Items tagged with 2009
Sweden's PiratePartiet (Pirate Party) has secured a win for the European Parliament in yesterday's Swedish European Parliament Elections, becoming - at least in this election - Sweden's 4th biggest party.According to official sources, the Pirate Party secured 7.1% of votes and elected to the European Parliament Christian Engstrom to voice the concerns of filesharers and throughout Europe. Thanks to the Swedish authority's enforcement of a court mandate and shutting down the Pirate Bay, the attempt at restricting the activity of filesharing has backfired and provided a soapbox of sorts for the Party.The Pirate Party's arguments are towards the "reform of copyright law", by making non-commercial...
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It was rumored earlier that AT&T and Apple were in discussions over tethering. And at the Web 2.0 Summit, AT&T Mobility CEO Ralph De La Vega indicated in an interview with Michael Arrington that an official, AT&T sanctioned method of tethering (using the iPhone as a 3G modem) is on the coming "soon." There are already some tethering apps for jailbroken phones, such as PDANet, but nothing you can download from the App Store, at least not since NetShare was pulled from the store. It's unclear when AT&T will roll out the tethering service; some point in 2009 is the only vague indication given. Would that mean that both PDANet (denied from the start) and NetShare would be allowed...
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NVIDIA Announces 2009-2010 Fellowship Program SANTA CLARA, CA - NOVEMBER 3, 2008 - NVIDIA Corporation (Nasdaq: NVDA), the world leader in visual computing technologies, announced it is accepting applications for the NVIDIA Fellowship Program for the 2009-2010 academic year.Dr. David Kirk, Chief Scientist at NVIDIA, stated: "The NVIDIA Fellowship Program is designed to stimulate and support excellence in visual and parallel computing research in universities worldwide, and to promote communication between NVIDIA's R&D team and outstanding students and professors. Since its inception in 2002, the Program has awarded over $1.6 million in funding to assist 65 Ph.D. students with their research."The...
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In July, Symantec opened its 2009 security products to public beta, promising that they would no longer be the performance hogs they have been in the past. You may know that Symantec's latest versions of their security products have been criticized over their memory footprint and CPU usage. Of course, there's also the activation issue (the software must be activated), but that's another point of contention. So this year Symantec focused on speed and resources, calling it a "zero-impact" performance goal. And on Tuesday Symantec announced the launch of its 2009 line, highlighting the following bullet points in a press release: Light on Resources: As we said this is one of the biggest complaints...
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Here at the HotHardware labs, we like to make use of SiSoftware's Sandra benchmarks for quick and dirty measurements on relative performance of a product versus another in its class. While the benchmark suite is virtually all synthetic testing, we've found that results and measurements generally scale pretty well with real-world performance in many cases. Regardless, this release nearly sneaked past us yesterday but it appears SiSoftware has launched Sandra 2009 and this time, they've stepped up to 3D graphics and GPGPU benchmarking as well. London, UK, September 1st 2008 - We are pleased to launch SiSoftware Sandra 2009, the latest version...
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When the 2009 Audi Q5 "compact crossover vehicle" debuts this fall, it will feature an additional kind of powerful engine: Driving the car's audio/visual interface control panel will be an Nvidia GPU. The Q5 will include the latest generation of Audi's Multi-Media Interface (MMI), manufactured for Audi by Harman/Becker. Harman/Becker refers to the MMI as a "3G infotainment system": "The Harman/Audi platform sets new benchmarks for automotive navigation, communication and wide-screen entertainment. A high-performance NVIDIA graphics processor ensures that navigation map images transition smoothly, even when the vehicle quickly changes direction. Driver orientation is enhanced by a three-dimensional...
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Apple MacBooks are due to get a LED backlighting as part of a future upgrade that will continue to raise the Cupertino-based firm’s green credentials. Apple first introduced LED backlighting in their 2007 MacBook Pro refresh, and since then they’ve also added it to the svelte MacBook Air. The movement is part of the company's charge towards "a greener Apple," which kicked into overdrive last year amid increased pressure from shareholders and environmental organizations who accused the electronics maker of dragging its feet when it came to removing environmentally harmful toxic chemicals from its products. As part of an open letter on the matter, chief executive Steve Jobs said plans...
