Few Confessions Of A Former Dell Sales Manager

found this piece on another site.

1. Promotion cycle dates - Thursday is the first day of new promotions. If you go to the web site at 11:45 p.m. on Wednesday night and again on 1 a.m. on Thursday morning, the promotions are different. The catalog promotions run from the start of the month to the end. Additionally, on holiday weekends (Memorial Day, 4th of July, etc.) there may be special sales/coupons for the three-day weekend.

2. Promotion styles - Typically, one week will be cash off while the next will be percentage off. If you liked cash off but the current promotion is percentage off, check the "As Advertised-Newspaper" section. These typically have a remnant of the prior week's promotion as well as better versions of the current week's promotions. Cash off helps for cheap systems, percentage off helps with high-end.

3. Dell Customer Care can price match within 24 hours from the time of order. Combining #1 and #2 from this section, if you are unsure of the value of the week's promotion but need to order something, order it Wednesday night. Check the promotions for the new week on Thursday. If its better, call and price match. If its not, sit back and feel smug for no reason

4. Dell corporate email - As of December 2006, everybody (save Michael Dell) working for Dell U.S. has the same form of email address: firstname_lastname@dell.com. Michael Dell's does not follow this pattern and is changed immediately whenever the current one is discovered by lower-level employees or the public.

5. Dell's internal fiscal calendar is different from other corporations. As their fiscal year ends in January or February (I honestly don't remember), the best deals will typically be found in late January and all of February. Also, buying during the last week of any quarter typically means free or deeply-discounted 2nd day or overnight shipping, and the quickest order turnaround. There are no steep discounts for the holidays, though they will run a few weeks of consecutive percentage off promotions during the back to school season in August.

6. The DFS servers are notoriously flimsy. If you apply for DPA (why would you?) and it is unable to complete, it means the server is overloaded but your credit rating has already been pinged. Reapplying will not fix the issue but it will repeatedly ping your credit. The system is unable to verify cell phone numbers and will automatically reject based on the use of one.

Fun facts about the Kiosks:

1. Why should I shop at a kiosk? I can order from home. - A very valid point, but the majority of kiosk customers are morons who think computers are magic boxes that let you see pictures of cats in funny poses while someone steals your AOL password. There's a few reasons why an educated person aka Consumerist reader should hit the kiosk up:

a. Discounts - There are several ways the Dell Direct kiosks can attempt to match or beat an online deal.


i. Closing tools - Dollar off coupons that depend on how much you spend. Spend $600=$25 off; $1200=$50 off; $1,600=$75 off; $2,000=$100 off.

ii. Refuse to Lose - 10% coupons meant to allow a sales rep to seal a large deal. These can only be used when the computer price alone is $1,600 or more. It can not be used on accessories, TVs or multiple computers whose aggregate value is above $1,600. This must be requested from the Manager on Duty (MOD) through an email request, and will generally be credited before the computer is shipped.

iii. DPA coupon - Dell will already give you 2% off your order if, at the payment screen you click the link that offers 2% off when you pay with DPA. The kiosks have a 3% DPA closing tool that can be used also, giving a discount of slightly over 5%. This works for all DPA purchases including TV's, monitors and cameras.

iv. The closing tools are nothing but individual-use coupons entered at the shopping cart. They are invalid on the home and small business site. Reps are supposed to use them as a last-ditch effort, but as long as you're not buying a sub-$600 system, they should offer them without your having to ask.


b. Printer cartridges - No you can't buy them there...officially. They are non-inventoried items that many kiosks have a heady supply of due to inexplicably random deliveries from corporate. If you're in a pinch and need one that day, go (don't call), get a feel for the employees, and if you think they're cool with it, offer cash.

2. There are two levels of kiosk employees. There are those hired by Spherion, creatively known as "Spherion reps," and then there are Dell Branded Reps, or DBRs. DBRs are effectively the management of the individual kiosk, and are the only ones able to work uncompensated overtime. Deal with them if possible, because they are very likely to be there the next time if you have a question. They've also been there much longer than any other kiosk staff, so they likely have a much better skill set for finding bargains.

3. If you have a problem with DPA, the kiosk has a specific email contact for Dell Financial. Problems can be resolved much much faster.

4. The Dell Direct kiosk website is configured differently than the others. There are "bundles" (linked from the main page under the "start shopping" graphics) and there are "non-bundles". Bundles, so called because...you guessed it...accessories and service are already bundled in, have a higher profit margin. They are also the most customizable system on the website. Non-bundles carry lower profit margins but may be limited. The salesman will always start from a bundle. Let them finish, then make them search the non-bundles for an equal system with a better price.

5. Kiosk reps are judged on the following:

a. Unit price: The average sale price of each reps transactions. $1,200 was the goal as of March, 2007 but $1,600 was preferred.

b. Bundle percentage: Dell varies on what percentage of all sales it wants to be from the "bundle" page depending on the month and who you're talking to. It is typically between 40% and 60%.

c. Service: Each PC/Notebook sale is expected to have a 3 year warranty attached. Typically, the number is between $160 and $200.

d. E&A: This is the percentage of the sale that was spent on accessories. Each transaction should have between 5% and 10%, or one printer and cable per PC or one bag, lock and travel mouse per Notebook.

e. DPA: Dell Preferred Account purchases. The expected percentage of DPA sales has climbed in the past years. It currently hovers between 40% and 60%, and they want a 1 to 1 customer to submitted application ratio.

6. Secret shoppers - The kiosks are secret shopped constantly, and they're playing of a 20-question scorecard. Don't be surprised if the salesman asks really base/borderline-insulting questions if you act interested. They think you're a secret shopper.

7. Communication - Complaints made about Dell to the kiosk reps go unheard. There is no place for the rep to turn around and report the complaint to. Communication between reps and even district management is limited, and reps are discouraged from calling the regional management. Store, district and regional management are all run from email and cell phones. It is not uncommon for the kiosks to receive three answers from three departments, with the end result being all three statements retracted without a solution in place.

Mysterious Clouds Creeping Out of the Arctic

A new NASA satellite has recorded the first detailed images from space of a mysterious type of cloud called “night-shining” or “noctilucent."

