Fire Alarm Companies

Ex-Microsoftie Paul Maritz sees Windows PCs below 20% in era of cloud, devices >> GeekWire

Life after Anonymous - Interview with a former hacker >> Cisco Blog

"SparkyBlaze: In my mind social engineering is the biggest issue today. We have the software/hardware to defend buffer overflows, malware, DDoS and code execution. But what good is that if you can get someone to give you their password or turn off the firewall because you say you are Greg from computer maintenance just doing testing. It all comes down to lies, everyone does it and some people get good at it."

Trouble is, that could mean that more will be along soon, depending on when the next gang gets its act together.

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HP: TouchPad is added OTA update for receipt 'function' originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 30 August 2011 08:46:00 EDT. Please read our terms for use of feeds.

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The geek world is somewhere thrive socially excluded. We 're interested in how smart people - not who they sleep

Tim Cook 's appointment as head of Apple is the official "gay disabled" sign above the door tech industry - but the truth is that they never unwelcome here. They love us! Well, actually, they 're totally ambivalent to us. For in the geek world, have the normal rules of society do not apply, for the simple reason that they don 't make sense.

Geeks love rules, especially the kinds of programming geeks (like me) to take over the world one line of code at a time. But we like the rules based on logic, or at least some kind of pragmatic interpretation of the specific results on real experiments (in the non-geek world as common sense) is based. There is no logical rule connects sexuality to untangle the ability to model the world as equations or a sequence of user actions. So it is a non-factor. Noise. Safely ignored.

For many geeks, this is largely how the world falls apart: things that matter and things that can be ignored. We have less interest than the traditional non-geek in value attributed to non-correlated factors. The things that are important really is important. For me, prime numbers, correct use of apostrophes and statistics, the direction of the content moves when you scroll, if you ever change batteries as a complete set, not your CONNECTIONS nouns, not statements that are illogical or 't be justified (ever). I care deeply about working with intelligent people, flexibility and creativity combined with rigorous thinking and attention to detail. I don 't matter who they want to fall asleep.

And yet my little company's three-for-three on the queer-counter. A lesbian (me), a gay man and a woman asexual. It seems that gay men and women in our industry in a way that \ may be over-represented 't simply is not rejected, we' re still, actively welcomed, because the tech world is full of people who first have hand experiences of social exclusion.

Some were too wise to understand some couldn 't the social norms around entertainment, but most of us spent our childhood, well outside the group. My wife is a psychotherapist and tells me that everyone has an experience of her childhood spent outside the group, but if you re 'an eight-year-old carries a pack of cards with physical issues in the case, believe me, this is a Another type of "outside".

If you're lucky, like John, who works with me, or Bill Gates himself, were found like-minded people who wanted to tinker with electronics or dice roll. Most of us were a mixture of boredom, fear and frustration, until we made our stride hit in the university or stumbled into the tech sector, where we met other people who are even more awkward socially, and even more brilliant intellectually, were than we do. Ridicule was replaced by cooperation.

It goes further though than simple tolerance. The tech industry folk I know are vehemently against discrimination in any form. Perhaps from bitter experience, or maybe we 're still burning from the collective senseless loss of one of our most brilliant minds: Alan Turing. You can 't deny the human sadness of his story, but for those of us who are logical value' s an additional layer of tragedy to the way our country treats the father of modern computing. We are uninhabitable not only from his life - pursuit of him to be gay, pushed him to chemical castration as an alternative to accepting a prison - we played the world for 30 or 40 year performance of one of the greatest problem solving minds in history. To be gay. That 's just stupid, and I' ve never had a tech person, wasn 't against stupid things.

It 's both brilliant and irrelevant that Tim Cook has replaced Steve Jobs at Apple. His appointment will solve many vicious debate among the tech community on Twitter, but the fronts will be the usual: Apple vs. Apple Suck Rock. Tim 's gay? Whatever. If 's he would fix the scrolling screwed into Lion?

Then there's the way that Apple - in the teeth of industry scepticism - made such an astonishing success of bricks-and-mortar retailing with its high-street stores. Or ponder the fact that it became the world's most valuable corporation without incurring a single cent of debt. Instead, it sits atop a $78bn (£48bn) cash mountain: enough to buy Tesco

"Do you want to spend the rest of your life selling sugar water," he asked, "or do you want to change the world?" (Sculley accepted the invitation, then presided over Jobs's expulsion.) But for Jobs it was a serious question. What he was asking, as the blogger Umair Haque put it, was: "Do you really want to spend your days slaving over work that fails to inspire, on stuff that fails to count, for reasons that fail to touch the soul of anyone?"

It goes without saying that he is impossible to work with; most geniuses are. Yet he has built - and retained the respect of - the most remarkable design team in living memory, a group that has been responsible for more innovation than the rest of the computer industry put together. For that reason, when the time comes to sum up Jobs's achievements, most will portray him as a seminal figure in the computing industry. But Jobs is bigger than that.

