Hybrid cars are big in Berkeley - how far behind it is the nation?

Hybrid cars are big in Berkeley - how far behind it is the nation?

  7:10:00 PM    Science Lover

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As Berkeley goes, so - eventually - goes the nation. As frightening as this may sound to some, it's a fact borne out by history.

Opposing the Vietnam War, spearheading ecological concerns, mandating energy-efficient buildings, banning smoking in public places, demanding equal access for the disabled - these causes were all dismissed as "Berkeley radical thinking" in their time. Today, they've all long since been integrated into mainstream America. While some might still quibble with one or another of them, in retrospect, most of us would now regard these causes as honorable and thoroughly American.

Today there's another revolution brewing in Berkeley, albeit a much quieter one. No matter where you look, the streets of this small university town are teeming with hybrid vehicles - most of them made by Toyota, with a lesser number from Honda, and practically none, I'd point out, made by that blundering straggler, General Motors.

If Berkeley proves as prescient in this "radical" trend as it has in prior ones, the environmental implications are vast. For one, it signals the beginning of the end for conventional internal-combustion-powered vehicles, many years earlier than auto industry analysts and other in-the-box thinkers would have us believe. Then again, these are the same folks who saw nothing shortsighted about GM cashing in on SUVs while leaving their advanced-vehicle programs to molder.

What's so different about hybrids? While conventional cars have huge gasoline engines sized to meet peak-power demands (which typical drivers use perhaps 1 percent of the time), a hybrid uses a small, high-efficiency gasoline engine to generate electricity on board. This, in turn, powers an electric motor that moves the car. This smaller engine is sized to provide power for average cruising, not for peak demand. When extra power is needed, as in climbing a grade or passing, it's provided by the batteries or by the gasoline engine, as appropriate. Hybrids also have a regenerative braking system that transforms braking energy into electricity instead of wasting it in heat, as a normal car does.

The small size and steady running speed of the hybrid's engine, the regenerative braking system and other features let hybrids achieve about twice the mileage of conventional cars while producing a fraction of the pollution. These advantages will only become more pronounced as the cars are refined over time.

While hybrids have some of the same shortcomings as conventional cars - an inherently inefficient internal combustion engine that burns gasoline and spews pollution, and a relatively friction-laden drive train - they nevertheless represent a huge advance over the clumsy mechanical-drive cars most of us own, providing an important steppingstone to true zero-emissions vehicles.

The only bad news is that the American auto industry will probably be at the tail end of this revolution, watching foreign competitors write the conventional car's epitaph, thanks to the monumental stupidity, shortsightedness and greed of General Motors executives, who preferred to wallow in the lucrative SUV trough while foreign competitors did their homework. Maybe those GM folks should've gotten out of the boardroom now and then, and taken a drive around Berkeley.

News from : www.sfgate.com

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Think twice about clicking on that e-card

Think twice about clicking on that e-card

  3:49:00 PM    Science Lover

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Spammers launched a widespread attack on e-mail inboxes this month. But instead of trying to lure users into opening a corrupted attachment, they're concealing a computer virus in a link to an online greeting card.

Last week, the FBI warned consumers about greeting-card spam; earlier this month, the Federal Trade Commission held a summit on the growth of malicious e-mail. Symantec, an antivirus company, also said it has seen a proliferation of online-greeting-card scams recently.

In most cases, the subject line informs recipients that they've received a greeting card or a postcard from a "friend," "family member," "worshipper," "school-mate" or "neighbour." When the e-mail is opened, there's a link to a Web site that uploads viruses to the recipient's computer.

Now that consumers generally know about the dangers of opening attachments from unknown senders, some hackers have turned to using links instead. Web site links don't generate the same level of suspicion among Internet users, as consumers regularly send online gift cards, share online photo albums and offer birthday wishes via e-mail.

Users of infected computers have few choices beyond buying and installing software to scan and clean their hard drives. Those who receive a purported greeting-card e-mail — but don't recognize the sender — are instructed to delete the e-mail.

source : google news

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`Red ring of death': What's wrong with Microsoft's Xbox?

`Red ring of death': What's wrong with Microsoft's Xbox?

  5:41:00 PM    Science Lover

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There are seven stages of grief: shock, denial, anger, bargaining depression, testing and acceptance. But with the Xbox 360, which has been giving a significant number of its owners grief, Microsoft last week moved directly from the first stages to the last -- from denying any problems with it to admitting a US$1 billion problem that potentially affects all 11.6 million consoles sold so far.

