While getting a laptop with an SSD inside is still ridiculously expensive, it won't be that way for long. That's because the price of flash memory is plummeting, with it dropping 75% in the last 5 months alone. In fact, 1GB chipsets are selling for as low as $2.23, with 4GB chipsets going for as low as $12.30.
What's that mean for you and me? Well, it means that a, say, 32GB iPhone isn't too far off, and that the days of platter hard drives in computers are numbered. If the trend of dropping prices continues, within a couple more years they'll be nearing the low prices of HDDs we're seeing now, and we'll all enjoy faster, more reliable, more energy efficient storage in all of our devices. Until then, you're still gonna have to do what you've been doing: wait.
Institutional Investor magazine, the top-ranked computer analyst estimate represents 27 percent of about 3.75 million iPhones sold last year was unlocked phones.
Apple gets an undisclosed cut of monthly service fees for the iPhone, which is typically sold with two-year contracts from wireless providers in the U.S. and Europe. For every 1 million unlocked iPhones, Apple loses $300 million to $400 million in future revenue and profit, and may also find it more difficult to sign deals with new carriers.
AT&T Inc., which is Apple's exclusive wireless partner in the U.S., said last week that about 2 million iPhones had been activated. If 315,000 iPhones were sold in Europe and 480,000 remain in store inventory, that leaves a "stunning" and "astounding" 1 million unaccounted for.
To unlock a phone, users must modify the software within the device that ties it to wireless services authorized by Apple.
Unlocked iPhones generate 50 percent less revenue and as much as 75 percent less profit than those tethered to service contracts. If 30 percent of the 10 million iPhones Chief Executive Officer Steve Jobs plans to sell this year are unlocked, Apple's earnings may be lower by about 37 cents a share in each of the next two years.
In September 2007, Apple tried to halt the number of unlocked iPhones by releasing a software update that renders some of them inoperable. Hackers released software to bypass the update.
Web search engine giant Google Inc is interested to set up operations in Malaysia, citing the country's technology infrastructure and strategic location, newspapers reported on Sunday.
Prime Minister Abdullah Ahmad Badawi said Google has started discussions with Malaysia's Multimedia Development Corp on establishing a base in the country.
"They want to make their presence felt in Malaysia. It will be a big boost for our ICT industry," he told reporters after meeting Google Chief Executive Eric Schmidt on the sidelines of the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland.
Abdullah said Malaysia ranked as the top users of Google in Southeast Asia, which was another reason why it would make sense to use the country as a base for its operations.
In Asia, Google has offices in China, Hong Kong, India, Japan, Singapore, South Korea and Taiwan.
Google's new initiative to develop renewable energy sources conjures up images of data centers powered by water, wind, and the sun. No need to stretch your imagination; Google's already got them.
Google's hydro-powered data center on the banks of the Columbia River in The Dalles, Ore., has been well documented. As you can see from the pictures, Google's data center is literally a stone's throw from the Columbia. The juice to power and cool the place comes from a dam a mile or so downstream.
It seems that The Dalles would be a good location for wind-powered energy to augment the swift current of the Columbia. The surrounding landscape, hills, and river valley form a natural wind tunnel. Rights of way and public resistance to eyesore windmills would seem to be the obvious barriers.
In the Netherlands, Google has a wind-powered data center nearing completion. Check out these pictures[ Translate this page ] by local Erwin Boogert.
There are caveats to these images of a green Shangri La. In The Dalles, Google negotiated discounted energy rates and tax incentives, so it's able to suck more power at lower costs than other companies. And in the Netherlands, those windmills provide only some of the power. A power plant down the road generates the rest.
But it's clear that Google is intent on using eco-friendly energy sources in lieu of coal-burning power plants. In an article about a new Google data center under construction in Council Bluffs, Iowa, The Des Moines Register notes that Google purchased 1,000 acres of land south of town in addition to 55 acres for the data center itself and another 130 acres nearby. When local farmer Bruce Barnett asked Google's Ken Patchett -- the manager of Google's data center in Oregon -- about how that land would be used, he was told that Google was still thinking about it.
Might those 1,000 acres be used for a wind farm? Google's "renewable energy cheaper than coal" project increases the possibility.
