Suppose you have a music folder that contains all songs by your favorite
singer. Would it not be great if instead of the plain white background,
you could add the singer's image as the background of this folder?
It is relatively easy to add background images to folders using a simple desktop.ini trick just as easily as you can change your Desktop's background.
Desktop.ini is a system file that is used to customize the appearance
and behavior of folders in Windows. We can use this ability of
desktop.ini files to add backgrounds to folders just by adding a few
lines of code.
[{BE098140-A513-11D0-A3A4-00C04FD706EC}]
iconarea_image="location of the image"
You need to slightly modify this code on Windows Vista and Windows 7 as the ability to add folder backgrounds has been removed. So, if you use these versions of Windows, install AveFolder
and then, replace [{BE098140-A513-11D0-A3A4-00C04FD706EC}] with
[AveFolder] in the above code. To install this app, extract all the
files and then, open the folder according to your installation of
Windows (32 bit or 64 bit), right click install.bat and select Run as Administrator.
In this code, iconarea_image is the parameter where the location of your image will go.
Save the file as desktop.ini.
Place this file in the folder where you want your personalized background.
On Windows XP, you need to add system attribute to the folder where you want a background. To do this, open command prompt
and execute "attrib +s D:\Music" (without quotes) if "D:\Music" is the
location of your folder. If there are spaces in the location of your
folder, you need to add double quotes around it. Windows Vista and 7
users need not add system attribute to folders.
You might need to log off and log back on for the changes to take
effect. Sometimes, AveFolder app fails to work in which case you need to
restart Windows Explorer. I recommend you to create a System Restore point in case you do not like the results.
You can hide this desktop.ini file if you feel that it is something that should not be visible in your folder.
We don't live in a world where our Internet is beamed down from stratosphere balloons, but we might be soon.
If you live in an area that’s under-served by modern Internet infrastructure, you’re kind of missing out. The Internet is great, but you’re reading this on the Internet, so you probably know that already. Not everyone is so lucky. There are billions of people without access to an Internet connection, but Google wants to change that — with balloons. Here’s how.
Google’s “Project Loon” wants to launch solar powered balloons more than 60,000 feet above sea level into the stratosphere. These balloons would beam the Internet down to land-based antennas, offering previously disconnected people access to all the information the Internet has to offer, and also videos of cats.
The program is still in early tests, but Google hopes to one day have thousands of these balloons in the skies. Of course they have obstacles to overcome, like the fact that balloons tend not to stay where you put them. To get over that problem, Google is using “variable buoyancy” which lets the balloon change altitude to find winds going in the right direction. If a balloon is getting blown too far to the north, it could drop down a little bit into some southerly wind.
It took some time to work out, and some balloons didn’t go where they were supposed to. That’s why Google is testing the balloons in New Zealand. It’s remote enough that the likelihood of a balloon drifting across hostile borders is minimal.
While testing the balloons, obviously some of them came back down to Earth sooner than expected. The antennae payload would disconnect from the balloon in cases of failure, and then fall back to Earth with a parachute. Google couldn’t always be the first on the scene to recover their equipment so they labeled it “HARMLESS SCIENCE EXPERIMENT” and offered a reward for its return.
Imagine you see a strange object fall from the sky with a parachute. You examine it, only to find the words “HARMLESS SCIENCE EXPERIMENT” on it with a number to call promising a reward. There’s probably no way that would cause any sort of alarm. It’s just a HARMLESS SCIENCE EXPERIMENT that fell from the sky. Nothing to see here.
There are still a lot of things to be worked out before Google launches a planet-wide balloon Internet, but things seem to be progressing. There’s no word yet about a possible date for Project Loon to hit the mainstream, but a few New Zealand homes already have balloon Internet.
Motorola is finally making a play for smartphone relevance. Although the company’s previous Android handsets were generally well-received, they've never achieved the same popularity that Samsung enjoys with its Galaxy line. That may soon change, as the Moto X is easily one of the most interesting Android phones Motorola has produced in recent memory.
I managed to snag some alone time with the Moto X on Thursday and walked away from the encounter with a better idea of how Motorola is trying to position itself in the smartphone market.
