Microsoft Offering Data Transfer Tool for Windows XP Holdouts..

News flash,Windows XP holdouts. If you haven't already heard—Microsoft is ending support for the aging operating system in just a little over a month, on April 8.On that date, as we have been reporting in recent weeks, those running the legacy OS will still be able to use it, but they won't be able to count on Microsoft for patches, updates, security fixes, and other forms of support. With the deadline quickly approaching, Microsoft wants to help you finally migrate to a more recently released operating system such as Windows 8.1.The software giant on Monday announced that it has partnered with Laplink to provide XP users with a free data migration tool called PCmover Express for Windows XP, which copies all the files and settings from your Windows XP PC to a new computer running Windows 7, Windows 8, or Windows 8.1."This tool will copy your files, music, videos, email, and user profiles and settings from your old PC to your new device, transferring across your home or work network, and even enables Windows XP users to customize exactly what they want to bring over to their new device," Microsoft senior marketing communications manager Brandon LeBlanc wrote in a blog post.The tool will be available for download in English starting later this week via WindowsXP.com. It will be released in French, German, Italian, Japanese, and Spanish later in March, with Korean, Chinese, Russian, and Brazilian Portuguese versions to follow.Meanwhile, to make sure everyone gets the message, Microsoft is planning to send out official notifications to Windows XP users informing them that support for the OS will end on April 8. The pop-up on your desktop screen will include a link to the Windows XP end-of-support website, where you can find more information. The notification will reoccur on the May 8 and on the 8th of every month going forward, unless it's disabled.If you're not sure which version of Windows you're using, head over toAmIRunningXP.com. If the site detects XP, it will offer guidance on how to upgrade before April 8.

AMD introduces new midrange Radeon R7 265, slashes entry-level GPU pricing..

     AMD is kicking off the first quarter with some aggressive changes to its GPU roadmap, starting with the launch of a new $150 GPU this morning. The aptly-named R7 265 is sliding into the $150 bracket — and causing some significant price upheaval in the process. The “new” card itself is a rebadged 28nm GCN part — this is an R9 270, with fewer cores and a wider memory interfaceThe R7 265 should be effective competition for Nvidia in the $150 price bracket, but it also comes with an added bonus: AMD’s lower-end GPUs are getting a significant price cut.

                                                                      

AMD is kicking off the first quarter with some aggressive changes to its GPU roadmap, starting with the launch of a new $150 GPU this morning. The aptly-named R7 265 is sliding into the $150 bracket — and causing some significant price upheaval in the process. The “new” card itself is a rebadged 28nm GCN part — this is an R9 270, with fewer cores and a wider memory interfaceThe R7 265 should be effective competition for Nvidia in the $150 price bracket, but it also comes with an added bonus: AMD’s lower-end GPUs are getting a significant price cut.

New laser network between NYSE and NASDAQ will allow high-frequency traders to make even more money..

High-frequency trading — the practice of making thousands of algorithmic stock trades per minute  is about to get a big boost in the USA. Anova, a company that specializes in deploying low-latency networks for stock trading, is completing an ultra-high-speed laser network between the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) and the NASDAQ. The link will be just a few nanoseconds faster than the current microwave and fiber-optic links — but in the world of high-frequency trading (HFT), those nanoseconds could result in millions of dollars in profits for the trading companies. Such is the insanity of the stock markets; such is the unbelievable capacity of HFT to create money out of almost nothing.If you want to get a signal quickly from point A to point B, you basically have three options: fiber-optic cables, a network of microwave dishes, or laser links. Electrical (copper wire) networks are feasible over short runs, but their reduced functionality and bandwidth over longer runs makes them less desirable than fiber.
Microwave (and even higher-frequency millimeter wave) networks also aren’t very high-bandwidth, but because they’re purpose-built, they can take a very direct route, significantly undercutting the latency of an oft-congested and round-about fiber network. Laser networks have all the advantages of microwave /millimetre wave networks, but they have higher bandwidth, and some very clever adaptive optics means they’re not impacted by bad weather. (Microwaves really hate inclement weather.)

Windows apps and desktop are coming to Chrome OS, thanks to Google and VMware..

Google, acknowledging that “many of our customers still use traditional desktop applications” has teamed up with VMware to bring the Windows desktop and apps to Chrome OS. Apparently 21% of commercial laptop sales in the US last year were Chromebooks — and with Windows XP soon to be retired, Google and VMware think it’s prime time you make the jump to Chrome OS.The setup goes something like this: You (or rather your company’s IT admin) installs the VMware Horizon DaaS server. Horizon (which costs thousands of dollars) is basically a big server that runs virtualized instances of Windows. Then, when a user wants to use a Windows desktop or app, they simply connect to the server and request one of those instances. In this case, that connection is made using VMware View — and as of 2011, there’s an HTML5 version of VMware View that works in all major browsers, including Chrome OS. (In the photo above you can see an early beta version of VMware View logging into Windows 7 on a Chromebook.)
The HTML5 viewer is surprisingly good, especially over a high-speed LAN — but you probably won’t be using it to play fast-paced games on your Chromebook. The main use-case here is giving employees access to legacy applications — old, sometimes bespoke Windows programs that are very difficult to upgrade or migrate. This solution could also allow you to use high-performance applications like Photoshop on your wimpy, low-spec Chromebook.

First nonflammable lithium-ion battery will stop your smartphone, car, and plane from exploding..

