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U.S. residential broadband penetration is expected to exceed 50 percent in 2007--and the U.K. isn't far behind. By the end of 2007, more than 60 million U.S. households will be connected--around 55 percent--according to market researcher Parks Associates. During 2006, broadband subscriptions grew by more than 20 percent in the U.S. and by the end of the year around 50 million households had fat pipes.

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Dealing with the patches should be straightforward for most consumers. Microsoft released a daylight-saving fix for Windows XP Service Pack 2 on Tuesday, and it is pushing the patch out through the Automatic Updates feature in the operating system. An update is also available for Windows-based cell phones. However, the recently launched Windows Vista doesn't need a patch. For businesses, getting ready is a different story. It isn't as straightforward to apply updates to Windows PCs and phones in a corporate environment, because of potential compatibility woes. Moreover, there are many other fixes that need to be applied, not just from Microsoft, but also from Oracle, IBM, Red Hat, Hewlett-Packard and other software suppliers.

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"A new study of romantic relationships finds that as online daters got to know another person over time, their initially sweet notions turned sour. The researchers suggest that inflated expectations can lead to major disappointments when daters meet in person. Once a flaw is spotted, the whole date is tainted."

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"Daylight saving time arrives a little earlier — March 11 — and stays a little later — Nov. 4 — this year. And it’s bringing a problem along with it that could affect everything from stock trades to airline schedules to your BlackBerry. Software created before the law mandating the change passed in 2005 is set to automatically advance its timekeeping by one hour on the first Sunday in April, not the second Sunday in March. Congress decided that more early evening daylight would translate into energy savings. The result is a glitch reminiscent of the Y2K bug, when cataclysmic crashes were feared if computers interpreted the year 2000 as 1900 and couldn’t reconcile time appearing to move backward. If banks and other institutions aren't properly prepared, automatic stock trades reportedly might happen at the wrong hour, buildings that unlock at a certain time could stay shut, and airline flight schedules could be scrambled."

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That's because Vista uses a compatibility database and several heuristics to recognize installer executables and, every time the OS detects that an executable is a setup program, "it will only allow running it as administrator." This, in Rutkowska's mind, is a "very severe hole in the design of UAC." "After all, I would like to be offered a choice whether to fully trust given installer executable (and run it as full administrator) or just allow it to add a folder in Crogram Files and some keys under HKLMSoftware and do nothing more. I could do that under XP, but apparently I can’t under Vista, which is a bit disturbing," she added. A few days after Rutkowska flagged the UAC shortcoming, Microsoft's Mark Russinovich wrote a detailed technical explanation of the way the mechanism works. One thing that stood out in Russinovich's explanation is an admission of sorts that the default configuration of UAC puts the user at risk of a sophisticated code execution attack.

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Ubuntu Feisty Fawn Herd 3 is now available for download. New in this third alpha release of 7.04 Feisty Fawn is GNOME 2.17.90 and numerous other updated packages. For Ubuntu fanatics this is certainly worth trying out.

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Media center PCs are becoming more and more common today and with the availability of services like iTunes and Netflicks the need for a PC (or PC-like device) in the living room is becoming more and more necessary. While there are many stand alone devices that can stream media from the PC you generally loose the ability to browse the web or play video games from your couch. Today we will be looking at the NZXT Duet case, which was designed to be used in the living room for all your media center PC needs.

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We are now in the second week of the Windows Vista launch and the FUD (Fear Uncertainly and Doubt) being spread by those that compete with Microsoft is reaching amazing proportions. Apple, in their Mac vs. PC campaign is taking all kinds of shots at the system and wound up getting Bill Gates so excited he actually called Steve Jobs a liar in a NewsWeek interview. The campaign does say some questionable things which we=92ll explore at another time but let=92s check how the Vista launch month is going.

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The Thermaltake Bach VX case is nothing ordinary, even though the slogan The Charm of the Ordinary may imply some form of simpleness. The case sports some gorgeous looks and comes feature packed from start to finish. A brushed aluminum front, black drive bay covers, multiple locks and a partially screws-less design are just some of the highlights. We fill the case with hardware and let you know if we are still smiling in the end.

