Geithner Will Stay for Now, the Treasury Department Says

?Secretary Geithner has let the president know that he plans to stay on in his position at Treasury,? Jenni R. LeCompte, a Treasury spokeswoman, said in a written statement. ?He looks forward to the important work ahead on the challenges facing our great country.?

Mr. Geithner, 49, said a month ago that he would decide on his future after the administration and Congress reached a deal to increase the nation?s debt limit, raising the possibility that he would step down. Mr. Obama signed the debt ceiling legislation into law last Tuesday.

But the White House pressed Mr. Geithner to stay, citing a need for stability in Mr. Obama?s economic team and a desire to avoid another confrontation with Senate Republicans, who have used the filibuster to delay or prevent votes on many of Mr. Obama?s nominees to important executive branch positions.

By late last week, administration officials were saying privately that it appeared Mr. Geithner would stay through the end of Mr. Obama?s term, although he had not yet told the White House his final decision, pending conversations with his family.

Jay Carney, the White House spokesman, said in a statement on Sunday, ?The president asked Secretary Geithner to stay on at Treasury and welcomes his decision.?

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A Cloud that Can't Leak

Imagine getting a friend's advice on a personal problem and being safe in the knowledge that it would be impossible for your friend to divulge the question, or even his own reply.

Researchers at Microsoft have taken a step toward making something similar possible for cloud computing, so that data sent to an Internet server can be used without ever being revealed. Their prototype can perform statistical analyses on encrypted data despite never decrypting it. The results worked out by the software emerge fully encrypted, too, and can only be interpreted using the key in the possession of the data's owner.

Cloud services are increasingly being used for every kind of computing, from entertainment to business software. Yet there are justifiable fears over security, as the attacks on Sony's servers that liberated personal details from 100 million accounts demonstrated.

Kristin Lauter, the Microsoft researcher who collaborated with colleagues Vinod Vaikuntanathan and Michael Naehrig on the new design, says it would ensure that data could only escape in an encrypted form that would be nearly impossible for attackers to decode without possession of a user's decryption key. "This proof of concept shows that we could build a medical service that calculates predictions or warnings based on data from a medical monitor tracking something like heart rate or blood sugar," she says. "A person's data would always remain encrypted, and that protects their privacy."

The prototype storage system is the most practical example yet of a cryptographic technique known as homomorphic encryption. "People have been talking about it for a while as the Holy Grail for cloud computing security," says Lauter. "We wanted to show that it can already be used for some types of cloud service."

Researchers recognized the potential value of fully homomorphic encryption (in which software could perform any calculation on encrypted data and produce a result that was also encrypted) many years ago. But until recently, it wasn't known to be possible, let alone practical. Only in 2009 did Craig Gentry of IBM publish a mathematical proof showing fully homomorphic encryption was possible.

In the relatively short time since, Gentry and other researchers have built on that initial proof to develop more working prototypes, although these remain too inefficient to use on a real cloud server, says Lauter.

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23andMe Offers Free Genetic Tests to African Americans

To date, research into the genetic cause of disease has been overwhelmingly white.

Of the participants in the most common type of genetic disease study, 96 percent are of European descent. Growing evidence suggests that the results of these studies, which encompass hundreds of thousands of people, may be less relevant or even irrelevant to those in other ethnic groups.

23andMe, a direct-to-consumer genetic testing company, aims to shift the balance. It will offer free testing to 10,000 African-Americans as part of a research initiative to expand the diversity of its genetic database. The company hopes the project, announced last week at the National Urban League conference in Boston, will shed light on the genetic basis of disease in this population. More than 1,000 people have signed up on the website in the week since the project was announced.

A major motivation behind these genetic studies is to promote personalized medicine, which is aimed at predicting disease risk and treating patients based on their genetics. Experts worry that non-European ethnic groups will miss out on this new frontier if they are not included in such research. In addition to the 23andMe effort, several large-scale genetic projects on nonwhites are now underway.

Last year, the Carlos Slim Health Institute, a nonprofit based in Mexico City, and the Broad Institute, a genomics research institute in Cambridge, Massachusetts, launched a project to study the genetic basis of type 2 diabetes in Mexican and Latin American populations, as well as the genomics of cancer worldwide. In 2008, the National Institutes of Health opened a center devoted to the study of genetics, lifestyle, and disease in minority groups.