BRUSSELS, Belgium (AP) — IP addresses, string of numbers that identify computers on the Internet, should generally be regarded as personal information, the head of the European Union's group of data privacy regulators said Monday.
Germany's data protection commissioner, Peter Scharr, leads the EU group preparing a report on how well the privacy policies of Internet search engines operated by Google Inc., Yahoo Inc., Microsoft Corp. and others comply with EU privacy law.
He told a European Parliament hearing on online data protection that when someone is identified by an IP, or Internet protocol, address "then it has to be regarded as personal data."
His view differs from that of Google, which insists an IP address merely identifies the location of a computer, not who the individual user is — something strictly true but which does not recognize that many people regularly use the same computer terminal and IP address.
Scharr acknowledged that IP addresses for a computer may not always be personal or linked to an individual. For example, some computers in Internet cafes or offices are used by several people.
But these exceptions have not stopped the emergence of a host of "whois" Internet sites that apply the general rule that typing in an IP address will generate a name for the person or company linked to it.
Treating IP addresses as personal information would have implications for how search engines record data.
Google led the pack by being the first last year to cut the time it stored search information to 18 months. It also reduced the time limit on the cookies that collect information on how people use the Internet from a default of 30 years to an automatic expiration in two years.
But a privacy advocate at the nonprofit Electronic Privacy Information Center, or EPIC, said it was "absurd" for Google to claim that stripping out the last two figures from the stored IP address made the address impossible to identify by making it one of 256 possible configurations.
"It's one of the things that make computer people giggle," EPIC executive director Marc Rotenberg told The Associated Press. "The more the companies know about you, the more commercial value is obtained."
Google's global privacy counsel, Peter Fleischer, however, said Google collects IP addresses to give customers a more accurate service because it knows what part of the world a search result comes from and what language they use — and that was not enough to identify an individual user.
"If someone taps in 'football' you get different results in London than in New York," he said.
He said the way Google stores IP addresses meant one of them forms part of a crowd, giving valuable information on general trends without infringing on an individual's privacy.
Google says it needs to store search queries and gather information on online activity to improve its search results and to provide advertisers with correct billing information that shows that genuine users are clicking on online ads.
Internet 'click fraud' can be tracked down by showing that the same IP address is jumping repeatedly to the same ad. Advertisers pay for each time a different person views the ad, so dozens of views by the same person can rack up costs without giving the company the publicity it wanted.
Microsoft does not record the IP address that identifies an individual computer when it logs search terms. Its Internet strategy relies on users logging into the Passport network that is linked to its popular Hotmail and Messenger services.
The company's European Internet policy director, Thomas Myrup Kristensen, described the move as part of Microsoft's commitment to privacy.
"In terms of the impact on user privacy, complete and irreversible anonymity is the most important point here — more impactful than whether the data is retained for 13 versus 18 versus 24 months," he said.
But neither of the search engines received a pat on the back from Spain's data protection regulator, Artemi Rallo Lombarte, who criticized them for not trying to make their privacy policies accessible to normal people.
Their privacy policies "could very well be considered virtual or fictional ... because search engines do not sufficiently emphasize their own privacy policies on their home pages, nor are they accessible to users," he said, describing the policies as "complex and unintelligible to users."
Apple Inc. Chief Executive Steve Jobs continued his tradition of taking home only $1 in salary in 2007, when he also gained $14.6 million on paper by exercising stock options that were about to expire, according to a filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission.
Jobs has taken a $1 annual salary since returning to the Cupertino-based company in 1997 and has hoarded his shares of Apple stock since then, accumulating about 5.5 million, according to Apple's proxy report filed Wednesday with the SEC.
The value of Jobs' stock has taken a beating over the past month, however, as investors have retreated from Apple shares amid fears of slowing consumer spending and a recession in the United States.
Since Apple released a disappointing second-quarter forecast after the close of trading Tuesday, Apple shares have plunged almost 11 percent. That drop lopped $15 billion from the company's market value and trimmed the value of Jobs' stake by more than $90 million to a total of around $765 million.
Apple stocks closed down 11 percent, or $16.57, at $139.07 Wednesday, climbing back from a more serious decline earlier in the day as technology stocks staged a late comeback.