A full spectrum of color choices
The Moto X will be available in a host of colors.
This is is easily Motorola’s best-looking handset to date: While the company’s previous Android efforts are boxy and rigid, the Moto X features gentle curves that help the phone rest comfortably in your hand. The Moto X is made primarily of a composite material that doesn’t feel as flimsy as the plastics used in other smartphones, although I would have preferred if Motorola had used aluminum. The back of the phone can be customized to be practically any color you can imagine, and I was particularly smitten with a red model Motorola had on display at the event.
The front of the phone features a 4.7-inch, 1280-by-720 AMOLED display. It looks good, but it's not as impressive as the displays of other recent Android phones from Samsung, HTC, and LG. It’s disappointing that Motorola didn’t opt to go with a higher resolution display, but I honestly doubt most people will care—the 316 pixels per inch you get on the Moto X is comparable to the 326 pixels per inch offered by Apple’s Retina display iPhone 5.
You don't even have to touch it to use it
Much like the Verizon Droids that Motorola announced at the end of July, the Moto X is powered by a 1.7GHz dual-core Snapdragon S4 Pro processor that uses Motorola’s custom X8 system architecture. The phone didn’t seem any less responsive than any of the quad-core phones I’ve tested in the past, though I did notice a bit of lag when taking photos and trying out the voice recognition software in Google Now. The Moto X has “touchless controls” that you activate by saying “Okay Google Now” followed by a command.
It's always listening for "Okay Google Now," even when you're not touching it.
You can activate touchless controls at any time—even when the phone is in sleep mode—and the software learns your voice so you don’t run into the problem of other people trying to activate your phone. Unfortunately, you can’t change the trigger phrase to anything you like, though I’m sure some clever hacker will figure out a way to customize it into something awesome. (“Make it so, number one.”)
The Moto X has a 10-megapixel camera that uses an RGBC sensor, which features a fourth "clear" pixel in addition to the standard red/green/blue, to take in more light and improve performance in low-light environments. The camera worked well in the dimly lit demo room at the event, and it will be interesting to see how well it performs out in the real world. Motorola’s previous Android phones didn’t have stand-out cameras, so I’m glad the company is finally taking steps to improve this feature.
It looks like Motorola is finally paying serious attention to the camera.
The camera app on the Moto X is custom-built and lets you take a photo by simply tapping anywhere on the screen. You use a gesture to access the camera settings, which is also how you switch between taking regular photos and panoramas. Unfortunately, there’s no option for all-encompassing photospheres, which is a shame considering how much better this camera performs compared to the one on the Nexus 4.
An even bigger shame is that the Moto X ships with Android Jelly Bean 4.2.2. Motorola told me it definitely plans on updating the phone to the recently announced Android 4.3, but that update could take weeks (or even months) to roll out. For a company owned by Google, you’d think Motorola would be able to ship a phone running the latest version of Google’s mobile OS—especially when the two worked so closely together on developing this device.
Don't call it a comeback, yet
Motorola may need more than just customizable phones to become a dominant force in the phone market again.
All things considered, the Moto X is almost a re-birth of sorts for Motorola. It proves that Motorola does know how to make a stylish phone that can compete with the likes of Samsung and HTC, and shows us that Motorola is willing to try new things to stand out from the rest of the Android horde.
Although the phone is launching on all four major carriers, it's entirely possible the Moto X will be overshadowed by its Verizon Droid cousins as they share many of the same specs and features in a slightly different form factor. I know plenty of people who would be willing to give up customizability if it meant their phone could go 48 hours without charging, like the new Droid Maxx. Only time will tell if this new Motorola was worth the 13 billion Google spent to acquire it.
With news breaking yesterday thatAppleAAPL-0.91% had the forethought to file a patent five years around smart home control scenarios with the iPhone, there’s no doubt that the prescient company from Cupertino has probably spent a development cycle or two – if the rumors about the iWatch are indeed true – on how a smartwatch could be a key part of the smart home.