The clouds are on the move, brightening and creeping out of polar regions, and researchers don't know why.

"It is clear that these clouds are changing, a sign that a part of our atmosphere is changing and we do not understand how, why or what it means," said atmospheric scientists James Russell III of Hampton University in Hampton, Virginia. "These observations suggest a connection with global change in the lower atmosphere and could represent an early warning that our Earth environment is being changed."

The "Aeronomy of Ice in the Mesosphere” (AIM) satellite first imaged the noctilucent clouds May 25. People on the ground began seeing them June 6 over Northern Europe.

The clouds form 50 miles above the Earth’s surface, in an upper layer of the atmosphere called the mesosphere. The puffs of water vapor and crystals appear during summer months above the Northern Hemisphere's pole as well the Southern Hemisphere’s pole in summer.

AIM will record two complete cloud seasons over both regions, effectively documenting an entire life cycle of the shiny clouds for the first time. Researchers hope to figure out why noctilucent clouds form and how they might be related to global climate change.

Brain Scans Reveal Why Meditation Works

If you name your emotions, you can tame them, according to new research that suggests why meditation works.

Brain scans show that putting negative emotions into words calms the brain's emotion center. That could explain meditation’s purported emotional benefits, because people who meditate often label their negative emotions in an effort to “let them go.”

Psychologists have long believed that people who talk about their feelings have more control over them, but they don't know why it works.

UCLA psychologist Matthew Lieberman and his colleagues hooked 30 people up to functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) machines, which scan the brain to reveal which parts are active and inactive at any given moment.

They asked the subjects to look at pictures of male or female faces making emotional expressions. Below some of the photos was a choice of words describing the emotion—such as “angry” or “fearful”—or two possible names for the people in the pictures, one male name and one female name.

When presented with these choices, the subjects were asked to pick the most appropriate emotion or gender-appropriate name to fit the face they saw.

When the participants chose labels for the negative emotions, activity in the right ventrolateral prefrontal cortex region—an area associated with thinking in words about emotional experiences—became more active, whereas activity in the amygdala, a brain region involved in emotional processing, was calmed.

By contrast, when the subjects picked appropriate names for the faces, the brain scans revealed none of these changes—indicating that only emotional labeling makes a difference.

“In the same way you hit the brake when you’re driving when you see a yellow light, when you put feelings into words, you seem to be hitting the brakes on your emotional responses,” Lieberman said of his study, which is detailed in the current issue of Psychological Science.

In a second experiment, 27 of the same subjects completed questionnaires to determine how “mindful” they are.

Meditation and other “mindfulness” techniques are designed to help people pay more attention to their present emotions, thoughts and sensations without reacting strongly to them. Meditators often acknowledge and name their negative emotions in order to “let them go.”

When the team compared brain scans from subjects who had more mindful dispositions to those from subjects who were less mindful, they found a stark difference—the mindful subjects experienced greater activation in the right ventrolateral prefrontral cortex and a greater calming effect in the amygdala after labeling their emotions.

“These findings may help explain the beneficial health effects of mindfulness meditation, and suggest, for the first time, an underlying reason why mindfulness meditation programs improve mood and health,” said David Creswell, a UCLA psychologist who led the second part of the study, which will be detailed in Psychosomatic Medicine.

Google Desktop Search for Linux Available

After 3 long years since it was first introduced for Windows, Google Desktop Search is finally available for Linux users. It works on both KDE and GNOME based platforms like Ubuntu 6.10, SUSE 10.1, Debian 4.0 or Fedora Core 6.

The Quick Search Box is your fastest way to do web and desktop searches; type a few letters or words into the search box and your top results pop up instantly. You can call up the Quick Search Box by pressing the Ctrl key twice, and hide it by pressing Ctrl twice again.

Google Desktop automatically indexes and allows you to search the full text of virtually all your files, including the following types:

• Gmail
• Text files and source code
• PDF and PS files
• HTML files
• Email from Thunderbird
• OpenOffice.org documents
• Image and music files
• Man pages and Info pages
• File and folder names

New TFT LCD from LG is only 1.48mm thick

Samsung may try to unofficially claim the throne as the king of slim, but their fellow Korean companies aren’t going to give up without a fight. One of their biggest competitors, in the cell phone market anyways, is LG Electronics, and it seems that LG wants a big piece of the ultra-thin pie for themselves. The Korean manufacturer has just unveiled a new TFT LCD display that is a mere 1.48mm thick, or about 0.058-inches for those of you who aren’t metrically inclined.

Showcased in both 2.0 and 2.2-inch sizes, this new display will handle QVGA resolutions without a hitch, and they’re proposing various applications. I’m sure you can guess a few of these, like portable gaming machines, personal digital assistants (PDAs), and multimedia players. If integrated into a new batch of mobile phones, along with some other slim stuff, Samsung may have quite a battle for themselves when it comes to maintaining that they also have the “world’s thinnest”.

No word on when the TFT LCD’s will be available, and whether they plan on selling the technology for other companies’ uses.

Giant microwave turns plastic back to oil

A US company is taking plastics recycling to another level – turning them back into the oil they were made from, and gas.

All that is needed, claims Global Resource Corporation (GRC), is a finely tuned microwave and – hey presto! – a mix of materials that were made from oil can be reduced back to oil and combustible gas (and a few leftovers).

Key to GRC’s process is a machine that uses 1200 different frequencies within the microwave range, which act on specific hydrocarbon materials. As the material is zapped at the appropriate wavelength, part of the hydrocarbons that make up the plastic and rubber in the material are broken down into diesel oil and combustible gas.

GRC's machine is called the Hawk-10. Its smaller incarnations look just like an industrial microwave with bits of machinery attached to it. Larger versions resemble a concrete mixer.

"Anything that has a hydrocarbon base will be affected by our process," says Jerry Meddick, director of business development at GRC, based in New Jersey. "We release those hydrocarbon molecules from the material and it then becomes gas and oil."

Whatever does not have a hydrocarbon base is left behind, minus any water it contained as this gets evaporated in the microwave.

