Cloud Services Let Gadgets Punch above their Weight

Smart phones and tablets have never been more popular, but they pack puny computing power compared to the average desktop computer. Two companies hope to change this by connecting modestly powered portable devices to powerful Internet servers that perform intensive tasks on their behalf. This week, both these companies?OnLive, based in Palo Alto, California, and GameString, in Seattle?demonstrated handheld gadgets running high-end games and other complex software.

Since launching last year, OnLive has used powerful servers to stream computer games to its subscribers' PCs. It recently released a lightweight "microconsole" that brings the service to television sets, and it also has its sights set on portable devices. Yesterday it released an iPad app that uses the same technology to bring those PC games to Apple's tablet. The action is relayed from the server to the app using compression algorithms that ensure quick transmission of data over a wireless connection and the Internet.

"Initially we are only offering the ability to watch other players who are logged into OnLive from a PC, because these games were not designed to run on a touchscreen," says Steve Perlman, OnLive's founder and CEO. "But I know that publishers are excited about it becoming possible to offer high-performance titles on a tablet, and we will work on that." As soon as game developers release a game that can be operated with a finger rather than a keyboard and mouse, OnLive will make it playable on an iPad, he says.

GameString released its own demo video yesterday, of an Android smart phone being used to play the multiplayer game World of Warcraft (see video). The Android app was made using Adobe's Air platform for web apps and a software toolkit created by Gamestring to help game developers make powerful games that run partly on a mobile device and partly on a cloud server.

Wireless networks, server hardware and software, and portable devices have all become sophisticated enough to enable a big shift in how games are delivered, says Chris Boothroyd, GameString's founder and CEO. "They're following music and movies?onto the Web," he says.

Streaming a game is much more complex than streaming video or music, though. Video software typically "buffers" several seconds of footage ahead of what the viewer sees at any time, in case of connection problems. This can't be done with games, because what happens in the next few seconds depends on the player's present actions. Instead, compression has to be good enough to ensure that the data stream never falls behind long enough to affect gameplay.

OnLive's engineers have developed algorithms that are tuned to a particular game, and even a particular user's Internet connection. "The compression algorithm that we use can even vary from scene to scene," says Perlman. "Darkness, detail, and the pattern of the 3-D motion in the frames all make a difference." If data is lost in transmission, then OnLive's software attempts to conceal the error by extrapolating from what is known, he says. All of that work is done by software running on remote servers-in the cloud. The software installed on a user's device is very simple, sending little more than the coordinates of the user's mouse and the timing of keyboard or button clicks.

The technology has applications outside gaming, says Perlman, who yesterday demonstrated a still-unfinished app that brings a full Windows 7 desktop to the iPad. "Everything works as if it was local," says Perlman, "even high-end applications like professional video editing or computer-aided-design applications typically used on a workstation."

Powered by WizardRSS | Best Membership Site Software

Source: http://feeds.technologyreview.com/click.phdo?i=0960779dc9d4d559c9675929b64c449d

fanny brice randy shannon walmart cyber monday bryan cranston

Stretchable Silicon Could Make Sports Apparel Smarter

Stretchable silicon electronics that offer the computing power of rigid chips could make their way into Reebok's athletic apparel in the coming years. The company will work with MC10, a startup maker of flexible electronics, to develop sportswear that incorporates electronics to monitor athletes' health and performance during training and rehabilitation.

Reebok and MC10, which is based in Cambridge, Massachusetts, would not provide specifics about what products are under development. Representatives say the goal of the project is to make the interface between people and their electronics disappear. "We want to bring more information to the athlete, using the [conformable electronics] technology in a way that makes the electronics invisible to the user," says Paul Litchfield, head of Reebok Advanced Concepts.

Textiles incorporating electronics are already available today, for example in sports bras that use conductive textiles to register a woman's heart rate. But today's devices connect to a box containing the heart of the electronics, which are built on rigid chips. In the bra, a removable plastic box beams a signal to a watch.

Clothing incorporating high-performance conformable electronics could have many advantages over these systems, says MC10 CEO David Icke. First, the electronics could be totally incorporated into the inside of a shirt, or into a decal placed directly on the skin, without the need for a casing. They could conform to the body, and their increased level of contact with the skin could lead to higher-quality measurements. And by incorporating transistors that can amplify and process signals for better sensitivity, the flexible electronics would deliver more-valuable information. "It's not like wearing a device with hard segments attached to the body," says Litchfield.

The athletic-apparel devices might incorporate sensors and a microprocessor to monitor many indicators of an athlete's health, such as impacts on the body, electrical information from the heart and nervous system, sweat pH, blood pressure, gait, and strain on joints. Such devices could process the data to generate information about metabolism and athletic performance and broadcast it to another device. MC10 says the products could be out within a year or two.

The researcher who cofounded MC10, University of Illinois materials science professor John Rogers, has prototyped sensors, processors, and light-emitting diodes based on silicon and built on thin, lightweight, flexible, and even stretchy materials. Like conventional silicon chips, these flexible electronics are fast and power-efficient. Other flexible electronics, based on organic semiconductors rather than silicon, tend to be slower and more power-hungry. Working with organic materials, researchers at Xerox's PARC have made printed sensor tape for the U.S. military that's mounted inside helmets to record blast strength, temperature, and other data, and includes transistors to process the data.

MC10's devices are made by etching out very thin strips of silicon and printing them onto flexible substrates. This lets them conform to uneven surfaces such as human skin. Rogers notes that other products under development by MC10 include electronics for interfacing between the body's delicate inner tissues and surgical instruments such as balloon catheters. "From the standpoint of mechanics and materials design, there are many foundational issues common to use inside and outside the body," he says.

As the performance gap between rigid chips and conformable electronics begins to close, the idea of a wearable computer begins to seem less speculative, says Juan Hinestroza, who heads the Textiles Nanotechnology Laboratory at Cornell University in Ithaca, New York. "Those were impossible dreams, but now we can produce high-performance electronics on flexible substrates," says Hinestroza, who is not affiliated with Reebok or MC10. "The interface between electronics and garments will disappear," he predicts.

Powered by WizardRSS | Best Membership Site Software

Source: http://feeds.technologyreview.com/click.phdo?i=db34da1a2b4e286d9c2b51237929a91c

sugar bowl 2011 bcs projections uncle buck oklahoma state football

The Caucus: ?Don?t Ask, Don?t Tell? Repeal Falls Short in Senate

4:31 p.m. | Updated A Republican senator and an independent senator said today that they will jointly introduce a stand-alone bill to repeal the military?s ?don?t ask, don?t tell? policy after a larger defense bill containing the repeal failed to advance in the Senate.

