer than conventional superconductors, which must be cooled to near absolute zero (0 K or -273 degrees Celsius), high- Tc superconductors have the potential for real world applications. If scientists can unravel the current-carrying mechanism, they may even be able to discover or design versions that operate at room temperature for applications such as zero-loss power transmission lines. For this reason, many researchers believe that understanding how this transition to superconductivity occurs in cuprates is one of the most important open questions in physics today.
In conventional superconductors, electron pairs form at the transition temperature and condense into a collective, coherent state to carry current with no resistance. In high- Tc varieties, which can operate at temperatures as high as 165 K, there are some indications that electron pairs might form at temperatures 100-200 K higher, but only condense to become coherent when cooled to the transition temperature.
To explore the phase transition, the Johns Hopkins-BNL team sought evidence for superconducting fluctuations above Tc.
"These fluctuations are something like small islands or droplets of superconductivity, within which the electron pairs are coherent, which pop up here and there and live for a while and then evaporate to pop up again elsewhere," Bozovic said. "Such fluctuations occur in every superconductor," he explained, "but in conventional ones only very, very close to Tc — the transition is in fact very sharp."

Some scientists have speculated that in cuprates, on the contrary, superconducting fluctuations might exist in an extremely broad region, all the way up to the temperature at which the electron pairs form. In the present study, the scientists tackle this question head-on, by measuring the conductivity as a function of temperature and frequency up to the terahertz range.
"With this technique, one can see superconducting fluctuations as short-lived as one billionth of one billionth of a second — the shortest possible — and over the entire phase diagram," Bozovic said.
The scientists studied a superconductor containing variable amounts of lanthanum and strontium layered with copper oxide. The samples were fabricated at Brookhaven, using a unique atomic-layer molecular beam epitaxy system that allows for digital synthesis of atomically smooth and perfect thin films. Terahertz spectroscopy measurements were performed at Johns Hopkins.
The central finding was somewhat surprising: The scientists clearly observed superconducting fluctuations, but these fluctuations faded out relatively quickly, within about 10-15 K above Tc, regardless of the lanthanum/strontium ratio.
This implies that in cuprates at the transition temperature, electron pairs lose their coherence. This is in contrast to what happens in conventional superconductors, where the electron pairs break apart at the transition temperature.
"So, unlike in conventional superconductors, the transition in cuprates is not driven by ," Bozovic said. "The hope is that understanding this process in full detail may bring us one step electron (de)pairing but rather by loss of coherence between pairs — that is, by phase fluctuations closer towards cracking the enigma of high-temperature superconductivity."
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Giant ring of black holes

X-ray: NASA/CXC/MIT/S.Rappaport et al, Optical: NASA/STScI
Just in time for Valentine's Day comes a new image of a ring -- not of jewels -- but of black holes.

This composite image of Arp 147, a pair of interacting galaxies located about 430 million light years from Earth, shows X-rays from the NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory (pink) and optical data from the Hubble Space Telescope (red, green, blue) produced by the Space Telescope Science Institute (STScI) in Baltimore, Md.
Arp 147 contains the remnant of a spiral galaxy (right) that collided with the elliptical galaxy on the left. This collision has produced an expanding wave of star formation that shows up as a blue ring containing in abundance of massive young stars. These stars race through their evolution in a few million years or less and explode as supernovas, leaving behind neutron stars and black holes.
A fraction of the neutron stars and black holes will have companion stars, and may become bright X-ray sources as they pull in matter from their companions. The nine X-ray sources scattered around the ring in Arp 147 are so bright that they must be black holes, with masses that are likely ten to twenty times that of the Sun.
An X-ray source is also detected in the nucleus of the red galaxy on the left and may be powered by a poorly-fed supermassive black hole. This source is not obvious in the composite image but can easily be seen in the X-ray image. Other objects unrelated to Arp 147 are also visible: a foreground star in the lower left of the image and a background quasar as the pink source above and to the left of the red galaxy.
Infrared observations with NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope and ultraviolet observations with NASA's Galaxy Evolution Explorer (GALEX) have allowed estimates of the rate of star formation in the ring. These estimates, combined with the use of models for the evolution of binary stars have allowed the authors to conclude that the most intense star formation may have ended some 15 million years ago, in Earth's time frame.
These results were published in the October 1st, 2010 issue of The Astrophysical Journal. The authors were Saul Rappaport and Alan Levine from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, David Pooley from Eureka Scientific and Benjamin Steinhorn, also from MIT.
Provided by Chandra X-ray Center (news : web)
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Microsoft Patches out AutoRun for USB Devices