, each of these industries started out as an open, irrationally exuberant, chaotic muddle of incompatible standards, crummy technology and chancers. The pivotal moment in the evolution of each industry came when a charismatic entrepreneur arrived to offer consumers better quality, higher production values and greater ease of use.

Jobs is from the same mould. He believes that using a computer should be delightful, not painful; that it should be easy to seamlessly transfer music from a CD on to a hard drive and thence to an elegant portable player; that mobile phones should be powerful handheld computers that happen to make voice calls; and that a tablet computer is the device that is ushering us into a post-PC world. He has offered consumers a better proposition than the rest of the industry could - and they jumped at it. That's how he built Apple into the world's most valuable company. And it's why he is really the last of the media moguls.

It \ s bizarre decision shut down mobile operator in one of his stations, disabled some potential protesters' s a lot of coverage extends \ over BART been "investigated. With the FCC, we 've heard several people say that it' s no First Amendment violation here, because it 's "not the right mobile phone service. "And though it 's true that it' s not a right, wireless service, the law is pretty clear that a right to try, not the government, a special form of speech by shutting down the infrastructure, the only to suppress this form of language specifically.

That is, the key issue isn't whether BART needed to keep its mobile phone service up all the time. If it goes down for maintenance, that's fine. But it can't turn it off if the decision is to try to block a particular type of speech. And that's exactly what BART clearly admitted to doing. Of course, it's not just the First Amendment at issue. There's also telecom law, and it appears BART violated that too.

Telecom attorney / consumer rights attorney Harold field has a long and detailed explanation as to why the shutdown both injured and telecom law is just a bad idea in general. It 's quite detailed and pointed to the specific citations in telecom law, which were injured and a number of relevant case law decisions. It 'sa lot in there, but here' sa key quote, as it could be applied almost immediately, BART is the situation:

In Pike v. Southern Bell Tel & Telegraph Co. , 81 So.2d 254 (Ala. 1955), Mr. Connor, in his capacity as Commissioner of Public Safety for the City of Birmingham, Southern Bell ordered the phone from a Louis Pike, Mr. Connor as "Remove described negro" by "questionable character" Mr. Connor said a "well-known lottery operator in the city" and with his cell phone for unspecified "illegal activities." reviewing cases from other countries (including People v. Brophy ) Was the Alabama Supreme Court that the right of every citizen to use a phone number was guaranteed by federal law, and could not be deprived without due process. As the Court stated:

Counteract the current trend and tendencies, Police State are all free Americans pause. Which is unconstitutional and extra-judicial extension of coercive governmental power, a frightening and cancerous growth on our body politic. As soon as we assume, of course, that a citizen was presumed innocent until proved guilty. The tendency of governments to shift the burden of proof for the citizens to prove their innocence is unsustainable and unbearable.

We are not able to glean from the bare conclusions set up in the letter of the Commissioner, whether it is claimed that the "illegal" use of the telephone was by the appellant, her husband, or a total stranger.  From aught that was alleged in the plea, except for the conclusion of the Commissioner, no "illegal" use of any type was made of this telephone by any one.

The announcement, which was allegedly received by the Telephone Company formulated in terms of a direct order from the Commissioner of Public Safety. What is the source of Mr. Connor authority to issue such an order? We know nothing about it. And we believe that none exists.

If we represented the opposite position, flowing course it would then follow that the phone company into action on the announcement of an overzealous police officer who is impressed without evidence and based on mere suspicion, with the bad character or justified would be filling a specific telephone company subscribers. The letter of Commissioner Connor set up in the defense is no defense. It is the phone company charge to show that the use of the telephone than in fact to justify their removal.

This devastation of a participant right to telephone service as a denial of due process guaranteed by the Constitution of 1901, art. 1, § 6 The gratuitous and arbitrary action of a police officer is no justification for an excerpt from this law. To determine that will justify the Telephone Company in discontinuation of service "order," a police officer would recognize a judicial police force that does not exist. The mere assertion of an executive officer he the Attorney General of the United States or a policeman hit by a remote, can not be accepted as a substitute for proof in court proceedings. No presumption arises that the adequacy of evidence based on a law enforcement official conclusions.

Similarly, the BART 's possession of "intelligence" that people can use their mobile phones to give to coordinate activities are not illegal "police force that does not exist." BART needs to go to the California agency with current law, the CPUC, and received a law authorizing the closure of the mobile operator.

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Legal disputes over alleged copyright violations are nothing new, but the music industry, new ways with its most recent action. More than two dozen record companies in Japan get the owner of a site called YouTube Downloader TubeFire sue. They demand more than $ 3,000,000 in damages.

TubeFire not only allows the user to download the video files to a YouTube video, but extract the audio track as mp3. The suit, on 19 August was filed, claims that this process of copying, conversion and distribution of content is a violation. The $ 3,000,000 figure was calculated by dividing the number of downloads from TubeFire processed, then you work out what the license fee would have been reached.

