alphadogg writes "The plethora of spectrum bands used for LTE will result in more expensive devices, and also make the ability to roam globally using the technology less likely, according to industry organization GSM Association's research arm. Wireless Intelligence predicts there will be 38 different spectrum frequency combinations used in LTE deployments by 2015, thanks to ongoing spectrum auctions, license renewals and reallocation initiatives across a wide range of frequency bands. The number of combinations means economies of scale won't be as good and prices won't come down as much as they could if fewer spectrum bands were used as volumes increase, Joss Gillet, a senior analyst for Wireless Intelligence."
Lindan9 writes "In a 9 billion dollar investment, Apple's A5 chips will now be produced in Austin, TX, in a new Samsung factory that is apparently 'the largest-ever foreign investment in Texas.'" According to the article, the factory's been churning out chips since the beginning of this month.
doug141 writes "In standard solar cells, much energy is lost (as heat) from photons mismatched to the capability of silicon to capture them. A new technique uses a pentacene layer to down-convert each hot (un-captureable) electron to two electrons that can be captured by standard silicon cells." You can read more at the University of Texas research group's web page.
Tootech points out this story for anyone who's been curious about getting that top-secret clearance and the promise of a cushy pension from the CIA, as a reward for decades of blood-curdling, heart-pounding, knuckle-whitening IT service: "Be prepared to go through a lot of scrutiny if you want to work in the Central Intelligence Agency's IT department, says chief information officer Al Tarasiuk. And it doesn't stop after you get your top secret clearance. 'Once you're in, there are frequent reinvestigations, but it's just part of process here,' says Tarasiuk, who also gets polygraphed regularly, though he won't be more specific. For those senior IT managers who are the 'privileged users,' meaning system administrators, 'there is certainly more scrutiny on you,' Tarasiuk says. 'It's interesting: there's so much scrutiny that a normal person might not want to put up with that. But it's part of the mission.'"
itwbennett writes "Use of the GPL, LGPL, and AGPL set of licenses is declining at an accelerating rate, according to new analysis by the 451 Group's Matthew Aslett. In fact, the 451 Group projects that GPL usage will hit 50% by September 2012. Instead, developers are licensing projects under permissive licenses such as the MIT, Apache (ASL), BSD, and Ms-PL. The shift started in 2007 and has been gathering momentum ever since. Blogger Brian Proffitt posits that 'the creation of the GPLv3 and the sometimes contentious discussion that led up to it' may be partly responsible for the move away from the GPL."
New submitter yanom writes "I'm thinking about making a holiday donation to a charity, but I'm not sure where to give it. I've looked at organizations such as the Red Cross and Village Reach that promote disaster relief and health in the developing world. I want my money to have the biggest possible impact, so where should I send it?"
An anonymous reader writes "Contrary to a previous story, Google played no part in the Megaupload takedown. From Wired: 'YouTube said Friday that Universal Music abused the video-sharing site's piracy filters when it employed them to take down a controversial video of celebrities and pop superstars singing and praising the notorious file-sharing service Megaupload.'"
smitty777 writes "Adding to the recent black hole discoveries of gas clouds and a quasar accretion disc, Forbes is reporting on a recent discovery by NASA's Rossi X-Ray Timing Explorer (RXTE) on the smallest known black hole. From the article: 'If the astronomers' calculations are correct, this black hole is located about 16,000 to 56,000 light years away from Earth (a more precise distance hasn't yet been determined). The black hole itself is only about three times the mass of the Sun, which means that the original star was just barely big enough to form a black hole.'"
lkcl writes "An initiative by a Community Interest Company Rhombus Tech aims to provide Software (Libre) Developers with a PCMCIA-sized modular computer that could end up in mass-volume products. The reference design mass-volume pricing guide from the SoC manufacturer, for a device with similar capability to the Raspberry Pi, is around $15: 40% less than the $25 Raspberry Pi but for a device with an ARM Cortex A8 CPU 3x times faster than the 700mhz ARM11 used in the Raspberry Pi. GPL Kernel source code is available. A page for community ideas for motherboard designs has also been created. The overall goal is to bring more mass-volume products to market which Software (Libre) Developers have actually been involved in, reversing the trend of endemic GPL violations surrounding ARM-based mass-produced hardware. The Preorder pledge registration is now open (account creation required)." Of course, the Raspberry Pi is not only only much further along, but has recently announced an expansion module (the Gertboard).