Senate Republicans blocked the attempt to move ahead with the bill that would have repealed the ban on gay troops serving openly in the military. The vote was 57-40, almost entirely along party lines, and three short of the 60 needed.

The vote was a setback to President Obama and the Democratic leadership, who have made repealing the Clinton-era policy a key priority. And it short-circuited the efforts of a handful of Republicans who said they supported a repeal but wanted more time to negotiate the process of debating and voting on the measure.

The lawmaker leading that effort, Senator Susan Collins of Maine, voted in favor of the motion but was not joined by any of her colleagues. Ms. Collins and Senator Joseph I. Lieberman of Connecticut, an independent, announced shortly after the vote their intention to introduce a new bill.

?I am convinced that there are 60 or even 61 or 62 votes to repeal ?don?t ask, don?t tell?,? Ms. Collins told reporters. ?I?m extremely disappointed that the Senate majority leader walked away from negotiations in which we were engaged and which were going well.?

A spokesman for Senator Harry Reid, the majority leader, said Mr. Reid will co-sponsor the stand-alone legislation. ?We do intend to take a free-standing bill to the floor,? said Jim Manley, a spokesman for Mr. Reid.

But a bill focused solely on repealing the ?don?t ask, don?t tell? policy faces steep challenges, including the likelihood that supporters of the policy in the Senate could seek to offer numerous amendments during a debate over the legislation.

In a statement, President Obama said he was disappointed that ?yet another filibuster? by Republicans had blocked the defense bill and the provisions to repeal the ?don?t ask, don?t tell? policy.

?A minority of Senators were willing to block this important legislation largely because they oppose the repeal of ?Don?t Ask, Don?t Tell,?? Mr. Obama said. ?While today?s vote was disappointing, it must not be the end of our efforts. I urge the Senate to revisit these important issues during the lame duck session.?

Mr. Reid had called for the procedural vote on the overall defense bill despite having failed to reach agreement with the Republicans on how to proceed. In a statement after the vote, Ms. Collins said those negotiations were ?going well? and she accused Mr. Reid of walking away from the discussions.

Republicans had earlier indicated that without an agreement about the number of amendments and the timing of the debate, they would vote against moving forward to vote on the legislation.

Advocates of repealing the policy criticized the vote, saying the effort to allow gays to serve openly in the military had fallen victim to political squabbles in the Congress. One newly elected Democrat, Senator Joe Manchin of West Virginia, also voted against the measure.

?Today leaders of both parties let down the U.S. military and the American people,? said Joe Solmonese, president of Human Rights Campaign. ?Instead of doing what is right, ?the world?s greatest deliberative body? devolved into shameful schoolyard spats that put petty partisan politics above the needs of our women and men in uniform.?

Mr. Solmonese vowed that ?this fight is too important to give up despite this setback and we will continue fighting in this lame duck session. It?s not over.?

A veterans group also expressed anger at the vote, which delays approval of the massive military spending bill to which the repeal was attached. The Congress has not failed to pass a military spending bill for decades.

?By voting to filibuster the Defense Authorization Act, today, a minority of Senators have betrayed our troops,? said Ashwin Madia, interim chairman of VoteVets.org. ?Leaving aside ?Don?t Ask, Don?t Tell,? this bill is crucial to our military readiness, and funding our troops in harm?s way.?

Prior to the vote, Mr. Reid conceded that that the failure to reach an agreement could doom the effort to repeal the policy, which has been a key priority for President Obama and gay activists.

?Despite the critical importance for our troops, for our nation, and for justice that we get this bill done, we have not been able to reach an agreement,? Mr. Reid said this afternoon. ?And I regret to say that it is our troops who will pay the price for our inability to overcome partisan political posturing.?

Mr. Reid?s decision to move forward in an attempt to force a vote caught senators off guard, including Ms. Collins, who had been negotiating with Mr. Reid about the terms of the debate.

In an impassioned, impromptu speech, Ms. Collins complained that she wanted to vote in favor of the overall bill, including the repeal provision, but could not do so without an agreement on the process first.

Powered by WizardRSS | Best Membership Site Software

Source: http://feeds.nytimes.com/click.phdo?i=7778fa0247921b71661f9c7831dcdcc9

bee movie jenni lyn watson best buy cyber monday sugar bowl 2011

The Caucus: ?Don?t Ask, Don?t Tell? Repeal Falls Short in Senate

4:31 p.m. | Updated A Republican senator and an independent senator said today that they will jointly introduce a stand-alone bill to repeal the military?s ?don?t ask, don?t tell? policy after a larger defense bill containing the repeal failed to advance in the Senate.

Senate Republicans blocked the attempt to move ahead with the bill that would have repealed the ban on gay troops serving openly in the military. The vote was 57-40, almost entirely along party lines, and three short of the 60 needed.

The vote was a setback to President Obama and the Democratic leadership, who have made repealing the Clinton-era policy a key priority. And it short-circuited the efforts of a handful of Republicans who said they supported a repeal but wanted more time to negotiate the process of debating and voting on the measure.

The lawmaker leading that effort, Senator Susan Collins of Maine, voted in favor of the motion but was not joined by any of her colleagues. Ms. Collins and Senator Joseph I. Lieberman of Connecticut, an independent, announced shortly after the vote their intention to introduce a new bill.

?I am convinced that there are 60 or even 61 or 62 votes to repeal ?don?t ask, don?t tell?,? Ms. Collins told reporters. ?I?m extremely disappointed that the Senate majority leader walked away from negotiations in which we were engaged and which were going well.?

A spokesman for Senator Harry Reid, the majority leader, said Mr. Reid will co-sponsor the stand-alone legislation. ?We do intend to take a free-standing bill to the floor,? said Jim Manley, a spokesman for Mr. Reid.

But a bill focused solely on repealing the ?don?t ask, don?t tell? policy faces steep challenges, including the likelihood that supporters of the policy in the Senate could seek to offer numerous amendments during a debate over the legislation.

In a statement, President Obama said he was disappointed that ?yet another filibuster? by Republicans had blocked the defense bill and the provisions to repeal the ?don?t ask, don?t tell? policy.

?A minority of Senators were willing to block this important legislation largely because they oppose the repeal of ?Don?t Ask, Don?t Tell,?? Mr. Obama said. ?While today?s vote was disappointing, it must not be the end of our efforts. I urge the Senate to revisit these important issues during the lame duck session.?

Mr. Reid had called for the procedural vote on the overall defense bill despite having failed to reach agreement with the Republicans on how to proceed. In a statement after the vote, Ms. Collins said those negotiations were ?going well? and she accused Mr. Reid of walking away from the discussions.

Republicans had earlier indicated that without an agreement about the number of amendments and the timing of the debate, they would vote against moving forward to vote on the legislation.

