Posts Tagged ‘Design’
Acer For Your New Laptop
August 19th, 2009 | 
Author: We recognize many brands for laptop manufacturers. Each brand has its own benefits for users. One of the top brands for laptop manufacturers is Acer. All over the world, this brand has proven to give complete features in the most reasonable price. This brand has satisfied users in all over the world with the easiness on operating it and installing new application programs into it. Acer also gives quite fair price for its high quality laptop, some even call the price is much cheaper than the price of other laptop brands. Acer also keeps following the new trend on technology. Nowadays, most laptop users expect to have more easiness on bringing their laptop on their travel. Even though laptop only weight less than 2 kg, they want for a slimmer laptop that has weight less than that.
The new Acer netbook LT3000 series tries to answer this market demand. Acer releases this netbook only with the basic features. This netbook is only able to perform basic gaming, word processing, email, and other similar features. However, Acer still gives its best technology to support this LT3000. We will find Atom Z520 processors that powered its Windows XP OS. Even though it only has 11.6-inch LCD display, but we can still enjoy 1GB of RAM, 160 HDD, as well as US15W chipset. It also gives three USB 2.0 ports, wireless LAN, Bluetooth, webcam and other features that can help us to stay connected while we are traveling. This small size netbook will only weight for 1.25kg that will not require lots of space in our luggage.
Posted in Technology | 
Tags: application, blog, blogs, bluetooth, Computer, Design, email, gadget, lcd display, Space, Technology, webcam, Windows, Wireless, world | 
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USA: the stimulus of $7billion for broadband will be too little to achieve its goals
The economic stimulus package, officially known as the American Recovery & Reinvestment Act of 2009, directs the Federal Communications Commission to construct a “national broadband plan” and provides $7.2 billion to the Agriculture Dept. and Commerce Dept. for grants and loans for broadband deployment and related projects.
In doing so, Congress kicked off a race for government broadband money and a debate over how to achieve universal broadband access. Ironically, the money will likely be gone before the broadband policy is in place.
Part of what’s slowing the process of rolling out broadband networks to remote rural and unwired urban areas are debates over how fast the networks should be, how much it will cost to provide universal broadband service, and who will pay for it.
A Leap in Data Capacity
Broadband connections allow the fast flow of information that permits people to send e-mail, shop online, and retrieve information from the Web at high speeds. Broadband Internet access also lets PC users exchange videos, music, and other large digital files. To get an idea of the leap in data capacity we’re talking about, standard phone system voice calls transmit data at the rate of about 10,000 bits per second. But digital videos require bandwidths of about 2 million bits per second. Applications such as online “distance learning” classes need even more.
Some companies and consumer groups have advised the FCC to set a goal for national broadband speeds of 10 million to 20 million bits per second. Meeting that goal will require network speeds 20 to 100 times faster than is typical in today’s networks, which were designed for voice or one-way video distribution. Upgrading, extending, and adding to today’s networks will require enormous capital expenditures.
The problem is, nobody really knows how much capital will be needed. The broadband goal isn’t yet defined, and the U.S. doesn’t have an accurate count of how many households lack Internet connections or are “underserved” by slower networks.
Part of the government’s stimulus money will go toward defining this “broadband gap.” Closing the gap could be more expensive than the country expects, however, and will depend on several technical and geographic factors.
A More Realistic Estimate
Many estimates say that about 40 million U.S. households may be unserved or underserved by broadband networks and that providing those homes with broadband connections will cost about $1,500 per household. That comes to $60 billion at minimum, since this math excludes the money consumers will need to spend to acquire PCs and other computer gear.
The $60 billion estimate also excludes the cost of bringing users who are in areas served by slow broadband connections up to the emerging national standard. Our best estimate of the minimum capital requirement is about $120 billion. This assumes substantial provision of wireless Internet service to rural homes and elsewhere, which is contingent on making available more radio spectrum.
It’s clear the $7.2 billion stimulus package funding won’t go very far, even if all the money is used for network investment. And that won’t likely happen, since the Recovery Act says the money also needs to be used for things such as consumer education and maps that show which areas are least served.