And truth be told, they wouldn’t be the only ones. Existing smartwatch makers have told in interviews I’ve done for Smartwatch.FM that they’re are looking at ways to connect their smartwatches to the smart home.
So what would a smartwatch controller for the smart home do? Well, much like the smart home control apps available today from the likes of Vivint,Lowe’s, SmartThings and others, a smartwatch could receive alerts from sensors notifying home owners about any home security events or information about home energy usage, or it could even provide command capabilities to enable things like locking doors, controlling a home’s temperature or turning on lights.
The natural next question is whether people would want to use their watch as a smart home information and command center. Well, much like with how people are discovering the smartwatch is a good companion device to their smartphone or tablet – in large part because it’s not always convenient to have those screens in front of you – a smartwatch could pair well with either of those devices as a fairly passive companion device to present monitoring information or it could be a device that enables basic commands either through a fully independent smartwatch or even through a companion-watch.
I believe the first implementations of smart home-connected smartwatches will mainly provide monitoring data, but over time these watches will allow their owners to execute basic smart home control commands.
Will Apple be the first to enable these scenarios with the iWatch? Maybe. But no matter who the manufacturer is, I do think some of you no doubt use your watch to lock the door, turn on the lights within the next few years.
1. Can you do the job? 2. Will you love the job? 3. Can we tolerate working with you?
That’s it. Those three. Think back, every question you’ve ever posed to others or had asked of you in a job interview is a subset of a deeper in-depth follow-up to one of these three key questions. Each question may be asked using different words, but every question, however it is phrased, is just a variation on one of these topics: Strengths, Motivation, and Fit.
Can You Do the Job? – Strengths
Executive Search firm Heidrick & Struggles CEO, Kevin Kelly explained to me that it’s not just about the technical skills, but also about leadership and interpersonal strengths. Technical skills help you climb the ladder. As you get there, managing up, down, and across become more important.
You can’t tell by looking at a piece of paper what some of the strengths and weaknesses really are…We ask for specific examples of not only what’s been successful but what they’ve done that hasn’t gone well or a task they’ve, quite frankly, failed at and how they learned from that experience and what they’d do different in a new scenario.
Not only is it important to look at the technical skill set they have…but also the strengths on what I call the EQ side of the equation in terms of getting along and dealing or interacting with people.
…younger employees do not wish to get paid merely for working hard—just the reverse: they will work hard because they enjoy their environment and the challenges associated with their work…. Executives who embrace this new management style are attracting and retaining better employees.
Continuing on with our conversation, Heidrick’s Kelly went on to explain the importance of cultural fit:
A lot of it is cultural fit and whether they are going to fit well into the organization… The perception is that when (senior leaders) come into the firm, a totally new environment, they know everything. And they could do little things such as send emails in a voicemail culture that tend to negatively snowball over time. Feedback or onboarding is critical. If you don’t get that feedback, you will get turnover later on.
40 percent of senior executives leave organizations or are fired or pushed out within 18 months. It’s not because they’re dumb; it’s because a lot of times culturally they may not fit in with the organization or it’s not clearly articulated to them as they joined.
T-Mobile will begin its rollout of phones based on Mozilla’s Firefox OS when it puts the Alcatel One Touch on sale in Poland next week.
MARTYN WILLIAMSFirefox OS home screen
The launch in eastern Europe will come just two weeks after the new smartphone OS made its global debut with Telefoniain Spain.
The OS is based around Internet technologies and particularly HTML5. Applications for the phone are written in Web languages—a departure from the current practice where apps are typically written and compiled for each smartphone platform. Mozilla is promoting the openness of Firefox OS as a better alternative to systems like Android or Nokia’s Asha for low-end smartphones.
T-Mobile will launch the Alcatel One Touch in Poland Monday starting at 1 zloty (US$0.30), the company said. It didn’t provide any tariff details. In Spain, Telefonica put another Firefox handset, the ZTE Open, on sale July 2 for €69 (US$90) with a prepaid subscription.
Both carriers are planning wider availability of the phones as the year progresses.