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The SuperTalent MEGA Screen 2GB MP3 player is value priced but is not a value oriented MP3 player. This unit can be found for just over $100CDN online and has a ton of nice features, good looks and a nice color screen. It is a bit cheaper than other media players that come without a nice screen. The MEGA Screen name is a bit of a stretch as the screen only measures 1.5 at 128px * 128px, but it is bright, clear and very functional to find songs, tune radio stations and check song titles.

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Intel's Visual Computing Group (VCG) gave an interesting overview of the discrete graphics plans this week. There seems to be a few interesting developments down the pipeline that could prove quite a challenge to NVIDIA and AMD in 2 years time. As already stated on their website, the group is focused on developing advanced products based on a many-core architecture targeting high-end client platforms initially. Their first flagship product for games and graphics intensive applications is likely to happen in late 2008-09 timeframe and the GPU is based on multi-core architecture. We heard there could be as many as 16 graphics cores packed into a single die.

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If you just recently purchased the latest GeForce 8800 GTS/GTX graphics card, you may found out that your power supply is just not up to the task to handle such monster card. Often, not only a poorly constructed power supply will not deliver the needed wattage to the components, it could potential damage them as well. The power supply is the heart of the system and it cannot be overlooked specially if you have expensive components, such as GeForce 8800.

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Earlier today, I stumbled upon an article that was filled with reader comments stating that the sellers of open source software are to be dismissed as scam artists. Those in this crowd that actually understand the legal bindings of the individual license(s) and definition of open source generally pointed out that they feel such sales are unethical - just not illegal. Fine. But what kills me are these misguided individuals that claim that laws are being broken should said software be sold to the end user. This is false. What they apparently misunderstand is that open source software offer a fairly complex license. And while variations of a common idea are abound in the open source licensing world, it's still the same concept at its core.

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What makes Moneual one of the premiere HTPC builders as stated above? High quality products like the Moncaso 932B. The 932B is not only constructed of high quality aluminum and has striking good looks, but also boasts a full color seven inch LCD touch screen that supports a resolution of 1024x768. Throw in a remote control and a wireless keyboard and you have the ultimate HTPC case.

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The I-Rocks IR7330 4-Way Navigation Laser Mouse is a very light, but robust 800/1600 DPI mouse. It offers more than the usual functionality and comes with a very small and slim piece of software to customize these. If you are a gamer looking for an ultra light mouse, this one may be for you. We won't be distracted by the fancy blue scroll wheel and take a close look at form, functionality, feel and performance of this mouse.

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There are two things I enjoy most in life. The first is photography and the latter, well.I like to tell people what to do. It makes me feel powerful. Strong. Like a small pony. Keep reading. One of the most common questions I get as related to photography is what camera should I buy? I've already answered that question (sort of) with a couple of previous articles. The next most common question (I mean next literally, as in directly after the previous question) is what lens should I buy? Well, that's a tricky question because there simply is no one-size-fits-all lens. My goal in this article is to give you some basic knowledge about lenses that will help set you on the path to lens buying goodness, or if you're like me, indecisiveness. Hey, it's a start.

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* ForeSight Systems LLC... ever heard of them? Nor me, but today I have their Pertelian X2040 LCD display designed for the lazy end user who doesn't want to do through the modding process of using, say, a Matrix Orbital. Hopefully their display will improve on others in the market.

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ATi briefly mentioned to their partners a 2nd generation Unified Shader Structure and a new hardware Crossfire for R600 family which can be bridgeless yet faster. The retail card is half an inch longer at 9.5 and the OEM/SI version remains the same at 12. It comes with 512-bit memory bus and 1GB DDR4 at more than 2GHz frequency. Core clock remains a mystery as yet.

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Logitech has a wide variety of keyboard/mouse combos to choose from. They offer two Cordless Bluetooth versions and nine Cordless versions. Not long ago I looked at the MX 5000 Laser and Sheldog just took the diNovo Edge for a ride. Today we are going to have a close look at the LX 710 Cordless Desktop. The LX 710 offers several great features, while still staying practical.