This case is unique because the content of hurting or not, is already free on YouTube already. TubeFire says she has been working to prevent piracy, but that it is to close temporarily while the case proceeds. Really, that's probably all the labels want. TubeFire is by far not the only service that provides conversions YouTube. Do you think that similar services are in jeopardy as well?

Simple yet brilliant games that you can not miss

For us to be more strategy games never-ending spiral of regret and woe. Do not get us wrong, we love the genre. But our approach to tactics usually goes something like this: ".. OK, go here and ... oops All that we love is burning," said simply, mistakes happen. Frozen synapse, but it allows us to make informed error. In brief, you can use the game you see the result of your moves before you make them. Tugging it is an absolutely brilliant, and if you're a perfectionist, both a dream come true and your biggest nightmare.

The not-quite-turn-based, not-quite-real-time strategy game encourages you to any movement under the microscope slide, carefully playing every situation you can dream up. However, your opponent can do the same. Tugging obsess, to think, look again, sometimes for hours. Then you give your seal of approval to a plan to "F'real this time" button and watch it fall to pieces in seconds. And it's amazing.

Lesson one taking the cover. This is the only one lesson.

To ensure that your poor brain does not overheat, freeze the basic mechanisms of synapse are actually incredibly simple. There are no tech trees, units, heroes, and supply lines to micromanage here. Normally you are a small group where people glowing green, and that's it. Combat, then a piece of neon-colored cake. With nothing but clicks and a drop-down menu, you tell your husband to move where and when to aim, take cover, fire, and even ignore the enemies. It is not brain surgery on a rocket scientist, while on board an actual rocket. Hell, your children would probably not select a problem and then. Mastering the game is a very different story.

Staying one step ahead of your opponent is absolutely critical, but it never ceases to feel like you are about to step off a cliff. Committing to a plan is downright unnerving. After all, you have to run themselves ragged to test it. Thanks to your hard work it is airtight. Foolproof. Above all, it is up to you. Then your opponents bulldozer with brilliant strategy, pure luck, or (usually) a combination of both, and you are back to square one. When reference is number one, "Oh God, there are a million knife against my neck, and I'm going to lose on a train." But you will find a way to survive, and it's so damn happy.

Campaign missions, extra wrinkles and civilians caught in crossfire throw.

That balance of psychological posturing and swift, brutal chaos holds up quite well in both the single-player campaign and multiplayer. Single-player, while a bit confusing on the story side, does a great job of gradually easing you into deeper tactical waters, and multiplayer makes use of a Words With Friends-style "take as long as you want per turn" approach.

Really, just thawed frozen synapse in ugly gray mush, if its random level generator decides to commit terrible crimes against the balance. Occasionally, you're in a tough battle unwinnable find, because the gods of the placement of the wall is not smiles in your favor. It's frustrating, sure, but hardly a deal-breaker. Apart from the frozen synapse a fantastic step outside typical strategy games field is completely silence from an absolute steal at $ 25. There is no need to test and optimize the outcome of this: Buy and do not look back.

$ 25, www.frozensynapse.com, ESRB: not rated

Eric Schmidt criticises David Cameron's proposal that potential rioters should be barred from social media

Google's executive chairman, Eric Schmidt, has criticised David Cameron's proposal to limit the use of social media sites during civil unrest in the wake of the riots that took place across England earlier this month.

Schmidt, speaking at the MediaGuardian Edinburgh International Television Festival on Saturday, said that such a move was likely to backfire, highlighting how when the Egyptian authorities turned the internet off to try and quell unrest earlier this year it merely "enraged the citizens and got them to leave their homes to protest".

Asked in Edinburgh, which he by Cameron 'thoughts' s proposal, Schmidt said: "I think it' .. Sat mistake is a mistake to look in the mirror and try to break the mirror Whatever the problem was [ that the riots] The Internet is a mirror image of this problem. If you have a problem, use the Internet to understand what the problem is. "

Cameron struck in the wake of the riots, the social media services such as BlackBerry Messenger, Twitter and Facebook could shut down temporarily to prevent a repetition of the problems.

Schmidt, that in a Q & A session after his MacTaggart lecture at the festival on Friday evening, said such a move a "strategic mistake ... like turning off the water," would.

"When the Eygtian revolution happened a number of people were busy being revolutionaries and a majority where at home being afraid. The government turned off the internet for about four days. They enraged the citizens and got them to leave their homes to protest," he added.

"It was a strategic mistake. It 's like turning off the tap. A lot of people are using these [sites] substantially every day of their life, and when you turn it you' re really emit them piss. "

The Government seems already rowing back on first Cameron 's proposal.

On Thursday, the Interior Minister, Theresa May, said social networks at a meeting that the government does not intend, "internet restricting services 'had.

BlackBerry maker Research in Motion, Facebook and Twitter were summoned to the meeting with May after Cameron's post-riots comments about social media.

May sees one opened the meeting by immediately exclude restrictive measures, and indicates that there was a discussion on the improvement of law enforcement online.

