Iraq Emerges From Isolation as Telecommunications Hub

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The new cable will speed Internet and telephone traffic to India in the East and Sicily in the West. From there, traffic moves onto other networks to connect to the rest of the world.

Much of the world takes lightning-fast broadband service for granted, but any kind of Internet access remains a rarity in Iraq, where fewer than 3 percent of households are online. The new capacity could help bring Internet connections to 50 percent within two years, said Mohammed Tawfiq Allawi, the Iraqi communications minister.

via Iraq Emerges From Isolation as Telecommunications Hub – NYTimes.com.

All-Optical Networks: The Last Piece of the Puzzle

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The functionality of an optical diode is simple to understand, as explained by MIT’s Caroline Ross, whose lab recently published a paper on the diode: “It lets light go one-way, but blocks it from going the other way.” In that sense, it’s no different from electrical diodes that have existed for decades. (While the electronics term is “diode,” the preferred term in photonics is “optical isolator.”)

But controlling photons presents challenges far more complex than controlling electrons. “You need to have a material where light propagating in one direction behaves differently from light propagating in the opposite direction,” says Ross. In order to achieve that, you need a transparent material that when magnetized creates an asymmetrical medium, which allows you to control the light’s direction.

via All-Optical Networks: The Last Piece of the Puzzle – Input Output.

Boeing prepares an ultra-secure smartphone

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Earlier this week, it was revealed that aerospace firm Boeing was working on a high security mobile device for the various intelligence departments. This device will most likely be released later this year, and at a lower price point than other mobile phones targeted at the same communities. Typically, phones in this range cost about $15,000-$20,000 per phone, and use custom hardware and software to get the job done. This phone will most likely use Android as its main operating system of choice, which lowers the cost per phone, since Boeing’s developers don’t have to write their own operating system from scratch

via Boeing prepares an ultra-secure smartphone – Denver Computers | Examiner.com.

New targeted Mac OS X Trojan requires no user interaction

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After infecting a given Mac, this Trojan is like most: it connects to a remote website using HTTP in typical command and control C&C fashion to fetch instructions from remote hackers telling it what to do. The backdoor contains functionality to take screenshots of the user’s current session, upload and download files, as well as execute commands remotely on the infected machine. Encrypted logs are sent back to the control server, so the hackers can monitor activity.

via New targeted Mac OS X Trojan requires no user interaction | ZDNet.

The New Grabio Lets You Grab Classified Deals On The Go

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Essentially it’s a mobile Craigslist with notifications and location-based searches for classified listings. You can enter any neighborhood, do a quick search, and pick up a broken girls bicycle seat or a gently used full body cast for a few bucks

via The New Grabio Lets You Grab Classified Deals On The Go | TechCrunch.

There are a few similar services out there, most notably EggDrop and Zaarly, but Grabio uses a location aware API notifies you when you’re near deals.

Open-Source NVIDIA Driver Approaches Stable State

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The Nouveau driver has had a long and challenging journey to get where’s it at today where the developers are now comfortable with the Nouveau driver leaving the Linux kernel’s staging area and thus also fully committing to a stable ABI for their kernel driver (their DRM version is also now marked as v1.0). Nouveau began more than a half-decade ago; I first wrote about the project in 2006 and it wasn’t until 2007 that OpenGL began to sort of work on this free software driver that was started by Stephane Marchesin (he’s no longer directly involved with Nouveau as for a while now he’s been off working for Google on Chrome OS). Nouveau’s journey has been quite interesting and in the past six years has earned itself 450 news posts where I have written about this open-source NVIDIA driver and over 60 featured articles that have included benchmarks or more extensive information on this Linux driver.

via [Phoronix] Open-Source NVIDIA Driver Approaches Stable State.

Worlds Inc. Files Patent Infringement Lawsuit Against Activision Blizzard, Inc., Blizzard Entertainment, Inc., and Activision Publishing, Inc.

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Worlds Inc. owns US patents numbers 8,082,501, 7,493,558, 7,945,856 and 7,181,690 titled “System and Method for Enabling Users to Interact in a Virtual Space” and has additional continuation claims in process before the U.S Patent & Trademark Office (USPTO). These patents relate to computer architecture for three-dimensional graphical multi-user interactive virtual world systems. Such systems are utilized in Massive Multi-Player Online Role-Playing Games (MMORPG).

via Worlds Inc. Files Patent Infringement Lawsuit Against Activision Blizzard, Inc., Blizzard Entertainment, Inc., and Activision Publishing, Inc. – MarketWatch.

Jevons paradox

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In economics, the Jevons paradox (sometimes Jevons effect) is the proposition that technological progress that increases the efficiency with which a resource is used, tends to increase (rather than decrease) the rate of consumption of that resource.[1] In 1865, the English economist William Stanley Jevons observed that technological improvements that increased the efficiency of coal-use led to the increased consumption of coal in a wide range of industries. He argued that, contrary to common intuition, technological improvements could not be relied upon to reduce fuel consumption.[2]

via Jevons paradox – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.