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What is a mobile provider to do when only 12 percent of its customers own phones capable of taking advantage of data plans? Certainly having exclusive U.S. rights to arguably the most advanced--or at least the sexiest--smartphone is a good start. And the iPhone has been big a boost to AT&T's sales in 2007. But by the close of 2007, AT&T only had 9 million subscribers to its 3G services. It would seem that you can lead a horse to water, but you can't make it drink. But what if you make the water tastier? "AT&T's cellular Internet access will be more than five times faster in 2009 than it is this year, the company's mobility chief Ralph de la Vega said today at Morgan Stanley's annual...
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The rumored release date of the successor to Vista, dubbed Windows 7, has typically bounced between 2010 and 2011 until Bill Gates let the following slip:In response to a question about Windows Vista, Gates, speaking before the Inter-American Development Bank here, said: "Sometime in the next year or so we will have a new version." Referring to Windows 7, the code name for the next full release of Windows client software, Gates said: "I'm super-enthused about what it will do in lots of ways."Mr. Gates was not exactly clear on whether he meant another milestone version such as the one that key Microsoft partners allegedly received recently or something like a beta or candidate release version....
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Now that Blu-ray has won the format wars, many are wondering when the prices are going to start dropping, maybe even coming into line with HD DVD player prices. Don't hold your breath:The $200-player Blu-ray cavalry is at least a year away, according to Sony Electronics CEO Stan Glasgow, who we talked to today in New York. "I don't think $200 is going to happen this year. Next year $200 could happen. We'll be at a $300 rate this year. $299 will happen this year."We're still keen on the PS3 as a Blu-ray player. Sure it's a little more expensive than a simple player but you get Blu-ray, the ability to play the latest games, and it can even help cure diseases with folding@home....
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As part of the result from Microsoft's anti-trust litigation with the U.S. government, the Redmond giant is currently subject to oversight to ensure that it doesn't abuse its market position. While there are numerous decrees that govern this arrangement between Microsoft and the various government entities involved in the oversight, most of those agreements were due to run out in late 2007.It seems that the government bodies are still not 100% confident in Microsoft's ability to operate without running into anti-trust issues and thus are extending their arrangement for a few more years."A federal judge ruled Tuesday that a consent decree enforcing the settlement would remain in effect until...
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Samsung reports that along with Micron Technology, Nokia, Texas Instruments, Ericsson, Spansion, and STMicroelectronics, they've agreed to create and adhere to an industry standard format for flash memory data cards, anticipated to be in place by 2009. "For makers, the open common standard will help them cut costs for the development of products as they will be able to manage memory solutions more efficiently. For example, the new standard will set the ground for memory makers to develop next generation flash memory cards that will feature superior functions to existing cards. The JEDEC Solid State Technology Association (JEDEC),...
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LCD monitors are getting bigger and more affordable. Likewise LCD televisions. Although slightly more expensive, the LCD monitors are competing against TVs now, as their increased functionality makes up for their slightly higher prices. Digitimes does some research into the near future and and predicts who'll be buying what and how much it will cost. Worlwide LCD monitor shipments are expected to reach 158 million units in 2007, with the 19-inch widescreen segment to grow the most in terms of shipment share percetage, according to DisplaySearch. In 2008, the segment will become the mainstream size in the monitor market, the research firm...
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Windows Vista has been out for only a few weeks and Microsoft is already talking about the next step. In an attempt to avert something similar to the five year wait Windows XP users experienced waiting for Vista, Microsoft has disclosed details on the successor to Vista, codenamed Vienna. WinFS, native HD DVD capabilities, and FireWire-B may be addressed in the first service pack for Vista but there is a chance some of these features may not make it into an MS operating system until Vienna. Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer has already proclaimed that there is "More where that came from" when it comes to operating systems. According to PC World, 2009 is when we can expect more...
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