Tech News
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Moto Exec on Android Upgrade Delays: It's The Hardware
Published: Thursday, February 9, 2012 | By: GarrettMotorola talks upgrade delays and how its the hardware that usually causes it. It would seem that Ice Cream Sandwich might help reduce those delays and get the good stuff in your hands sooner.
Motorola understands that consumers want their Android upgrades sooner, but the process is complicated, she said. First there's hardware support, then the layering in of custom software from manufacturers like Motorola, and finally, phones must be re-certified by carriers, taking more time.
As a Motorola Droid X owner, there are two things that normally happen when Motorola talks about updates; they don't say anything or they make excuses. Seems like this time, we get the latter and instead of talking about one phone they talk about their entire brand.
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Hackers release Symantec pcAnywhere source code
Published: Thursday, February 9, 2012 | By: GarrettA heads up to anyone that uses Symantec pcAnywhere, update it now!
The files were uploaded to The Pirate Bay Tuesday, leaving anyone without an updated patch of the software vulnerable to hackers taking control of their computers. PcAnywhere is software that enables users to control their computer remotely.
Hackers sure do know how to upset not only corporations but the public as well.
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How Computer Geeks Aim to Put a Stop to Fake Online Reviews
Published: Wednesday, February 8, 2012 | By: GarrettWhen researching a product to buy one of the major things to check for are the reviews from both professions and users. Businesses have taken notice of the reviews posted on websites and add fake reviews in order to promote themselves. This deception has not gone unnoticed and we are seeing groups of researchers and websites start to track fake reviews.
Just how prevalent are fake online reviews? One indication is how overtly some businesses pay for them. Fake Review Writer is one of the categories of gigs listed at Freelancer.com. The Web page doesn’t beat around the bush, boldly encouraging businesses to “Outsource fake review writer projects!” Nobody’s getting rich writing fake reviews; the pay might be as little as $1 for 500 words. But online ratings and reviews affect consumer perceptions as well as how high a business appears in online search results, both of which can translate into big money.
While these efforts might not stop all the fake reviews, the less I have to wonder the truth in a glowing 5 star review in a sea of 1 and 2 star reviews for the same product.
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Engineers boost AMD CPU performance by 20% without overclocking
Published: Wednesday, February 8, 2012 | By: GarrettUsing a new technique, engineers have been able to take the strengths of the CPU and GPU and improve performance by up to 20%.
To achieve the 20% boost, the researchers reduce the CPU to a fetch/decode unit, and the GPU becomes the primary computation unit. This works out well because CPUs are generally very strong at fetching data from memory, and GPUs are essentially just monstrous floating point units. In practice, this means the CPU is focused on working out what data the GPU needs (pre-fetching), the GPU’s pipes stay full, and a 20% performance boost arises.
This will be interesting to watch out for as AMD is already going down a similar road.
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The TR Podcast 105: Eye candy and SSD scaling
Published: Tuesday, February 7, 2012 | By: DennisAnother episode of the Tech Report Podcast.
We've got a short and sweet episode of tech reporting this week, featuring Scott's scratchy Bluetooth headset, Jordan's favorite podcasts, and Geoff's sexy SSD roundup. We also answer some listener mail, pore over Scott's review of the Radeon HD 7950, and hear Cyril's critique of the two leading stereo 3D solutions from AMD and Nvidia.
Pretty good episode, its a bit long but worth a listen.
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5 free operating systems that aren't Linux
Published: Tuesday, February 7, 2012 | By: GarrettWhen you think of PC OSes, there are normally three that just about anyone can name: Windows, Mac, Linux. Tech 2 found 5 free OSes that you might never heard of before.
The war of operating systems started decades ago, and the first mainstream desktop OS war took place between the Macintosh and Windows operating system. Operating systems are the first bit of software that go into our computer. As PCs dominated the market, Windows became the most used and most popular operating systems ever. It’s stayed that way for close to two decades.
While may they may not be a daily driver, it might be nice to have to change pace from everyday Windows/Mac use. Personally, with most able to be installed in a virtual environment, I am temped to see what ReactOS has to offer.
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Wolfram, a Search Engine, Finds Answers Within Itself @ NYT
Published: Tuesday, February 7, 2012 | By: Garrett"Step 2" of the Wolfram Alpha search engine being released this Wednesday, Feburary 9th 2012, offers more than just mathematical computation.
The new version handles data and images. In a recent demonstration, Dr. Wolfram, using his computer mouse, dragged in a table of the gross domestic product figures for France for 1961 to 2010, and Wolfram Alpha produced on the Web page a color-coded bar chart, which could be downloaded in different document formats. He put in a table of campaign contributions to politicians over several years, and Wolfram Alpha generated a chart and brief summary, saying that House members received less on average than senators.
I have only used Wolfram Aplha a handful of times but was always impressed with the information it provides and how it is provided. Wolfram seems to be going the route of research engine.
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Switching between Android 4.0 ICS and iPhone 4S
Published: Sunday, February 5, 2012 | By: GarrettSlashgear has provided a article to help you understand the differences between some of the features found in Android's Ice Cream Sandwich OS and iPhone's iOS.
When you switch from an Android phone over to the iPhone or vice versa, there are a few adjustments you’ll have to make. The difference between the two, no matter which versions of the software you’re dealing with, are much smaller than the difference between either and any other software. Windows Phone, Symbian, any number of lesser cell phones are much more difficult to switch to or from when the alternative is switching to Android or iPhone from the other. This article is but one of several in a series written by your humble narrator called “I’m switching to iPhone 4S for a week,” this series having the alternate title “iPhone 4S Up Close and Personal.”
In addtion to reading this article, I would go find a friend or coworker with the phone you want to switch to and ask to play around with it. Hands on experience can be key when picking a device that you will use everyday and store demos rarely give you what you want.
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Taiwan man dies playing video games at internet cafe
Published: Sunday, February 5, 2012 | By: GarrettNews like this as been steadly increasing over the years, especially in Taiwan and Korea. A man was found dead in gaming cafe after a long session of gaming.
The waitress last saw him talking on the phone around noon on Wednesday and his body had apparently been sitting there for up to nine hours without any of the 30 other people in the cafe noticing.
Things like this remind us that any obsession, even video games, can be deadly when taken to exteremes.
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Stanford professor resigns, launches Udacity: Free, online, university-level computer science courses
Published: Friday, February 3, 2012 | By: GarrettLooking to build your own search engine? A new educational startup, UDacity, joins the growing trend of free online college level educational sites.
In a discussion of the report on Bits, a New York Times Technology blog, it was observed that, "The real promise of online education is providing learning experiences that are more tailored to individual students than is possible in classrooms. That enables more 'learning by doing,' which many students find more engaging and useful."
As prices of eductions continue to increase, will we be seeing more sites like this offering core classes such as math and science?