23andMe analyzes DNA using chips designed to detect a million common genetic variations across the genome. Users, who order the test online for $99, get a customized report detailing their genetic risk for about 200 diseases and other traits. The vast majority of predictions are based on studies that were mainly of people of European descent. So it's not clear whether the findings are relevant for African Americans.

Research on a handful of diseases that have been studied across different ethnicities has shown that the genetic variants that increase risk often vary by population. Recent studies of asthma and prostate cancer, for example, have identified new disease-linked variations unique to those of African descent. Dozens of studies of Europeans have identified 19 common genetic variations linked to type 2 diabetes. But follow-up studies in a more diverse group found that five of those variations have different effects in different populations.

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Congressional Memo: S.&P. Downgrade Is Seen as Adding Urgency to Debt-Cutting Panel

Even before the panel is appointed, its mission is expanding. Its role is not just to cut the annual budget deficit and slow the explosive growth of federal debt but also to appease the markets and help restore the United States? top credit rating of AAA. Otherwise, taxpayers may eventually have to pay more in interest for every dollar borrowed by the Treasury.

The report certainly got the attention of Capitol Hill. ?I think this is one of the most telling, important moments in our country?s history right now,? Senator John Kerry, Democrat of Massachusetts, said Sunday on the NBC program ?Meet the Press.? He added: ?This poses a set of choices not just about a recession. It?s about a financial crisis and the structure of our economy, which really has been misallocating capital.?

In the S.&P. report on Friday outlining the reasons for removing long-term Treasury debt from its list of nearly risk-free investments, the company cited doubts about the ability of the two political parties to bridge their gulf on fiscal policy.

Credit rating agencies have thus emerged as a powerful constituency whose concerns are taken seriously by Congress.

Representative Joe Courtney, Democrat of Connecticut, said he had ?read and reread the S. & P. report? several times since it was issued Friday night, and he said it could spur action by Congress. If the 12 members of the committee, to be appointed by Aug. 16 by Congressional leaders of the two parties, could agree on a deficit-reduction package, and if Congress approved it, Mr. Courtney said, ?that would surprise a lot of skeptics? and could disprove the company?s criticism of the United States political system.

Representative Blake Farenthold, a freshman Republican from Texas, said the S.&P. report could have a beneficial effect. ?Anything that encourages the new committee to get the job done and get us back on a rational fiscal path is a good thing,? Mr. Farenthold said.

Another freshman Republican, Representative Steve Southerland II of Florida, said the credit report created ?a sense of urgency for the two parties to come together.? The possibility of a further downgrade ?scares me,? Mr. Southerland said.

The stated goal of the new panel, the Joint Select Committee on Deficit Reduction, is to cut federal budget deficits by a total of ?at least $1.5 trillion? over the next decade.

The first round of savings under the new law, coming from annual caps on appropriations, is estimated at $917 billion over 10 years. Standard & Poor?s had said it was hoping to see $4 trillion in total deficit reduction. If the joint committee wanted to reach that goal, it might seek a bigger, more comprehensive deal, aiming to save $3 trillion rather than $1.5 trillion over 10 years.

If Congress wants to satisfy the rating agencies ? Moody?s and Fitch have so far kept their AAA ratings of government debt ? it will need to lock in substantial deficit-reduction measures, without using the kind of budgetary gimmicks that sometimes appear to produce savings under accounting rules prescribed by Congress, several lawmakers said.

Senator John McCain, Republican of Arizona, said Sunday on ?Meet the Press? that the credit downgrade created an ?added incentive? for the new committee and Congress as a whole to agree on major deficit-reduction plans.

On the other hand, opposition to proposals from the committee, due by Nov. 23, could increase with the size of the package. And a bigger joint committee bill might make the alternative ? automatic across-the-board cuts saving $1.2 trillion over 10 years ? appear more attractive, lawmakers said.

Democrats like the Senate majority leader, Harry Reid of Nevada, cited the downgrade as another reason to include revenue-raising measures in a package. Republicans like Speaker John A. Boehner of Ohio said the downgrade strengthened the case for deeper cuts in spending.