Simplified recycling

"Take a piece of copper wiring," says Meddick. "It is encased in plastic – a kind of hydrocarbon material. We release all the hydrocarbons, which strips the casing off the wire." Not only does the process produce fuel in the form of oil and gas, it also makes it easier to extract the copper wire for recycling.

Similarly, running 9.1 kilograms of ground-up tyres through the Hawk-10 produces 4.54 litres of diesel oil, 1.42 cubic metres of combustible gas, 1 kg of steel and 3.40 kg of carbon black, Meddick says.

Watch a video of tyre powder being reduced by the Hawk-10.

Less landfill

Gershow Recycling, a scrap metal company based in New York, US, has just said it will be the first to buy a Hawk-10. Gershow collects metal products, shreds them and turns them into usable pure metals. Most of its scrap comes from old cars, but for every ton of steel that the company recovers, between 226 kg and 318 kg of "autofluff" is produced.

Autofluff is the stuff that is left over after a car has been shredded and the steel extracted. It contains plastics, rubber, wood, paper, fabrics, glass, sand, dirt, and various bits of metal. GRC says its Hawk-10 can extract enough oil and gas from the left-over fluff to run the Hawk-10 itself and a number of other machines used by Gershow.

Because it makes extracting reusable metal more efficient and evaporates water from autofluff, the Hawk-10 should also reduce the amount of end material that needs to be deposited in landfill sites.

source:newscientist

Ubuntu Tricks - How to mount your Windows partition and make it read/writable with NTFS-3G

Previously I looked at mounting your NTFS drive on your Ubuntu box using raw Fuse to do it. Now we’re going to look at what may be a better way to do it. It’s certainly easier and from reports, NTFS-3G is a bit more stable as well. This Howto is written specifically for and from Ubuntu 6.10 - Edgy Eft but should work on any Debian based distro.

It should be noted that NTFS-3G is a BETA project (It’s sinced moved to release 1.0) and as such may contain bugs and issues. Writing to NTFS from Linux may be unstable so you should use this at your own risk.

The first thing you’re going to have to do is install NTFS-3G. Let’s open up a terminal session and do the following:

sudo apt-get update

sudo apt-get install ntfs-3g

You’ll be prompted to install this and several other dependancies as well. If you run into errors where ntfs-3g can’t be found, check out this article about adding extra repositories.

Now that NTFS-3G is installed, it’s time to tell your box to use it to mount your NTFS partition. Let’s find out where exactly that is. Back in your terminal type

sudo fdisk -l

You should get something that looks like this:

Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/sda1 * 1 2550 20480008+ 7 HPFS/NTFS
/dev/sda2 2550 7493 39707451+ f W95 Ext’d (LBA)
/dev/sda3 7494 9729 17960670 83 Linux
/dev/sda5 2550 7394 38911288+ b W95 FAT32
/dev/sda6 7395 7493 795186 82 Linux swap / Solaris

We’re interested in the partition that says HPFS/NTFS. Notice that on my machine it’s /dev/sda1. You’ll want to keep track of this for yours. I suggest spelling it out in leftover Halloween candy on your desk, or for a spooky effect, use fake blood.

Now that you have your info on the NTFS partition, let’s edit the fstab file in your /etc directory to use NTFS-3G.

sudo cp /etc/fstab /etc/fstab.bak

Always make backups of stuff like this. Really.

Many Ubuntu users will find that the fstab already reflects their NTFS drive as mounted in the /media folder. This is standard but does not allow write access, only read access. We’re going to change this to use NTFS-3G. To see what you have do the following:

cat /etc/fstab

If you have a mount point already for your NTFS partition, it will look something like:

/dev/sda1 /media/sda1 ntfs defaults,nls=utf8,umask=007,gid=46 0 1

You’ll want to replace the bit that says ntfs with ntfs-3g, so it looks like this:

gksu gedit /etc/fstab

Now add:

/dev/sda1 /media/sda1 ntfs-3g defaults,nls=utf8,umask=007,gid=46 0 1

Replace the /dev/sda1 bit with whatever you wrote down from your fdisk -l output and save the file.

If you don’t have this listed at all, you’ll want to create a mount point in your /media folder. If you want to call it ‘windows‘ then you’d make a directory under /media called windows:

sudo mkdir /media/windows

Then add the below line to your /etc/fstab file:

gksu gedit /etc/fstab

Now add:

/dev/sda1 /media/windows ntfs-3g defaults,nls=utf8,umask=007,gid=46 0 1

Finally, restart your machine. Your Windows partition should now be on your desktop, and you can access it through your terminal by going to /media and then cd into the directory your using.

source:arsgeek

Google Translate launches dictionary

Have you ever wanted to translate a single word into or from another language? Now you can use Google Translate to get their definition/translation and several examples of it used in a sentence. For individual word translations, this method is better than typing in a single word into the translate box — you get a better answer, and some useful usage samples.

This new feature currently only works for French, German, Italian and Korean to and from English.

Several weeks ago, Google also gave us the ability to search the “foreign web” in a three staged approach. First Google translates our search terms into the target language, then it queries Google for results with that translation, and finally it displays the results translated back into a language understood by the user.

Google Talk Gadget Introduces Group Chat

The browser based version of Google Talk has now added Group Chat feature which lets you invite other people to join your conversation. You can initiate group chat by clicking on the “Group Chat” button during normal chat conversation.

This new feature will work only on Google Talk Gadget, if you are trying to invite someone who is using other client (including Google Talk for Windows); he’ll get a link to the browser based version of Google Talk.

WWIGO: Use Camera Phone as Wireless Webcam for Free

Need a webcam? Why shell out cash when you can use your camera phone as a webcam for free. Motvik has recently released a product called WWIGO (Webcam Wherever You Go), it turns your Bluetooth enabled camera phone into a wireless webcam which can be used with any application on your computer.

WWIGO is a free application and supports all Nokia S60 v2.0 and v3.0 devices. There are plenty of benefits in using WWIGO over conventional webcams: Modern camera phones are equipped with better lens and higher resolution cameras, so your camera phone will behave as high quality webcam. It works wirelessly over Bluetooth, giving you the flexibility to move your camera phone. WWIGO is a two piece application, one part is installed in your computer and second part is installed in your mobile.