Advocates of repealing the policy criticized the vote, saying the effort to allow gays to serve openly in the military had fallen victim to political squabbles in the Congress. One newly elected Democrat, Senator Joe Manchin of West Virginia, also voted against the measure.

?Today leaders of both parties let down the U.S. military and the American people,? said Joe Solmonese, president of Human Rights Campaign. ?Instead of doing what is right, ?the world?s greatest deliberative body? devolved into shameful schoolyard spats that put petty partisan politics above the needs of our women and men in uniform.?

Mr. Solmonese vowed that ?this fight is too important to give up despite this setback and we will continue fighting in this lame duck session. It?s not over.?

A veterans group also expressed anger at the vote, which delays approval of the massive military spending bill to which the repeal was attached. The Congress has not failed to pass a military spending bill for decades.

?By voting to filibuster the Defense Authorization Act, today, a minority of Senators have betrayed our troops,? said Ashwin Madia, interim chairman of VoteVets.org. ?Leaving aside ?Don?t Ask, Don?t Tell,? this bill is crucial to our military readiness, and funding our troops in harm?s way.?

Prior to the vote, Mr. Reid conceded that that the failure to reach an agreement could doom the effort to repeal the policy, which has been a key priority for President Obama and gay activists.

?Despite the critical importance for our troops, for our nation, and for justice that we get this bill done, we have not been able to reach an agreement,? Mr. Reid said this afternoon. ?And I regret to say that it is our troops who will pay the price for our inability to overcome partisan political posturing.?

Mr. Reid?s decision to move forward in an attempt to force a vote caught senators off guard, including Ms. Collins, who had been negotiating with Mr. Reid about the terms of the debate.

In an impassioned, impromptu speech, Ms. Collins complained that she wanted to vote in favor of the overall bill, including the repeal provision, but could not do so without an agreement on the process first.

Powered by WizardRSS | Best Membership Site Software

Source: http://feeds.nytimes.com/click.phdo?i=7778fa0247921b71661f9c7831dcdcc9

fanny brice randy shannon walmart cyber monday bryan cranston

Republicans Block U.S. Health Aid for 9/11 Workers

The 9/11 health bill, a version of which was approved by the House of Representatives in September, was among several initiatives that Senate Democrats had hoped to approve before the close of the 111th Congress. Supporters believe this was their last real opportunity to have the bill passed.

The action by the Senate created huge uncertainty over the bill?s future. Its proponents were working on Thursday to salvage the legislation, with one possibility being to have it inserted into a large tax-cut bill that Republicans and Democrats are trying to pass before Congress ends its current session.

But such a move seemed unlikely, since it might complicate passage of the tax package, which includes another provision that Democrats, including President Obama, sought in return for supporting the extension of tax cuts for all income levels that Republicans wanted: a continuation of unemployment benefits for jobless Americans.

In a vote largely along party lines, the Senate rejected a procedural move by Democrats to end debate on the 9/11 health bill and to bring it to a vote; 60 yes votes were needed, but the move received only 57, with 42 votes against.

Republicans have been raising concerns about how to pay for the $7.4 billion measure, while Democrats, led by Senator Kirsten E. Gillibrand of New York, have argued that there was a moral obligation to assist those who put their lives at risk during rescue and cleanup operations at ground zero.

The bill is formally known as the James Zadroga 9/11 Health and Compensation Act, named after a New York police detective who participated in the rescue efforts at ground zero. He later developed breathing complications that were common to first responders at the site, and he died in January 2006. The cause of his death became a source of debate after the city?s medical examiner concluded that it was not directly related to the 9/11 attacks.

After the vote, Representative Carolyn B. Maloney of New York, a chief sponsor of the bill in the House, argued that Democrats should include the 9/11 health bill in the larger tax-cut legislation and, in the process, dare Republicans to oppose it in that context. Ms. Maloney added that the tax- cut bill was the one piece of legislation that ?Republicans won?t leave this town without passing.?

As the day wore on, it appeared increasingly unlikely that the Senate would include a provision providing health care for ground zero workers in any tax package it brought to the floor, according to senior Hill officials. But supporters of the 9/11 legislation said there was a possibility that they could persuade Democratic leaders in the House to include it in any tax-cut plan that that chamber approves, and pull the Senate along in conference committee.

The Senate vote earlier in the day was a blow to sponsors of the bill, who mobilized a network of allies across the political spectrum to lobby on its behalf, including the New York City police commissioner, Raymond W. Kelly, and Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg.

Ms. Gillibrand, the chief sponsor in the Senate, even reached out to former President George W. Bush. But her aides say Mr. Bush did not respond to her entreaties.

In a statement, Mr. Bloomberg chastised Senate Republicans for their ?wrongheaded political strategy? and called on them to allow the bill to come to the floor for a vote. ?The attacks of 9/11 were attacks on America,? he said, ?and we have a collective responsibility to care for the heroes ? from all 50 states ? who answered the call of duty, saved lives, and helped our nation recover.?

The bill calls for providing $3.2 billion over the next eight years to monitor and treat injuries stemming from exposure to toxic dust and debris at ground zero. New York City would pay 10 percent of those health costs.

The bill would also set aside $4.2 billion to reopen the September 11th Victim Compensation Fund to provide payments for job and economic losses.

In addition, the bill includes a provision that would allow money from the Victim Compensation Fund to be paid to any eligible claimant who receives a payment under the settlement of lawsuits that 10,000 rescue and cleanup workers recently reached with the city. Now, those who receive a settlement from the city are limited in how much compensation they can get from the fund, according to the bill?s sponsors.

There are nearly 60,000 people enrolled in health monitoring and treatment programs related to the 9/11 attacks, according to the sponsors of the bill. The federal government provides the bulk of the money for those programs.

If the bill is not adopted by the current Congress, its supporters will have start over again next year. With Republicans set to take over the House, passing the bill in that chamber will be extremely difficult, the bill?s supporters say. That is a large part of the reason backers of the measure were pleading with Senate leaders to get it passed by this Congress.

Powered by WizardRSS | Best Membership Site Software

Source: http://feeds.nytimes.com/click.phdo?i=a89b10b34950de5d6047f5c8e29c539a

bcs projections uncle buck oklahoma state football fanny brice

Cloud Services Let Gadgets Punch above their Weight

Smart phones and tablets have never been more popular, but they pack puny computing power compared to the average desktop computer. Two companies hope to change this by connecting modestly powered portable devices to powerful Internet servers that perform intensive tasks on their behalf. This week, both these companies?OnLive, based in Palo Alto, California, and GameString, in Seattle?demonstrated handheld gadgets running high-end games and other complex software.