Jobs did not pocket the profit from the 120,000 stock options he exercised in 2007, Apple said in the regulatory documents. The options -- granted to Jobs for his service on Apple's board of directors -- were set to expire in August 2007 so he exercised them and held on to all of the shares.
Apple valued the exercise of those options at $14.6 million, which indicates the difference between the price Jobs was able to buy the shares for and the price of Apple's stock the day of that purchase.
Options give employees of a company the right to buy shares of their company's stock in the future at a set price. They can be extremely lucrative if the stock price appreciates substantially, which boosts the recipients' windfall.
Jobs currently has no un-vested equity awards. Apple noted in the documents, however, that its board of directors is considering ways to provide Jobs additional compensation because of the importance of his continued leadership.
After he returned to the company he co-founded more than 20 years earlier, Jobs' bonus in 1999 for engineering an impressive turnaround was a $90 million Gulfstream V jet, whose operation Apple still helps pay for.
Under a reimbursement agreement, the company repays him for the expenses of operating his private plane when it is used for company business, an arrangement that cost Apple $776,000 in 2007, according to the filings.
I'm a new soul I came to this strange world hoping I could learn a bit about how to give and take. But since I came here felt the joy and the fear finding myself making every possible mistake
la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la...
I'm a young soul in this very strange world hoping I could learn a bit about what is true and fake. But why don't please trying to comunnicate finding just that love is not always easy to make.
la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la...
This is a happy end cause' you don't understand everything you have done why's everything so wrong
this is a happy end come and give me your hand I'll take your far away.
[Refrain]: I'm a new soul I came to this strange world hoping I could learn a bit about how to give and take but since I came here fellt the joy and the fear finding myself making every possible mistake
Microsoft Chairman and visionary Bill Gates gave his final keynote speech at the 2008 International Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in Las Vegas on January 6.
This is a right decision for him since Vista is not doing very well as what he is not expected, and companies like Apple and Google as well as open source platform especially Linux are all going after him. Apple's Mac OS X Leopard has getting a very competitive market share especially in Asia. Google's innovative softwares have penetrate some of the market and this has become nightmare to Microsoft; this can be seen very clearly with the Google-DoubleClick deal.
To leave Microsoft, at least, he saved his face. All the blames just push to Steve Ballmer ...and we can see the downfall of Microsoft empire.
Let's watch a video of Bill Gates' last day at Microsoft.
Wolfmother - Love Train - 5th Generation iPod Wolfmother - Wolfmother - Love Train
Bob Dylan - Someday Baby - 5th Generation iPod Bob Dylan - Modern Times - Someday Baby
Cut Chemist - The Audience Is Listening Theme Song - 2nd Generation iPod nano Cut Chemist - The Audience's Listening - The Audience Is Listening Theme Song
For those wondering what song Apple decided to use in their new MacBook Air commercial is New Soul by Yael Naim. Granted it is not quite as catchy as the Feist iPod nano song. Apple still knows how to pick them.
The MacBook Air is part of the MacBook family and the Apple's first to feature a multi-touch trackpad and an optional solid-state hard drive. Apple CEO Steve Jobs revealed the MacBook Air at the Macworld Conference & Expo on January 15, 2008. Apple describes it as the "world's thinnest notebook" at 0.76 inches (1.93 cm) thick at its thickest point and 0.16 inches (0.4 cm) at its thinnest.
Ferrari became the first team to launch their 2008 car on Sunday, Jan 6, when the wraps came off their new challenger at their Maranello base in Italy. The F2008, the 54th single-seater Ferrari have built to contest the Formula One world championship, will be raced by Kimi Raikkonen and Felipe Massa in the team’s defence of their drivers’ and constructors’ crowns this season.
The F2008’s design, codenamed internally as the 659, represents Ferrari’s interpretation of the regulations in force in 2008. A major new element of these is the introduction of a new electronic system to be used by all teams, known as SECU (Standard Electronic Control Unit) and produced by MES (McLaren Electronic Systems.) It consists of a single control unit and a software system, the development of which ends as the season begins.
Other areas affected by rule changes are: gearbox, which must be used for four consecutive events; safety, with the introduction of higher side protection around the driver's helmet; materials, with a limit to the type of composites that can be used. As a result of these rules, there has been an increase in the weight of the F2008 over its predecessor.