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At some point in time most of us have had to purchase a computer. Regardless of whether it was a laptop or a desktop price was a factor in the purchase. Price plays the dominant role in brand selection, component selection, timing of the purchase, and much more. It is our advice ,however, that consumers start to look beyond price and into factors that determine the overall long term usefullness of the system.

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Designed to be paired with all types of Apple iPods, the FreePulse headphones come with several small adapters to fit the original iPod, the iPod Video, the iPod Nano and the iPod Mini. Included in the box with the headphones is the wireless receiver, iPod adapters, AC power recharger, stereo mini-jack extension cord and a quick-start guide. After an initial charge of the headphones and receiver that takes about 40 minutes, the next step is to find the right iPod adapter to fit the receiver to your iPod. After finding and attaching the adapter to the wireless receiver, you connect the receiver to your iPod and are ready to start enjoying music. For those people who have MP3 players other than the iPod, there is also a short extension cable to work with any media player that has a stereo mini-jack.

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2006 was a great year for gamers, bringing us some great and innovative games. But everything has to end and, as we all know, every ending means a new beginning. It is now time to raise our heads, look forward into the distance and try to figure out what the future holds for us and what we should expect to see on our screen in 2007. Every year has it's own agenda and we, as gamers, always have our own list of games that we wait so eagerly to their release. This list is supposed to justify the huge amount of hours that we spend by staring at a bunch of pixels on the screen

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You've got to hand it to In Win. It takes a lot of guts to design and market a computer chassis with such close association to an automotive legend like the Ferarri F430. With their F430 case, though, In Win seems to have pulled it off rather well. The immaculate finish, innovative design elements, single-fan cooling, and racecar sounds all contribute to make the F430 a high-performance and stylish case with that little something extra that sets it apart from the crowd.

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Quote: Today we have the HIS' X1950 XT 256MB iTurbo video card in our lab. This X1950XT is features the popular HIS IceQ 3 cooler and is tagged as one of their iTurbo cards meaning it can be overclocked quite easily by using HIS' overclocking software. When overclocked the X1950XT runs at X1950XTX core speed of 650MHz and a memory speed of 900MHz (1.8GHz effective), a nice little speed boost. This card also has full HD video (1080p) with HDCP support right out of the box. When looking at other higher end video solutions including the X1950XTX and recently released GeForce 8800 GTS 320MB the X1950XT is priced quite competitively.

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Since consumers have long been in the dark about power supply units, it seems common that manufacturers market their product and push features that may not actually make a difference in performance. For example, it could be seen early last year that multi-rail technology was viewed as a positive innovation. Yet later down the road we learn that a single-rail power supply unit not only offers more stable and efficient power if designed and built correctly; it would also cost less.

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Microsoft says you have to buy Vista because it makes you much safer online than XP, or any of its previous operating systems. Do you believe that?
Thompson: Consumers should not be confused. Vista is not a security solution. Vista is an operating system, and Vista provides some very important advances from Microsoft's perspective and for the industry's point of view on building a more stable, more reliable, more secure operating platform, but people still need the efficacy that comes with the products that Symantec and others in the industry build, and so we should not be confused by the marketing rhetoric with what Vista is. It's a hopefully much better product than XP or any of its predecessors, but it's not a security solution.

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"According to the Associated Press and the Wall Street Journal, both citing people ‘close to the matter,’ EMI is fishing for proposals that will include the amount of upfront payment online music stores will offer in return for the rights to sell EMI’s catalogue of music. Bands such as Cold Play, Reliant K, and The Rolling Stones would be included. The latter two artists were included in an online experiment that offered their singles in MP3 format with no installed protection. It was a huge success.
If EMI starts selling music, with no DRM, it could mean tens-of-millions of dollars for the already growing amounts of money, they collect with existing contracts for digital music sales. Will the others in the ‘big four’ follow suit? There was no word from Warner, Sony BMG, or Universal, on the subject. Apple would not release a comment on what they called speculation."