Before their talks broke down last month, President Obama and Mr. Boehner were pursuing a ?grand bargain? that sought savings of $4 trillion over a decade.

Senator Kerry also endorsed that goal. The United States must show the markets that it is ?deadly serious about dealing with its long-term structural debt,? he said, and the way to do that is by ?putting a plan on the table, $4 trillion plus, if necessary.?

Republicans have historically seen the deficit as an issue that plays to their political advantage. Deficit-reduction proposals floated by Mr. Obama as part of a grand bargain set him against many of his liberal supporters.

Congressional Democrats, lobbyists for older Americans and advocates for the poor expressed alarm last month when Mr. Obama showed serious interest in proposals to reduce the cost-of-living adjustment for Social Security benefits, increase the eligibility age for Medicare and cut Medicaid payments to the states for treating poor people.

The new panel will have 14 weeks to do its work. Republicans have made clear that they will push for cuts in federal spending under the new health care law, arguing that it should be on the table along with other government programs and tax breaks. The Congressional Budget Office says the law will cover 34 million uninsured people by expanding Medicaid and subsidizing private insurance at a cost of $1.1 trillion over 10 years.

On ?Fox News Sunday,? Representative Paul D. Ryan, Republican of Wisconsin and chairman of the House Budget Committee, said the new panel would probably not ?achieve a full fix to our problems because Democrats have never wanted to put their health care bill on the table.?

S.&P. did not advocate a specific mix of increased revenue and spending cuts. But it did say that overhauling entitlement programs was ?key to long-term fiscal sustainability? and that the debt deal ?envisions only minor policy changes on Medicare.?

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23andMe Offers Free Genetic Tests to African Americans

To date, research into the genetic cause of disease has been overwhelmingly white.

Of the participants in the most common type of genetic disease study, 96 percent are of European descent. Growing evidence suggests that the results of these studies, which encompass hundreds of thousands of people, may be less relevant or even irrelevant to those in other ethnic groups.

23andMe, a direct-to-consumer genetic testing company, aims to shift the balance. It will offer free testing to 10,000 African-Americans as part of a research initiative to expand the diversity of its genetic database. The company hopes the project, announced last week at the National Urban League conference in Boston, will shed light on the genetic basis of disease in this population. More than 1,000 people have signed up on the website in the week since the project was announced.

A major motivation behind these genetic studies is to promote personalized medicine, which is aimed at predicting disease risk and treating patients based on their genetics. Experts worry that non-European ethnic groups will miss out on this new frontier if they are not included in such research. In addition to the 23andMe effort, several large-scale genetic projects on nonwhites are now underway.

Last year, the Carlos Slim Health Institute, a nonprofit based in Mexico City, and the Broad Institute, a genomics research institute in Cambridge, Massachusetts, launched a project to study the genetic basis of type 2 diabetes in Mexican and Latin American populations, as well as the genomics of cancer worldwide. In 2008, the National Institutes of Health opened a center devoted to the study of genetics, lifestyle, and disease in minority groups.

23andMe analyzes DNA using chips designed to detect a million common genetic variations across the genome. Users, who order the test online for $99, get a customized report detailing their genetic risk for about 200 diseases and other traits. The vast majority of predictions are based on studies that were mainly of people of European descent. So it's not clear whether the findings are relevant for African Americans.

Research on a handful of diseases that have been studied across different ethnicities has shown that the genetic variants that increase risk often vary by population. Recent studies of asthma and prostate cancer, for example, have identified new disease-linked variations unique to those of African descent. Dozens of studies of Europeans have identified 19 common genetic variations linked to type 2 diabetes. But follow-up studies in a more diverse group found that five of those variations have different effects in different populations.

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Beating the iPhone at any cost may prove too expensive for Google

When the iPhone was introduced in January of 2007, it caught the mobile phone industry flat-footed. The hardware on the market was archaic compared to the iPhone and the operating systems running on them were years behind Apples iPhone OS.