WWIGO is a free alternative to commercially available Mobiola Web Camera. I’ve tried both and I found WWIGO cleaner and simpler to use. You’ll need a S60 v2.0 or v3.0 handset and Windows (XP and Vista) along with Bluetooth adapter.

Features

• Use Camera Phone as Wirless Webcam
• Record videos with wwigo PC application.
• Use along with to do video chat.
• Live Upload with to share video.
• Video Quality better or comparable to off shelf webcam*
• Works with popular Bluetooth Stacks on PC
• Supported devices Nokia Series 60 v2.0 and Series 60 v3.0 phones ( see devices in download page)

source :motvik

Yahoo Censoring Open Source

According to avid Yahoo'er, Amanda Kerik, Yahoo seems to have developed a policy of censoring answers in their "Yahoo! Answers" service, if that answer contains a suggestion to use Open Source alternatives to Microsoft software.

The gist of it is, that a fellow Yahoo'er posted a question about what to do with a PC that had run into unsolvable Windows problems, since that user did not have a Windows install disc. Amanda suggested, quite amiably, that the hapless user should simply install Ubuntu Linux, since it looked like they'd need to start over from scratch anyway. Amanda was subsequently rewarded with a warning from Yahoo that her answer was "in violation of our Community Guidelines or Terms of Service.", and they promptly deleted her answer.

It's no secret that Yahoo are very pro-Microsoft, having previously supplied them with search and ad services, and there was much speculation about a possible merger between the two companies last year. More recently, during an interview with journalist John Battelle, Jeff Weiner, executive vice president of Yahoo’s Network Division intimated that Yahoo would be very open to working extremely closely with Microsoft in the future.

Meanwhile, Microsoft's arch rival Google is about to deliver a crushing blow against them, by finalising a deal to acquire advertising gurus DoubleClick, trouncing Microsoft's offer, despite the fact that Microsoft made a much higher bid. This, many have speculated, will mean the end for Microsoft's beleaguered Live services, which have failed miserably at every turn. With Google securing the DoubleClick deal with a lower offer, it is also a brutal humiliation for Microsoft, suggesting that DoubleClick lacked any confidence in Microsoft's ability to deliver quality search services, with their inept Live Search technology.

So is it any wonder that one of Microsoft's bed partners should be so keen to protect the Redmond giant's interests? Although censoring messages as innocuous as Amanda's, does seem to be stooping pretty low, even for a corporate Microsoft supporter.

But what does that say about Yahoo's ability to deliver accurate search results? Are they going to start censoring the entire Web, removing any negative references to Microsoft or Windows, and any positive references to Linux or Open Source?

source:slated

Jack PC: The Wall Socket PC

Newcastle-based Jade Integration will launch one of the smallest thin-client computers available in the UK to date, the Jack PC, next month.

Containing all the electronics needed to run as a low- to medium-power PC, the Jack PC, as its name suggests, will fit into a standard size wall socket. The entire PC sits on two layered circuitboards. It contains an AMD RISC processor to help reduce power consumption and heat output.

According to Jade Integration's managing director, Andy MacLellan, low power was one of the big breakthroughs achieved with the Jack PC. "A regular PC will use 80 Watts or more of power, and this only uses 5 Watts. That makes a big difference to the cost of running it, as well as other things."

The device was developed by Chip PC Technologies, a company that specialises in what it calls "post-PC technologies". According to MacLellan, Chip PC Technologies created the first Jack PC over a year ago and has been working on perfecting it since then. The University of Northumbria was one of the first organisations to take delivery of the device.

"This can be used as a standard PC on standard power," MacLellan told ZDNet UK, "or it can be used with power-over-Ethernet, and that really makes it efficient."

A basic Jack PC costs £209 without monitor or keyboard. At a low price and using low power, MacLellan believes the device is "one of the biggest developments in PCs that we have seen" and is one of the "ever-growing range of thin clients, which are rapidly replacing PCs as a more effective desktop computing solution for modern businesses".

The Jack PC runs Windows CE, is designed to connect to "any terminal server-based environment" and has Citrix ICA and Microsoft RDP clients built in.

It runs Internet Explorer 6.0 to connect to Web-driven applications, and runs an "up to 500MHz" AMD RISC processor, which the company says is equivalent to a 1.2GHz x86. It can come with up to 64MB of flash memory and 128MB RAM.

The power of a PC shrunk to a wall socket: the Jack PC

Analogue or digital monitors are supported, and the system can include support for dual-screen and 16:9 screens. It has four USB 2.0-compatible ports, 16-bit audio in/out and support for 24-bit (true colour), 1280x1024 graphics. The Jack PC will also support wireless connectivity.

While the device itself consumes less power than a standard PC, users who want to run a range of applications will need to connect it to a server. This will raise the total power consumption.

The Jack PC will be getting its official launch next month when it is being shown at the IT Works show which will run on the 14th and 15th of June in Newcastle.

source:Zdnet

Intel shows off 2 TFLOPS processor

INTEL'S ANNUAL Research@Intel Day here in Santa Clara kicked off in high gear, with Chipzilla letting out boffins from the lab to see the light of day. Intel has its fair share of "Blue Sky" projects but probably the most impressive is from its Tera Scale Computing group of projects. After demonstrating 80-core silicon in Beijing, brave researchers have now polished the cooling component and tweaked the silicon, so now the performance reaches two TeraFLOPS when these 80 floating-point mini-cores are working at no less than 6.26GHz. The Interesting thing about this demo was the fact that these cores achieve 1TFLOPS at 3.13GHz and at that clock, power consumption is only 24 Watts, while for double more, 6.26GHz eats up more th157 Watts.

80-core processor lived through many improvements from IDF Spring in Beijing

6.26 GHz yield 2TFLOPS... or how academia people will be dancing around the table when this comes to life

In idle, only four out of 80 cores are working, at 3.13GHz and they consume only 3.32 Watts, meaning that one FP unit eats only 0.83W at 3.13 GHz.