Since launching last year, OnLive has used powerful servers to stream computer games to its subscribers' PCs. It recently released a lightweight "microconsole" that brings the service to television sets, and it also has its sights set on portable devices. Yesterday it released an iPad app that uses the same technology to bring those PC games to Apple's tablet. The action is relayed from the server to the app using compression algorithms that ensure quick transmission of data over a wireless connection and the Internet.

"Initially we are only offering the ability to watch other players who are logged into OnLive from a PC, because these games were not designed to run on a touchscreen," says Steve Perlman, OnLive's founder and CEO. "But I know that publishers are excited about it becoming possible to offer high-performance titles on a tablet, and we will work on that." As soon as game developers release a game that can be operated with a finger rather than a keyboard and mouse, OnLive will make it playable on an iPad, he says.

GameString released its own demo video yesterday, of an Android smart phone being used to play the multiplayer game World of Warcraft (see video). The Android app was made using Adobe's Air platform for web apps and a software toolkit created by Gamestring to help game developers make powerful games that run partly on a mobile device and partly on a cloud server.

Wireless networks, server hardware and software, and portable devices have all become sophisticated enough to enable a big shift in how games are delivered, says Chris Boothroyd, GameString's founder and CEO. "They're following music and movies?onto the Web," he says.

Streaming a game is much more complex than streaming video or music, though. Video software typically "buffers" several seconds of footage ahead of what the viewer sees at any time, in case of connection problems. This can't be done with games, because what happens in the next few seconds depends on the player's present actions. Instead, compression has to be good enough to ensure that the data stream never falls behind long enough to affect gameplay.

OnLive's engineers have developed algorithms that are tuned to a particular game, and even a particular user's Internet connection. "The compression algorithm that we use can even vary from scene to scene," says Perlman. "Darkness, detail, and the pattern of the 3-D motion in the frames all make a difference." If data is lost in transmission, then OnLive's software attempts to conceal the error by extrapolating from what is known, he says. All of that work is done by software running on remote servers-in the cloud. The software installed on a user's device is very simple, sending little more than the coordinates of the user's mouse and the timing of keyboard or button clicks.

The technology has applications outside gaming, says Perlman, who yesterday demonstrated a still-unfinished app that brings a full Windows 7 desktop to the iPad. "Everything works as if it was local," says Perlman, "even high-end applications like professional video editing or computer-aided-design applications typically used on a workstation."

Powered by WizardRSS | Best Membership Site Software

Source: http://feeds.technologyreview.com/click.phdo?i=0960779dc9d4d559c9675929b64c449d

ernest borgnine cwtv bee movie jenni lyn watson

Everything You Need to Know About Wikileaks

What is Wikileaks?

Wikileaks is a self-described "not-for-profit media organization," launched in 2006 for the purposes of disseminating original documents from anonymous sources and leakers. Its website says: "Wikileaks will accept restricted or censored material of political, ethical, diplomatic or historical significance. We do not accept rumor, opinion, other kinds of first hand accounts or material that is publicly available elsewhere."

More-detailed information about the history of the organization can be found on Wikipedia (with all the caveats that apply to a rapidly changing Wiki topic). Wikipedia incidentally has nothing to do with Wikileaks?both share the word "Wiki" in the title, but they're not affiliated.

Who is Julian Assange, and what is his role in the Wikileaks organization?

Julian Assange is an Australian citizen who is said to have served as the editor-in-chief and spokesperson for Wikileaks since its founding in 2006. Before that, he was described as an advisor. Sometimes he is cited as its founder. The media and popular imagination currently equate him with Wikileaks itself, with uncertain accuracy.

In 2006, Assange wrote a series of essays that have recently been tapped as an explanation of his political philosophy. A close reading of these essays shows that Assange's personal philosophy is in opposition to what he calls secrecy-based, authoritarian conspiracy governments, in which category he includes the US government and many others not conventionally thought of as authoritarian. Thus, as opposed to espousing a philosophy of radical transparency, Assange is not "about letting sunlight into the room so much as about throwing grit in the machine." For further analysis, check out Aaron Bady's original blog post.

Why is Wikileaks so much in the public eye right now?

At the end of November 2010, Wikileaks began to slowly release a trove of what it says are 251,287 diplomatic cables acquired from an anonymous source. These documents came on the heels of the release of the "Collateral Murder" video in April 2010, and Afghan and Iraq War logs in July 2010 and October 2010, which totaled 466,743 documents. The combined 718,030 are said to originate from a single source, thought to be U.S. Army intelligence analyst Pfc. Bradley Manning, who was arrested in May 2010, but that's not confirmed.

Has Wikileaks released classified material in the past?

Yes, under an evolving set of models.

Berkman Fellow Ethan Zuckerman has some interesting thoughts on the development of Wikileaks and its practices over the years, which will be explained in greater detail when the Berkman Center podcast about Wikileaks is released later this week. In the meantime, here's a capsule version.

Wikileaks has moved through three phases since its founding in 2006. In its first phase, during which it released several substantial troves of documents related to Kenya in 2008, Wikileaks operated very much with a standard wiki model: the public readership could actively post and edit materials, and it had a say in the types of materials that were accepted and how such materials were vetted. The documents released in that first phase were more or less a straight dump to the Web: very little organized redacting occurred on the part of Wikileaks.

Wikileaks's second phase was exemplified with the release of the "Collateral Murder" video in April 2010. The video was a highly curated, produced and packaged political statement. It was meant to illustrate a political point of view, not merely to inform.

The third phase is the one we currently see with the release of the diplomatic cables: Wikileaks working in close conjunction with a select group of news organizations to analyze, redact and release the cables in a curated manner, rather than dumping them on the Internet or using them to illustrate a singular political point of view.

What news organizations have access to the diplomatic cables and how did they get them?

According to the Associated Press, Wikileaks gave four news organizations (Le Monde, El Pais, The Guardian and Der Spiegel) all 251,287 classified documents before anything was released to the public. The Guardian subsequently shared its trove with The New York Times.

So have all 251,287 documents been released to the public?

No. Each of the five news organizations is hosting the text of at least some of the documents in various forms with or without the relevant metadata (country of origin, classification level, reference ID). The Guardian and Der Spiegel have performed analyses of the metadata of the entire trove, excluding the body text. The Guardian's analysis is available for download from its website.

Wikileaks itself has released (as of December 7, 2010) 960 documents out of the total 251,287. The Associated Press has reported that Wikileaks is only releasing cables in coordination with the actions of the five selected news organizations. Julian Assange made similar statements in an interview with Guardian readers on December 3, 2010. Cables are being released daily as the five news organizations publish articles related to the content.

Is each of the five news organizations hosting all the documents that Wikileaks has released?