Even prior to the release of the iPhone , Google saw an opportunity to massively increase the amount of eyeballs seeing its mobile ads in a project called Android.  Android, a linux-based mobile OS that had been purchased by Google in 2005, was quickly polished up, priced irresistibly and offered as a lifeline to manufacturers floundering for an option.

Thus, Apple?s biggest current mobile competitor was born. But, even though Android was far beyond where most mobile operating systems were in 2007, it was still well behind Apple?s iPhone OS. This put the pressure on for Google to increase the speed of its development and to improve its capabilities to offer a viable alternative.

But the way in which Google managed to take Android from an unreleased experiment to a shipping product so quickly may now be coming back to bite them on the proverbial butt and, in the end, may cost more than the billions it has spent or lost making Android the ubiquitous mobile platform it is today.

Hunter to hunted

Google has come a long way since it began its life as a company producing a search tool and that has never been more evident than it has after the events of this week. The company whose public motto was once ?don?t be evil? has demonstrated that its internal policy may have been more along the lines of ?whatever it takes?.

This week, Google?s SVP David Drummond posted a treatise on the company?s official blog effectively accusing Apple, Microsoft and Oracle of trying to strangle the innovation of Android with patents. In doing so, Drummond set off a flurry of discussion about the validity of software patents and how the whole system is broken. That very well may be true, but unfortunately, it?s the system that we have, and Google has grown to be one of the biggest companies in tech while leveraging that very same system.

That?s why it?s unsurprising that Microsoft immediately shot back with a rebuttal to Drummond over his claims that Microsoft and Apple had conspired to deprive Google of the trove of Novell patents won by the companies, along with a group of other buyers. Microsoft?s head of legal counsel Frank Shaw apparently took umbrage with this accusation and produced a letter showing that Google was in fact invited to participate as a member of Microsoft?s group, but rejected the offer. Shaw?s explanation of why Google didn?t participate? ?Because they [Google] wanted to buy something that they could assert against someone else.?

Google is in effect playing the victim here by decrying the acquisitions of patents from Nortel and Novell by big meanie consortiums made up of Microsoft, Apple and other players in the telecommunication industries. This is incredibly ironic considering that Google is itself the owner of thousands of technology patents, some of them for products created in-house to be sure, but many of them purchased in previous auctions.

In the case of the Novell auctions, Google had a very simple reason for not participating in a joint bid. They were not interested in an even playing field, only one where they had an advantage. If Google was not able to purchase the patents on its own to use as leverage against other companies, then it figured it was not worth it.

You would think that Google couldn?t get any more blatant about its desire for dominance and its disregard for what actually constitutes competition and parity, but this week, Drummond?s complaints about ?hostile? patent attacks were made even more ironic by two internal Google communications that reveal just how willing it was to disregard other companies patents while establishing Android?s market dominance.

Letters of note

The two communications that have surfaced this week came about 5 years apart, one in October of 2005, before Android was publicly released, and one from the summer of 2010.

In the first, an email from Android?s head Andy Rubin, Rubin is commenting on the fact that it may not be able to obtain licensing to use code from Sun?s Java platform.

If Sun doesn?t want to work with us, we have two options: 1) Abandon our work and adopt MSFT CLR VM and C# language ? or ? 2) Do Java anyway and defend our decision, perhaps making enemies along the way

In the end, Rubin and co decided to proceed with Java because it would have taken a prohibitively long time for them to re-write the Java segments of Android using C and .NET technologies. When Oracle subsequently acquired Sun, it also got the Java language and that is where the suit that Oracle is now pursuing against Google came from.

Oracle is pursuing Google for its unlicensed use of Java in both the Android mobile OS and its desktop replacement Chrome OS. Something that never would have happened if Google hadn?t been pursuing such an aggressive timeline with Android.

The second email was written by Tim Lindholm, a Google engineer and former Sun employee, in August 2010.

What we?ve actually been asked to do (by Larry [Page] and Sergey [Brin]) is to investigate what technical alternatives exist to Java for Android and Chrome. We?ve been over a bunch of these, and think they all suck. We conclude that we need to negotiate a license for Java under the terms we need.

