Logging The Cyber World » computers

Pushing the boundaries of nanotechnology

Xyber — Fri, 13 Jan 2012 12:32:41 +0000

Computer and memory chips usually tend to get smaller over time, but a paper published Thursday in Science, IBM details how it’s building memory chips that would be 100 times more dense than today’s hard drives by starting with the smallest building blocks: atoms. Big Blue’s prototype chip is only 12 atoms across (click here for an awesome visualization of how small an atom is. No really, click it!) but is another way of thinking about ways to get beyond the limits of building ever-smaller chips keeping Moore’s Law on track.

Andreas Heinrich, the project lead for IBMs efforts, explained in an interview that this tech may never be realized in part because it requires an entirely new type of manufacturing equipment to be built. However, IBM is learning how to manipulate atoms for storing bits and identified a new type of magnetism that could one day be used. Unlike the type of magnetism that keeps your magnets stuck to your fridge, IBM is looking at the reverse of those properties to make this highly dense type of memory.

More at GigaOM

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Apple issues iOS 5′s first over-the-air update, with battery fix

Xyber — Fri, 11 Nov 2011 05:50:51 +0000

iOS 5.0.1 has landed, and the iPhone 4S experience is better as a result. Thanks to the update, the battery life bug which had been causing a large amount of pain to a small percentage of iPhone 4S users, is gone. The laundry list of other official improvements in 5.01 is brief: additional multitasking gestures for the iPad 1. Something about smoothing out the iCloud experience. That’s all well and good. But it’s what’s not on the list that’s of intrigue at this point. Other companies do it as well, but Apple in particular is known for slipping additional, under-the-radar improvements into their .x.x software updates. Why not announce it? Maybe it’s something the company want to advertise as having been a previous deficiency, but wants to improve upon nonetheless. That means iPhone 4S users now get to spend the next few days looking for other subtle signs of improvement in their iOS 5 experience. Did Apple, for instance, add refinements to the way in which Siri works? Perhaps some of the built-in apps launch just a bit faster on the 4S now than they did before. The search begins for what else iOS 5.0.1 has brought to the table.

More Here

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Hewlett-Packard buying ArcSight for $1.5 billion

Xyber — Tue, 14 Sep 2010 13:19:09 +0000

Hewlett-Packard Co. agreed to buy security-software maker ArcSight Inc. for about $1.5 billion, continuing the company’s spending spree that began after Chief Executive Mark Hurd resigned last month.

The deal also represents the latest purchase of a smaller security firm by a huge technology company, a trend some see continuing as big tech considers the importance of adding security to their product portfolio. ArcSight makes software that monitors corporate networks for unusual activity, such as a hacker’s attempt to break into a system.

ArcSight shares ended Monday trading up 25.1% at $43.91 on the Nasdaq, above H-P’s offer price of $43.50 a share, suggesting some traders may be expecting or hoping for a higher bid, similar to what happened with storage maker 3PAR Inc. last month. ArcSight, of Cupertino, Calif., had been quietly shopping itself to a handful of big technology companies, and the agreed-upon deal provides a 24% premium to ArcSight’s closing price Friday and a 70% premium to where it was trading a month ago.

On a conference call with investors, H-P executives declined to comment about the bidding process for ArcSight. They also wouldn’t speculate about what would have happened if Mr. Hurd remained CEO.

Ringleaders of Mariposa botnet busted!

Xyber — Wed, 03 Mar 2010 11:15:07 +0000

SAN FRANCISCO – Authorities have smashed one of the world’s biggest networks of virus-infected computers, a data vacuum that stole credit cards and online banking credentials from as many as 12.7 million poisoned PCs.

The “botnet” of infected computers included PCs inside more than half of the Fortune 1,000 companies and more than 40 major banks, according to investigators.

Spanish investigators, working with private computer-security firms, have arrested the three alleged ringleaders of the so-called Mariposa botnet, which appeared in December 2008 and grew into one of the biggest weapons of cybercrime. More arrests are expected soon in other countries.

Spanish authorities have planned a news conference for Wednesday in Madrid.

HP’s new EliteBook tablet with new Intel Processors

Xyber — Mon, 01 Mar 2010 07:09:33 +0000

Lest anyone be left out of the tablet/slate wave that’s currently crashing over the laptop and ultraportable industry, HP has announced a new 12.1-inch EliteBook convertible tablet for the business-minded who feel the need for pens and capacitive multitouch displays at the same time.

Equipped with a stainless steel finish and magnesium casing, the EliteBook 2740p tablet PC will be available with either a Core i5 or Core i7 processor, a reinforced glass screen, and a touch interface that will also work with an included pen. The 2740p (and its non-tablet sibling, the 2540p below) also meet military standards for high temperatures, dust, vibration and altitude, like its tablet predecessor the 2730p. Built-in HP DriveGuard technology also builds some impact resistance into the design.