Three weeks ago Todd Holmdahl, vice president of the gaming and Xbox products group, said repeated problems where people had to take back up to 11 consoles came from "a vocal minority" (tinyurl.com/yqtm4w) and dismissed suggestion of endemic problems.

Then last week Microsoft abruptly announced that it would set aside between US$1.05 billion and US$1.15 billion, charged against the just-finished 2007 fiscal year, to cover the costs of extending the warranty for every machine from one to three years, and to fix the many which show the "red ring of death" -- three red lights on the front panel control ring, indicating a general hardware failure.

How many? Unfortunately, Microsoft still isn't ready to deal with that issue.

PS3 surge

"When you look at the financial implication, obviously it's not a small number," said Robbie Bach, president of its entertainment and devices unit.

Sony, which last week had denied it would cut the price of its struggling PlayStation 3, saw an opening and snipped US$100 off the US retail price, prompting a surge in sales there.

Microsoft repeatedly declined to talk to me about precisely what problems the failed consoles suffer from. However, Peter Moore, head of the Xbox division, told Gamesindustry.biz: "There are a lot of different issues that eventually could all combine to create the three flashing red rings that appear on the power button on the console; no [one] specific issue."

He was repeatedly evasive in interviews, leaving the impression that the problems were either profound -- or embarrassingly simple.

The financial problems, though, are stark. The sum being set aside amounts to between US$90 and US$99 for every console sold -- extra loss on machines that are already sold at a loss. On its launch, analysts reckoned that each Xbox contained US$525 worth of components; but the machine sold for, at most, US$499, and more price cuts are rumored to be on the way to keep ahead of Sony. On average, Microsoft took a US$126 loss on each console sold at its starting price -- US$1.4 billion so far.

The billion-dollar figure also indicates that Microsoft's repeated insistence that the failure rate was about average for such hardware -- that is, between 3 percent and 5 percent -- cannot have been true. The real failure rate is probably about five times greater than the company has admitted, which would put repair costs at between US$330 and US$660 per console. At that upper limit, it would be cheaper for Microsoft simply to send a cheque for a brand new console. So what are the causes?

overheating

Owners and analysts have made their own investigations. The most obvious suggestion is that parts overheat; the Xbox 360 draws 160 watts, which has to be dissipated via two large heatsinks and two fans. One suggestion is that when the machine gets hot, the motherboard warps and pushes the graphics processing unit (GPU) off its board. Another is that some of the soldering is imperfect and so cracks at high temperature. A Microsoft support document (tinyurl.com/2qnefa) also suggests, improbably, that surge protectors and extension strips contribute to the problem by preventing the current surge needed for the fans to turn on; this seems unlikely, since that surge would be too small to trip them.

In desperation, some owners have turned to home-grown cures, including wrapping a towel around the machine, blocking the fan vents. This may -- depending who you believe -- either cause the solder to reflow or the GPU to reseat. (Microsoft has not commented.) The fixes sometimes work, at least temporarily.

We can deduce some of the reasons from the fact that Microsoft is declaring that the problems are sorted out -- just as it is moving from 90-nanometer to 65nm chips, which should reduce its power consumption significantly, and using a two-part heat sink in the new designs.

The key question though is whether these flaws will put off future customers, and how badly they have annoyed existing ones. The principal problem for the latter is that any content bought online must be re-enabled for a replacement console.

dream over?

Does the admission mean that Microsoft's dream that the Xbox will form the centerpiece of a strategy to put Microsoft software and hardware into everyone's living room has been permanently sunk?

A report this week from Jupiter Research suggests that there is now everything to play for.

"Jupiter Research anticipates the competitive field will be much closer than in the past; at the end of the current [console] cycle in 2012, the range in market shares is projected to be just under 10 percent compared with the 33 percent range in market shares at the end of the last cycle in 2005. Then, the PS2 dominated, and Nintendo was nowhere. Now, Nintendo's Wii is rocketing towards the Xbox 360 total; sales data suggests it is selling nearly three times faster than the Xbox 360 or PS3," the report said.