Hugh Pickens writes writes "Many of today's toys contain rare-earth magnets which are much more powerful than the magnets of yesteryear and the magnets pose a serious threat to children when more than one is ingested because as the magnets attract one another they can cause a range of serious injuries, including holes through internal organs, blood poisoning and death (PDF). Braden Eberle, 4, swallowed two tiny magnets from his older brother's construction kit on two successive days last spring and his mother's first reaction was that the magnet would pass through her son's system without a problem. "People swallow pennies of the same size every day," said Jill Eberle. "They're smaller than an eraser." But next morning, with Braden still in pain, the family's doctor told them to go straight to the emergency room where an X-ray revealed two magnets were stuck together. "They were attracted to each other with the wall of each segment they were in stuck together," said Dr. Sanjeev Dutta, the pediatric surgeon at Good Samaritan Hospital who would operate on Braden later that day. "Because they were so powerful, the wall of the intestine was getting squeezed, squeezed, squeezed, and then it just necrosed, or kind of rotted away, and created a hole between the two." The US Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC) says at least 33 children have been injured from ingesting magnets (PDF) with a 20 month-old dying, and at least 19 other children requiring surgery."
MojoKid writes "Over the last few years an increasing number of liquid coolers have been positioned as high-end alternatives to traditional heatsink and fan combinations. This has been particularly true in the boutique and high-end PC market, where a number of manufacturers now offer liquid coolers in one form or another. These kits are a far cry from the water coolers enthusiasts have been building for years. DIY water coolers typically involve separate reservoirs and external pumps. The systems tested here, including Intel's OEM cooler that was released with their Sandy Bridge-E CPU, contain significantly less fluid and use small pumps directly integrated into the cooling block as a self-contained solution. Integrated all-in-one kits may not offer the theoretical performance of a high-end home-built system, but they're vastly easier to install and require virtually no maintenance. The tradeoffs are more than fair, provided that the coolers perform as advertised."
bs0d3 writes "The Belgian Anti-Piracy Federation (BAF), has been threatening ISPs into expanding their blockade of thepiratebay. Recently they have been sending threatening letters to various other ISPs which were not involved with the original judgment to block thepiratebay. The letter 'kindly requests' that all ISPs voluntarily block thepiratebay, or BAF will bring legal action against them. The ISP BASE has succumbed to these legal threats. Also, many of the same Belgian ISPs have taken it one step further and also blocked the DNS for depiraatbaai.be. depiraatbaai.be was setup by thepiratebay as an alternative domain which directs users to the piratebay's servers to circumvent DNS censorship. For those who can't wait for The Pirate Bay to set up new alternative domains, a full working mirror of the site still exists at malaysiabay.org, which was originally set up to circumvent the piratebay block in Malaysia."
dell623 writes "Google is rolling out an OTA upgrade to Ice Cream Sandwich for the Nexus S. GSM versions can already be updated manually. An early review is largely positive and comments on the significant visual and performance improvements. The Nexus S upgrade allows for a direct comparison against Gingerbread on the same hardware, and the likely improvement in current phones that will receive the upgrade."
First time accepted submitter LazyBoyWrangler writes "Just noticed the 'free' non-commercial service from DynDNS has been deprecated. Not my place to argue with their business model changes, but the home router infrastructure out there has been built around the promise of free dynamic DNS service. Most manufacturers offer DynDNS as their only option. Removing the free service for non-commercial folks seems disingenuous when they are the only option for many users." According to the linked page, the free service is being drastically cut back for new users (one free hostname, rather than five, and from a shorter list of branded domains), but not ended entirely. Existing users, it says, will see no changes "as long as you keep your hostnames active and up-to-date. If you allow your account or hostnames to expire, you will have to select from the new domains instead and will be limited to the one free hostname."
jfruhlinger writes "A victory, or a just a breather? The U.S. House of Representatives Judiciary Committee has postponed further debate on the controversial Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) until after Congress' holiday break. At the urging of some SOPA opponents, Representative Lamar Smith, a Texas Republican and committee chairman, said Friday he will consider a hearing or a classified briefing on the bill's impact on cybersecurity." Update: 12/17 04:28 GMT by T : "Or not," as an anonymous reader comments below. "Despite the fact that Congress was supposed to be out of session until the end of January, the Judiciary Committee has just announced plans to come back to continue the markup this coming Wednesday. This is rather unusual and totally unnecessary. But it shows just how desperate Hollywood is to pass this bill as quickly as possible, before the momentum of opposition builds up even further."
Das Veer von Hewlett-Packard ist ein kompakter Smartphone-Slider auf Basis von WebOS. Dank Volltastatur ist der Winzling auch für Vielschreiber interessant. Hier haben wir neue Tests für Sie zusammengetragen.
Microsoft Sysinternals und NirSoft bieten zusammen weit über zweihundert System- und Admin-Tools an. WSCC (Windows System Control Center) ist eine grafische Bedienoberfläche für diese Programme. Der eingebaute ...