No. Each of the five news organizations hosts a different selection of the released documents, in different forms, which may or may not overlap. It's not clear how much they're coordinating on releasing new documents, since each appears to have a full set and normally newspapers would be eager to scoop one another.

How are the five news organizations releasing the cables?

Le Monde has created an application, developed in conjunction with Linkfluence, that hosts the searchable text of several hundred cables. The text can be searched by the sender (country of origin, office or official), date range, persons of interest cited in the docs, classification status, or any combination of the above. Only the untranslated, English text of the cables can be accessed and cut-and-paste is not available.

El Pais offers access to more than 200 cables, available in the original English or in Spanish translation, searchable by country of origin and key terms and subjects (such as "Google and China"). These searches also return El Pais articles written on a given subject, often placed ahead of the cables in the search listings. The paper also offers a "How to read a diplomatic cable" feature, explaining what all the abbreviations and technical verbiage mean in plain speak, posted on November 28, 2010.

The Guardian offers the cable data in several forms: It has performed an analysis of metadata of the entire 251,287-document trove, and made it available in several forms (spreadsheets hosted on Google Docs and in downloadable form) as well as infographics.

The Guardian also hosts at least 422 cables on its website, searchable by subject, originating country, and countries referenced.

The New York Times hosts what it calls a "selection of the documents from a cache of a quarter-million confidential American diplomatic cables that WikiLeaks intends to make public starting on November 28. The webpage goes on to say "A small number of names and passages in some of the cables have been removed by The New York Times to protect diplomats' confidential sources, to keep from compromising American intelligence efforts or to protect the privacy of ordinary citizens."

The documents are not searchable and are organized by general subject.

Who is responsible for redacting the documents? What actions did Wikileaks take to ensure that individuals were not put in danger by publication of the documents?

According to the Associated Press and statements released by Wikileaks and Julian Assange, Wikileaks is currently relying on the expertise of the five news organizations to redact the cables as they are released, and it is following their redactions as it releases the documents on its website. (This cannot be verified without examining the original documents, which we have not done?nor are we linking to them here.) According to the BBC, Julian Assange approached the U.S. State Department for guidance on redacting the documents prior to their release. One can imagine the State Department's dilemma there: assist and risk legitimating the enterprise; don't assist and risk poor redaction. In a public letter, Harold Koh, legal adviser to the Department of State, declined to assist the organization and demanded the return of the documents.

Are the documents hosted anywhere else on the Internet? What is the "insurance" file?

In late July 2010, Wikileaks is said to have posted to its Afghan War Logs site, and to a torrent site an encrypted file with "insurance" in the name. The file, which apparently can still be found on various peer-to-peer networks, is 1.4 gigabytes and is encrypted with AES256, a very strong encryption standard which would make it virtually impossible to open without the password. What is in the insurance file is not known. It has been speculated that it contains the unredacted cables provided by the original source(s), as well as other, previously unreleased information held by Wikileaks. There is further speculation, which has been indirectly boosted by Julian Assange, that the key to the file will be distributed in the event of either the death of Assange or the destruction of Wikileaks as a functioning organization. However, none of these things is known. All that is known for sure is that it's a really big file with heavy encryption that's already in a number of people's hands and floating around for others to get.

What happens if Wikileaks gets shut down? Can it be shut down?

It depends on what's meant by "Wikileaks" and what's meant by "shut down."

Julian Assange has made statements suggesting that if Wikileaks becomes nonfunctional as an organization, the key to the encrypted "insurance" file will be released (the key itself is not a big document and could presumably fit into Twitter messages). The actual machination of how such a "dead man's switch" would release the key is not known. If the key were released, and if the encrypted insurance file contains unredacted and unreleased secret documents, then those decrypted files would be available to many people nearly instantaneously. Wikileaks claimed in August that the insurance file had been downloaded more than 100,000 times.

Wikileaks apparently maintains a small paid staff?who and where is not exactly on a "people" page, though there used to be a physical P.O. box in Australia where documents could be sent?and is additionally supported by volunteers, speculated to be at most a few thousand. So, would it be possible for a motivated organization to disrupt its real-world infrastructure? Yes, probably. However, at this point, it is not practical to recover the information the organization has already distributed (which includes the entire trove of diplomatic cables to the press as well as whatever is in the encrypted insurance file), as well as any other undistributed information the organization might seek to release. So in terms of the recovery of leaked information, the downfall of Wikileaks as an organization would matter little.

Furthermore, there appear to be currently more than 1,000 sites mirroring Wikileaks and its content. Wikileaks has made available downloadable files containing its entire archive of released materials to date.

On a more technical level, the Wikileaks website can come under attack, and its means of collecting money can be made much more difficult.

Why did wikileaks.org stop working as a way to find the site?

For a traditional website to work, it needs a domain name like "website.com" so that people can find it easily with a Web browser. The domain name system (DNS) is hierarchical?information is spread from a zone containing several top-level (root) servers down to zones containing lower-level servers?but the top-level servers don't determine everything held by servers lower down the chain.

Domain names can stop working for any number of reasons. One common assumption is that the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN), which manages certain top-level protocol and parameter assignments for the Internet, intervened in the case of Wikileaks. It did not.

A little technical discussion to explain why: The root zone orchestrated by ICANN is a very small file?just a mapping between each top-level domain (TLD), such as .org or .ch, to the IP address(es) of servers designated to say more about that TLD. One server, not in ICANN's hands, keeps track of names under .org, another handles names under .ch, and so on. So the only thing, hypothetically, ICANN could do is to completely delete .org or .ch, which would make every domain name with that ending disappear temporarily.

Note that wikileaks.org went down not because of anything done to its DNS entry within the list kept by the registry that manages .org domains. (n.b. Jonathan Zittrain is on the board of trustees for the nonprofit Internet Society (ISOC), which is the parent to the Public Interest Registry, which keeps track of names in .org.) Instead, the name server to which its entry pointed (even lower down the DNS chain) was attacked with a flood of traffic by unknown parties, and EveryDNS, the operator of that name server, chose to stop answering queries about Wikileaks in the hopes that the attack would stop. (Apparently it did.)

A website also needs hosting, and Wikileaks has had to shift its hosting at least once after being dropped by a chosen provider: Amazon's commodity hosting service shut down the site for terms of service violations after being contacted by U.S. Senator Joseph Lieberman (D-Connecticut).

Powered by WizardRSS | Best Membership Site Software

Source: http://feeds.technologyreview.com/click.phdo?i=aa918d838c7cecb8889c5d22fb436e29

notre dame football juan manuel marquez vs michael katsidis steven pieper ernest borgnine

Everything You Need to Know About Wikileaks

What is Wikileaks?