Remember when you could insert a USB key into a Windows machine and have it auto-run any application stored on the device? Of course you do, it was only patched out for non-Windows 7 users yesterday! It’s hard to believe that such an obvious vector for possible infection has been left open for so long, but Redmond has finally rolled out an update to prevent this from happening in the future.
We suspect Microsoft finally took a hard look at auto-run over the past several months as they seek new and interesting ways to prevent another Conficker style worm from emerging ever again. Now before you get to excited and remind us the ability to disable this feature has been around for over a year now, we know that. The difference now is that this feature will be off by default, protecting the unwashed mass’s from future exploitation.
Microsoft still refuses to call Auto Run a “vulnerability” since it was “by design”, but let’s just admit this was a bad idea and move on shall we?
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Seagate Barracuda Green 2TB Hard Drive Release

Introduction:
Drives have been exploding in size in the last year or so and with that comes speed improvements. Drive manufacturers are constantly making improvements to both hardware and software technology which keeps us on the cutting edge. Not so long ago the rave was high speed 10,000 RPM drives that blew our socks off but were limited on capacity. Recently the SSD market took off again giving us blazing speed with lower power consumption but are still plagued with limited storage space and even higher prices. People loved the speeds but were screaming for capacity as well. Since flash chips are still expensive, the next best thing are low power high capacity drives. Either as your main drive or as a complement to your high end SSD, the "Green" drives offer large amounts of storage with lower operating costs.
Since the creation of the hard drive in the 1950's the densities were grouped into 512 byte sectors. With the evolution of hard drives and their capacity the old 512 byte sectors were lagging behind. This need for a change prompted the International Disk Drive Equipment and Materials Association (IDEMA) to come up with the Long Data Sector Committee in 2000. Almost 11 years later the committee finished the new 4K sector design dubbed 'Advanced Format' for the new technology that will cover the generations of Long Sector technology.
There are three categories for generation one drives. The first is 512 emulation (512e) which the drive had 4K physical sectors but translate them into 512 bytes for the host. The second is Native 4K (4Kn) which has the physical 4K sectors on the drive which are reported as 4K sectors to the host. The last configuration is 4K Read Host (Client devices only) which is a host system which works equally well with older 512 and 512e disk drives. Seagate is taking this new technology a bit further with their own Smart Align design which keeps data aligned together for faster access and read/write times.
Today we are going to be looking at the new Seagate Barracuda Green Advanced Format drive. To help better explain what Advanced Format with Smart align is Seagate has created a short video that I wanted to share with you.

Closer Look:

The Seagate Barracuda Green 2TB drive, model number ST2000DL003-9VT166, looks like any other desktop drive on the outside. Where the magic happens is on the inside. This beast not only has a high two terabyte storage capacity but it also packs a 64MB cache, uses a SATA 6Gbps interface and the first 5900 RPM spin speed, all in a power saving design aimed at those who want speed with efficiency without paying a lot for it. The Barracuda Green idles at 4.5 watts and has an average power consumption of 5.8 watts. With all of this running in your head let's take the hype and put it to the test.

Now that we have seen the physical part of the Seagate Barracuda Green drive let's get on to the testing.
Seagate Barracuda Green 2TB Hard Drive Review