All aerodynamic surfaces on the car have been completely revised. However, the current version will be replaced by a completely different configuration in time for the first 2008 race in March and an intensive and all-encompassing development programme is planned to run throughout the season.
The monococque has been further cut away under the driver's legs and the side pods and engine cover are more tapered. The suspension system has been reworked and developed around the new aerodynamics.
The wheelbase and weight distribution have been adapted to meet the challenge of the new regulations and on the basis of lessons learned last year in terms of the performance of the Bridgestone tyres. Changes to the technical and sporting regulations in terms of electronics, alongside the introduction of the SECU, have led to the removal of a host of a driver aids, such as traction control and engine braking and the electronically assisted start system, and also mean that management of the differential, engine and gearchange are much simpler.
The gearbox casing is produced in carbon, while the transmission continues to be mounted longitudinally. For the second consecutive year the gearchange is fitted with a quick shift system, adapted to the SECU software and further speeded up. The braking system has been updated with new callipers and innovative concepts regarding cooling.
The 056 engine is mounted longitudinally and continues as a load bearing element. Its basic structure remains unchanged compared to the unit homologated at the start of last season, while its auxiliary systems, air and fuel intakes have been further developed. The technical regulations also call for the use of fuel corresponding to European Union norms, with a content of components derived from biological sources equal to 5.75%.
Ferrari F2008 technical specifications – chassis
Carbon-fibre and honeycomb composite structure
Ferrari longitudinal gearbox Limited-slip differential
Ventilated carbon-fibre disc brakes Independent suspension, push-rod activated torsion springs front and rear
Weight (with water, lubricant and driver): 605 kg
BBS Wheels (front and rear): 13''
Engine
Type: 056
Number of cylinders: 8
Cylinder block in cast aluminium: V 90°
Number of valves: 32
Pneumatic distribution
Total displacement: 2398 cm3
Piston bore: 98 mm
Weight: <95 kg
Magneti Marelli digital electronic injection
Magneti Marelli static electronic ignition
Fuel: Shell V-Power ULG 64
Lubricant: Shell SL-1098
McLaren revealed their 2008 challenger on Monday, Jan 7, following Ferrari Sunday's event of F2008 launch, as the wraps came off the MP4-23 in a special ceremony at the Mercedes-Benz Museum in Stuttgart, Germany. The car will be raced by Lewis Hamilton and Heikki Kovalainen this season, and both were present to witness the car’s unveiling.
McLaren missed out on both championships in 2007 after they were stripped of their constructors’ points following the Ferrari ‘spy scandal’ affair. However, team boss Ron Dennis insisted they would be fighting for both titles again in 2008.
The 2008 season gets underway in Melbourne on March 16.
NEC will unveil a 42-inch wraparound display at Macworld next week. The model CRVD-42DWX+ has a seamless image, 2880 x 900 pixels, achieved with a combination of a DLP engine and LEDs.
The use of a DLP engine and LEDs allows for a very fast response time, less than 0.02 ms. and an image free of motion artifacts. Other specs include: pixel pitch of 0.36 mm, 350 nits brightness, a contrast ratio exceeding 10,000:1 and an NTSC color gamut of 170 percent.
The target markets are gaming, simulation, those who've considered a multi-monitor setup, and of course video and film creation and viewing.
NEC expects delivery in the second half of 2008. Information on pricing is not yet available.
We've seen amazing developments in flexible e-paper digital displays in the past, but LG.Philips LCD is about to debut the world's highest resolution 14.3-inch flexible color e-paper display at CES 2008. Let's go back for a moment, do you remember Fujitsu's bendable color electronic e-Paper? Or Sony's flexible OLED display? If so you'll understand how impressive a 14.3-inch e-paper display (equivalent in size to an A4 sheet of paper) with a resolution of 1280 x 800 pixels, and 16.7 million colors is.
The display is said to be extremely energy efficient, and very thin at less than 300 micrometers. It's made of metal foil and plastic substrates, which makes LG.Philips LCD's e-paper display bendable and durable, while also maintaining its excellent thin-film transistors (TFT) display qualities. This e-paper display pops back into shape after being bent, and it can also be viewed from a full 180 degrees.
