PATREONItems tagged with can
In the past we've reported the Comcast has been disconnecting broadband service to people it loosely defines as 'excessive' users. Comcast defines 'excessive' as homes or businesses that download about 3 motion pictures or roughly 1000 songs a day over an unspecified period of time.Users who violate this typically get a phone call or possibly other communication informing them that they have one month to set things straight. Of course, they've been targeted for at least one law suit over disconnecting customers because their service is advertised as being without limits. So what is Comcast's justification for what many are terming a breach of contract? Here's a word or two from a Comcast...
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It's been two years since the New York Times starting charging for "select" content on its site (hence the name), but the paper has admitted defeat and decided to open the content up for all, saying it could make more money from increased ad revenue than the subscription fees.Times Select, the name of the service that charged access to opinion pieces and some news stories, was available to print subscribers for free. Times Select had 787,400 subscribers, including 471,200 print subscribers who received access to the service for free. Of the remaining subscribers, 89,200 readers received free access on college campuses and 227,000 paid either $7.95 per month or $49.95 for the service, depending...
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Hello Everyone. We're going to take a break from our typical technology / hardware coverage for just a moment here and ask for your help to support a great cause. A good friend of HotHardware's is walking in an event sponsored by the American Cancer Society in Westport, CT and is seeking donations to help fight breast cancer... "Today there is more hope than ever before for people who have had to hear the words, "You have breast cancer." But there is still much work to be done to promote early detection and to help those impacted by the disease. To help make a difference, I'm participating in the American Cancer Society's Making Strides Against Breast Cancer walk....
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Sprint Nextel announced today that you can shop online or compare prices for up to 7 million products from 30 retailers, using their Mobile Shopper Service. The service is offered free as an enticement to get Nextel customers to use up those precious web access minutes. "It said it will not charge mobile users extra subscription fees for the service, but it will charge them for Web access. "The big opportunity for Sprint is the potential increase of data usage," said Sprint product manager Charnsin Tulyasathien. Sprint, along with its rivals, has been pushing data services such...
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Many have expressed concern over the privacy aspects of Google's Street View. Although Google is now allowing anyone to report identifiable faces, license plates, etc., which Google will then zap, Canadian privacy law may not be satisfied by the "zap process." Canadian law obliges businesses wishing to disclose personal information about individuals to first obtain their consent. Stoddart said pictures of people on Street View were clear enough to be considered personal information. "The images ... appear to have been collected largely without the consent and knowledge of the individuals who appear in the images," wrote Stoddart....
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It seems like a never-ending debate. One study will say cellular phones do not cause cancer, another says they might. This is the latest study, and it shows a "hint" of a connection between cellular phones and possible long-term effects such as cancer. The good thing is they seem to have ruled out short-term effects.Programme chairman Professor Lawrie Challis said it was now up to the government to offer advice. The team found that there was a slight excess reporting of brain and acoustic neuroma (ear) cancers. Researchers said this was on the borderline of statistical significance. Professor Challis said...
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The Foleo was overwhelmingly panned as a device in search of a market. Not only that, as late as last week analysts were saying it would have to be delayed because of a number of bugs. Rather than do that, today the first generation of Foleo - Palm insists there will be another generation - has been cancelled. Palm CEO Ed Colligan broke the news on Palm's official blog Tuesday after the close of the stock market. Just last week, a financial analyst predicted that Palm would have to delay the Foleo's launch until September or October because of serious software-related bugs, but Colligan decided to kill the entire project instead."In the course of the past several months, it has become...
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Citing a post from Hackintosh, the iPhone Atlas is starting to uncover the dark side of iPhone unlocking, namely the allegedly explosive nature of some of the devices.Here's an tidbit from the original post, spelling errors and all: “We were so happy, all the software part was done, so we started opening the iphone. The antenna cover was a bit tricky but eventually it came off. Then we started to open the metal cover (after taking out the 3 screws) and PUFF, up it went in smoke, I think my collegue must have touched something. It literally went up in black smoke. I was so hot that when I tried to pick it up I burnt my fingers. So, this is for sure the most difficult part of the whole process....