MARTYN WILLIAMSThe Firefox OS dialer
T-Mobile said it plans to have Firefox OS phones on sale in Germany, Hungary and Greece by the end of the year. Underlining its low-end focus, in Germany the phone will be sold under T-Mobile’s no-frills Congstar brand. Spain’s Telefonica has plans to launch Firefox OS handsets in several South American markets within 2013.
These additional carriers are yet to announce firm launch plans for Firefox phones.
The platform has also attracted support in the supply chain with Foxconn, the world’s largest contract electronics manufacturer, planning a series of Firefox OS-based devices. It is hiring a team of several thousand software engineers to work on the platform and support customers, it said recently.
With phones now getting into the hands of consumers, Mozilla is starting to eye its first tablet PC based on the platform, a Mozilla executive said last week when speaking in San Francisco. Mozilla is “moving aggressively and you’ll see things soon,” CTO Brendan Eich said when asked about a tablet.
National carrier Thai Airways is applying for a license with the national telecom regulator to become the first airline in Thailand to offer in-flight wi-Fi.
Jesada Sivaraks, secretary to the vice-chairman of the National Telecommunications Commission of Thailand’s National Broadcasting and Telecommunications Commission NBTC, explained the commission is now considering approving a license for Thai Airways to provide wireless internet access on the aircrafts. If everything goes through, it is expected to be available from early September onwards.
The airline didn’t get the license when it applied two years ago. Back then, Thai airways asked the regulator for two licences to provide both in-flight WiFi and mobile services. However, the NBTC could not award the license for mobile services as it would violate Section 46 of the Frequency Allocation Act, which states:
Section 46. A spectrum license for telecommunications business is the exclusive right of the licensee and is not transferable. The licensee who has been authorized to use spectrum for telecommunications services shall carry out the services by himself or herself. Business management either in whole or in part shall not be rendered or permitted to act on his/her behalf.
In other words, the National Telecommunications Commission will be considering the license for WiFi first, and the usage of mobile will be discussed later.
The spectrum that Thai Airways requested for wifi is automatically licensed to everyone who requests it. After obtaining a license, the airline carriers will have to select a WiFi service provider. At present, the only two providers globally are OnAir of Switzerland and AeroMobile Communications of the UK.
These are the standard GT seats on the 2014 Chevrolet Corvette Stingray. There is also an optional Competition seat geared for track driving that has more aggressive side bolsters and provisions for a four-point harness. (Credit: Chevrolet)
The Chevrolet Corvette used to have some of the lightest seats in the industry, which matters a lot for sports cars because every last ounce counts.
So why did engineers decide to give the highly anticipated 2014 Corvette new seats that weigh 11 pounds more?
“We felt like we had to do it,” says Tadge Juechter, chief engineer for the C7 Corvette, “because we were so heavily critiqued for the previous seats.”
The current industry trend is for cars to shed mass, and generally speaking Chevy is like other automakers in this regard. But the new Corvette weighs more overall than the model it replaces, and the seats account for 12 percent of its extra 90 pounds.
Juechter is satisfied, though, that the iconic sports car gets heavier to get better, with the seats being a case in point.
Though they had been among the lightest in the market, the previous seats also were among the weakest. They would flex and creak during spirited driving. A complaint that has plagued Corvette interiors for nearly 50 years is that they feel cheap, and the seats are partly to blame.
So when designing seats for the 2014 model, the engineers started from scratch.
“The whole seat is a big, single, cast piece of aluminum,” Juechter says. “Then all of the joints are through-bolted so that the whole thing ties together as a rigid body.”
The beefier frame adds mass. But to help offset this, the new seats incorporate more parts made of magnesium, which has two-thirds the density of aluminum.
The result is a strong and supportive seat that didn't budge during a three-hour test drive of the C7 Corvette on the serpentine roads of Southern California. It also felt well cushioned and contoured, with enough compliance for longer journeys to be comfortable.
A noteworthy benefit of the added rigidity has to do with the head rests. The seats in the 2014 Chevy Corvette won’t flex much during rear-end collisions, which allows for the head rests to be positioned further back, while still complying with new whiplash safety standards.