Some public interest groups urge more government funding and call attention to efforts of state, local, and foreign governments to build networks with tax funds. But the fiscal realities are discouraging.
Posted in Communications |
Tags: amp, application, blog, blogs, broadband service, business, Communications, communications commission, Computer, consumers, Culture, Design, grants, information, Internet, internet access, internet service, maps, money, Network, online, system, Technology, voice calls, Wireless |
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Messaging Anti-Abuse Working Group has issued best practices to help ISPs work with consumers to eliminate botnets
Bots, or malware running on users’ computers without their knowledge, are responsible for generating up to 90 percent of spam and can also be used to steal personal information or take part in DDOS (distributed denial of service) attacks. MAAWG Common Best Practices for Mitigating Large Scale Bot Infections in Residential Networks (Version 1.0) outlines strategies used by some of the largest ISPs worldwide yet was developed to be scalable for smaller network operators and to consider legal and process differences among countries.
“Bots are a global affliction and these best practices are an important step in educating the industry on the appropriate processes to help protect consumers. We’re sharing the experiences of our global membership so that network operators everywhere can more aggressively tackle this problem. As an industry, we are becoming more proactive in alerting customers when bots are detected on their computers and in helping users remove the malware before it can harm them,” said MAAWG Chairman Michael O’Reirdan.
The new best practices outline various options for alerting customers when their computers are infected and has suggestions for helping end-users clean their systems. The paper discusses bot detection methods, customer notification, and the use of walled gardens to limit infected machines’ exposure to the Internet. Among the recommendations:
While protecting users’ privacy, network operators can use various tools to detect infected end-user computers, including DNS, scanning the IP space to identify vulnerable computers, and collecting IP traffic information for known command and control addresses.
Email, phone calls to customers, postal mail and walled gardens are common notification tools, each with their own considerations. In-browser messages are considered to be among the most effective methods to alert customers but also can be technically challenging to implement.
ISPs need to maintain a well-publicized security portal that includes directions for end-user bot removal.
The paper also includes sample end-user messages and a list of malware detection and removal tools. The best practices will continue to be revised to reflect new procedures and the evolution of new bots threats.
Users Under Estimate Bot Threat
A bot residing on a consumers’ computer is usually part of a larger network of machines programmed to perform specific, clandestine operations under the control of a “botmaster.” The malware is often installed on unsuspecting consumers’ machines when they click on an infected email or download illicit code from a compromised Web site. Bots are designed to operate stealthily – for example, sending spam or recording passwords and personal information without their owners’ knowledge – making it difficult for end-users to detect their machines are infected.
While about 80 percent of consumers are aware of bots, only 20 percent believe they will ever be infected, according to a survey MAAWG released in July (the survey and related news release are available at www.MAAWG.org). “ISPs need to take steps to protect users, but we also need to continually educate customers and work closely with them to contain bot propagation,” O’Reirdan said.
The new bot mitigation best practices are part of the ongoing work at MAAWG to confront messaging abuse. Previously, MAAWG has published best practices for managing port 25, using walled gardens, sharing dynamic IP address space, email forwarding practices, and senders best communications practices, among other topics.
The MAAWG Common Best Practices for Mitigating Large Scale Bot Infections in Residential Networks can be downloaded from the organization’s Web site at www.MAAWG.org. The MAAWG consumer survey, published white papers and best practices also are available at the site.
MAAWG Tackles Bots with New ISP Guidelines for Restoring Infected End-Users’ Machines
South Africa: ICASA has not reduced interconnection fees towards cost-orientation
The decision not to lower the fee comes in new regulations issued this week by the Independent Communications Authority of SA (Icasa).
Nyanda called for the interconnection fees to be lowered last month, when he told journalists that regulatory intervention was probably needed. Icasa had not been able to achieve much and had not managed to come to grips with the issue, Nyanda said.
His comments were justified as the regulator first staged public hearings three years ago, when it proposed forcing the operators to charge a fee related to the actual cost of the service.