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A recent poll shows that more and more Americans are turning to the Internet for information about health and health issues. In fact, according to the 2007 Consumer Medical and Health Information poll, nearly as many Americans list the Web as their primary source of medical information as do their doctor. The 2007 Consumer Medical and Health Information poll, commissioned by search engine Ask.com and performed by Harris Interactive Inc., revealed that 70% of adults use the Internet as a primary source for health information and that 72% describe their doctor as a primary source. The study also found that 76% of adults older than 55 -- a group sometimes stereotyped as eschewing the Web --...
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Panasonic System Solutions Company has created the so called “Walkthrough Iris Identification System,” which is a device that can scan a person’s iris while he/she walks through. As we may have already seen in the movies, iris identification is a highly advanced type of biometric authentication technology that does not use ID cards or passwords, which users could lose or forget. A drawback to biometric authentication technologies is that they are not always accurate. Nevertheless, at a verification failure rate of less than 1/1,200,000, the Walkthrough Iris Identification System is quite formidable. “To enable verification of a person walking (at 1 m per second) from a distance of more than...
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Way back in April, a class-action lawsuit was filed against Microsoft, alleging that Microsoft used deceptive marketing practices when it allowed computer and other hardware makers to use the term "Windows Vista Capable" on their items, when in fact the hardware was unusable with Vista. The suit really centers around personal computers labeled as "Windows Vista Capable" before the operating system released in January. A judge has ruled that the lawsuit can proceed and set a court date for October. Seattle District Court Judge Marsha Pechman on Tuesday rejected Microsoft's request for a dismissal of the case. Microsoft had argued that the plaintiffs, Dianne Kelley and Kenneth Hansen, lacked...
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Recently, after the deaths of four cheerleaders in a automobile accident, it was discovered that one of them, apparently the driver, had been text messaging in the car. Some legislators wondered if there should be an effort to ban both emailing and text messaging while driving. A Harris Interactive survey commissioned by mobile messaging service Pinger Inc. found over 90% of those surveyed do believe texting while driving is dangerous and should be banned. The Harris Interactive survey commissioned by mobile messaging service Pinger Inc. found 89 percent of respondents believe texting while driving is dangerous and should be outlawed.Even so, 66 percent of the adults surveyed who drive...
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The smug factor with the iPhone is off the charts. I personally don't need a PDA I can yell into, so I don't have much of an opinion about it. But it will be fun to see the reaction of the Apple fanatics to the announcement that the iPhone is susceptible to being taken over by hackers if you visit a malicious website or tap into a bad internet hotspot with it. I imagine it will be a kind of sticking of fingers in the ears and chanting la la la until Steve Jobs makes it go away, and then it will have never happened. The flaw applies not only to the iPhone, which was launched just three weeks ago, but also to Apple computers running Mac OS and the company's Safari Web browser, a version...
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It seems that AMD has cancelled their upcoming Lima CPU, which was slated to be a relatively low-end single core offering: “AMD will continue to ship single-core processors. However, all single-core processors will carry the Sempron brand. With Lima out of the picture, Sparta will be the next new single-core AMD processor. AMD expects to launch Sparta in September 2007 in 256KB and 128KB L2 configurations. Sparta arrives as a replacement for Orleans and Manila-core processors and is essentially a 65nm die-shrink of Manila." According to the new AMD roadmaps, it seems that Semprons will still stay single core for at least the next year or so. Perhaps once we start seeing 8+...
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Scientists at UIUC, the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, have recently developed a very unique polymer material that has the ability to heal itself over and over again when it cracks. The new polymer is designed to be like human skin. When human skin is cut, blood vessels from the inner layer deliver nutrients to the site of injury to aid healing. UIUC’s material acts in a similar way and consists of two layers. In order to test the material, the group of scientists bend it until the polymer coating cracks. Tests reveal that the material is capable of self-recovery up to seven times before being worn out. “The polymer coating on top contains tiny catalyst pieces scattered throughout....