Wikileaks is a self-described "not-for-profit media organization," launched in 2006 for the purposes of disseminating original documents from anonymous sources and leakers. Its website says: "Wikileaks will accept restricted or censored material of political, ethical, diplomatic or historical significance. We do not accept rumor, opinion, other kinds of first hand accounts or material that is publicly available elsewhere."

More-detailed information about the history of the organization can be found on Wikipedia (with all the caveats that apply to a rapidly changing Wiki topic). Wikipedia incidentally has nothing to do with Wikileaks?both share the word "Wiki" in the title, but they're not affiliated.

Who is Julian Assange, and what is his role in the Wikileaks organization?

Julian Assange is an Australian citizen who is said to have served as the editor-in-chief and spokesperson for Wikileaks since its founding in 2006. Before that, he was described as an advisor. Sometimes he is cited as its founder. The media and popular imagination currently equate him with Wikileaks itself, with uncertain accuracy.

In 2006, Assange wrote a series of essays that have recently been tapped as an explanation of his political philosophy. A close reading of these essays shows that Assange's personal philosophy is in opposition to what he calls secrecy-based, authoritarian conspiracy governments, in which category he includes the US government and many others not conventionally thought of as authoritarian. Thus, as opposed to espousing a philosophy of radical transparency, Assange is not "about letting sunlight into the room so much as about throwing grit in the machine." For further analysis, check out Aaron Bady's original blog post.

Why is Wikileaks so much in the public eye right now?

At the end of November 2010, Wikileaks began to slowly release a trove of what it says are 251,287 diplomatic cables acquired from an anonymous source. These documents came on the heels of the release of the "Collateral Murder" video in April 2010, and Afghan and Iraq War logs in July 2010 and October 2010, which totaled 466,743 documents. The combined 718,030 are said to originate from a single source, thought to be U.S. Army intelligence analyst Pfc. Bradley Manning, who was arrested in May 2010, but that's not confirmed.

Has Wikileaks released classified material in the past?

Yes, under an evolving set of models.

Berkman Fellow Ethan Zuckerman has some interesting thoughts on the development of Wikileaks and its practices over the years, which will be explained in greater detail when the Berkman Center podcast about Wikileaks is released later this week. In the meantime, here's a capsule version.

Wikileaks has moved through three phases since its founding in 2006. In its first phase, during which it released several substantial troves of documents related to Kenya in 2008, Wikileaks operated very much with a standard wiki model: the public readership could actively post and edit materials, and it had a say in the types of materials that were accepted and how such materials were vetted. The documents released in that first phase were more or less a straight dump to the Web: very little organized redacting occurred on the part of Wikileaks.

Wikileaks's second phase was exemplified with the release of the "Collateral Murder" video in April 2010. The video was a highly curated, produced and packaged political statement. It was meant to illustrate a political point of view, not merely to inform.

The third phase is the one we currently see with the release of the diplomatic cables: Wikileaks working in close conjunction with a select group of news organizations to analyze, redact and release the cables in a curated manner, rather than dumping them on the Internet or using them to illustrate a singular political point of view.

What news organizations have access to the diplomatic cables and how did they get them?

According to the Associated Press, Wikileaks gave four news organizations (Le Monde, El Pais, The Guardian and Der Spiegel) all 251,287 classified documents before anything was released to the public. The Guardian subsequently shared its trove with The New York Times.

So have all 251,287 documents been released to the public?

No. Each of the five news organizations is hosting the text of at least some of the documents in various forms with or without the relevant metadata (country of origin, classification level, reference ID). The Guardian and Der Spiegel have performed analyses of the metadata of the entire trove, excluding the body text. The Guardian's analysis is available for download from its website.

Wikileaks itself has released (as of December 7, 2010) 960 documents out of the total 251,287. The Associated Press has reported that Wikileaks is only releasing cables in coordination with the actions of the five selected news organizations. Julian Assange made similar statements in an interview with Guardian readers on December 3, 2010. Cables are being released daily as the five news organizations publish articles related to the content.

Is each of the five news organizations hosting all the documents that Wikileaks has released?

No. Each of the five news organizations hosts a different selection of the released documents, in different forms, which may or may not overlap. It's not clear how much they're coordinating on releasing new documents, since each appears to have a full set and normally newspapers would be eager to scoop one another.

How are the five news organizations releasing the cables?

Le Monde has created an application, developed in conjunction with Linkfluence, that hosts the searchable text of several hundred cables. The text can be searched by the sender (country of origin, office or official), date range, persons of interest cited in the docs, classification status, or any combination of the above. Only the untranslated, English text of the cables can be accessed and cut-and-paste is not available.

El Pais offers access to more than 200 cables, available in the original English or in Spanish translation, searchable by country of origin and key terms and subjects (such as "Google and China"). These searches also return El Pais articles written on a given subject, often placed ahead of the cables in the search listings. The paper also offers a "How to read a diplomatic cable" feature, explaining what all the abbreviations and technical verbiage mean in plain speak, posted on November 28, 2010.

The Guardian offers the cable data in several forms: It has performed an analysis of metadata of the entire 251,287-document trove, and made it available in several forms (spreadsheets hosted on Google Docs and in downloadable form) as well as infographics.

The Guardian also hosts at least 422 cables on its website, searchable by subject, originating country, and countries referenced.

The New York Times hosts what it calls a "selection of the documents from a cache of a quarter-million confidential American diplomatic cables that WikiLeaks intends to make public starting on November 28. The webpage goes on to say "A small number of names and passages in some of the cables have been removed by The New York Times to protect diplomats' confidential sources, to keep from compromising American intelligence efforts or to protect the privacy of ordinary citizens."

The documents are not searchable and are organized by general subject.

Who is responsible for redacting the documents? What actions did Wikileaks take to ensure that individuals were not put in danger by publication of the documents?

According to the Associated Press and statements released by Wikileaks and Julian Assange, Wikileaks is currently relying on the expertise of the five news organizations to redact the cables as they are released, and it is following their redactions as it releases the documents on its website. (This cannot be verified without examining the original documents, which we have not done?nor are we linking to them here.) According to the BBC, Julian Assange approached the U.S. State Department for guidance on redacting the documents prior to their release. One can imagine the State Department's dilemma there: assist and risk legitimating the enterprise; don't assist and risk poor redaction. In a public letter, Harold Koh, legal adviser to the Department of State, declined to assist the organization and demanded the return of the documents.

Are the documents hosted anywhere else on the Internet? What is the "insurance" file?