According to sources acknowledged at the hearing that the police that they "needed more \ do" in terms of learning how to use social media. Understood the London police have said they are "a little behind" other forces when it came to Twitter and Facebook.

. For the Media Guardian news desk email editor@mediaguardian.co.uk or phone 020 3353 3857 Contact. For all other inquiries please call the main switchboard on 020 3353 guardian 2000th If you have a comment for publication, please mark clearly "for the publication of".

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A few years ago we did not get Tim Quirk 's battle for Warner Music, actually provide any sort of accounting for the money earned by his band, Too Much Joy . There were a few similar stories over the years, and begin to understand what you is that it seems that major labels generally don 't even track this stuff. They seem to assume that draw most bands only won 't, and so they never have a balance sheet (and just keep the money for themselves) to them at all. From what I heard 've if a band is really successful and annoys the label, eventually they 'll somewhat closer together an account of what' s earned. Who knows how accurate these statements.

Of course, sometimes these stories are just crazy to downright crazy. Hans Ridder points us to the story of Bill Nelson, the band Be-Bop Deluxe, and the rather ridiculous situation he went through over the years. The actual story is more than a decade, but some new attention earlier this year when a number of blogs it reposted. We are just thinking about it, if Ridder sent it in, and wanted to post it here because it really shows how to treat these labels some of its artists - never give actual accounting, always slow to answer with any details that deny always that everything 's recouped. The fact that she then started changing their story and claimed that they were actually the money to the wrong people- Then to deny that again said that the case was later - is just an extra dimension of insanity.

The story began with Nelson to ask EMI repeated been earned for an accounting of what Be-Bop Deluxe, and either get no answer, or (after asking for many times) is said to be "recouped again.", the band \ There was never any evidence of this presented. The label reissued kept working, and even contact with him to work on some of them. In one case, they told him if he helped work on a "best of" with that the account would be on top, and he 'd start royalties. Of course, that never happened. But EMI came back to ask him to work on a box set, and he asked again. And that 's when things got weird:

Over a period of two years, a very strange story. The first communication received from EMI's lawyers said that they had in fact been paying royalties to ... "By the band. 'My answer to the lawyers was ..." Ask them, the band, "Sure as I had received no royalties from the record company. After a long time and demand more of the lawyers said EMI that they do actually have been paying royalties to Nick Dew, Ian Parkin and Rob Bryan. The amazing thing is that these three people was not due to the Be Bop Deluxe albums with the exception of the very first, 'Axe Victim.' all other albums were mixed with various musicians (Charlie Tumahai, Simon Fuchs and Andy Clarke), under a different contractual set-up appeared. There, that was the first line-up, which always included only the ONE release will receive royalties from EMI for ALL Bop recordings, including re-issues ... loading images, in which they had not participated, either as actor or otherwise, the really damning is the fact that none of the original members of the band ever talked about it and said. "Wait a minute, I 'm getting money for this music that I didn' t even! "(It would be obvious from the royalties statements that they receive the payments for various albums from the Be Bop were catalog, and not just the 'Axe Victim' album.) Record company cock-up to the side, which means say about the people, you even know how to look your friends?

Anyway, after I explained to the lawyers, about Richard was that these people do not license fees \ on everything but the band's first album received, letters were then sent to EMI request an explanation. Went back a few months before a response. I think I remember that some know not to EMI, where to contact me to license fees (and I have continued to be the only member of the original line-up with a professional and public career in music) murmur send, but to a later date, they seemed to change her story and said that they paid hadn 't the other members, after all. Actually, they said, were obliged only EMI, a company called 'Be Bop Deluxe Ltd.,', which was developed by Be Bop 's manager Mike Dolan and had no longer exists due. As the company no longer existed, there was, EMI claims it has no legal obligation for them no royalties to pay generated by the product. (Despite earlier claims to money paid to \ the band's first line-up.)

While trying to decide what to do next, I suggested that EMI's lawyers should at least let me know how much my 'lost' royalty would have been asking for numbers. That would help me to decide whether it's worth, EMI was on. The court costs are prohibitive, of course, very much for me. A large company like EMI can afford it, things turn up all the enemy collapses under financial stress. I know how good they can 't.

Again, time passed, further reminders were sent to EMI and they finally replied. It seems that they had now gone back to their first story, that they HAD made payments but only to the three other members of the 'Axe Victim' line-up, excluding myself. A circular argument? Since then, further communications have been made between my side and theirs. These communications have always been marked by a painfully slow response from EMI. Spinning it out as long as possible, hoping that it might go away, perhaps? Eventually, an offer came... EMI would pay me any future royalties generated by Be Bop Deluxe product, provided, one suspects, that I didn't cause any more fuss. Basically, they said that they were under no legal obligation to pay me anything at all, (due to the 'Be Bop Deluxe Ltd' company's demise), although they do admit to paying royalties to the wrong members of the band. An administration mistake, apparently. Does that make it OK then?