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No it can't read minds in the literal sense, but it's probably still better than a polygraph machine. They say that only a small fraction of human communication comes from words; about 60% is body language and about 30% is tone. The irony is that most of us are probably not able to pick up on these subliminal messages very well. That might be why Rana El Kaliouby, an MIT grad student, decided to develop the special software used in the Emotional Social Intelligence Prosthetic, which is a device that helps people interpret body language and facial expressions. The device, upon detecting boredom/inattention in the listener, will vibrate to alert the user. "This software interprets emotions based...
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The UK's Barclays Bank is beginning to use two factor authentification for transactions online to combat fraud. They are supplying 500,000 customers with a PINsentry device that would make it imposible for a phishing scam to clean out your bank account by simply getting their hands on your log-in password. While broadly welcomed, many in the industry have been concerned at the slow introduction of two-factor authentication. "It has taken banks a while to get round to tokens because it is a cost to them," said Tony Redmond, chief technology officer at HP Services and HP Security. "Some bankers have said that this is because it is more expensive to introduce tokens...
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Physicists have found a way to control the motion of individual electrons using the peaks of energy waves, which electrons can ride on like surfers. The National Physical Laboratory’s electron surf machine sends a steady stream of over a billion electrons per second in single file. It involves oscillating waves of electrostatic force, which is the force of attraction between positive and negative charges. Although we can already produce small streams of electrons, until today nobody has developed a method of delivering electrons at such a high rate in a controlled manner. Motivated by better computing and better security of digital communication, scientists are now able to manipulate billions...
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Just about everyone throughout history has made at least a couple of bad choices when they were growing up. There might have been a period of shame (especially if friends and family knew) but eventually the shame and the event were behind them.The major difference for people growing up in the digital age is that they have to contend with the internet acting as a living history book that might record some of these mistakes in the form of a blog, or on an entry on a site such as MySpace. Generations prior to this could be reasonably assured that a drunken streak would not be something a potential employer might find out about even the next week, whereas the youth of today might even find it humorous...
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Is it a hairdryer or a shower head?. Actually it's neither. Shown in the photo is the C2 comfort device from Herman Miller and is part of “The Be Collection.” Though it looks simple, it is armed with patented technologies that enhance one’s personal climate experience. The C2 allows users to personalize air temperature and enhance air quality via its particulate air filter that is Greenguard-certified. “The C2 is 41 percent recyclable, and businesses can count it toward environmental certification using the points-based LEED system. It also uses 90 percent less energy than a typical space heater.” The optimal operating distance is 18 inches and can increase the air temperature by up to 32...
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We're all moody recluses now. We're weary from telephone salesman calling us, wary of people looking around for us. And we never offer any information to anyone about ourselves without a second thought anymore. One of the results of this desire for telephone privacy, coupled to the rise of people who use a cellphone as their only phone, is that the number of people listed in the phone book is beginning to shrink -- and will likely do so for the foreseeable future. At the end of last year, 7.2 percent of American households used only a cellphone, up from just 0.7 percent six years earlier, according to TNS Telecom, a research company. Americans have not been eager to list...
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Asus has announced the launch of the Xonar D2 sound card, which is the very first product in its brand new product line. Based on the AV200 audio chip, the Xonar integrates various sound-enhancing technologies from big names like DTS and Dolby. With a signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) of 118 dB, for both audio in and audio out, users can enjoy unprecedented sound quality on their PCs. "Unlike generic sound cards in the market that provide the highest SNR to only the front stereo outputs, the Xonar D2 is able to deliver 118 db quality audio for all 7.1 channels." Gamers can enjoy superb in-game audio quality thanks to the various onboard technologies brought to...
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