In contrast, seats on most other new cars flex back during rear-end crashes, which means that their head rests must protrude further forward to compensate, often to the point where they can poke against the back of the head during everyday driving. This can make it difficult for some people (me included) to get comfortable behind the wheel
There is most definitely such a thing as getting way too close to lions. Way too close means close enough that lions can chase you down and tackle you and bite your legs off. Don't let this happen to you. Next time you find yourself in the Serengeti trying to snap the perfect lion picture, just do what the pros over at National Geographic do and enlist the assistance of a little tracked camera robot.
There's even better footage of the robot on the NatGeo website, although, be warned, when we say that some of these lion encounters are intimate, we mean intimate. Yeeeah. Slightly creepy robot, no?
This is not the first time humans use robots to spy on wild animals. We've seen robotic cameras used to film lions before (though not as close), as well aspenguins, zebras, and bonobos.
Photographer Michael "Nick" Nichols talked to NatGeo about how he made all of this stuff work; we've reposted a few of the robotics-heavy answers below, and you can read the full interview here.
Why did you decide to use a remote-controlled camera robot?
You don't want to be looking down on animals: They hate it; it is demeaning to them. Old zoos put the animals in pits, but if you go to a modern zoo you look up at the tigers. That makes their lives better; it makes them feel like king of the beasts. I couldn't bear photographing lions looking down on them; it made me sick to my stomach. I wanted to photograph them at their level or lower.
So we had a ground-level robot, basically a mini remote-controlled tank. It was from a company that makes them to defuse bombs and stuff like that, called SuperDroid Robots.
We had no idea when we started two years ago if we could actually do it, but when you think about lions and who they are, they are so supremely confident that they could give a **** about this robot. An elephant would stomp it or run away, and all other animals would run away.
After only three visits they didn't care about that tank. At first they were cautious. Some of the most cautious ones moved to the back of the family. But after five or six times they were all falling asleep with it.
How did the micro-drone work out?
We had a MikroKopter to give us a view of the Serengeti without bringing in a helicopter. Those are dangerous. They require a lot of permits to fly low, and they make a lot of noise and smoke, which scares lions away. Using planes and helicopters was a life of frustration. You have to hire them in advance, so you never have them when you need them.
At first the lions were a little spooked [by the MikroKopter], but then they seemed to have fun with it. One time one of the pride even jumped and tried to grab it. They seemed to know [the remote-controlled devices] came from us; they saw our green car, and they knew we didn't prevent them from getting a meal. So we could fly over these lions when they were sleeping. We crashed it a few times and had to replace it.
That's the nice thing about robots, though: you can crash them, or a lion can take a chunk out of one, and you can just buy a new one. It's a much better solution than an emergency airlift to the nearest hospital to try to find someone who can stitch your legs back on.
Once a secret project, Google's autonomous vehicles are now out in the open, quite literally, with the company test-driving them on public roads and, on one occasion, even inviting people to ride inside one of the robot cars as it raced around a closed course.
Google's fleet of robotic Toyota Priuses has now logged more than 190,000 miles (about 300,000 kilometers), driving in city traffic, busy highways, and mountainous roads with only occasional human intervention. The project is still far from becoming commercially viable, but Google has set up a demonstration system on its campus, using driverless golf carts, which points to how the technology could change transportation even in the near future.
Stanford University professor Sebastian Thrun, who guides the project, and Google engineer Chris Urmson discussed these and other details in a keynote speech at the IEEE International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems in San Francisco last month.
Thrun and Urmson explained how the car works and showed videos of the road tests, including footage of what the on-board computer "sees" [image below] and how it detects other vehicles, pedestrians, and traffic lights.
Google has released details and videos of the project before, but this is the first time I have seen some of this footage -- and it's impressive. It actually changed my views of the whole project, which I used to consider a bit far-fetched. Now I think this technology could really help to achieve some of the goals Thrun has in sight: Reducing road accidents, congestion, and fuel consumption.
Watch:
Urmson, who is the tech lead for the project, said that the "heart of our system" is a laser range finder mounted on the roof of the car. The device, aVelodyne 64-beam laser, generates a detailed 3D map of the environment. The car then combines the laser measurements with high-resolution maps of the world, producing different types of data models that allow it to drive itself while avoiding obstacles and respecting traffic laws.