The optimistic forecast -- written before the Xbox's problems were admitted -- suggests that the Xbox will continue to sell. Moore repeated his insistence that the Xbox division will move into profit next year; having shovelled the billion-dollar faults back into the last fiscal year, it can look for profits from its online service, peripherals and games. The strategy remains untouched. All that has changed is the time it will take to pay back. But Microsoft is prepared to play the longest of games -- even when it has no chance of winning.

source : TAI PEI TIMES

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IE or Firefox: Who's to blame for newest browser zero-day?

IE or Firefox: Who's to blame for newest browser zero-day?

  10:05:00 PM    Science Lover

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Both browsers must be present for the vulnerability to be exploited


Confusion reigns around a zero-day browser vulnerability made public yesterday, with four researchers or organizations squaring off over whether Microsoft Corp.'s Internet Explorer or Mozilla Corp.'s Firefox is at fault.

Image via Wikipedia

According to researcher Thor Larholm, the zero-day bug is in IE. "There is an input validation flaw in Internet Explorer that allows you to specify arbitrary arguments to the process responsible for handling URL protocols," Larholm said on his blog. That becomes a problem on PCs that also have Firefox 2.0.0.2 or later. Firefox, said Larholm, registers a URL protocol handler called FirefoxURL, designed to let Web pages force a Firefox launch if the "firefoxurl://" uniform resource identifier (URI) is used.

IE doesn't perform any input validation on the protocol, which means an attacker can use IE to pass malicious a script -- JavaScript code, say -- to the browser. The result: a PC hijack. Symantec Corp.'s analysts backed up Larholm's conclusion.

Larholm also said that the IE bug is similar to the input validation vulnerability in Safari 3.0 that he spotted the same day Apple Inc. released the Windows browser in beta.

Others, however, blamed Firefox for the vulnerability. In an e-mail, Thomas Kristensen, chief technology officer at Danish bug tracker Secunia, did not dispute Larholm's findings but did have a problem with his conclusion. "This is in fact not an IE issue, it is a Firefox issue," said Kristensen. "The way in which the URL handler was registered by Firefox causes any parameter to be passed from IE (or another application) to Firefox when firefoxurl:// is activated." FrSIRT, a French company that also monitors vulnerabilities, agreed with Secunia.

"Registering a URI handler must be done with care," said Kristensen, "since Windows does not have any proper way of knowing what kind of input potentially could be dangerous for an application. Improper usage of URI handlers and parameters supplied via URIs has historically caused problems."

No matter which browser is to blame, it takes two to tango or, in this case, both must be present to let an attacker inject malicious code. Only PCs with Firefox 2.0.0.2 or later (Firefox's most recent update was to 2.0.04) are vulnerable, and then only if the victim uses IE to surf to a malicious site sporting the firefoxurl:// protocol.

Secunia rated the threat as "highly critical," its second-highest ranking; FrSIRT, meanwhile, pegged it as "critical," its top-most warning. Several proof-of-concept exploits have been posted to security mailing lists or Web sites, including one by Larholm and another by a researcher named Billy Rios, who goes by the initials BK.

Image via Wikipedia

No fixes -- for either Firefox or IE -- are available, although in a comment posted last month to a security message forum, Dan Veditz, a Mozilla developer, said the team is preparing a patch. "[We are] working on protecting users from this on our end for a future security update," said Veditz. Nonetheless, Veditz, like Larholm and Symantec, said IE should shoulder responsibility for the zero-day vulnerability.

"I do think IE should escape quotes in URLs (RFC 1738 considers them an 'unsafe' character in URLs), but the Firefox team has been looking into back-stop protection in our app since we saw Thor Larholm's Safari 0-day post," Veditz wrote.

Source : Computer World

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Affair with iPhone cools when handset breaks

Affair with iPhone cools when handset breaks

  8:56:00 PM    Science Lover

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After four days with phone, trouble in paradise

	A customer at an Apple store at Southpark Mall in Charlotte, N.C., examines the new Apple iPhone during the first day of sales for the device June 29. View related photos
Jason E. Miczek / AP file

By Joe Hutsko

MSNBC contributor

Falling in lust with an expensive device like the iPhone sets owners up for a hard fall if it stops working. I know, because mine died after only four days into our relationship.

At first I thought it was just a hiccup when the iPhone was working fine one minute, then wouldn’t turn on the next. I tried the prescribed reset (hold down the Home and Sleep/Wake buttons at the same time for several seconds until the device restarts) with no luck. Black screen, period. But when I plugged it in the Apple logo appeared as if restarting. Then it vanished, the screen went black again, and a few seconds later the logo reappeared, as if restarting. Again. Then again. And again. Trouble in paradise.