Now, here's the big kicker for this demo. Currently, this project is actually split in two: one project is currently integrating x86 cores into an massive 80-core monster, while another project is actually stacking of SRAM and DRAM memory on top of this Tera-Scale processing monster. When that happens, cache memory will have bandwidth measured in hundreds of gigabytes per second.

This very impressive stuff has only one real problem when "coming to life" part is concerned. With X86 cores onboard, this CPU would simply, without any doubt whatever, slaughter the Itanic like there's no tomorrow.

Intel toys with carbon nanotubes

RECENTLY, CARBON nanotubes have been getting a lot of attention as a replacement for, or more likely an addition to, normal semiconductor materials. What are they, and what do they do?

Carbon nanotubes are basically carbon atoms that form into a straw-shaped tube molecule which gives them a bunch of interesting properties, two of which are relevant to chip makers. There are two forms of the tube one is a good ballistic conductor, the other a semiconductor, and they only differ in their chirality (look it up).

In nature, they form at about two-third semiconductor, one-third conductor, making them pretty useless in aggregate for either function. Intel research is hard at work trying to determine how to not only make them at 100 per cent one form or the other, but also how to place them on a chip.

The chirality can be strongly influenced by the seed material or catalysts for the formation of the tubes, so you can nudge it one way or the other. For a chip with a billion transistors, you need to improve the error rate to one wrong molecule ever few billion, one off could kill a chip. Going from 33 per cent to .00000000001 per cent or so is not easy, and missing by a tiny bit means dead parts.

Once that is solved, there comes the question of what to do with the damn things. Currently there are two options, neither is really the clear winner right now, and both or neither may pan out. You can use them in the semiconductor form for traditional semiconductor roles, or you can use the conductive form for interconnects.

No matter what you use them for, there is another question, or more to the point, problem to be solved. Grow or place? You can make the tubes in a vat and place them with sub-micron accuracy a billion times, or grow them where they need to be. Both are not trivial things to do, and will be another research topic once you figure out how to make them in the first place.

In any case, there are three problem and two uses for carbon nanotubes in chips. With any luck, they will be solved before traditional methods run out of headroom, and progress can continue. They may pan out, they may not, that is what research determines

Source Techbuzz

Connect Google Talk to AIM, MSN, & Yahoo

Google has announced plans to get Google Talk and AIM talking, but with a little elbow grease you can do that and more today.

Now that Google has opened up their Google Talk servers for federation with other Jabber servers, you can use Google Talk to connect to your friends on AIM, MSN, Yahoo or ICQ. Here's how, step-by-step with screenshots.

First, download and install the free Jabber client called Psi. It's a fine Jabber client, and you might want to keep it, but you won't need to once you've set everything up. The Psi wiki has a great step-by-step for connecting to Google Talk. Follow their instructions and you'll be able to see your Google Talk contacts.

Next, go to Service Discovery and browse the Jabber server ursine.ca and you'll see the transports available.

Click on a transport and Psi will gather data.

Right-click on a transport to register. Registration involves entering your username and password for the given IM network. Once you do, Psi will connect to that network and retrieve your contacts. You can also add new contacts.

Once I had "registered" each of my IM accounts, I had a lot (hundreds?) of system messages.

Basically it asked me to confirm that I wanted to add each of these contacts. Once I did, they showed up in my Psi contact list.

Now exit Psi and fire-up Google Talk. You'll have all your IM contacts right there on your Google Talk contact list.

Once you've done so, you can chat with your friends on AIM, Yahoo, ICQ, MSN -- all using Google Talk. You can also add contacts directly within Google Talk. Just use the format [screenname]@[transport.dns.name]. For example, to add my MSN screen name you would enter jeff@msn.ursine.ca

What's the deal with ursine.ca? You can use any Jabber server you'd like -- you'll find a complete list here at Open Jabber Servers -- ursine.ca was just the server I used.

This process works, although in my experience, the MSN transport has not been reliable. One of my friends reported an weird "echo" effect. Everything she typed was returned back to her as if from me (I saw none of her messages). I've also sent IMs to MSN contacts, only to have them immediately appear "offline."

As with any of these kinds of hacks, your mileage may vary. But you've got to admit -- it is very cool to be able to use Google Talk as a universal IM client.

10 Things We Can Learn From Apple

There's no need to restate the high reverence (or pangs of envy, depending on where your loyalty lies) of Apple. They have innovated, floundered, and in recent years, risen from the ashes to make one hell of a run in computing and electronics devices. Love them or hate them, you can't deny that they are adored by their fans. Their brand has reached that highly sought-after place in the world of marketing: they can do no wrong.

So how did they get there? Is it dumb luck? Or are they just much smarter than the rest of us? The most common reason given is Apple's rabid devotion to design. That is, without a doubt, a key component of Apple's success. But I think there's more to it than that. Here are ten reasons why I think Apple is so successful today, and what we can learn from them:

1. Understand The Total Experience. Apple is not a software company. It's also not a hardware company. It's an experience company. Software and hardware just play a part in the broader experience. Imagine your iPod without iTunes. Hardware and software are industry demarcations that the masses could care less about. By ignoring that separation and focusing on solving real problems in a cohesive way, they obliterated the portable music market.
2. Less Is More. You see it in all of Apple's interfaces. That "clean" look. Sure, the power is there, but wherever possible it's hidden away. As for controls, there's hardly a single button on an iPod. Hell, there isn't even a power switch. It seems counter-intuitive to the engineering mind. Less features and less controls appeal to people more. But it makes sense. With less, there's less room for error. Less to digest. Less to learn. In other words, a shorter path to enjoyment.
3. "He's Got His Father's Eyes." Take a look at an iPod. Then take a look at the Apple remote. Load up iTunes. Then visit apple.com. Nearly all of Apple's products share common genetic characteristics. One of the most striking examples is a previous version of the iMac that actually looks like an iPod. Why is this important? Two reasons. First, by reinforcing common conventions, the learning curve is flattened. Second, these familiar profiles reinforce Apple's signature. You could probably pick an Apple product out of a line-up that you've never seen before.
4. "I'd Like To Introduce You To Some...Thing." How many other companies do you know of that introduce a product line personally? Rather than a press release. Or a meme that starts out among a collection of bloggers. Or some sort of email list. Apple personally introduces their products to their loyal fans. Often times, it seems like magically, their web presence is simultaneously updated - sometimes allowing for purchase of just-introduced products.
5. Control The Hardware. This isn't even a secret. Steve Jobs said it bluntly at the iPhone introduction: if you want to build great software, you have to control the hardware. This is precisely why the iPhone feels four or five generations ahead of any portable device available today. Phone carriers like Sprint and T-Mobile fish around looking for sexy, powerful hardware from electronics manufacturers like Samsung and Motorola. Microsoft will go to bed with just about anybody to promote their software platform. Apple knows better. To create truly compelling experiences, you need to have a hand in all the pieces of the puzzle. The iPhone is a great example of that synergy.
6. Hide The Screws. This is a classic Apple move. Mimic real world artifacts and make things feel less like technology devices and more like something you'd find in the real world. Pick up your iPod. It has no visible screws. It isn't even clear how the device comes together. Hiding the ugliness of technology makes these toys more endearing. Features like coverflow and the upcoming time machine further this notion of pulling design inspiration from the real world.
7. "Go Ahead. Touch It." People are scratching their heads wondering why the Apple retail stores are so successful. Gateway tried it years ago and their stores are all gone now. Dell is trying to sell through retail as well...through Walmart. Somehow, I don't think finding Dell laptops across the aisle from 60 lb. bags of fertilizer will amount to the same shopping experience. Above all else, Apple stores are designed to allow you to touch, play with and interact with every one of their products. You're implicitly invited to approach an iPod or Macbook and just play with it. This evinces a confidence in the ease of use of their products, and more importantly, a confidence in you.
8. Feeling & Thinking. Good functional design and thoughtful product management is a struggle to appeal to and connect with others at a cognitive level. While that's important, Apple understands there's more to it than that. Their products have a welcoming, anthropomorphic quality about them. They lack the rigid right angles and black tones that dominate so many computer devices. They appeal to our emotions as well as our intellect.
9. Great Design = New Invention. The MP3 player was around for years before the iPod hit the scene. While others were vying to somehow coax consumers towards this new way of carrying and listening to music, the iPod reset everything. It was, for the great majority of people, the real invention of the portable music player. Apple understands that great design (not just good design) can have such a staggering impact that it can introduce a product to the uninitiated masses. Another example is Spaces, one of the new features on their upcoming operating system. Virtual desktops have been around for years, but one look at Spaces and it feels brand new.
10. It's About People. The one over-arching theme that seems to penetrate everything Apple does is their basic understanding that every single thing they sell will be touched by a person. They don't build API's. They aren't integrating with back-end systems. They aren't making sure machines talk to machines. They're creating things that people are going to touch and, at the risk of sounding hokey, have relationships with. Every bit of their philosophy - from how a box is opened to how a clickwheel feels - reinforces this unavoidable fact.

source : basement

Apple Pits the iPhone against Nokia N95

Apple claims to be the leader of the smart phone pack when it comes to battery life. In a press release yesterday, Apple claimed that the iPhone will feature up to 8 hours of talk time, 6 hours of Internet use, 7 hours of video playback or 24 hours of audio playback.

Quite like the ultra competitive embedded CPU business, the battery segment happens to be the hot bed of innovation. This announcement is reminiscent of what happened with the iPods. The Gen 5.5 iPods had considerably more battery life that its Gen 5 ancestors, albeit with a brighter display and a little lighter in weight.

This seems to indicate that the OEM battery manufacturers for Apple have probably improved their batteries. This could also be coupled with CPU (Most likely an ARM core, quite like the iPods) throttling improvements to the OS Kernel, by Apple. Unlike most smart phones available in the market, iPhone’s battery cannot be swapped with a freshly charged battery by the user; however that should be compensated with 8 long hours of talk time.

Apple claims that there has never been a phone like iPhone and to prove this, they have provide a neat comparison chart which compares iPhone with other popular smart phones like N95, Samsung Blackjack, Blackberry Curve 8300 and Palm Treo 750.

With just 10 days left, Apple also revealed that they’ve upgraded iPhone’s entire top surface from plastic to optical-quality glass for superior scratch resistance and clarity.

YouTube Mobile Goes Live

YouTube has official launched the mobile friendly version of their popular video sharing website which is accessible at m.youtube.com. Previously, YouTube had an exclusivity deal with Verizon (in the US) and Vodafone (in UK), which is now coming to an end.

Upon your first visit, you’ll be warned that YouTube Mobile is a data intensive application and they recommend upgrading to an unlimited plan. Only limited number of videos are currently available on YouTube Mobile, which is quite disappointing.

Screenshots:

I tried YouTube Mobile on my N95 and the video quality is remarkably good. However, due to lack of content and other social aspects, the site fails to deliver the true YouTube experience.

Free Flickr Pro Account for Yahoo! Photos Users

Yahoo’s decision to close down Yahoo Photos seems to have disappointed many users. Now, Yahoo wants to bring back smiles on their faces and encourage them to migrate to Yahoo-owned Flickr by giving them 3-months of free Flickr Pro account.

“June 17, 2007 – 3 months of Pro Account status fell from the sky on to You (a gift from Flickr to say thanks!) – $0.00.”

A regular Flickr users has a 100 MB monthly upload limit, 3 sets and photostream are limited to just 200 most recent images, whereas Flickr Pro account have no restrictions on uploads, sets, photostream and more.