At the end of his attorneys basically told him there was nothing he could do, except possibly the original band members to sue, and that it may continue with pretty much any strategy would be terribly expensive. In the meantime, we 're not supposed to believe that record companies are the best interests of the artist at heart? Why it is believed this myth?

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To mark the release of the cyberpunk adventure Deus Ex: Human Revolution, the game's publisher has released a fascinating documentary about the real-life tech behind cyborg hero, Adam Jensen

The main character of Deus Ex is a mechanically enhanced cyborg revolution, which many cybernetic additions give him a series of people (or it should be post-human) forces. But how likely we are to such physical augmentation until the game look 's-setting 2027?

To find out, the game 's publisher Square Enix commissioned Canadian filmmaker Rob Spence, to explore the current state of physical augmentation and augmented reality displays. Spence lost an eye in a shooting accident as a teenager and has since built a wireless video camera in his eye socket, which he all that he sees record.

During this fascinating 10 minutes film, he meets several people from cutting augmentation technologies, as well as firefighters the testing of a new AR-suit, they have benefited with information about their surroundings, including the presence of dangerous chemicals during fire fighting.

Anyway, it 'sa little more interesting than the usual promotional trailer - although if you' re squeamish, watch out, there are brief scenes of medical operations.

Hands on with the latest smart phone and tablet applications

With thousands of new apps released every week there is a real needle / haystack to find the good feeling. Here are the latest crop of applications, we have 've tests.

Euro Star trains

iPhone / Android, free
Aside from a few brave souls who commute regularly from London to Paris or Brussels (or vice versa), most of us take the Euro Star train is relatively rare - why get an app to book tickets, rather than do it online? Actually, the killer feature for ? Star 's new app of mobile ticketing. You can buy tickets for the main destinations ? star review bookings book and control of your loyalty points, but also get a QR code to actually check in. While this feature isn 't made exclusively for bookings via the app, it' s good to have all in one place. Meanwhile, the app itself is very smooth and usable, and the fact that it 's launch on Android as the iPhone with Euro Star' s credit.

Official Rugby World Cup 2011

iPad / iPhone / Android / Windows Mobile / BlackBerry, free
The International Rugby Board 's official World Cup app makes an even better view when it comes to the view of IOS is available with four different versions. Obviously we can 't a final verdict until we see how it performs during the actual tournament, but all the ingredients seem in place for an efficient way, scores, statistics and video highlights to get during the World Cup. There are other features for everyone actually attended the tournament also: seating charts and other information about the different stages and hosting cities.

Spy Mouse

iPhone, 0.69 pounds
Spy Mouse is one of the most anticipated iPhone games this year because it 's the latest from the Australian studio Firemint: the company behind the Flight Control and Real Racing Games. Spy-mouse is equally impressive and captivating as the games, with an initially simple gameplay: you follow a line on the screen to your mouse to the output via lump cheese guide, avoiding cats. Soon throws in power-ups and gadgets to complicate the action, like the cats the pressure ramp. If you fight again, there '\ sa "Kiska" power-up purchasable for 69p to help you through levels, like the Mighty Eagle in Angry Birds. The gameplay is finely tuned, and the production values ??are top notch.

Seatwave tickets

iPhone, free
Seatwave ticketing service is the latest company looking to take on Songkick for the wallets of iPhone owners music fans. As the app, it is recommended you gigs on the bands that you yourself and your location, with tickets for sale on the iPhone. An extra seats that card allows you to choose where you sit in the larger towns. One thing to note is that Seatwave is a ticket exchange, so cards have a number of awards, including many that cost more than the standard price. Nevertheless, it 'sa good fallback if tickets are sold out, that it may be worthwhile to be a place on your home screen, alongside Songkick.

Peter Dickson 's Pocket Announcer

iPhone / Android, £ 1.49
Heard from Peter Dickson It 'sa good chance you' ve heard him: he 's voice over the chap responsible for the booming participants and guest star on X Factor intros. Now he is 's has its own app, which is partly a sounding board of the Peter screams comedy set phrases. So far, so novelty. But you can also set the creator mode Dickson to build their own announcements to call with a good variety of names, actions and other things for him. Granted, not novelty, but if the ability of the UK 's roar have leading prime-time speaker responds quips about friends and armadillos, this fun app. Perhaps a niche, yes.

Bug Village

iPhone / Android, free
Mobile games publisher Glu Mobile has quite a fan base for his recording freemium games in recent months with Gun Bros to pick up the group. For anyone who wants something a bit less ... Burlap provides a cutesy bow Village resource management game, that building a colony of ants and bees go. The impact of animated films such as A Bug 's Life and Antz lurks in the background, but the game is fun and accessible. As with Glu 's other games you can play for free, but paying for virtual coins and objects accelerate progress - even if it' s weighted rightly, do not feel as hard to sell too much of one. It feels like a game for younger players more than adults, but still polished and playable.

Have you caught him yet? I'm obviously related to fever tablet. With this last weekend uber-hectic Fire Sale on HP touchpads, it seems, have the tech-noobs tablet fever in the blood. If you're like me and so many others out there, but you were not able to enter one of hamster heart of the buyer access devices, [...]

