Yahoo Triples Domain Name Renewal

        I was checking my email reading a renewal notice from Yahoo for a domain name I have registered with them that made my toenails curl: “Please note that the billing center will not reflect the new $34.95 domain-renewal price until July 1. Until that time, you will continue to see the old renewal price next to your plan.” Wow! That is triple what I am paying now! I called Yahoo to see if this is some kind of mistake. I was put on hold for TWO HOURS before I got to talk to a Representative. Basically it wasn’t a mistake the Rep said. “Didn’t you get the email we sent out?” I told him I didn’t. “Well we’ve had a problem with the emails and told everyone to check their spam folder”, he said. “So you emailed everyone to check their spam folder? That doesn’t make much sense”, I said. I asked him why is it that Yahoo is tripling the price. The higher ups told him that the cost was too much for technical help. Now my question to him was what kind of technical help does a person need who just has a domain name parked there? I asked the Rep if he thought it was just a little unethical to triple the price for a domain name? He didn’t comment. Is it unethical that your signup page still reflects the $9.95/year price? The rep then said that it does reflect the new price somewhere on the site. Well I had already checked this out and I couldn’t find it stated anywhere; I even went so far as to go through the process of getting a new domain name on the site all the way to where it asks for your credit card: nothing! So it all boils down to this: you can pay the $34.95, or go somewhere else. And I went elsewhere! My two domain names at Yahoo would have cost me $69.90! Yahoo bills credit cards automatically. Can you imagine the look on some poor soul’s face that has ten domain names or more at Yahoo when they review their credit card statement? Yikes! This isn’t the Yahoo I remember. Welcome to the dark side!

Hibernate and Standby | Windows XP Power Scheme

Hibernate and Standby | Windows XP Power Scheme: "Do you know the differences between Stand By and Hibernate? These two Windows XP shutdown options often confuse people. These power saving options offer advantages, but it’s important to know the differences when creating a power scheme for notebooks or desktops."

One Man’s Blog » How I’d Hack Your Weak Passwords

One Man’s Blog » How I’d Hack Your Weak Passwords: "If you invited me to try and crack your password, you know the one that you use over and over for like every web page you visit, how many guesses would it take before I got it?

Let’s see… here is my top 10 list. I can obtain most of this information much easier than you think, then I might just be able to get into your e-mail, computer, or online banking. After all, if I get into one I’ll probably get into all of them.

1. Your partner, child, or pet’s name, possibly followed by a 0 or 1 (because they’re always making you use a number, aren’t they?)
2. The last 4 digits of your social security number.
3. 123 or 1234 or 123456.
4. “password”
5. Your city, or college, football team name.
6. Date of birth - yours, your partner’s or your child’s.
7. “god”
8. “letmein”
9. “money”
10. “love”

Statistically speaking that should probably cover about 20% of you. But don’t worry. If I didn’t get it yet it will probably only take a few more minutes before I do…

Hackers, and I’m not talking about the ethical kind, have developed a whole range"

Tyan Announced Personal Supercomputer with 40 CPU Cores

Tyan Announced Personal Supercomputer with 40 CPU Cores: "Tyan Announced Personal Supercomputer with 40 CPU Cores
March 22, 2007

TyanPSC T-650 QXTyan Computer Corporation announced today the immediate availability of the TyanPSC T-600 series Personal Supercomputer featuring new low-power 50-watt quad-core server processors from Intel. The TyanPSC T-650 QX can be configured with up to 40 processing cores and up to 60GB of system memory.

“With a maximum power draw of 15A the TyanPSC can be deployed in many non-traditional computation environments: starting with the office or home and extending to the ship, plane or remote outpost. With 40 processing cores available for high-performance computing there is a lot of compute power in a compact system. The system utilizes the Quad-Core Intel Xeon processor L5320. The new 50-watt quad-core processor operates at 1.86 GHz and features a unique 8 megabytes (MB) of on die cache for faster memory data communication and interfaces with a dedicated 1066 MHz front side bus. The TyanPSC allows individuals and workgroups access to computational power formerly only found in data centers,” the company announced.

With options to preload Microsoft Windows Compute Cluster Server 2003 or a Linux operating system the TyanPSC T-600 series is delivered as a pre-tested cluster configuration and ready to use.

T-650 Series Features:

* 1400 Watts max, plugs into standard wall outlet
* Small form factor, portable
* Low-noise, whisper quiet operation… less than 52dB.
* Microsoft Windows Computer Cluster Server 2003
* Linux Operating System
* 40 CPU cores per system
* Up to 60 GB of RAM

The TyanPSC T-650 Series is now available for about $20,000.