Sounds like a moderately fair incentive for Yahoo Photo users to migrate to their photos to Flickr Pro Account, which would otherwise cost $24.95 per year (hence, a value of $6.23). If Flickr isn’t your choice, there are other similar services which provide incentives: Shutterfly (a free 8×8 inch photo book), Kodak Gallery (Get 20 free 4×6 inch prints) or Snapfish (Get 50 free 4×6–inch prints)

In other Flickr-Yahoo news, Yahoo has dropped PayPal as a payment option for Flickr Pro accounts. Instead, they want you to use Yahoo! Wallet, which lets you add PayPal account, but only if you have a credit card or a debit card attached as an alternate funding method in your wallet. This news comes as a disappointment to many International Flickr Pro users, who don’t have a credit card. Discussions on Flickr forum, indicate that the users don’t seem to be very happy about this change either.

source : techBuzz

iPhone to Deliver up to Eight Hours of Talk Time

When it ships on June 29, iPhone will deliver significantly longer battery life than originally estimated: up to 8 hours of talk time, 6 hours of Internet use, 7 hours of video playback or 24 hours of audio playback. It will also feature up to 250 hours (more than 10 days) of standby time. Apple also announced that it has upgraded the entire top surface of iPhone, including its stunning 3.5-inch display, from plastic to optical-quality glass to achieve a superior level of scratch resistance and optical clarity.

ICSA Labs certifies Kaspersky Internet Security 6.0 for Windows Vista

Kaspersky Internet Security 6.0 has passed certification testing conducted by the US laboratory ICSA Labs, a respected research lab.

Kaspersky Lab, a leading developer of secure content management solutions, announces that Kaspersky Internet Security 6.0 has been certified under both Desktop/Server Anti-Virus Detection and Anti-Virus Cleaning Criteria for Microsoft Windows Vista.

To be awarded an ICSA Labs certificate, a product should detect and remove all malicious programs from the test set without any false positives and without damaging any files that it disinfects. The tests conducted by ICSA Labs experts on a 32 bit version of Windows Vista prove that Kaspersky Internet Security 6.0 meets the highest standards of antivirus protection by detecting and removing all malicious program samples on the infected computer.

ICSA Labs, formerly known as the International Computer Security Association, is one of the most respected bodies specializing in developing standards and providing certification for IT security products. Kaspersky Lab products have traditionally passed ICSA certification since Kaspersky Lab was founded in 1997.

"We are glad to see that such a respected organization as ICSA Labs has confirmed the effectiveness of protection provided by our flagship product for platforms based on Microsoft’s latest operating system. The ICSA Labs certificate is further proof that Kaspersky Lab solutions are an optimal choice for Windows Vista users,” said Alaxey Tal, Kaspersky Lab certification manager.

Microsoft's own antivirus fails to secure Vista

Microsoft's own antivirus software, Live OneCare, is unable to fully protect Vista users against viruses, and one of security firm McAfee's antivirus software packages also fails to protect users, according to independent research released Friday.

Security news site Virus Bulletin, backed by a team of security researchers based in Oxfordshire, U.K., tested 15 antivirus software packages used by businesses and designed specifically for Vista, Microsoft's newest operating system. The packages were released to businesses two months ago.

The researchers tested whether each of the antivirus products would stop a set of viruses known to be currently circulating. In order to be awarded a pass, the software had to detect all the viruses with no false positives.

But out of the 15, four failed: Microsoft Live OneCare 1.5; McAfee VirusScan Enterprise version 8.1i; G DATA AntiVirusKit 2007 v17.0.6353; and Norman VirusControl v5.90. The other 11, including software from CA, Fortinet, F-Secure, Kaspersky, Sophos and Symantec, detected all the viruses.

"With the number of delays that we've seen in Vista's release, there's no excuse for security vendors not to have got their products right by now," said John Hawes, technical consultant at Virus Bulletin. "In these days of hourly updates, it's always a surprise and a disappointment to see major products missing them (viruses). Vista cannot fend off today's malware without help from security products. It certainly looks like people upgrading to the new platform are going to need additional security solutions."

Joe Telafici, vice president of operations for McAfee's Avert Labs, told ZDNet UK that, in his opinion, Virus Bulletin had not used its latest antivirus updates, causing the failure. He said McAfee would issue further results with the updated software.

Microsoft pledged to improve Live OneCare. "We are looking closely at the methodology and results of the test to ensure that Windows Live OneCare performs better in future tests and, most importantly, as part of our ongoing work to continually enhance Windows Live OneCare," a company representative told ZDNet UK.

On the subject of Vista, the Microsoft representative added: "It's important to remember that no software is 100 percent secure. Microsoft is working to keep the number of security vulnerabilities that ship in our products to a minimum, through our Security Development Lifecycle process, and that work is paying off. The release of Windows Vista is the first Microsoft operating system to use the Security Development Lifecycle from start to finish and was tested more, prior to shipping, than any previous version of Windows."

source:zdnet

Google suspects users are not human

IN A FINE TWIST of irony, the software algorithms at Google's planet-wide cluster interrupted my peaceful web searching experience to tell me I looked more like a virus rather than a human being.

In Philip K Dick's famous novel 'Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?' 'bounty' hunters track down, identify and kill human-like androids which are made of organic components and thus virtually indistinguishable from humans. They subject suspect androids to an "empathy test" interrogation designed to trigger an emotional response on the suspects. Since those androids can't feel empathy, their responses are either bad or too slow as the programmed brain on them struggles to come up with the logical correct answer, instead of the emotional one that the interviewer expects.

Oh-oh... "Toto, I’ve a feeling we’re not in Kansas anymore"

This time, the situation was reversed... it wasn't a human looking for rogue machines, but a machine (the GoogleMind) testing me, to see if I was human. For a moment, I felt inside Philip K Dick's world -which plenty of you would surely remember more because of the 'Blade Runner' movie. I swear I wasn't doing anything "suspicious". I just typed www.google.com, then clicked on Google Groups, and then started a search with the string "cyberguard password" -as I was trying to find the default password for one firewall appliance-. The first results page was promptly displayed, but when I clicked on "Next" to see the second results page, the GoogleMind awakened and virtual alarms were triggered.

What was my sin? Searching for "Cyberguard password"

Before I realized what happened, a the web browser read in unusually large typeface "We're sorry...", followed by an explanation of sorts... "your query looks similar to automated requests from a computer virus or spyware application". Yes, Google was telling me that apparently computer virus log/in to GMail with a valid account -like I did minutes before- that viruses and spyware type assorted legit search strings, to end with a search for "cyberguard password". Huh?. Did I miss something?. I was probably authenticated with a cookie on my browser by then, was I a total stranger to the GoogleMind? Apparently so.