In late July 2010, Wikileaks is said to have posted to its Afghan War Logs site, and to a torrent site an encrypted file with "insurance" in the name. The file, which apparently can still be found on various peer-to-peer networks, is 1.4 gigabytes and is encrypted with AES256, a very strong encryption standard which would make it virtually impossible to open without the password. What is in the insurance file is not known. It has been speculated that it contains the unredacted cables provided by the original source(s), as well as other, previously unreleased information held by Wikileaks. There is further speculation, which has been indirectly boosted by Julian Assange, that the key to the file will be distributed in the event of either the death of Assange or the destruction of Wikileaks as a functioning organization. However, none of these things is known. All that is known for sure is that it's a really big file with heavy encryption that's already in a number of people's hands and floating around for others to get.

What happens if Wikileaks gets shut down? Can it be shut down?

It depends on what's meant by "Wikileaks" and what's meant by "shut down."

Julian Assange has made statements suggesting that if Wikileaks becomes nonfunctional as an organization, the key to the encrypted "insurance" file will be released (the key itself is not a big document and could presumably fit into Twitter messages). The actual machination of how such a "dead man's switch" would release the key is not known. If the key were released, and if the encrypted insurance file contains unredacted and unreleased secret documents, then those decrypted files would be available to many people nearly instantaneously. Wikileaks claimed in August that the insurance file had been downloaded more than 100,000 times.

Wikileaks apparently maintains a small paid staff?who and where is not exactly on a "people" page, though there used to be a physical P.O. box in Australia where documents could be sent?and is additionally supported by volunteers, speculated to be at most a few thousand. So, would it be possible for a motivated organization to disrupt its real-world infrastructure? Yes, probably. However, at this point, it is not practical to recover the information the organization has already distributed (which includes the entire trove of diplomatic cables to the press as well as whatever is in the encrypted insurance file), as well as any other undistributed information the organization might seek to release. So in terms of the recovery of leaked information, the downfall of Wikileaks as an organization would matter little.

Furthermore, there appear to be currently more than 1,000 sites mirroring Wikileaks and its content. Wikileaks has made available downloadable files containing its entire archive of released materials to date.

On a more technical level, the Wikileaks website can come under attack, and its means of collecting money can be made much more difficult.

Why did wikileaks.org stop working as a way to find the site?

For a traditional website to work, it needs a domain name like "website.com" so that people can find it easily with a Web browser. The domain name system (DNS) is hierarchical?information is spread from a zone containing several top-level (root) servers down to zones containing lower-level servers?but the top-level servers don't determine everything held by servers lower down the chain.

Domain names can stop working for any number of reasons. One common assumption is that the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN), which manages certain top-level protocol and parameter assignments for the Internet, intervened in the case of Wikileaks. It did not.

A little technical discussion to explain why: The root zone orchestrated by ICANN is a very small file?just a mapping between each top-level domain (TLD), such as .org or .ch, to the IP address(es) of servers designated to say more about that TLD. One server, not in ICANN's hands, keeps track of names under .org, another handles names under .ch, and so on. So the only thing, hypothetically, ICANN could do is to completely delete .org or .ch, which would make every domain name with that ending disappear temporarily.

Note that wikileaks.org went down not because of anything done to its DNS entry within the list kept by the registry that manages .org domains. (n.b. Jonathan Zittrain is on the board of trustees for the nonprofit Internet Society (ISOC), which is the parent to the Public Interest Registry, which keeps track of names in .org.) Instead, the name server to which its entry pointed (even lower down the DNS chain) was attacked with a flood of traffic by unknown parties, and EveryDNS, the operator of that name server, chose to stop answering queries about Wikileaks in the hopes that the attack would stop. (Apparently it did.)

A website also needs hosting, and Wikileaks has had to shift its hosting at least once after being dropped by a chosen provider: Amazon's commodity hosting service shut down the site for terms of service violations after being contacted by U.S. Senator Joseph Lieberman (D-Connecticut).

Powered by WizardRSS | Best Membership Site Software

Source: http://feeds.technologyreview.com/click.phdo?i=aa918d838c7cecb8889c5d22fb436e29

randy shannon walmart cyber monday bryan cranston cyber monday deals 2010

Tax Deal Is Key to Avoid Recession, Obama Adviser Says

But Democrats in the House and Senate were still seething with anger ? both about the substance of the deal, which includes keeping the Bush-era rates even on the highest incomes, and the way they were iced out of the negotiations. It was unclear that the ominous economic forecast by the adviser, Lawrence H. Summers, would help. Senate Democrats said they were still pressing for changes to the plan, but Republicans and the White House showed no signs of flexibility.

Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr., who failed on Tuesday to persuade many of his old Senate colleagues to get behind the plan, met with House Democrats for more than an hour on Wednesday. Dozens of lawmakers lined up to voice their displeasure, and to ask if there was any chance of reworking the plan, especially a provision setting a generous tax emption for wealthy estates.

?There is a substantial amount of dissatisfaction with the deal that was cut,? Representative Jim McDermott, Democrat of Washington, said after the meeting. ?The Democratic caucus put itself on notice that it would not vote for tax cuts for the wealthy because we can?t afford them and because they are not needed, and that?s the point one Democrat after another is making.?

The continuing anger in Congress raised the likelihood that the tax deal would be approved largely with Republican votes. Enough Senate Democrats were expected to support the plan to surmount any filibuster. And in the House, given Republican support, it seemed possible for the tax plan to be adopted even with two-thirds or more of Democrats voting against it.

The deal would extend for two years the Bush-era tax cuts at all income levels, not just on income up to $250,000 per couple as President Obama had sought. In exchange, Republicans agreed to the administration?s demands for a 13-month continuation of jobless benefits for the long-term unemployed, a one-year reduction in the payroll tax for nearly all workers, and other steps aimed at lifting the economy.

The plan also includes an agreement to reduce the estate tax, which lapsed completely this year but is set to return on Jan. 1 with an exemption of $1 million per person and a maximum rate of 55 percent. The deal will set the exemption, or unified credit, at $5 million per estate, and the maximum rate at 35 percent ? a higher exemption and lower tax than many Democrats want.

The Senate Republican leader, Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, excoriated Democrats for trying to bring up several other issues, including an immigration bill and a Pentagon policy measure that includes authorization to repeal the military?s ?don?t ask, don?t tell? ban on open service by gay men and lesbians. Mr. McConnell urged the Democrats to bring the tax plan to the floor.

?Are we here to perform or to legislate?? Mr. McConnell asked.

The majority leader, Harry Reid of Nevada, struggled on Wednesday to chart a path on several major items, including the tax proposal. Votes were tentatively scheduled for Thursday morning on the immigration measure, which would create a path to citizenship for certain illegal immigrants brought to the United States as young children, and on the military bill.

As attention focused mainly on the tax issue, House Democrats muscled through a stripped-down spending bill that would finance the federal government through Sept. 30 of next year, freezing the budgets of most agencies but including money for the war in Afghanistan.