Tyan"

Raytheon Develops World's First Polymorphic Computer | Military Embedded Systems

Raytheon Develops World's First Polymorphic Computer | Military Embedded Systems: "Raytheon Develops World's First Polymorphic Computer
03/20/2007
EL SEGUNDO, Calif., March 20, 2007 -- The world's first computers whose architecture can adopt different forms depending on their application have been developed by Raytheon Company (NYSE: RTN).

Dubbed MONARCH (Morphable Networked Micro-Architecture) and developed to address the large data volume of sensor systems as well as their signal and data processing throughput requirements, it is the most adaptable processor ever built for the Department of Defense, reducing the number of processor types required. It performs as a single system on a chip, resulting in a significant reduction of the number of processors required for computing systems, and it performs in an array of chips for teraflop throughput.

'Typically, a chip is optimally designed either for front-end signal processing or back-end control and data processing,' explained Nick Uros, vice president for the Advanced Concepts and Technology group of Raytheon Space and Airborne Systems. 'The MONARCH micro-architecture is unique in its ability to reconfigure itself to optimize processing on the fly. MONARCH provides exceptional compute capacity and highly flexible data bandwidth capability with beyond state-of-the-art power efficiency, and it's fully programmable.'

In addition to the ability to adapt its architecture f"

SanDisk | OEM | Products | SanDisk SSD Solid State Drives | SanDisk SSD SATA 5000 2.5"

SanDisk | OEM | Products | SanDisk SSD Solid State Drives | SanDisk SSD SATA 5000 2.5": "SanDisk SSD SATA 5000 2.5'

SanDisk SSD SATA 5000 2.5', a solid state drive with 32-gigabyte (GB)* flash memory, is a drop-in replacement for the hard disk drive. This popular form factor and Serial ATA (SATA) interface are ideal for thin and light notebooks, the largest mobile PC segment in the enterprise space.

Highly Durable
Our 5th generation SSD, SanDisk SSD SATA 5000 2.5' is based on technology that has been field-proven for over a decade in the harshest of environments. It uses NAND flash enhanced by our patented TrueFFS® flash management technology. SanDisk SSD delivers an outstanding two million hour mean time between failure (MTBF)1. This superior level results in reduced tangible costs, such as IT labor costs, while also decreasing intangible costs associated with inaccessible data.
Enhanced Performance
With no moving parts, SanDisk SSD SATA 5000 2.5' does not need to spin up into action or to seek files in the way that conventional hard disk drives do, while also eliminating the limitations of random seek performance. These characteristics, combined with SanDisk advanced flash management technology, enable SanDisk SSD to achieve performance that is approximately twice as fast as the hard disk drive2. SanDisk SSD SATA 5000 2.5' achieves a sustained read rate of 67-megabyte (MB)"

Max Planck Society - Press Release: "A Single-Photon Server with Just One Atom

Physicists at Max Planck Institute of Quantum Optics have succeeded in turning a Rubidium atom into a single-photon server.

Every time you switch on a light bulb, 10 to the power of 15 (a million times a billion) visible photons, the elementary particles of light, are illuminating the room in every second. If that is too many for you, light a candle. If that is still too many, and say, you just want one and not more than one photon every time you press the button, you will have to work a little harder. A team of physicists in the group of Professor Gerhard Rempe at the Max Planck Institute of Quantum Optics in Garching near Munich, Germany, have now built a single-photon server based on a single trapped neutral atom. The high quality of the single photons and their ready availability are important for future quantum information processing experiments with single photons. In the relatively new field of quantum information processing the goal is to make use of quantum mechanics to compute certain tasks much more efficiently than with a classical computer. (Nature Physics online, March 11th, 2007)

Fig.: A single atom trapped in a cavity generates a single photon after being triggered by a laser pulse. After the sou"

Download of the Day: Driver Collector (Windows)

Windows only: Freeware tool Driver Collector finds the currently installed drivers for hardware currently installed on your PC, then copies the files to a pre-defined folder.

If you've re-installed Windows before, you know how handy a tool like Driver Collector could be - whether you've long since lost your driver disks or you just don't want to go through the hassle of searching through all your install disks for the correct drivers. With tools like InstallPad for automating your software installations and Driver Collector for taking care of your hardware, re-installing Windows on your computer gets easier by the day. — Adam Pash

Driver Collector 1.2

Prototype DNA computer -- MAYA-II
Computers that process information using DNA instead of silicon chips could one day lead to faster, more accurate tests for diagnosing West Nile Virus, bird flu and other diseases, according to a team of researchers at Columbia University Medical Center in New York and the University of New Mexico. To demonstrate the potential of this technology, the team developed a prototype DNA computer, named MAYA-II, that plays a complete game of tic-tac-toe. Shown in the foreground is a cell-culture plate containing pieces of DNA that code for possible 'moves.' A display screen (background) shows that the computer (red squares) has won the game against a human opponent (blue).