More at CNET…

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Intel Begins Shipping Solid State Drives

Xyber — Tue, 23 Dec 2008 06:34:49 +0000

Intel on Monday started shipping a 160-GB, 2.5-inch solid-state drive for laptops and desktops.

In addition to the new X25-M, the chipmaker said it would ship next month a 160-GB, 1.8-inch SSD called the X18-M. Intel shipped 80-GB versions of the same two drives in September.

Computer manufacturers are offering SSDs in ultralight laptops and mini-notebooks, which are used primarily for e-mail and Web browsing. SSDs are particularly useful in these machines because the drives are lighter and use less power than hard disk drives. Major computer makers such as Dell, Hewlett-Packard, and Lenovo offer SSDs in notebooks.

The X18-M and X25-M are based on Intel’s multilevel cell memory. The technology that differentiates the SSDs from competitors, according to Intel, includes highly parallel 10x NAND flash channels and “native command queuing” that enable up to 32 concurrent operations for faster performance.

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Apple will unveil an $800 Laptop

Xyber — Fri, 10 Oct 2008 02:04:30 +0000

Apple’s reported plans to introduce new laptops next week are seasoned with a particularly titillating rumor that the company will unveil an $800 laptop that would close much of the price gap with low-cost PC laptops.

On Thursday, Apple sent out an announcement stating, “The spotlight turns to notebooks,” and inviting recipients to a launch event on Oct. 14.

An $800 laptop — allegedly crafted from single pieces of aluminum using a laser and water jet process known by the code-name “brick” — would be a dramatic price drop from Apple’s current lowest-price standard laptop, which carries a $1,099 retail price point. That’s a $300 price cut and, while still substantially higher than low-cost PCs, would bring a Mac machine into the affordability price range of a whole new wave of users.

New HP laptop with a 24-hour battery life

Xyber — Tue, 09 Sep 2008 07:19:50 +0000

Hewlett-Packard says it has achieved a mobile-computing milestone by getting the HP EliteBook 6930p to operate continuously for 24 hours on a single battery charge. The laptop used in the test is, however, rather different from those consumers would pick up at the store, at least for now.

The machine’s equipped with high-end components including Intel solid-state hard drives (SSDs), a mercury-free LED display, and an optional ultra-capacity battery.

The cream-of-the-crop components played a crucial role in making the 24-hour battery life possible. HP says the Illumi-Lite LED display, by itself, boosts battery run time by up to four hours compared with traditional LCD displays, and the Intel SSD provides up to a 7 percent increase in battery life compared with traditional hard drives.

Article from CNET News

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Mac OS X shares closing to 8%

Xyber — Fri, 04 Jul 2008 15:04:55 +0000

Apple’s share of the global operating system market is climbing steadily, and could top 8% this month, statistics from a Web metrics firm showed Wednesday.

The latest monthly numbers from Net Applications show that Mac OS X had 7.94% of the market in June. Considering that its share has been climbing an average of 0.18% a month over the last 10 months, Mac OS X could top 8% this month. In August 2007, the Apple OS had 6.18% of the market.

During the same period, Linux has also increased market share, rising to 0.8% of the market in June from 0.47% last August, according to Net Applications. Meanwhile, the global market share of Microsoft Windows has declined over the last 10 months. In June, Windows accounted for 90.89% of the market, down from 93.06%.

Complete article from Yahoo! News

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Catching an untraceable Hackers

Xyber — Fri, 20 Jun 2008 15:19:20 +0000

They’re in our computers, reading our files. The Chinese government, that is, according to two U.S. Congressmen who recently accused Beijing of sending hackers to ferret out secret documents stored on Congressional computers. The Chinese deny any involvement, but if they were lying, would we be able to prove it?

The answer, according to computer and security experts, is probably not.

At least, not conclusively enough for a court of law.

“It’s very difficult to track hacker attacks and, even if you can track it, you don’t always know with 100 percent certainty if you’re right,” said James Lewis, director and senior fellow of the Technology and Public Policy Program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, D.C.

That was the problem faced by the investigators who attempted to figure out who broke into computers used by the staff of Rep. Christopher H. Smith, R-N.J., and Rep. Frank R. Wolf, R-Va. The Congressmen announced on June 11 that they’d been the targets of several attacks, beginning in 2006.

Both Smith and Wolf are high-profile critics of the Chinese government. They told reporters that, among other things, the hackers stole lists of identities of Chinese dissidents and records from Congressional human-rights hearings.

Read complete article here

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