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Part of the problem is likely the lackluster sales for the company's most famous product. Only 222 medical patients in total have opted to get RFID chips from VeriChip implanted as of the end of 2006, according to documents filed by the company with the Securities and Exchange Commission as part of its initial public offering. It's a modest number, the company says, and revenue for these systems is far below projections. "To date, we have only generated approximately $0.1 million in revenue ($100,000) from sales of the microchip inserter kits, significantly less than we had projected at the beginning of 2006. We may never achieve market acceptance or more than nominal or modest sales of this system," the company stated.

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Another example of good design, say experts, is the Nintendo Wii. Unlike game consoles that rely on controllers and buttons, Nintendo's Wii lets people play a game like they might in the real world. A person playing tennis, for example, would swing her arm with the Wii controller as though she were holding a tennis racket. "It's a welcome sigh of relief to many people. Mind you, this didn't take any technological breakthrough, it just took some imagination and some thought about the average person," said Norman.

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"On March 25, 2004, Amber and Jeremy took digital photos of themselves naked and engaged in unspecified "sexual behavior." The two sent the photos from a computer at Amber's house to Jeremy's personal e-mail address. Neither teen showed the photographs to anyone else. Court records don't say exactly what happened next--perhaps the parents wanted to end the relationship and raised the alarm--but somehow Florida police learned about the photos. Amber and Jeremy were arrested. Each was charged with producing, directing or promoting a photograph featuring the sexual conduct of a child. Based on the contents of his e-mail account, Jeremy was charged with an extra count of possession of child pornography. Under Florida law, Amber and Jeremy would be legally permitted to engage in carnal relations, but they're criminals if they document it. Amber's attorney claimed that the right to privacy protected by the Florida Constitution shielded the teen from prosecution, an argument that a trial judge rejected. Amber pleaded no contest to the charges and was placed on probation, though she reserved her right to appeal her constitutional claim."

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The idea behind the strategy, experts believe, it is to find a "workaround" to YouTube. And while Viacom executives say they're not trying to take the Google-owned video-sharing site head on, there's no question that relations between the two companies are chilly. After months of fruitless negotiations, Viacom last week demanded that YouTube remove 100,000 clips that featured the company's television shows or movies.

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The deep fat fryers and waste oil containers of America house a large, untapped source of transportation fuel, says Rubin, business development general manager for BiOil, a biodiesel company based in Sausalito, Calif. Namely, billions of gallons of animal fat and waste vegetable oil that can be converted into domestically produced, cleaner-burning biodiesel, says Rubin, among others. BiOil's plan--which will require sizable funding--is to build a national network of disposal centers, with help from biodiesel producer Pacific Biodiesel, based in Kahului, Hawaii, to collect a substantial portion of the 3.9 billion gallons of waste vegetable oil produced at fast-food eateries, refine it and then sell it to trucking companies and drivers.

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"Krstic's system, known as the BitFrost platform, has only one user prompt (turning on the camera) and imposes limits on every program's powers. Under BitFrost, every program runs in its own virtual machine with a limited set of permissions. Thus a picture viewer can't access the web, so even if a hacker comes up with an exploit that lets him control the program, he couldn't use it to grab all the photos on the laptop and upload them to the internet. Programs downloaded to the computer can't "request a set of permissions that let (them) do bad things," Krstic said, unless that software has been certified by a trusted authority, which will be either One Laptop Per Child or one of the countries signed onto the project. Users can, however, manually assign more power to a particular program through the security control panel. While the idea of limiting permissions program by program dates back as far as 1959, according to Krstic, it's not been adopted widely because it puts the burden on application writers to deal with security. Other Linux/Unix-based systems -- including Apple's Mac OS -- run programs with authority limited to a local user, but that's not enough, said Krstic, because the program can still delete user files, even if it can't touch the underlying system files. Krstic's no fan of Microsoft's security, either -- despite Vista's imposition of limited permissions on programs, and its isolation of Internet Explorer in a virtual sandbox. "Vista's sandboxing is trying to impale sandboxing on something broken," Krstic said. Still, Krstic admits there's a drawback to his system: It limits interactions between applications."