Subsequent to its initial inability to gain a license for Java, Google decided to follow Rubin?s second plan of action and just go ahead with it anyway and deal with the consequences later. In the end, Java became such a big part of the Android OS that it was impossible to keep up with the release schedule and demands for new versions of the OS as well as go back and rewrite all of the segments of Android that required Java.

Google had several more chances over the years to reach an agreement with Sun for Java, but each time Google felt that the offer was too costly, or Sun feared the impact of licensing Java to Google on the other deals that it already had in place.

If you?re interested in a great dissection of how these two emails might affect the Oracle vs. Google case, definitely check out Florian Mueller?s post at FOSS Patents.

In the end, Google?s desire to hasten the production of Android and to spur its enormous growth to even greater heights caused them to look for ways to take shortcuts. Once the project was established and they found that they couldn?t get the licensing they needed, it looks as if they just willfully infringed on Sun?s (now Oracle?s) patents on Java.

This, folks, is what we call irony.

The sincerest form of flattery

Google?s CEO Eric Schmidt joined Apple?s board of directors in November of 2006. At the time, Android was still very much a twinkle in Google?s eye and the iPhone was being prepared for its January 2007 debut. Behind the scenes, Apple and Google were working together to integrate Google?s search, maps and YouTube products into the fabric of the iPhone. Then, in November of 2007, Google announced its Android project publicly as a platform that other phones would run on.

As you can see in the video above, early Android devices looked nothing like the iPhone and instead were reflections of where the world?s other manufacturers of smartphones were in terms of design thought at the time. That hideous mutant-BlackBerry-looking Android device never actually made it into production. Google announced the first Android device, the distinctly different touch-screen T-Mobile G1 manufactured by HTC, in September of 2008.

Just over a year later, in August of 2009, Eric Schmidt and Apple parted ways. The reasons for Schmidt leaving were explained by an Apple statement that Google and Apple were just too much in competition in the mobile space as well as the desktop space now that Google had entered the market with Chrome OS.

In his book In The Plex, author Steven Levy attributes the split to the animosity felt by Steve Jobs after he witnessed very distinctly iPhone features like ?pinch-to-zoom? being demonstrated on Android devices at Google?s headquarters. Although Schmidt stayed on for a year after Android first arrived on a phone, he was left more and more consistently out of the loop and was not privy to Apple?s plans for the iPad at all, reportedly at Jobs? insistence.

Pinch-to-zoom was actually not present in the T-Mobile G1, although Android was indubitably capable of multitouch as it appeared on the Motorola Droid the very next year.

The damage was done, although we may have yet to see the end of it. Apple began making small moves, like mapping company Placebase, ditching Skyhook and Google for location data and preparing a traffic service of its own, that are preparing it to divest itself of much of Google?s presence on the iPhone via its Maps product.

The real cost for Google

Google stands to lose money in the billions if the patent suit brought against them by Oracle goes in the wrong direction. This alone would be bad enough, but Google has cash, they can pay out and move on if they need to. The impact of a ruling against them in the Oracle suit has a longer shadow than just a settlement.

In addition to Oracle, Android is also under attach either directly or indirectly by suits brought against manufacturers like HTC and Samsung by Apple. Although Apple is ostensibly going after those makers for copying the design of the iPhone, there are components of the suits that implicate the Android OS just as much as the hardware itself. This could in effect have the ability to block Android hardware from being sold in the US, and, if Apple was so inclined, force Google to pay its primary rival a licensing fee for every copy of Android shipped, as it currently does with Microsoft.

Google makes money from ads, not Android. But every pair of eyeballs that are landing on an Android device is potential revenue that comes in. The question is whether or not the revenue from those devices, estimated to hover around $150m/yr, will be enough to offset the fact that Google makes nothing on licensing Android, which it gives away, and next to nothing on Android apps like Gmail, which it forces Android licensers to install on their devices.

If things don?t go Google?s way in the patent courts over the next 18 months or so, they could be looking at a situation where they?re paying out hundreds of millions of dollars a year just to be able to give Android away for free. No matter how much money Google makes elsewhere, that can?t seem like a good business plan.