Lithium-ion batteries, despite being one of the most important pieces of modern technology, have always had a particularly grievous flaw: they’re highly flammable. If you puncture a lithium-ion battery, or you charge and discharge them improperly, you’ll usually have a pretty bad fire on your hands — or worse, if the conditions are just right, an explosion. Most notably, the Boeing 787 Dreamliner was grounded in 2013 due to its lithium-ion battery packs causing electrical fires mid-flight, but there have also been a fair number of stories about exploding smartphone batteries recently. Now, long overdue, researchers at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill say they’ve built a nonflammable lithium-ion battery.
Lithium-ion batteries (LIBs) are prone to be incendiary and explosive for two reasons: because they’re pressurized, and because their electrolyte — the charge-carrying liquid that sits between the positive and negative electrodes — is flammable. The electrolyte in an LIB is nearly always a lithium salt dissolved in an organic solvent, and most of these solvents are highly flammable. Because of these factors, LIBs are generally manufactured to a very high level of quality, but that doesn’t help you if the battery is somehow pierced (as in the Tesla Model S battery pack that was impaled and burst into flames), or if thermal runaway occurs.

Don’t panic: Mozilla will be incorporating ads into Firefox..

How does an ad-powered web browser sound to you? You might think of the idea as old-fashioned or dystopian, but Mozilla is on its way to delivering sponsored content slots to new Firefox users. This move has raised eyebrows across the community, and rightfully so. Mozilla is largely seen as a bastion of user advocacy, so this decision is slightly jarring to some. Even so, with a track record as solid as Mozilla’s, the company deserves the benefit of the doubt until we actually see these ads in practice.
As it stands, new browser tabs display nine tiles populated solely by frequently visited webpages. If you’re a new Firefox user, you’re presented with little more than a pile of blank tiles — useless. To offer a better user experience, Mozilla announced the new Directory Tiles program. It automatically populates these tiles with content from across the web, and dynamically changes the content based on how you browse. Nothing inherently wrong with any of that, right? In fact, it actually sounds useful for new users. However, some of these tiles will indeed be sponsored, and that’s making some people very uncomfortable.

The story of India’s/Indian/Indian-American contribution to technology is not new..

Satya Nadella's elevation as CEO of Microsoftmarks the acme of global corporate leadership attained in recent years by first generation Indian immigrants. While Indra Nooyi at Pepsico, Vikram Pandit at CitiBank (who has since stepped down), Ajay Banga at Mastercard, and Anshu Jain at Deutsche Bank have already scaled the dizzy heights, Nadella's ascension was a landmark event given Microsoft's high profile and its close association with India, fuelled in part by a large section of its workforce being of Indianorigin. (The figure of 33 per cent Microsofties being of Indian origin is hyperbolic; it is less than 10 per cent, and from what Bill Gates told this correspondent several years back, it is about 20 per cent in the engineering division.)The story of India's/Indian/Indian-American contribution to technology is not new; it goes back at least couple of decades, possibly more. Back in the 1990s,
when I was working on a book that was eventually titled The Horse That Flew: How India's Silicon Gurus Spread Their Wings, a librarian who was helping me with research would pull my leg about India having invented zero ("THE zero,'' I'd correct her), as we scoured the archives for stories about Indians in the science and technology fields. The idea for the book was triggered by then "hot male'' Sabeer Bhatia's sale of Hotmail to Microsoft for $ 400 million. Shortly before that, Vinod Dham had been instrumental in launching the Pentium chip, and Ram Shriram (who would later fund Google and become a billionaire) was a key figure in Netscape, the early browser favorite. Years before, Narendra Singh Kapany had done pioneering work in fiber optics, C. Kumar Patel was recognized for cutting edge work on lasers, Arun Netravali led the team that developed high-definition television (HDTV), and Praveen Chaudhari held patents for the erasable read-write compact discs, the kind you burned music on a generation back. I chronicled several such stories in my book.

NSA reportedly compromised more than 50,000 networks worldwide..

Leaked top secret presentation slide shows over 50,000 Computer Network Exploitation implants..

  The U.S. National Security Agency reportedly hacked into over 50,000 computer networks around the world as part of its global intelligence gathering efforts, and also taps into large fiber optic cables that transport Internet traffic between continents at 20 different major points.

The agency installed specialized malware referred to as "implants" on over 50,000 devices in order to perform Computer Network Exploitation (CNE), Dutch newspaper NRC Handel-isblad reported Saturday based on documents it said were leaked by former NSA contractor Edward Snowden.The information is reportedly taken from a 2012 top secret
presentation about the NSA's worldwide signals intelligence gathering capabilities that was shared with the intelligence services of Australia, Canada, the U.K. and New Zealand that form the Five Eyes partnership.

CNE is one of three types of Computer Network Operations that NSA computer specialists perform. It "includes enabling actions and intelligence collection via computer networks that exploit data gathered from target or enemy information systems or networks," the NSA says on its careers website.

DDR4 memory may not find way into PCs, tablets until 2015.. Put your thoughts on DDR 4..

            While major memory vendors have started producing next-generation DDR4 memory, don't expect to see it in servers until late next year, and in PCs and tablets in 18 months.

            Until Intel and AMD begin supporting DDR4 in their processor boards, users won't be able to enjoy the benefits of the technology, which offer twice the performance, twice the base capacity