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Bit Player reports that our old friends at the RIAA issued a response today lauding Apple's offer to license FairPlay as a "welcome breakthrough" that would be a "real victory for fans, artists and labels." There's only one problem: Jobs didn't offer to license FairPlay at all. In fact, he makes it pretty clear that he thinks that switching to an open model for DRM wouldn't work...

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State Sen. Carl Krueger, a Democrat who represents New York's 27th district in the New York City borough of Brooklyn, claimed that the phenomenon of "iPod oblivion" has led to a number of fatal accidents on urban streets. While he did not cite any statistical studies that have indicated a rise in such incidents, he referred to the January death of a 23-year-old Brooklyn man who, tuned into his iPod headphones, walked into the path of a city bus. The bill would effectively make it illegal to use any kind of portable electronic device--a music or video player, cell phone, smart phone, gaming device, etc.--while crossing the street in cities such as New York, Albany and Buffalo. Offenders would be slapped with a $100 fine and a criminal court summons. Joggers and bicyclists would have to limit their iPod use to city parks in which no street crossing would be involved.

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"Kodak said it will in March start sales of 3 EasyShare All-in-One printers, ranging from $150 to $300, which will print, scan and copy document and photos. Black replacement ink cartridges will sell for about $10, and a color one for about $15, about 50 percent less than its rivals, Kodak said, adding that it will profit on sales of both printers and ink. Kodak said this strategy is meant to disrupt the market dominated by HP, Canon Inc. and Lexmark, where inexpensive printers are sold at a loss, and profits are earned over the long term in sales of replacement ink cartridges. In that model, consumers purchasing ink unknowingly also buy expensive brand-specific technology that is built into each cartridge, Kodak says. “You are throwing that (technology) away and buying a new one every time you buy one of their cartridges, which is pretty expensive stuff, said Cheryl Pohlman, a marketing director at Kodak. “With our system we have put that print head right into the printer... so all you have to buy is ink.”"

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"The essay, dubbed "Thoughts on Music," cited the anti-piracy technology as the main reason music sold through iTunes can't be transferred to other portable players besides the iPod. If not for the DRM safeguards, Jobs asserted that Apple would be able to create a more flexible system that would allow iTunes music to work on other devices, such as Microsoft Corp.'s recently introduced Zune. Jobs suggested that consumers unhappy with the status quo should urge the world's four largest labels — Universal Music Group, EMI, Sony BMG Music Entertainment and Warner Music Group — to sell their online catalogs without the DRM restrictions. Those four labels distribute more than 70 percent of the world's music. "Convincing them to license their music to Apple and others DRM-free will create a truly interoperable music marketplace," Jobs wrote. "Apple will embrace this wholeheartedly.""

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Turner Broadcasting System and a Manhattan marketing agency have agreed to pay $2 million in restitution and other costs for a Cartoon Network advertising campaign that set off fears of terrorism, the state attorney general, Martha Coakley, said today. The agency, Interference, Inc., carried out the campaign, which placed electronic advertisements for the show “Aqua Teen Hunger Force” in public places, including a Boston overpass where it was mistaken for a bomb last Wednesday.

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States will have to comply by May 2008. If they do not, driver's licenses that fall short of Real ID's standards cannot be used to board an airplane or enter a federal building or open some bank accounts. About a dozen states have active legislation against Real ID, including Arizona, Georgia, Hawaii, Massachusetts, Missouri, New Hampshire, Oklahoma, Utah and Wyoming. Missouri state Rep. James Guest, a Republican, formed a coalition of lawmakers from 34 states to file bills that oppose or protest Real ID.

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Meanwhile, Motorola has already initiated two share buyback programs. The first ended in May 2005 and cost the company $4 billion. The second, launched this summer, will likely cost the company $4.5 billion. Icahn's move presents a strategic dilemma for Motorola CEO Ed Zander, because satisfying Icahn could make it hard for Zander to execute his own vision for the company. Zander has said he wants to keep a good portion of the company's cash in the bank and use some of it to buy smaller companies that can help Motorola broaden its product portfolio and reach into new markets. The company has already been on a shopping spree, announcing 10 new purchases in 2006, including the $4.9 billion purchase of the mobile enterprise equipment supplier Symbol Technologies.