On a whim I held the buttons for a reset again but this time kept holding, until eventually a bright yellow triangle appeared, instructing me to Connect the iPhone to iTunes. This forced “restore mode” allowed the otherwise endless-looped iPhone to appear in iTunes, which prompted me to restore the phone. Since iTunes backs up the phone’s data after every sync I said sure, gladly, please do.

The restore process began — but then the loopy restarts started again. And again, ad nauseam. At that point I felt a little nauseous, too — four days and the iPhone I spent eight hours in line to buy was a goner.

I contacted the AT&T store and was told I could return the phone for a refund (with a 10 percent restocking fee) but could not exchange it for a replacement; all iPhone support is handled by Apple. I contacted a public relations person at Apple and she said she’d have customer service call me. While waiting on that call I decided to drive to the nearby Apple Store with the far-flung hope that they’d simply swap the phone for me (crazily assuming they’d even have another 8 GB model in stock).

An extremely polite Apple customer service rep named Nate called just as I was walking into the Apple Store. He introduced me to the store manager, Sean, who was also on the line. We hung up with Nate and conducted the service business in person. Sean said they’d simply swap my phone for another, and after some help from two guys named Chris at the Genius Bar, they took back the broken one and I left with the new iPhone. Driving home, I had a number of questions. Would they completely erase my iPhone when it reached the service department, so that my private data remains mine alone? What if they hadn’t had another iPhone in stock?

I got answers from Apple’s PR department. Yes, all iPods and iPhones that are exchanged for replacements get wiped clean. As for the in-stock issue, iPhone owners can swap a “DOA” phone for a replacement if within 30 days of purchase. If the store is out of stock or if the purchase is past thirty days (or if a customer doesn’t live near an Apple Store), the repair-by-mail process kicks in.

The owner removes the SIM card (which will work in the previously used phone that the iPhone presumably replaced), mails the iPhone to Apple, and they repair it and send it back. Apple offers the option of a rental iPhone during the repair process for a $29 fee — something that is bound to rub customers the wrong way.

There was no such fee from AT&T when one of my previous phones — the Palm Treo 680 — went in for repairs. While under warranty AT&T automatically ships a loaner phone, which you wind up keeping if they deem your original dead.

They do charge a small fee if you want the replacement sent overnight, but otherwise the repair process is free. (AT&T waived the rush fee the two additional times I had to send the Treo in for replacement due to the thin plastic bezel around the screen repeatedly cracking despite my handling the device with kid gloves.)

Why did my iPhone fail so soon? Apple’s Geniuses couldn’t say on the spot. But I think it had something to do with heat — my iPhone would get incredibly hot to the touch when plugged in and charging while I was on a long phone call. So hot I lived those first three days in constant fear that it would heat to the point of burning up.

So hot that I was tempted to put some raw egg in a foil cup and set it atop the iPhone to see if it would cook — or if not actually cook, turn opaque from the iPhone’s super-heated back surface. Describing this on my blog JOEyGADGET promoted one other iPhone owner to comment:

“Yep, mine seems hot but I don’t know if it’s too hot. Hotness is relative you know.” Agreed when discussing physical attraction, but when talking about physical touch, take my word for it, my original iPhone all but burned the skin on my hand.

SOURCE : http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/19614050/

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Microsoft plans job portal in India

Microsoft plans job portal in India

  5:00:00 PM    Science Lover

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NEW DELHI: Microsoft Corp yesterday announced that it was in talks with partners in government and industry for a job search portal.

The company said that it plans to launch a job search service this year for the country's nearly 400,000 engineers graduating every year. Microsoft's job portal will compete with Info Edge (India) www.naukri.com and Monster Worldwide’s www.monsterindia.com, among others. Its online portal www.msn.com will provide educational content to students.

The company has also entered into an agreement with Advanced Micro Devices and Zenith Computers to make and sell personal computers in India.

The computers, priced at Rs 21,000, would be sold in 10 retail outlets each in Bangalore and Pune from July on a test basis for three months and will be expanded later on the basis of response.

"We don't see any gain in the short term. Our perspective is long term," Microsoft India chairman Ravi Venkatesan told reporters.

In 2006/07 the total installed base of PCs in India was 22 million, that is, a PC for about every 50 Indians, industry tracking body IDC said in a recent report.

SOURCE : THE TIMES OF INDIA

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