Category: Computers, Science & Technology

Imagine computing at the atomic level, with atoms as network nodes and photons as transmitters of data. Zowie! Well, guess what? They have done it! Anyone wanna bet on how long it is before we have Data’s “positronic brain?”

Scientists Build First Working Quantum Network

“Scientists at the Quantum Dynamics division of the Max Planck Institute of Quantum Optics (MPQ) in Garching, Germany announced Wednesday that they have built the very first, elementary quantum network comprised of a pair of entangled atoms that transmit information to each other via single photons.

That and a couple of bucks will get you a cup of coffee, plus anything from a perfectly secure data exchange system to the massive scaling via distributed processing of the already mind-bogglingly powerful, if theoretical, potential of a standalone quantum computer.

These are indeed heady days for the pioneers of quantum computing, with each news cycle seemingly bringing forth a major breakthrough in a subatomic frontier that appears poised to revolutionize how our calculating machines deliver us everything from satellite mapping to LOLcats.

It’s also a daunting time for those of us who have barely just sussed out the mechanics of old-fashioned, silicon-based computer chips–only to be confronted with this new science of computing, a full understanding of which requires one to be not just an advanced electrical engineer, but a quantum physicist to boot.

All of which is to say that, yes, the bright individuals who are trying to harness the computational power of stuff so small and weird, it can only be described mathematically, are at it again.

Years in the Making

The accomplishment was the result of years of work, according to Scientific Computing. Lead researcher Prof. Gerhard Rempe and his colleagues had to figure out a means of exercising “perfect control” over all the components in their quantum network, which first meant getting the two atoms that make up the network’s receptor nodes to somehow stay stationary, because a couple of free-floating atoms wouldn’t be able to communicate with the photons relaying information between the two very efficiently.

“This approach to quantum networking is particularly promising because it provides a clear perspective for scalability,’ Rempe told the journal. His colleague and leader of the experiment, Dr. Stephan Ritter, added, ‘We were able to prove that the quantum states can be transferred much better than possible with any classical network.’

The team was able to fix their atoms in optical cavities, basically a couple of highly reflective mirrors a short distance from each other, by means of fine-tuned laser beams. Why mirrors? Photons entering the cavity bounce around the mirrors ‘several thousand times,’ which actually enhances the atom-photon interaction and enables the network node atoms to absorb the photon-based data packets ‘coherently and with high efficiency,’ according to the scientists.

The use of optical cavities for a quantum network was proposed by Prof. Ignacio Cirac, an MPQ directory and head of its Theory division.
“In fact, we demonstrate the feasibility of the theoretical approach developed by Prof. Cirac,’ Ritter said.

After trapping and stabilizing the atoms that would serve as the system’s network nodes, the scientists had to get the atoms to emit single photons encoded with information in a controlled way and transfer that information onto a second photon.

Then, to demonstrate an actual networking effect, the team connected two such systems ‘and quantum information was exchanged between them with high efficiency and fidelity,’ Scientific Computing reported.

The two systems were connected by a roughly 180-foot-long fiber optic cable and hosted in separate labs about 60 feet apart from each other. So basically, walking down the hall and just telling the guys in the other lab what was on the photon would have been about as effective, but the point of the exercise was to show the network performing as designed and to worry about scaling it out to purposefulness later.”

Microsoft Warns of the Termination of Support for Windows XP and Office 2003!

Time to get serious! Get off Windows XP and Office 2003 SOON! Official support will be over as of April 2014. No more patches, no more call-in support… nothing!

Upgrade Today: Two-Year Countdown to End of Support for Windows XP and Office 2003

“Back in October we celebrated the anniversaries of Windows XP and Office 2003 and took the opportunity to remind everyone that on April 8, 2014, we will officially end support for these versions of Windows and Office. Today, we want to acknowledge the two-year countdown to the end of Windows XP and Office 2003 support, which was this past Sunday. If you still have some PCs running Windows XP and Office 2003 in your organization, now would be a good time to start migrating them to Windows 7 and Office 2010.

Windows XP and Office 2003 were great software releases for their time, but the technology environment has shifted. Technology continues to evolve and so do people’s needs and expectations. Modern users demand technologies that fit their personal workstyle and allow them to stay productive anywhere anytime, while businesses have an ever increasing need to protect data and ensure security, compliance and manageability. It is in a company’s – and its employees’ – best interest to take advantage of the modern Windows and Office software that is designed with these needs in mind.

