computer

"US COMPUTER BRANDS will go the way of the dodo in 20 years because the land of the free is not the home of the save, according to the founder of Taiwanese PC maker Acer.

Speaking to the Commercial Times, Acer's founder Stan Shih said that the US has not got the knack of producing the low-priced PCs the market demands." source

"Led by a holiday season featuring price cuts of unprecedented duration, the US PC market established a new record of nearly 20.7 million units shipped in the fourth quarter of 2009, resulting an on-year growth of 24%. Other regions also experienced solid growth, particularly emerging markets in Asia/Pacific and Latin America, leading the global market to 15.2% on-year growth for the quarter, according to IDC.

This marked the first quarter of double-digit volume growth since the third quarter of 2008. The fourth quarter results cap a strong second half of 2009, further cementing signs of a market revival and ending the year with on-year growth of 2.3%." source

"Shy and retiring Virgin boss Sir Richard Branson says that Brits have wasted almost $12 billion on digital gadgets they can't figure out how to use. And, somewhat bizarrely, many claim that a computer crash is worse than not getting laid for a month or giving up smoking, or even giving up smoking after getting laid.

In the survey of 2,000 British adults, the respondents bemoaned how stressful it is when technology stops working and how technical support from digital companies is letting them down. A third of the population say that digital gizmos have caused them real stress, with 78 percent having shouted at their technology, 21 percent having thrown gadgets against the wall, and 14 percent punching it. " source

"Hackers are spreading a vicious computer virus through spam email messages that urge recipients to visit a bogus website offering vaccinations to protect them against another virus -- the one that causes swine flu.

The email purports to be from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control, directing them to what looks like an official government website to fill out a vaccination form, said researchers from security firms Symantec Corp and AppRiver." Source

"Michael Arrington's CrunchPad has never had a particularly firm basis in reality, and although we'd been promised that the inexpensive browser-based tablet would be launching soon, the sky's come crashing down: Mike says Fusion Garage, the company he hired to build the CrunchPad, has reneged on their deal, and that he's about to file "multiple lawsuits." What happened? Well, it's not exactly clear: according to Mike, the CrunchPad was ready to be launched on November 20, but on November 17 Fusion Garage decided to cut TechCrunch out of the deal and sell it directly. Oh, it's a sad tale, especially since Arrington claims a wide variety of industry heavyweights were lined up to support his tablet -- including development assistance from Intel complete with sweetheart pricing on Atom CPUs, a "major multi-billion dollar retailer" who offered to sell it at "zero margin," and even venture capital firms "waiting to invest in the company." Making matters worse, Mike's no longer buds with Fusion Garage CEO Chandra Rathakrishnan, who he thought he'd be friends with "for the rest of our lives." Tear. Now, we're not sure we've heard the last of the CrunchPad -- if anything, Michael Arrington is irrepressible -- but we can't say we're surprised the first chapter has ended in such fantastic fashion. We're assuming several major Hollywood studios are already lining up to buy the rights, and we've heard unconfirmed reports that George Clooney has signed on to star for free because he believes in the project so deeply."  Source Another Link

"Computers capable of mimicking the human brain's power and efficiency could be just 10 years off, according to a leading researcher at IBM.

According to the researcher, Dharmendra Modha, the manager of IBM's cognitive computing initiative, scientists from his company and some of the world's most prestigious universities have already managed to simulate the computing complexity of the feline cortex, a feat that could augur a day not too far off when it will be possible to ramp up to what the human brain can accomplish.

Last year, IBM and five universities were awarded a DARPA contract to work on a cognitive computing project aimed at eventually achieving that goal. Just a year later, Modha said, his team, working in conjunction with the universities' scientists, have achieved two major milestones.

The first was a real-time cortical simulation that achieved more than 1 billion spiking neurons, as well as 10 trillion individual learning synapses. According to Modha, that exceeds what a cat's cortex is capable of.

Second, the scientists created a fresh algorithm they're calling BlueMatter that is aimed at spelling out the connections between all the human brain's cortical and sub-cortical locations. That mapping is a critical step, Modha suggested, for a true understanding of how the brain communicates and processes information." source