In the end though, it?s Google?s partnerships like the one it has with Apple that may end up being the most painful cost of all when it comes to the price of its success. Google makes an incredible amount of money serving ads to desktop users, but the mobile market is growing by leaps and bounds and will at some point surpass even laptops as the platform of choice for computing on the go. Android has enjoyed incredible success so far, but its survival is by no means assured, especially if Google?s early indiscretions in its development come back to haunt it.

Google stands to lose billions of dollars in direct costs, but the long-term costs of Google becoming persona non-grata to Microsoft, Apple, Oracle and any other potential partner in the mobile space may end up being the harshest loss of all. Google had better hope that its gambles with Android?s future pay off, because that may soon be the only platform that you see with a Google product on it.

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Source: http://thenextweb.com/insider/2011/08/08/beating-the-iphone-at-any-cost-may-prove-too-expensive-for-google/

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Happy Birthday: World Wide Web turns 20

British engineer and computer scientist Tim Berners-Lee of the European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN) unveiled a project for organizing information on August 6, 1991. He called it the World Wide Web and posted a short summary on the alt.hypertext newsgroup, marking the debut of the Web as a publicly available service on the Internet. Today, the World Wide Web is thus 20 years old.

The World Wide Web, or just the Web as we call it today, is a system of interlinked hypertext documents accessed via the Internet. In essence, users can view web pages that contain text, images, videos, and/or other multimedia with a Web browser. Navigation between them occurs via hyperlinks.

Berners-Lee, now Director of the World Wide Web Consortium, used concepts from earlier hypertext systems to write a proposal in March 1989 for what would eventually become the World Wide Web. In November 1990, Berners-Lee and Belgian computer scientist Robert Cailliau proposed to use hypertext to link and access information of various kinds.

The project was publicly introduced in December 1990 at CERN in Geneva, Switzerland. Berners-Lee used a NeXT Computer as the world's first web server and also to write the first web browser, WorldWideWeb. By Christmas 1990, Berners-Lee had built all the tools necessary for a working Web: the first Web browser (which was a web editor as well), the first web server, and the first web pages, which of course described the project itself.

Of the various individual projects that went into building the Internet, the World Wide Web is to this day one of the most significant by far. Thank you Berners-Lee!

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Acer founder: Ultrabooks and tablets are short-term fads

Acer founder Stan Shih has declared that ultrabooks and tablets are both short-term fads. At the same time, he has urged companies in the notebook supply chain to innovate further and create products with even more value, according to DigiTimes.

Shih specifically referred to Apple's success with the iPad, saying that all notebook players should learn from Cupertino's outside-the-box thinking. He also noted that tablets are just extensions of the original PC, and all further innovation will have to once again start from the PC.

As in other market segments, Acer is trying to undercut its competitors. Shih believes that consumers want products with low price and convenience, and each player will need to face such pressures in the tablet arena. The Acer Iconia Tab A500 (our review) starts at $450 while the Acer Iconia Tab A100 starts at $350.

I'm not sure I believe that ultrabooks and tablets are a short-term fad, but I may have a different definition of short-term. I simply believe they are niche markets that will grow quite a bit in the coming years, until they are replaced by other more convenient form factors.

Both of these types of PCs are really nothing new. They are expected to explode because the price range for both of them is finally at a point where the average consumer can justify it. Computer parts have finally reached a point where they are both powerful and small enough that ultrabooks and tablets can be purchased under the $500 price point, and as we know, that's one of the sweet spots of the PC industry.

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Weekend tech reading: Anonymous breaches US government sites

Group hacks US law enforcement sites, steals data The group known as Anonymous said it hacked into some 70 mostly rural law enforcement websites in the United States, a data breach that at least one local police chief said leaked sensitive information about an ongoing investigation. The loose-knit international hacking collective posted a cache of data to the Internet early Saturday, including emails stolen from officers, tips that appeared to come from members of the public, credit card numbers... AP

Professors cede grading power to outsiders -- even computers The best way to eliminate grade inflation is to take professors out of the grading process: Replace them with professional evaluators who never meet the students, and who don't worry that students will punish harsh grades with poor reviews. That's the argument made by leaders of Western Governors University, which has hired 300 adjunct professors who do nothing but grade student work. The Chronicle