That would have been at least 30% less, and some analysts believe it would have created far greater savings. John Holdsworth, CEO of Electronic Communications Networks, has previously calculated that the actual cost of switching a call to a rival network is no more than 25c.
Yet the opportunity to force down the fee has been ignored in the new guidelines.
The omission has prompted a flurry of complaints on the website mybroadband.co.za, a forum for the telecoms industry.
“Icasa once more demonstrates its uncanny knack for skirting the big issue, price,” one commentator wrote. “These regulations are all about protecting companies. It comes up with a big zero on the protection of consumers.”
Another said: “These regulations are so full of legal holes it’s frightening. They don’t seem to even begin to address the cost of interconnect rates.”
Icasa says the purpose of its regulations is to help operators reach interconnection deals by setting out the principles and processes. Clauses include making sure that networks are not so overloaded that the interconnection provider is forced to build extra capacity ahead of its budgeted investments.
They also aim to ensure that accepting calls from another network does not have a negative effect on the network quality.
In its explanatory notes, Icasa says interconnection is an important way of introducing competition, and these commercial deals require some form of regulation, “particularly in the absence of a competitive environment”.
But it says: “The authority does not intend to regulate the parties’ commercial relationships,” and it has chosen not to do so by not addressing the price structure or insisting on cost-based interconnection fees.
The fact that the operators could easily charge each other less is demonstrated by the history of the fee, which used to be 25c a minute. But just before Cell C was launched, MTN and Vodacom bumped it up more than 500% to R1,25.
Cell C described that as an anticompetitive measure designed to stifle it from the start, since Cell C’s new users were making most of their calls to people on the two dominant networks. Cell C regulatory affairs executive Nadia Bulbulia said yesterday she was still considering the new regulations, but one immediate concern was a section dealing with exemptions for operators that did not hold significant market power.
Those smaller operators will be treated more leniently. But it is a controversial issue since even the major players claim not to hold significant market power, as that would see them face more onerous conditions to prevent them from abusing their dominance.
Icasa has yet to determine which operators hold significant market power, and until then, every player is treated equally.
Research by WorldWideWorx has confirmed that the high cost of calling another network has prompted millions of people to have accounts with two or even three operators in order to avoid such fees.
While there are 50-million active SIM cards in SA, the number of individual users is closer to 34-million. That means up to 16-million people have SIM cards with different operators to avoid interconnection fees.
Posted in Communications |
Tags: ash, blog, blogs, budget, business, car, Communications, consumers, Design, electronic communication, Environment, industry regulator, Network, research, sim card, sim cards, world |
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Mobile: Malware found that would enable a hacker to create a botnet of phones
The Symbian Trojan, which Trend Micro detects as SYMBOS_YXES.B, poses as a legitimate application called ACSServer.exe and calls itself ‘Sexy Space’. It steals the user’s subscriber, phone and network information, and connects to a website to send that information back to a hacker. It can also target the victim’s contacts with spam SMS messages, and pull the content in those messages from the malicious website.
“In short, it appears to be a botnet for mobile phones,” wrote Jonathan Leopando of the Trend Micro technical communications team in a blog post on Wednesday.
However, the malware itself is classified as low risk, with a low distribution potential, according to a Trend Micro analysis.
Leopando added that there may be a problem with digital signing by the Symbian Foundation. Digital signatures, which are cryptographic security features, are designed to provide a level of certainty that a message or piece of software actually comes from the organisation it appears to have come from.
However, Leopando wrote in the blog post that SYMBOS_YXES.B was similar to another phone malware that Trend Micro detects as SYMBOS_YXES.A, and that both pieces of malware had been signed by Symbian Foundation.
“The signing process — undertaken by the Symbian Foundation itself — is supposed to ferret out instances like this, but somehow this slipped through,” wrote Leopando. “It may well be a coincidence, but it does not reinforce confidence in the signing system.”
The Symbian Foundation had not responded to a request for comment at the time of writing.
Posted in Communications |
Tags: application, blog, blogs, Communications, Design, information, Mobile, mobile phone, mobile phones, Network, sms, Software, Space, Spam, symbian, system |
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