OK, I go back, hit "Next Results" and I'm stopped again

The message continued "To protect our users" [pardon me? since when does a web search hurt other search engine users?] "we can't process your request right now". The company apparently informed me then that "my access" [to the search engine I suspect] was suspended: "We'll restore your access as quickly as possible, so try again soon". [soon?].

"In the meantime, if you suspect that your computer or network has been infected, you might want to run a virus checker, or spyware removed, to make sure that your systems are free of viruses and other spurious software". [Gee, I run Linux, and at the time of that incident my notebook was the only active system on my IP address, I wonder if they mean "Picasa for Wine" when they say "spurious software"? -sorry, I couldn't resist the punch].

Finally, I prove I'm Human and I'm allowed to continue...

The ending line of the message was even more frightening: "We apologize for the inconvenience, and hope we'll see you again on Google" [So, is the firm escorting me out the door?]. Fortunately, at the end of that page of nonsense, was something that made a bit of sense "To continue searching, type the characters you see below" followed by a familiar captcha box, the Turing test to tell humans apart from computers, more frequently seen in web forums and guestbooks to fend off spammers.

Just to make sure I understood what happened, I hit my browser's -SeaMonkey 1.11- "Back" button, and yes, I was indeed logged in at Google, and my search was "Cyberguard password", pretty harmless it seemed to me. So I hit the "next" link, once again, at the bottom of Google's first page of results to my search query. Once again, I was interrupted by the dreaded Google Police. Fortunately, once I entered the Captcha message, the GoogleMind identified me as a "surely an human being, sometimes", and let me carry on with my search for the default manufacturer password for an internet appliance.

source:theinquirer

Picture power: Tragedy of Omayra Sanchez

Found this in BBC site.. schking!!

In the second of five pieces by photographers talking about their award-winning work, Frank Fournier describes how he captured the tragic image of 13-year-old Omayra Sanchez trapped in debris caused by a mudslide following the eruption of a volcano in Colombia in 1985.

Frank Fournier's winning photo Enlarge Image

Red Cross rescue workers had apparently repeatedly appealed to the government for a pump to lower the water level and for other help to free the girl. Finally rescuers gave up and spent their remaining time with her, comforting her and praying with her. She died of exposure after about 60 hours.

The picture had tremendous impact when it was published. Television cameras had already relayed Omayra's agony into homes around the world.

When the photo was published, many were appalled at witnessing so intimately what transpired to be the last few hours of Omayra's life. They pointed out that technology had been able to capture her image for all time and transmit it around the globe, but was unable to save her life.

---

I arrived in Bogota from New York about two days after the volcanic eruption. The area I needed to get to was very remote. It involved a five-hour drive and then about two and a half hours walking.

Dawn was just breaking and the poor girl was in pain and very confused

The country itself was in political turmoil - shortly before the explosion, there had been a takeover of the Palace of Justice in Bogota by leftist M-19 guerrillas. Many people had been killed and this had a big impact on the way people in the remote town of Armero were helped. The army, for example, had been mobilised in the capital.

I reached the town of Ameroyo at dawn about three days after the explosion. There was a lot of confusion - people were in shock and in desperate need of help. Many were trapped by debris.

I met a farmer who told me of this young girl who needed help. He took me to her, she was almost on her own at the time, just a few people around and some rescuers helping someone else a bit further away.

'Eerie silence'

She was in a large puddle, trapped from the waist down by concrete and other debris from the collapsed houses. She had been there for almost three days. Dawn was just breaking and the poor girl was in pain and very confused.

People were asking: 'Why didn't you help her? Why didn't you get her out?' But it was impossible

All around, hundreds of people were trapped. Rescuers were having difficulty reaching them. I could hear people screaming for help and then silence - an eerie silence. It was very haunting. There were a few helicopters, some that had been loaned by an oil company, trying to rescue people.

Then there was this little girl and people were powerless to help her. The rescuers kept coming back to her, local farmers and some people who had some medical aid. They tried to comfort her.

When I took the pictures I felt totally powerless in front of this little girl, who was facing death with courage and dignity. She could sense that her life was going.

I felt that the only thing I could do was to report properly on the courage and the suffering and the dignity of the little girl and hope that it would mobilise people to help the ones that had been rescued and had been saved.

I felt I had to report what this little girl had to go through.

Powerful

By this stage, Omayra was drifting in and out of consciousness. She even asked me if I could take her to school because she was worried that she would be late.

I gave my film to some photographers who were going back to the airport and had them shipped back to my agent in Paris. Omayra died about three hours after I got there.

At the time, I didn't realise how powerful the photograph was - the way in which the little girl's eye connect with the camera.

There was an outcry - debates on television on the nature of the photojournalist - how much he or she is a vulture

The photograph was published in Paris Match magazine a few days later. People were very disturbed by it because Omayra's plight had been captured by television reporters and relayed around the world. Then my picture of her in the last few hours of her life was published after she had died.

People were asking: "Why didn't you help her? Why didn't you get her out?" But it was impossible.

There was an outcry - debates on television on the nature of the photojournalist, how much he or she is a vulture. But I felt the story was important for me to report and I was happier that there was some reaction; it would have been worse if people had not cared about it.

I am very clear about what I do and how I do it, and I try to do my job with as much honesty and integrity as possible. I believe the photo helped raise money from around the world in aid and helped highlight the irresponsibility and lack of courage of the country's leaders. There was an obvious lack of leadership. There were no evacuation plans, yet scientists had foreseen the catastrophic extent of the volcano's eruption.

People still find the picture disturbing. This highlights the lasting power of this little girl. I was lucky that I could act as a bridge to link people with her. It's the magic of the thing.

There are hundreds of thousands of Omayras around the world - important stories about the poor and the weak and we photojournalists are there to create the bridge.

The question of the power of the press is more important today that it ever has been because it is so much under pressure from the business side of things.


source:BBC