Special report: Here's Fusion processors, AMD's 2012 model mobile According to information from the last sale in July, 1.5 million Fusion LIano processor performs and raise the level of 7-8 million projected by year-end sales figures, AMD, laptop's computing market, to offer next-generation Fusion processors to market gained acceleration in 2012, aims to consolidate. AMD is prepared to update the entire product line with 2012... DonanimHaber (translated)

Defcon lockpickers open card-and-code government locks in seconds To open a door fitted with the latest U.S. government-certified lock from high-end Swiss lock manufacturer Kaba, an employee must both enter a code up to eight digits long, then swipe a unique identity card coded to comply with a new standard that requires an extra layer of security, one designed to track individual staffers and make covert intrusion harder than ever. Forbes

Microsoft readies 22 patches for Windows, IE next week Microsoft said it will ship 13 security updates next week to patch 22 vulnerabilities in Internet Explorer, Windows, Visio, and Visual Studio. Next Tuesday's patch lineup is larger than July's on the update count, but matches last month's vulnerability total. That's unusual, since the company usually delivers a heavier load in even-numbered months. PCWorld

Nvidia drivers giving 2010 MacBook Pro owners Lion upgrade headaches Users of last year's MacBook Pro models with Nvidia GPUs are finding the upgrade to Lion to be far less than perfect. Problems in the NVidia graphics drivers that shipped with OS X 10.7 appear to be at the root of kernel panics and system freezes that leave an affected MacBook Pro with a blank black screen. Ars Technica

Time Warner Cable?s porn problem: It Isn?t selling enough Big cable companies like Comcast and Time Warner Cable keep saying they don?t see Web video cutting into their business: Even if people are watching more Hulu, Netflix, Apple TV, etc., it?s not hurting cable, say the cable guys. But there?s at least one big, dirty exception. AllThingsD

Comcast rolls out $10 Internet access for low-income families As a condition of Comcast's acquisition of NBC, the folks at Kabletown have created Internet Essentials, which offers internet access to low-income families for $9.95/month so long as they meet certain criteria. To be eligible for the program, the family must... The Consumerist

Pod cars, moving silently at Heathrow?s Terminal 5 Travelers passing through Heathrow Airport have an opportunity to experience the not-so-distant future of airport transportation systems in Terminal 5, where a curious row of pod cars connects the terminal?s two business parking lots. NY Times

Verizon unions strike as contract talks fail About 45,000 Verizon Communications Inc. workers began a strike after failing to reach agreement on a new contract with the second-largest U.S. telephone company. The contract expired yesterday at midnight. Bloomberg

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Gaming 30 ? Randomly Random

Gaming 30 ? Randomly Random

Posted on 31st Jul 2011 at 11:23 by Podcast with 18 comments

Joe is joined by Paul and Clive to muse about whether Battlefield 3 will really be better than Modern Warfare 3. The hype indicates that the former will be the better game, but Joe thinks they will be much of a muchness.

He?s also changed his mind on Rage, after being allowed to play the first three hours of the game and loving every minute. Previously, Rage has not received much praise, but it apparently plays brilliantly. Listen in to find out why.

We then quickly segue to the news that we could soon be playing one of the most highly anticipated games of the year: Deus Ex: Human Revolution is ready to ship. Yay!

We also grapple with the subject matter that was raised in the game's latest trailer (see the link above), and also discuss the confusing matter of the book of the game. The book is a prequel to Human Revolution, which is itself a follow-up prequel to the sequel of the original. Or something like that.


We also discuss whether DLC is necessarily a bad feature, and whether there?s any harm in long-term plans for a game that incorporates DLC, expansion packs or episodic updates. Is DLC evil and lazy, or is it just a bit of extra fun for a small fee?

We also answer a piece of reader-mail ? Mathew Whinney was so impressed with the visuals of Final Fantasy 13 on the PS3 that he asked why we don?t see the same level of graphical awesomeness on the PC. We try our best to answer this without subverting this gaming podcast into a hardware one. To be honest, we're not sure we succeeded.

As ever, the bit-tech hardware podcast features music by Brad Sucks, and was recorded on Shure microphones. You can download the podcast direct, listen in-browser or subscribe through iTunes using the links below. Also, be sure to let us know your thoughts about the discussion in the forums.

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