Now you may be asking yourself – should I wait to upgrade until the next versions of Windows and Office are available? We don’t recommend waiting. Not only is it important for companies to complete deployment before support runs out, but they should also be aware that by upgrading to Windows 7 and Office 2010 today they can gain substantial results today while laying the foundation for future versions of these products. And with over 525 million Windows 7 licenses sold since its release, many customers are already taking advantage of everything Windows 7 has to offer.”

Apple is working to develop a Flashback removal tool!

Apple developing Flashback malware removal tool

“In response to Flashback malware that’s been in the news lately, Apple on Tuesday revealed that it is developing a tool to detect and remove it.

There is no date that the tool will be released, but considering it is Apple, it should be available on its support Web site or even the built-in software update in Mac OS X. The software is not the only thing that Apple is doing, however.

‘In addition to the Java vulnerability, the Flashback malware relies on computer servers hosted by the malware authors to perform many of its critical functions,’ Apple wrote on its Web site. ‘Apple is working with ISPs worldwide to disable this command and control network.’

Apple updated Java on April 3 to fix the Java security flaw for systems running OS X v10.7 and Mac OS X v10.6.”

Chrome OS will soon offer a lot of “Windows-i-ness” for users… and soon Windows won’t look like Windows! Things to make you go, “Hummmmm!”

Google’s Chrome OS Will Soon Look More Like Windows Than A Browser

“It’s hard to say how popular Chrome OS, Google’s browser-centric operating system, really is. There can be little doubt, though, that Google is quite serious about this initiative. Today, Google launched the latest developer version of Chrome OS and this update sports the first major redesign of the operation system’s interface since its launch in late 2010.

In this new version, Chrome OS almost looks like a traditional OS, with a full-blown desktop and window manager instead of just a browser and tabs. Aura, as this hardware-accelerated window manager is known, is Chrome’s next generation user interface framework and it is making its public debut in this new developer version of Chrome OS.

This update is quite a departure from Chrome OS’s origins. Until now, Chrome OS basically just gave users access to a single browser window at a time (you could already have multiple browser windows open on separate virtual screens) and launching new apps meant you first had to open a new tab and then look for the app you wanted to start. Now, Chrome OS features a Launchpad-like app launcher, as well as a Windows-like taskbar (Google calls it a ‘shelf’). Apps, it is worth noting, still start in a browser tab and not as stand-alone windows, though.

In short, Chrome OS now looks and behaves a lot more like the desktop operating systems it set out to challenge.”

Wow! 1.1 Billion for patents! I have to wonder what M$ has up their sleeve on this one!

AOL Sells 800 Patents For $1.1 Billion To Microsoft

“This just in: one chapter of AOL’s patent journey is coming to an end. The company is selling 800 patents to Microsoft for just north of $1 billion: $1.056 billion in cash to be exact.

Tim Armstrong, the CEO of AOL (which owns TechCrunch), says that the company will continue to hold on to about 300 patents and patent applications after the sale. These span ‘core and strategic technologies’ around advertising, search and content generation, he noted in a memo to employees…

The sale to Microsoft came after a ‘competitive auction process’ the company noted in a statement. It also includes the sale of the stock of an AOL subsidiary (unspecified which in the statement) ‘upon which AOL expects to record a capital loss for tax purposes and as a result, cash taxes in connection with the sale should be immaterial.’

AOL also said it ‘expects to utilize approximately $40 million of its existing deferred tax assets, representing approximately 20 percent of its total deferred tax assets, to offset any ordinary income taxes resulting from the license of its remaining patent portfolio.’ We have reached out to try to get more specifics on the subsidiary and so licensee information for the remaining patents.

The sale is expected to be completed by the end of 2012.”

This bodes well for the Dr. Bill.TV show! And, all the Techpodcasts Network shows! The future of IPTV is so bright, I gotta wear shades!

TV Sets Are Connected to the Internet In 38% of Homes

“Nearly two fifths (38%) of all households have at least one television set connected to the Internet, up from 30% last year, and 24% two years ago, according to a new study from Leichtman Research Group, Inc. (LRG) reports.

The TVs could be sets with their own connection or could be connected via a video game system, a Blu-ray player, an Apple TV or Roku set-top box. These findings are based on a survey of 1,251 households nationwide that was primarily conducted in February of 2012 and are part of a new LRG study, ‘Emerging Video Services VI.’

In another sign of the growing importance of video games in delivering video into the homes, video game systems were the primary connection, with 28% of all households owning a video game system connected to the Internet. Just 4% of all households are connected solely via an Internet-enabled TV set, and Apple TV or Roku set-tops are the only connected devices in 1% of all households.

While the study found growing penetration of connected devices it did not find that this shift in viewing patterns was impacting multichannel subscriptions.