The vehicle also carries other sensors, which include: four radars, mounted on the front and rear bumpers, that allow the car to "see" far enough to be able to deal with fast traffic on freeways; a camera, positioned near the rear-view mirror, that detects traffic lights; and a GPS, inertial measurement unit, and wheel encoder, that determine the vehicle's location and keep track of its movements.
Here's a slide showing the different subsystems (the camera is not shown):
Two things seem particularly interesting about Google's approach. First, it relies on very detailed maps of the roads and terrain, something that Urmson said is essential to determine accurately where the car is. Using GPS-based techniques alone, he said, the location could be off by several meters.
The second thing is that, before sending the self-driving car on a road test, Google engineers drive along the route one or more times to gather data about the environment. When it's the autonomous vehicle's turn to drive itself, it compares the data it is acquiring to the previously recorded data, an approach that is useful to differentiate pedestrians from stationary objects like poles and mailboxes.
The video above shows the results. At one point you can see the car stopping at an intersection. After the light turns green, the car starts a left turn, but there are pedestrians crossing. No problem: It yields to the pedestrians, and even to a guy who decides to cross at the last minute.
Sometimes, however, the car has to be more "aggressive." When going through a four-way intersection, for example, it yields to other vehicles based on road rules; but if other cars don't reciprocate, it advances a bit to show to the other drivers its intention. Without programming that kind of behavior, Urmson said, it would be impossible for the robot car to drive in the real world.
Clearly, the Google engineers are having a lot of fun (fast forward to 13:00 to see Urmson smiling broadly as the car speeds through Google's parking lot, the tires squealing at every turn).
But the project has a serious side. Thrun and his Google colleagues, including co-founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin, are convinced that smarter vehicles could help make transportation safer and more efficient: Cars would drive closer to each other, making better use of the 80 percent to 90 percent of empty space on roads, and also form speedy convoys on freeways.
They would react faster than humans to avoid accidents, potentially saving thousands of lives. Making vehicles smarter will require lots of computing power and data, and that's why it makes sense for Google to back the project, Thrun said in his keynote.
Urmson described another scenario they envision: Vehicles would become a shared resource, a service that people would use when needed. You'd just tap on your smartphone, and an autonomous car would show up where you are, ready to drive you anywhere. You'd just sit and relax or do work.
He said they put together a video showing a concept called Caddy Beta that demonstrates the idea of shared vehicles -- in this case, a fleet of autonomous golf carts. He said the golf carts are much simpler than the Priuses in terms of on-board sensors and computers. In fact, the carts communicate with sensors in the environment to determined their location and "see" the incoming traffic.
"This is one way we see in the future this technology can . . . actually make transportation better, make it more efficient," Urmson said.
Watch:
Thrun and Urmson acknowledged that there are many challenges ahead, including improving the reliability of the cars and addressing daunting legal and liability issues. But they are optimistic (Nevada recently became the first U.S. state to make self-driving cars legal.) All the problems of transportation that people see as a huge waste, "we see that as an opportunity," Thrun said.
Apple’s upcoming iPhone 5S is rumored to be more than 30 percent faster than the iPhone 5. Specifically, the next generation A7 chip is said to be 31 percent faster than the A6 that powers the iPhone 5 and the fourth gen iPad according to sources as reported by Fox News anchor Clayton Morris.
A speed increase of this caliber would certainly put Apple’s flagship handset in line with other high-end phones on the market from Samsung, HTC and LG. That’s especially true when you consider it’ll likely be a dual-core chip while virtually every other manufacturer has moved to quad-core components. But perhaps even more interesting are rumors that Apple is also testing 64-bit processors in some of their iPhone 5S prototypes.
9to5Mac said they’ve heard independent claims that Apple is indeed testing 64-bit chips inside select iPhone 5S prototypes. The bump from 32-bit to 64-bit will reportedly boost the A7’s ability to handle tasks like animations, transparencies and other iOS 7 graphic effects. This same chip, or perhaps an even more advanced one, is expected to show up in the fifth generation iPad.