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In its executive ranks, the number of top managers who report to Dell would be streamlined from more than 20 to 12. "We have great people...but we also have a new enemy: bureaucracy, which costs us money and slows us down," he wrote The moves come as Dell tries to retake its lead in the PC market. In 2006, Dell started growing slower than the market, the first time that has happened since the company started back in the mid-1980s. HP overtook Dell as the largest PC manufacturer midway through 2006. Dell fell short of that $60 billion target during its 2006 fiscal year, with $55.9 billion in revenue.

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People can download the software, available under the open-source BSD license, for free from SourceForge on Friday. Microsoft intends to make the software available from its own Web site as well, the company said. The same group of Microsoft partners will now start work on code to translate file formats between Microsoft's Excel spreadsheet and PowerPoint presentation software and the corresponding ODF files, said Jean Paoli, the general manager of interoperability and XML architecture at Microsoft.

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But while players seem largely satisfied with BC, as it's known, some also worry that the millions of people still playing the original game, especially those at the highest levels, are left with a somewhat barren version of the adventure they're used to. "Blizzard deliberately killed their (original) game," said Katrina Glerum, a veteran WoW player who, like thousands of others, stood in line for hours to be among the first to purchase the expansion. The original game "is dead," she said. "Most of the work Blizzard did for the past two years building interesting content to keep (players of the original game) amused is dead." World of Warcraft launched in 2004. Players in the U.S. pay $15 a month to play, and that has brought hundreds of millions of dollars into Blizzard's coffers.

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What if gasoline, diesel and jet fuel could be made without oil and made instead with sugar? An Emeryville-based company founded by U.C. Berkeley scientists is on its way to doing just that, with staggering environmental and economic implications.
This sugary solution could be what breaks America's addiction to oil. Science has long understood how ethanol is made by adding sugar to yeast. But now using the same basic biological processes, scientists can re-program the microbes to make something closer to gasoline. It's cutting-edge technology commonly known as "synthetic biology" and it will change the way we fuel any vehicle that now relies on oil -- at least that's the hope at Emeryville-based Amyris Biotechnologies. Jack Newman, PhD, Amyris Biotechnologies VP: "Why are we making ethanol if we're trying to make a fuel? We should be making something that looks a lot more like gasoline. We should be making something that looks a lot more like diesel. And if you wanted to design, you name it, a jet fuel? We can make that too."

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"The usual bag of tricks--leveraging the supply chain and their economies of scale--hasn't worked," Richard Shim, an analyst with IDC, said after Dell announced the departure of Rollins. Dell has lost both its market share lead and most-favored hardware company status on Wall Street to Hewlett-Packard. In trying to regain market share, Dell may have spent too much time bottom-feeding on the low end of the PC market, eroding the operating margins that were once the envy of the entire PC industry.

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Still hopeful that Sony might one day bring rumble back to the PlayStation 3? It doesn't look like it's going to happen. A company called SplitFish has announced new rumble tech that works with motion sensing and sidesteps Immersion's patents, but Sony told GameDaily BIZ that it's not interested.

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Beneath the gloss they have hidden traps that take away important consumer rights, force expensive and environmentally damaging hardware upgrades. All computer hardware, such as monitors and sound cards, will have to obey Microsoft's rules for encrypting content in order for consumers to use Vista to play 'premium' content, such as Blu-Ray and HD DVD disks. Although it is unlikely to prevent copying, it will make Vista more attractive to Hollywood film distributors, while also locking them into a Vista content distribution system.

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Installation is one of the major problems with solar energy. The electricity generated by solar panels is free, but solar systems are not: typically it takes about eight years of free electricity before a consumer breaks even. The solar industry wants to reduce the break-even point to about four years. The industry spends millions in R&D every year to come up with solar cells that can convert more of the sun's energy into electricity or reduce the cost of producing solar cells. These systems, however, mostly get installed the old-fashioned way: contractors hoist panels onto the roof and drill and screw them into place. About half of the cost of a solar system goes to the inverter (a device that converts the direct current from the solar panel into alternating current) and to installation, said John Langdon, vice president of marketing at HelioVolt.