Overall, 1.6% of households were not subscribing to the multichannel service but had subscribed to one in the past year. In addition, just 0.1% of the sample who dropped service in the past year and do not plan to subscribe again in the next six months, told researchers say that they don’t subscribe because of Netflix or because they can watch all that they want on the Internet or in other ways.

‘Video is increasingly being watched on different platforms and in different places, yet these emerging video services still generally act as complements to traditional television viewing and services rather than as substitutes,’ said Bruce Leichtman, president and principal analyst for Leichtman Research Group, Inc. ‘Among all adults, reported time spent watching TV is similar to last year, and there remains little evidence of a significant trend in consumers ‘cutting the cord’ to their multi-channel video services to watch video solely via these emerging services.'”

People are gloating that the Mac finally has a serious virus threat. Thing is, it is really a Java threat that effects the Mac in certain specific cases. So chill, you guys!

What you need to know about the Flashback trojan

“On April 4, Russian antivirus vendor Dr. Web published strong evidence that more than 500,000 Macs have been infected by the latest variant of the Flashback trojan. As Mikko Hypponen, Chief Researcher at F-Secure pointed out via Twitter, if there are roughly 45 million Macs out there, Flashback would now have infected more than 1 percent of them, making Flashback roughly as common for Mac as Conficker was for Windows. Flashback appears to be the most widespread Mac malware we’ve seen since the days when viruses were spread on infected floppy disks; it could be the single most significant malware infection to ever hit the Mac community.

Here’s what you need to know about Flashback, what you can do about it, and what it means for the future of Mac security.

Flashback is the name for a malicious software program discovered in September 2011 that tried to trick users into installing it by masquerading as an installer for Adobe Flash. (Antivirus vendor Intego believes Flashback was created by the same people behind the MacDefender attack that hit last year.) While the original version of Flashback and its initial variants relied on users to install them, this new form is what’s called in the security business a drive-by download: Rather than needing a user to install it, Flashback uses an unpatched Java vulnerability to install itself.”

And, you can read the whole artcle at the link above!

Somehow, I thought so!

Augmented reality! Digital lifestyle on steroids! Awesomeness! Don’t take my word for it, watch the video!

Will they actually be able to pull off this concept “in the real world?” (And, what IS the real world, anymore?) Zowie! I hope so!

I am just glad that 1/5 of all Americans have read ANY book! But, still, that is pretty impressive when you think about it! I read my Star Trek books on my Kindles all the time… so I probably “skew the curve,” but we are definitely reading more virtual books!

The rise of e-reading

Summary of findings

“One-fifth of American adults (21%) report that they have read an e-book in the past year, and this number increased following a gift-giving season that saw a spike in the ownership of both tablet computers and e-book reading devices such as the original Kindles and Nooks.1 In mid-December 2011, 17% of American adults had reported they read an e-book in the previous year; by February, 2012, the share increased to 21%.

The rise of e-books in American culture is part of a larger story about a shift from printed to digital material. Using a broader definition of e-content in a survey ending in December 2011, some 43% of Americans age 16 and older say they have either read an e-book in the past year or have read other long-form content such as magazines, journals, and news articles in digital format on an e-book reader, tablet computer, regular computer, or cell phone.

Those who have taken the plunge into reading e-books stand out in almost every way from other kinds of readers. Foremost, they are relatively avid readers of books in all formats: 88% of those who read e-books in the past 12 months also read printed books.2 Compared with other book readers, they read more books. They read more frequently for a host of reasons: for pleasure, for research, for current events, and for work or school. They are also more likely than others to have bought their most recent book, rather than borrowed it, and they are more likely than others to say they prefer to purchase books in general, often starting their search online.

The growing popularity of e-books and the adoption of specialized e-book reading devices are documented in a series of new nationally representative surveys by the Pew Research Center’s Internet & American Life Project that look at the public’s general reading habits, their consumption of print books, e-books and audiobooks, and their attitudes about the changing ways that books are made available to the public.

Most of the findings in this report come from a survey of 2,986 Americans ages 16 and older, conducted on November 16-December 21, 2011, that extensively focused on the new terrain of e-reading and people’s habits and preferences. Other surveys were conducted between January 5-8 and January 12-15, 2012 to see the extent to which adoption of e-book reading devices (both tablets and e-readers) might have grown during the holiday gift-giving season and those growth figures are reported here. Finally, between January 20-Febuary 19, 2012, we re-asked the questions about the incidence of book reading in the previous 12 months in order to see if there had been changes because the number of device owners had risen so sharply. All data cited in this report are from the November/December survey unless we specifically cite the subsequent surveys. This work was underwritten by a grant from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.”