If the move to 64-bit doesn’t take place this year, we’ll likely see it happen in 2014 with the A8 according to analyst Ming-Chi Kuo.
Apple’s next iPhone is widely expected to be revealed alongside a cheaper model known as the iPhone 5C during a press event on September 10. Cupertino has yet to confirm the date but given the fact that it’s fast approaching, we’ll likely hear an official announcement this week.
Enthusiasts have been squeezing extra performance out of processors, memory and graphics cards via overclocking for as long as I can remember. The challenge and ultimate satisfaction of achieving a stable overclock can often be more rewarding than the performance gains which is why Intel’s first public demonstration of overclocking a solid state drive piqued my interest so.
Next month’s Intel Developer Forum in San Francisco will be the stage for the tech demo according to a published session agenda titled Overclocking Unlocked Intel Core Processors for High Performance Gaming and Content Creation. Specifically, Intel mentions the first public demonstration of overclocking Intel SSDs will occur. The talk is scheduled for the morning of September 10 at 11:00 AM.
There’s not a whole lot to go on otherwise, but the idea itself brings up a few possible scenarios. Intel could be prepared to let users overclock the controller chip on their solid state drive or perhaps enable overclocking of the storage interface – either SATA or PCIe. The latter seems a bit less likely from a practical standpoint as overclocking the entire interface would also affect other connected devices.
While the idea of a faster anything is always welcomed, I’m also a bit leery of overclocking a storage device as one false move or bad overclock could potentially spell disaster for valuable data. I’d venture a guess that Intel has thought about this as well and has some sort of data loss prevention method in place, however.
Security researchers from the Technical University of Berlin have discovered a new way to block both phone calls and SMS messages with just a few software modifications to their own mobile device. According to the MIT Technology Review, the exploit works by embedding custom firmware in the baseband processor -- the component of the phone responsible for communicating with nearby network towers.
Under normal circumstances, when a call is sent out, the tower sends out a “ping” to the intended recipient. Before the call is properly connected or the SMS message is received, the intended receiver must answer back by effectively saying “it’s me”. The modified handsets, however, intercepts these signals by responding to the “pings” faster than the actual recipient. As a result, the unknowing victim never receives the message. If the hack is pulled off successfully, it can steal communications within an area approximately 75 square miles in size.
Fortunately, there are some restrictions as to what the exploit can actually do and who the software can target. First off, Motorola phones are currently the only known handsets that can be modified for these purposes.The jammers also only affect 2G GSM networks, rendering them useless against 3G and 4G variants. That being said, GSM networks are still the most popular network worldwide and are used by nearly 4 billion people.
Another limitation is that only phones under the same provider can have their communications blocked; for example, T-Mobile phones are immune to modified Verizon handsets. Most importantly, the hack can’t actually be used to listen in on calls or read SMS messages; disrupting the pinging process is about as far as the research group went.
Interestingly, the threat could be eliminated if current GSM protocols are altered to include the exchange of encrypted codes. This safeguard isn’t expected to be deployed anytime soon though - not unless there’s imminent danger. Victor Bahl, principle researcher of the mobility and networking research group at Microsoft, explained, “The defense is expensive to deploy. I can only speculate that the cell network providers are reluctant to invest in mitigation strategies in the absence of an immediate threat.”
It may be tough to believe given our connected audience but it’s true: nearly one out of every three adults in the US don't have high speed Internet access at home. What’s more, three percent of American adults still connect to the web using a dial-up connection – a figure that’s held steady over the past two years – according to the latest survey from Pew Research Center’s Internet & American Life Project.
The research firm further found that the number of adults that don’t use the Internet has dropped by 50 percent over the past five years, from 30 percent to just 15 percent. It appears that much of this growth comes from smartphone usage and accessing the web at work.
As was the case in previous research, college graduates, adults under age 50 and adults living in households earning at least $50,000, as well as whites and adults living in urban or suburban areas represent those with the highest rates of home broadband adoption.