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Specifications:
Model Number: ST2000DL003
Interface: SATA 6Gb/s
Cache: 64MB
Capacity: 2TB
Areal density (avg): 422Gb/in2
Guaranteed Sectors: 3,907,029,168
Height: 26.1mm (1.028 in)
Width: 101.6mm (4.0 in)
Length: 147.00mm (5.78 in)
Weight (typical): 635g (1.39 lb)
Spin Speed (RPM): 5900 RPM
Sustained data transfer rate: 144Mb/s
Average latency: 4.16ms
Random read seek time: <12.0ms Random write seek time: <13.0ms I/O data transfer rate: 600MB/s Unrecoverable read errors: 1 in 1014 12V start max current: 2.0A Average idle power: 4.5W Average operating power: 5.8W Operating Temperature: 0°–60°C Nonoperating Temperature: -40°–70°C Maximum operating temperature change: 20°C per hour Maximum nonoperating temperature change: 30°C per hour Operating Shock (max): 70 Gs for 2ms Nonoperating Shock (max): 300 Gs for 2ms Acoustics (Idle Volume): 2.1 bels Acoustics (Seek Volume): 2.3 bels Features: • A unique 5900-RPM speed delivers the fastest-performance eco friendly drive available. • Seagate SmartAlign technology allows you to get all the benefits of the new Advanced Format 4K sector standard without any hassle–no utilities, no extra steps. • The SATA 6Gb/s interface and 64MB cache maximize performance. • Low power consumption combined with leadership in the use of environmental compliance materials means you don't have to sacrifice environmental stewardship for performance. • Cool, quiet operation SUBSCRIBE TO BLOG BY: EMAIL
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Sony Unveils PlayStation-Friendly 'Xperia Play' at Mobile World Congress

Sony popped the lid on the industry's worst kept secret this afternoon, trotting out its Xperia Play Android phone at Mobile World Congress 2011 in Barcelona, Spain. You probably know all there is to say about the device at this point, except for one little thing.
It's not a PlayStation Phone. No, really. In fact you won't find the PlayStation logo anywhere on the thing. It's rather an Android "Gingerbread" slide-bottom phone (with PSP-style controls, admittedly a first) that can play PlayStation games.
Well, "PlayStation Certified" games, which means stuff developed using Sony's recently announced PlayStation Suite, a library of game development tools intended to bring PlayStation software to a much broader array of mobile devices. In other words, Xperia Play is just the beginning.
As anticipated, Xperia Play features a 4-inch multitouch 854 by 480 pixel LCD screen with the standard four Android buttons, a Qualcomm MSM8655 chipset with a single core processor capable of clocking from 123MHz up to 1GHz, an Adreno 205 GPU, 512MB of RAM, a 5.1 megapixel camera, Bluetooth, Wi-Fi, a micro-USB port, a 3.5mm headset jack, 400MB internal flash memory, PSP-style shoulder-buttons, and a slide-bottom gamepad with PSP-style controls to either side of an oblong touchpad accessed with your thumbs (think thumb-nubs without the nubs).
Games designed for the phone should look pretty sharp on this sort of hardware, though nothing like what's coming with Sony's NGP, which sports processing architecture several orders of magnitude more powerful. You'll be able to purchase new games by accessing an online Sony Ericsson store.
In a move sure to induce yawns from serious gamers, Sony's Kazuo Hirai said the phone would come preloaded with "legendary" PS One games. For those who don't know what a PS One is, remember the original 1994 PlayStation? That.
And expect "legendary" to be a matter of taste. Final Fantasy VII was the second-bestselling game on the original PlayStation, but it's a mess to play on the PSP or PSPgo: Already-pygmy characters dwindle to pinpricks as you attempt to maneuver them through confusingly complex pre-rendered backdrops. That, and PS One games were designed for old-school TVs, meaning you'll have to grapple with ugly pixel interpolation and formatting (non-anamorphic) limitations.
Sony says they'll launch with 20 publishing partners and offer 50 games at launch, though based on what Sony showed today--stuff like Guitar Hero, Dead Space, and Assassin's Creed--expect mostly ports out the door, not Xperia Play exclusives.
Sony said the Xperia Play should ship globally in March, and that they'll launch in the U.S. on Verizon.
The takeaway: Sony wants PlayStation games pretty much anywhere publishers care to sign up for their new PlayStation Certified program. For the moment, that means Android, and for now, Xperia Play. Expect other Android mobiles (and who knows, perhaps other platforms) to follow.
The company also wants to define itself as superior to Apple's iPhone, which Xperia Play is from a gamer's perspective. Assuming a similar games library and similar application pricing, what would you rather have? A 3.5-inch touchscreen? Or a 4-inch touchscreen with an alternative slide-out gamepad that employs familiar d-pad and button controls?
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