The bill cuts nearly $46 billion from the president?s requested budget, and includes provisions for a two-year pay freeze for non-military federal employees.

The vote was 212 to 206, with 35 Democrats and all 171 Republicans in opposition.

With the president on the defensive with his own party, the White House marshaled an offensive that included circulating dozens of private-sector economic analyses and endorsements from public officials.

But the big gun was the economic warning from Mr. Summers, the soon-departing director of the White House National Economic Council.

?Failure to pass this bill in the next couple weeks would materially increase the risk that the economy would stall out and we would have a double-dip? recession, Mr. Summers told reporters at a briefing.

Mr. Obama, in a brief appearance with the president of Poland, rebutted a reporter?s question alluding to Congressional Democrats? sense of betrayal.

?It is inaccurate to characterize Democrats writ large as feeling ?betrayed,? ? Mr. Obama said. ?I think Democrats are looking at this bill, and you?ve already had a whole bunch of them who said this makes sense. And I think the more they look at it, the more of them are going to say this makes sense.?

The fight over the Bush-era rates would resume in the coming two years, Mr. Obama said, adding that he would make the case for ?tax reform, that we?ve got to simplify the system.?

Powered by WizardRSS | Best Membership Site Software

Source: http://feeds.nytimes.com/click.phdo?i=1fbe482fa8782e63f06a69e9030fb669

bcs projections uncle buck oklahoma state football fanny brice

Google?s Cr-48 Netbook Review: Is this the dawn of computing?s future? [TNW Google]

When we first laid eyes on the test platform for Google?s Chrome OS, it was love at first sight. At a bare minimum, it was ultimate curiosity at first sight. Now, after only two days of waiting, a few of us here at TNW have gotten our hands onto our test units and it?s time to let you know about the OS as a whole, but also about the device on which it is presently being tested.

First Impressions

First, a video. Why? Because you need to see this machine as close to hands on as you can to really get a feeling and understanding for it. As our own Adam Mills points out, if you?re used to using Chrome then this will feel like a tidy version of home for you:

  • Great, tactile feel to the machine. Velvety finish to the case.
  • Extremely comfortable keyboard. Feels identical to a MacBook.
  • Battery is half charged, on boot. After 1 hour, the level hasn?t moved.
  • Instant-on is amazing. Works exactly as described.
  • Included SD card reader is handy for extra storage.
  • Silent. Dead silent. Is this thing on?

Taking the device out of the box, it?s a sparse bit of treasure. All that was included was the netbook, a power adapter and 2 sheets of paper that gave a walk through and basic instructions for the device. Setup was supremely simple. Connection to WiFi was painless and fast. I took a picture, entered some details and then was at a familiar Chrome screen.

Operating in a Web-only environment is a bit different. You have to shift your way of thinking away from local saves of files and local applications. The initial setup screen of the Chrome OS helps you to get a handle on this pretty quickly. There are some great tips in there, as opposed to the typical ?here?s how to plug in your computer? things that we normally see.

MacBook and MacBook Pro users will be delighted by the fact that the touchpad has a two-finger scroll enabled by default. It works exactly as it does on an Apple device, if a bit jerkier and slower.

Overall, the hardware is really well done. For a test platform, it?s downright impressive. Generally speaking, test hardware is mediocre at best. This? We could use this for a long time to come as long as it holds up as well as it seems that it would.

Working In Chrome OS

Remember that ?bit different ? comment that I made earlier? That?s really all that there is to it. If you?re familiar with Chrome and if you?ve been using Chrome apps or extensions, then everything about operating like this will make sense to you. The browsing experience itself is absolutely not different, you just have to bear in mind that you?re working entirely online and so there are not locally-hosted applications that you might normally use.

We were pleasantly surprised to find out that you can work in WordPress within the platform. The iPad, in all of its glory, still has no way to store files locally and then upload them into WordPress. That?s been a sore spot for us since day one. The Chrome OS, while it does have limited space on this machine, still does allow you some areas of the storage in which you can save files and then upload them to WordPress.

The missing F keys, which have been replaced by a row of keys that help you navigate and operate, makes a lot of sense in its use. You?ll find forward and back, refresh, full screen and even a key to cycle through open tabs. Have something that pops open in a new window? You?ll need to use this button to move to that window. It takes a moment to figure out, but works well in practice.

There are some settings to the Chrome OS that are different than what you?ve seen in the browser itself. Located in the same place, under the familiar wrench on the right hand side, you?ll have a new menu system that opens in a page of its own instead of in a popup window:

Beyond this screen, there is another for your ?Personal Stuff? that can address any sharing or synchronization issues you might want to adjust. There?s also a dedicated ?Internet? menu where you can adjust your WiFi or 3G settings. The rest of the menu? It?s almost exactly what you?ve seen in Chrome, just in a different format.

Around the Web

To be honest, the test unit feels a bit underpowered. With 4 or 5 tabs open, the input starts to get a bit laggy. With a single tab, however, everything works just fine. It?s worth noting, though, that I do have TweetDeck open and it tends to be a bit of a resource hog with all of the columns that I use.

Flash on the Cr-48 is?workable. It?s not great. It?s not even really good. But it is workable. Adobe did just issue a statement noting that it is still a ?work in progress?. Watching videos in Flash on YouTube gives a passable experience, but not one that I?d want to have for my daily use machine. Again, this might be due to system resources. Bear in mind, this is not the computer that you will have running Chrome OS, it?s just the one that we have.

Want to watch Netflix? You?re pretty much out of luck in Chrome OS. At least for now. Chrome OS is open-source, based on Linux. As such, Netflix doesn?t support the platform, though there has been talk in the past of making it happen.

The Verdict

Did Google just give us a glimpse at what cloud computing is supposed to be like? Our knee-jerk reaction is yes. If you?re like us, working primarily on the Internet via cloud-based operations, then the Chrome OS is a dream. Low overhead, high function and massive battery life are a must for Cloud-based computers and even our test platform handles this like a dream.

It?s worth repeating, because I want to make this clear: This is not the notebook that you?ll be using. It might be similar, but smart manufacturers will beef them up a bit from where this one sits. It?s a tiny bit underpowered, but hugely functional. Bundling the Verizon Wireless 3G is a genius move and the price points are relatively easy to swallow. Keeping track of your use will be paramount, but Verizon has notoriously simple tools for doing that via its website.

Look for us to do a more thorough review somewhere down the line. But for a first impression? Google is most certainly onto something big here. We can?t wait to keep using it and find out how things go.

Powered by WizardRSS | Best Membership Site Software

Source: http://thenextweb.com/google/2010/12/09/googles-cr-48-netbook-review-is-this-the-dawn-of-computings-future/

fanny brice randy shannon walmart cyber monday bryan cranston