Research In Motion 's new service will start closed beta in the UK, the USA and Canada.

You have to feel for Research In Motion. The BBM-messaging application: After months of almost constant negative headlines about the company 's BlackBerry devices, it has just unveiled a truly innovative new music service built on its crown jewel. And yet the revelation came as Apple CEO Steve Jobs appeared to suck the blogosphere 's attention and energy away from any other technology history.

BBM Music, it deserves some of that attention, but again: it has much potential and is far from a me-too rivals for popular music services like iTunes, Pandora and Spotify.

Presented by British music services company Omnifone, it has licenses from all four major labels in the bag in time for the start today of the Closed Beta in the UK, the USA and Canada, followed by a global rollout later this year in this countries as well as Australia, Colombia, France, Germany, Indonesia, Italy, Malaysia, Mexico, Netherlands, Saudi Arabia, Singapore, Spain, Thailand, Turkey and the United Arab Emirates.

The basic facts: costs BBM music is a subscription service $ 4.99 per month in the U.S. will be, though, as the changes elsewhere in the world is yet to be announced. The user can select 50 songs from the BBM music catalog for the profiles that are used can create playlists, and locally on their BlackBerry smartphone for offline listening.

50 songs? That 's not much, but that's where the BBM angle kicks in. Users can also access the 50 songs from their BBM contacts who register for the service. This means a theoretical range of 100 songs when a friend logs on, 200 songs, when to do three, and 2,000 songs to do when 39th And so on.

RIM has given no details of any limit, but in an interview with berry review, says senior project manager Nick Patsiopoulos "during the beta, the BBM music connections to 140 BBM music contacts is limited to the start, but it is past there \ scale ". Licensing agreements are probably the most important factor in every ceiling is finally set.

The BBM Music app itself is built around an activity stream of the songs friends are adding to their profiles, as well as the friends they are sharing those tracks with, and the playlists they are creating. Users can comment on one another's songs, and fire up full BBM chats from within the application.

The app also ties into Amazon's MP3 music store to buy and download tracks beyond the 50-song limit, with the choice of partner being slightly surprising, given RIM's previously close relationship with British firm 7Digital.

BBM music is interesting and really disturbing in the broader scheme music services. An addressable subscriber base of 45 million users, BBM is a strong base to start from, although BBM is more music on BlackBerry 's younger customers, rather than address their business users.

There are some pitfalls ready. First, the younger users will be willing to pay for a subscription music service, even if it is tied in BBM? Second, how will it stack up in competition with other streaming services, which provide desktop and mobile access, without limiting 50-song? RIM 's means the introduction of these services BBM BBM Social API can build in their own BlackBerry applications after all.

Perhaps most importantly, is BBM Music 's success to the overall performance of the RIM itself bound. It 'sa move bold and innovative, but their long-term prospects for the success of the current wave of BlackBerry 7 OS phones off, but more importantly, as next year' s new generation of devices with RIM 's QNX software to perform.

RIM's challenge remains proving that it can halt its sliding market share against fierce competition from iPhone and Android, but at least BBM Music shows its strategy is not just about playing catch-up.

You need gigabytes or performance? Laptop upgrades, or a screaming new gaming PC? We carry what you need to know to get the right storage solution for your PC.

Storage. Always needed, often overlooked.

Often lost in the excitement around the latest DirectX 11 GPUs and CPUs hexacore is the ability to store and retrieve your stuff. Your applications, games, photos, digital music and everything that lives on your hard disk. But the boring old rotating magnetic disk just does not seem exciting or high-tech - even though the technology is in a hard drive actually pretty incredible.

A technology that has a bit of memory is sexier, SSDs - Solid-state drives to flash memory technology. But SSDs are not a perfect solution, as we shall soon see. We cover the entire range of storage options for your operating system and applications to help you understand better what the best storage solution for your needs. (Note that we are not about optical storage media, that's really secondary to speak these days.)

We'll first briefly technology and jargon, then look at various scenarios, and try to focus on the storage options could be useful and cost effective. But first, let's talk tech. We will first briefly drives, then take a quick look at SSDs.

Good Old Fashioned Hard Drives

Disks coated with magnetic plates consist of small-sensitive material. These plates are designed to be stacked up to five on each other, and run with spin rates of up to 15,000 revolutions per minute. Some high-end desktop drives run at 10,000 revolutions per minute max, but the most performance hard drives for desktop PCs at 7,200 revolutions per minute. The 15K RPM drives are mostly used in servers.

10,000RPM. That's really fast rotational speed. It's about as fast as you can get for a desktop hard drive.

One of the most important aspects of the hard drives areal density - how many bits you can put it on a square inch. Despite the relative maturity of the technology continues to improve areal density on hard disk manufacturer. Seagate and Samsung have both announced hard drives ship in late 2011, offering one terabyte per platter, or 625 gigabits per square inch.