Kathryn Zickuhr, research associate for the Pew Research Center’s Internet Project and lead author of the report said they’ve consistently found that age, education and household income are among the strongest factors associated with home broadband adoption. Many dial-up users cite cost and access as the main reasons they don’t have broadband, she said, but for adults who don’t use the Internet at all, a lack of interest is often the main issue.
Elsewhere, 46 percent of Americans polled said they have both a smartphone and broadband access at home. 24 percent reported having broadband but no smartphone while 10 percent had a smartphone without high-speed Internet access at home.
Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer will stay on at the company until a successor is found.
Microsoft has stepped into a new and uncertain era with the announcement that CEO Steve Ballmer will retire within 12 months, triggering a search for a successor to take over the software behemoth.
The announcement on Friday surprised analysts and investors and sent shares surging, reflecting belief that the company will benefit from new leadership as it tries to innovate and chase the market for smartphones and tablets.
"There is never a perfect time for this type of transition, but now is the right time," Ballmer said in a statement.
The company needed a leader who could see through its reorganisation and new strategy, he added. "My original thoughts on timing would have had my retirement happen in the middle of our company's transformation to a devices and services company. We need a CEO who will be here longer term for this new direction."
Ballmer, 57, who succeeded Bill Gates as CEO in 2000, will stay on until a successor is found. Gates, who is now chairman of the board, will be part of a small committee tasked with finding the successor. It will be chaired by John Thompson, the board's lead independent director, and consider internal and external candidates.
"I'll work closely with the other members of the board to identify a great new CEO," said Gates. "We're fortunate to have Steve in his role until the new CEO assumes these duties."
Devices chief Julie Larson-Green was tipped as the most obvious internal candidate but many analysts urged Microsoft to plump for an outsider to shake things up.
Ballmer's departure will likely draw a line under Microsoft's origins and traditional tenure. He first met Gates in 1973 when they shared a dormitory hall at Harvard university. He joined the company in 1980 – the company's 30th employee – after it landed a contract to supply an operating system to IBM and swiftly rose up the ranks.
Under Ballmer the company developed successful products like WindowsXP and the Xbox 360. It grew to be worth $78bn and employ more than 100,000 people. It has more than a billion users and remains immensely profitable.
Over the past decade, however, its share price stagnated in contrast to the meteor-like performance of Apple, Google and Amazon. Once the world's most valuable company, Microsoft hemorrhaged more than half of its market value. Critics accused Ballmer of failing to anticipate the explosive growth in tablets and smartphones and the decline of personal computers.
Some, though not all, were appeased by a 22% jump in share price this year after the company started developing and selling its own tablet-style computer.
"The stock is at a relative high at the moment. So it's better to leave on a high note rather than a low note," said Vasudev Bhandarkar, CEO of the Silicon Valley-based Caralta Corporation.
"If you look at the various revenue streams the future doesn't hold very much for the PC industry. Sales are flattening, revenue streams are under attack. Microsoft will have to reinvent itself just like it did in the internet age."
Last month Ballmer announced a sweeping reorganisation to focus more on hardware and make the company nimbler. It appeared to mimic Apple by dividing itself into functions each dedicated to a single purpose such as operating systems, devices, apps or services.
Ballmer fired Steven Sinofsky, who had run Windows and was considered to be the heir apparent, to pave the change.
Many concluded this meant the CEO would stay for the foreseeable future at the corporation's sprawling campus in Redmond, Washington.
"That's why today's news is even more surprising after Ballmer achieved such a big change for Microsoft. If his or her successor doesn't like the 'One Microsoft' vision, he'll have to do another reorganization," notedTechCrunch.
Ballmer's personal wealth is estimated at $15.2bn, which includes about 4% of Microsoft's stock. Born in Detroit, the son of a Ford motor company manager, he studied applied mathematics and economics at Harvard. He worked at Proctor & Gamble and later dropped out of Stanford's graduate school of business to join Microsoft.
Leaving was an emotional, difficult decision, he wrote in a letter to employees.
"I take this step in the best interests of the company I love; it is the thing outside of my family and closest friends that matters to me most."