Jahr für Jahr beginnt kurz vor der Ferienzeit in vielen Betrieben wieder der Streit darüber, ob, wann und wie Betriebsangehörige ihren Jahresurlaub nehmen können. Dabei sind die Urlaubsansprüche von Arbeitnehmern ...
InstallPad bringt die Funktionen eines Linux-Paketmanagers in die Windows-Welt. Über das Tool lassen sich Programme installieren und aktualisieren, ohne dass man sie sich mühsam im Web zusammensuchen ...
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Wenn Chefs noch diskutieren, ob Home Office gut oder schlecht für die Firma ist, dann sollten sie sich vorher ein Frage stellen: Warum arbeiten Mitarbeiter lieber im Home Office oder an anderen Orten ...
Canonical hat seit 24. August 2011 keine Lizenz mehr, Oracle Sun JDK auszuliefern. Wegen Sicherheitslücken nimmt man das Paket komplett aus dem Softwarelager.
Die Funktionalität und der Nutzwert von Android-Smartphones und Tablets werden durch das Angebot an Apps ständig erweitert. Mittelweile verfügt der Android Market über mehr als 580.000 Apps. Wir haben ...
Ist die verfügbare Internetbandbreite nicht für alle laufenden Anwendungen ausreichend, lässt sich mit dem NetLimiter 3 für jedes einzelne Programm gezielt eine Bandbreitenbeschränkung festlegen. So werden ...
Die Entwickler der Instant Messaging Software Pidgin haben eine aktualisierte Ausgabe zur Verfügung gestellt und schließen damit diverse Schwachstellen.
Testen Sie Ihr IT-Wissen! Jeden Tag finden Sie bei TecChannel eine Frage aus dem IT-Bereich, deren richtige Antwort Sie als IT-Experte kennen sollten. Machen Sie kostenlos mit und erweitern Sie Ihre IT-Kenntnisse!
Einmal in der Hektik nicht aufgepasst und schon ist das Smartphone weg - und mit ihm alle persönlichen Daten. Für solche Fälle gibt es Ortungsdienste wie Seek Droid. Ist die App installiert, informiert ...
Für den Einsatz in Unternehmen wurde die Business Edition von NOD32 mit zahlreichen Funktionen aufgewertet. Besonders die zentrale Administration ist der große Pluspunkt gegenüber der Consumer-Ausgabe ...
Geht die Installation eines Custom ROMs schief, ist noch nicht alles verloren: Android bringt die passenden Werkzeuge mit, mit deren Hilfe die Smartphones meist gerettet werden können.
Google Chrome machte es von Anfang an vor, Firefox macht es nach - und Microsoft jetzt auch: Der IE wird künftig automatisch auf dem aktuellsten Stand gehalten. Anwender bekommen so automatisch die neueste, ...
Es gibt eine Aktualisierung für HP-UX 11.x, die hoch kritische Schwachstellen in der Java-Version für dieses Betriebssystem schließt .
Sie wollen den Tablet-PC an einen Fernseher anschließen? Über WLAN drucken? Wir haben Ihnen häufig gestellte Fragen und die Antworten für das Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1 zusammengestellt.
IBM hat Updates für AIX zur Verfügung gestellt. Diese kümmern sich um zwei Schwachstellen im X-Server.
Die BitLocker-Laufwerksverschlüsselung gehört bei einigen Windows-Versionen zur Grundausstattung. Seit Windows 7 lassen sich mit BitLocker-To-Go auch USB-Sticks per Verschlüsselung sichern. Wie Sie BitLocker ...
Die Berechnung des Subnetzes und von IP-Adressen gehört zu den Grundlagen einer jeden Netzplanung. Mit dem kostenlosen Subnet Calculator für Android wird diese Arbeit ein Stück leichter und lässt sich ...
Mit Windows MultiPoint Server 2011 können mehrere Benutzer gleichzeitig an einem Computer arbeiten. Teure Hardware ist dazu nicht notwendig. Unser Workshop zeigt Ihnen, wie Sie mit dem System schnell ...
Mit Windows MultiPoint Server 2011 können mehrere Benutzer gleichzeitig an einem Computer arbeiten. Teure Hardware ist dabei nicht notwendig. Unser Workshop zeigt Ihnen, wie Sie mit dem System schnell ...
Auf 3HE bringt der SATABoy eine stattliche Speicherkapazität unter. Das System bietet Platz für 14 Festplatten. Auch die Verwaltungsfunktionen können sich sehen lassen und bringen den für kleine und mittlere ...
Jedes jemals installierte USB-Gerät, vom schlichten Stick bis zum Multifunktionsgerät, hinterlässt im Windows-System bleibende Spuren. Mit dem kostenlosen Tool USBDeview kann man bei Problemen die verwendeten ...