Heads on arms that are moved by an electric motor mounted drive is called, how the data gets written to and read from the CD. Conductor technology is as important as areal density, because the read heads are extremely sensitive to individual bits, if it 625 billion of them must be in a square inch of disk space.

There are several important aspects of disk performance:

• Storage density. The more bits you can cram on a plate, the faster the ride, all other factors being equal. At the same spin rate means higher bit densities, the more data read from disk per linear inch, as it rotates.
• Spin rate. How do you turn a faster drive, read more bits travel under the head, and more data per second.
• Cache. Most hard drives have some DRAM cache. More cache is generally better. The highest performance hard drives have as much as 64MB of fast DRAM cache.
• Conductor technology. The robustness and responsiveness of the engines, which can be the head (the head actuator) moves determines how fast the head moves to different areas of the drive. This applies random access performance.

One thing that does not really affect the performance of hard disk these days is the interface. Even 10,000 RPM drives can not fully saturate 3Gbps SATA I connector. Seagate has suggested that the data come from the latest second generation of its 64MB cache SATA 6 Gbps drive can saturate the bust, but it would be best with short bursts, and no practical impact on performance.

Seagate was first to market with a 7200 RPM, 3TB HDD, but the system BIOS in order to recognize it properly, if you want to configure it as one large partition.

Western Digital and Seagate are also a number of "green" (low power consumption) drives. The WD GreenPower drives at 5,400 RPM usually turn while running the Seagate Barracuda Green drives usually at 5,900 revolutions per minute. Note that energy consumption while actually under heavy load is not so much lower, but these drives also offer a rule demanding sleep modes that consume very little power when idle. This type of technology will be gradually migrated to higher performance drives, as well.

SSD Tech

Solid state drives are still in their infancy as a technology. Products and further develop the capacity increases with time. This applies particularly to the performance for random writes. Often much slower than old-fashioned rotating disks - first generation SSDs were hobbled by extremely slow random write times. This is supported on newer generation of control systems, better garbage collection (which reorganizes the data on the number of small, empty blocks are minimized) and TRIM command with modern operating systems where the OS tells the SSD, the blocks of data as deleted be changed.

The cost per bit of SSDs is much higher than hard drives, and given the limitations of manufacturing processes, the cost per bit will remain high, albeit declining gradually. There are currently 25nm flash memory parts pretty much the order of the day, with 20 nm on the near horizon. Anand Shimpi As noted in a recent article, to prevent the cost of flash chips of ever-lower prices. And given the cutthroat competition delivered products that are not fully baked.

Nevertheless, we were back in using a SSD RAID array in our primary system for everyday use and gaming, and it would be hard to get. The incredibly fast boot times and fast application loading are seductive, and the thought of waiting is painful to load on things. Most people can not afford large capacity SSD or SSD RAID arrays are so modest size drives pretty much the rule of the day. That's one reason why so many 120GB disks - it's right in the sweet spot for pricing.

As for hard drives, there are a number of factors affecting the performance of the hard disk:

• The type of lightning. Drives with SLC (Single Level Cell) flash are faster than with MLC (Multi-Level Cell) built, but lower density, it drives built with SLC Flash memory is expensive. However, SLC drives are based not only higher performance but consume less electricity and last longer. Therefore SLC drives are often used in server applications.
• The interface. In contrast to rotating platter drives, SSDs can saturate newer 3Gbps interface. Therefore many of the newer 6Gbps are moving SATA specification.
• The controller. The controls built into the drive itself is the real secret sauce. Note that older hard drives have controllers, but controllers in SSDs have a much greater influence on performance. The current favorite in the SSD controller Sandforce place with his SF-2281. But Intel controllers are pretty good. It is also worth mentioning that OCZ Indilinx bought a relatively new company controller. So that's controller is likely to continue.
• The firmware. The real problem with SSDs is that they are fairly new technology. What does this mean in practical term? Bugs. If you have different online forums cruise, you will notice that SSDs have often oddball questions, such as blue screens, sudden loss of capacity and more.

Before you put too much into the details of controllers and flash memory types, remember that every good, the latest generation of SSD performance is that nothing short of amazing the offer if you come from a rotating platter drive. Installed after using your PC to your shiny new SSD, you're going to expect PCs to be that reacts - and ask yourself why this is so shiny new laptop bought your spouse just seems so damn slow. Note: It is not the CPU or memory.

A 120GB SSD Patriot Wildfire like this is a great performance for a laptop up to a few years old and with Windows 7

The other important consideration to weigh when you're on the capacity of SSDs. As already mentioned, is the sweet spot at the moment 120 GB drives, built in price from $ 170 to $ 300 for drives in standard, 2.5-inch form factor. Newer 240GB drives cost well north of $ 300 to over $ 500. Would you like a 500GB SSD? Be prepared to shell out almost $ 800 or more. To keep your budget and applications before the expensive step of SSDs. We will discuss some scenarios short.

Now that we have a basic understanding of hard drives and SSDs, we look to find some typical application scenarios.

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The Basic Office PC

This could be a common living room PC. It is usually easy to power, often with integrated graphics. The applications are not demanding, either - Office applications and Internet surfing are the mainstays, with some occasional digital photo or media transcoding. The total cost of the system could be under $ 500.

"Green" drives consume less power most of the slower speeds, but also offer added sleep mode to reduce power consumption.

This is the perfect PC for one of these low-power green hard drives. If you are upgrading an existing, older system, cloning the boot drive to 1 TB Western Digital GreenPower or Seagate Barracuda Green will improve responsiveness and to significantly increase capacity.

The laptop upgrade

My laptop is several years old, but you can not really justify refreshing the entire unit only. If the hard disk in the laptop is 250GB or less, definitely consider replacing it with a 120GB SSD. Sure, you give some capacity, but you will gain some immediate advantages:

• Boot times will be much faster. Waiting for laptops to boot slowly, 5,400 RPM 2.5-inch drives is like watching grass grow.
• You can use Hibernate instead of Sleep Mode. Sleep more power than hibernation, but a system with a SSD come back from sleep almost as soon as a system wake up from sleep.
• SSDs are robust since there are no moving parts. Thus, the shocks and vibrations experienced by most mobile PCs have little impact on an SSD.

If you need capacity into a laptop, it fits at 7,200 rpm, 750 GB hard drive from Western Digital the bill.

If you really need capacity in your laptop - you travel a lot with the camera, for example, and are frequently copying and editing photos - get a high capacity, 7,200 RPM drive, as Western Digital Scorpio Black 750GB hard drive. An interesting alternative would be Seagate 500GB Momentus XT hybrid, a 4GB flash-memory cache, combined with a 7200 RPM hard drive is. The performance is slightly better than a standard hard drive, although the gains are not nearly what they will with a real SSD.

A Digital Media Studio

To edit a lot of photos - especially raw DSLR photos. Or you can record videos and you need a fast system with plenty of capacity to edit your digital movies. They have both the capacity and performance, because waiting times for large media files to load painful. But what you get depends on your budget. There is also the problem of data security - backups are important, but we do not discuss here.
Let's look at some possible storage configurations.

• If your budget is tight, consider a 7,200 RPM, 2 GB hard disk with 64 MB cache. This usually costs $ 150 or less.
• If you have a few dollars more, you build the system with a fast 1 TB drive for applications and a secondary, 2 TB hard drive for data and scratch files.
• If your budget can be several hundred euros to spare for storage, a third, 2 TB hard drive and combine them in a RAID 1 (that's right, RAID 1) array for data redundancy. The write performance is a tad slower, but read performance of RAID 1 is actually a little better than a single drive.
• If you have a boatload of money, get a 240-256GB SSD as a boot drive. Use that for the applications and for the scratch files. Put all the data on a second, 2 TB RAID 0 array. (You can have 3 TB drives, too, but you can be technical problems with some motherboard BIOS occur and the need to configure it as a GPT partitions if you use Windows.)

Unless you're filthy rich, you will not build an all-SSD digital media editing system - capacity often is king here. If you are filthy rich, it may be worth a visit dedicated hardware RAID cards and RAID 10 arrays, or something similar.

Killer Gaming Rig

Games really benefit from the speed of SSDs - but games take a large amount of disk space. If all you can afford it, is a modest gaming system - under $ 1000 - SSDs are probably out of the picture.

Or are they?

For under a hundred bucks, you can pick up a 60GB SSD. But don't use it as a boot drive. Instead, build your gaming system using a motherboard with an Intel Z68 chipset and use the small SSD as a cache for a larger (1TB or so) hard drive. (Intel brands this as "Smart Response Technology.") You'll see substantially improved storage throughput. All you need to do is first install Windows on the rotating media drive (making sure that RAID mode is enabled in the system BIOS), then add the SSD and configure it as a cache in the RAID BIOS or through Intel's software utilities.

Intel Z68 chipset plus Senteo a whole new wrinkle to inexpensive systems and can be a major improvement in speed with minimal cost than buying a faster CPU - but for a gaming rig, we would choose a faster graphics card, and victims of the SSD if we on a really tight budget. At the moment, Senteo is only on the Z68, so AMD users or gamers with Intel X58 Triple channel rigs on this option.

These 250GB SSD Intel 510 is an excellent solution for high-end gaming rig, if you can afford it.

If you have a generous budget for a gaming system, is a 250 GB hard drive handle your important applications, as well as a number of games that you can have a second drive for other types of information when you need it. And if you have a lot of money happens to left hand, is a second 250GB SSDs in RAID 0 mode, actually cheaper than a single 500GB SSD on the market today.

Each storage needs are different, but it used to be simple: Find a hard drive with the right combination of price, performance and speed for your needs. Today, however, SSDs have the edge equation, and the right mix for your own needs may be the right mix of SSD and HDD. This combination is what depends on your needs, budget and technical inclination.