Extradition: Kim Dotcom takes the lead, and proposes to go under conditions

Kim Dotcom is willing to go to the US authorities, but requires some guarantees.

On Twitter, Kim Dotcom - the erratic pattern of MegaUpload - sent a message to the Department of American justice, which clearly states: "Hey, it will come to the USA." No need for extradition. "It wants to bail, access to funds to pay lawyers fees and daily costs." Kim Dotcom tent so interesting but risky movement, while the extradition request US the respect will be judged in March 2013 in New Zealand and that he could be fired if case justice the rejects.

Kim Dotcom would therefore agree to make him even to American justice, under conditions. The idea being to recover access to her money, while showing to justice its good will, which could count in the judgment. Kim Dotcom cannot apparently be without that access to its funds are thawed, especially that the postponement of the extradition hearing is that extending the period during which he must take no money.

Recently, he explained to a New Zealand newspaper be riddled debts following the accumulation of millions of dollars in legal fees, while it can pay to counsel the penny. "They want to just me hang and dry me up until I have more sole support" he said. Is that Kim Dotcom expects to receive a negative response on the part of the authorities, believing that they "know that they cannot win in this case". "All I want is a fair judgment for us" said, as additional bravado.

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Hard disk: back on the molecular storage

The hard drive is becoming 50,000 times more dense. Finally, it remains to the road before coming to industrialise the process...

We you talked about at the beginning of the year, IBM would have found a way to store a magnetic bit with only 12 atoms. Other researchers of the University of Karlsruhe, at Strasbourg and Tokyo would for their successful feat with a single molecule of 51 atoms. If researchers at these universities are not better than those of IBM, the feat is in the form of the maintenance of the State of the bit.

The Interior of a kind of shell maintained by these 50 atoms constituting the organic molecule, they placed a last atom of iron. Thus, by spin transition, the iron atom can be charged either positively or negatively to induce a change of State and therefore be read a posteriori as a bit to 0 or 1.

Molecular storage of KIT (Karlsruhe Institute of Technology)

Toshio Miyamachi, researcher at the Center for functional nanostructures of the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT) indicates that with its structure as nanomolecule, it is possible to store 50,000 times more information on an area equivalent to our current with a reliability hard drives since it is here to add or remove from the electrons in an atom of iron. To compare, if we take a disk trays of 1 sold To currently in the trade, we could then obtain almost 50 inches (or 50 million GB) with this technique.

If the technique seems simple, in practice it is more complicated because he must write the bit in each nanomolecule. With our technology of reading and writing at positioned magnetic head perpendicular to the plateau, he will have to find a way to reduce the finesse of this head to match the fineness of the molecule. A new field of research is therefore opened for its universities and which we will still hear talk about for years to come.

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SSD: Plextor passes to the M5S

Plextor prepares to launch new SSD series M5S. A priori, they should be even faster than the M3 and M3P.

Plextor attacked the DSS with serious market, evidenced by his records M3 and M3P tests. And the mark (acquired by Philips-LiteOn in 2009) is not to stop there. A new SSD arrives, the M5S which promises to be faster even than its predecessors.

Plextor course highlights the quality of its firmware development which "guarantee the performance of exception in time", by leveraging technologies such as Instant Restore, the Global Wear Leveling or Bad Block Management. And thanks to its certification TrueSpeed (another Plextor technology), the M5S promises to reach 390 MB/s write, and 73,000 and 70,000 IOPS and 520 MB/s read speeds. Unfortunately, Plextor details not under some conditions and on what reference.

Because the M5S Plextor will be offered in three capacities: 64 GB from $ 99.99, from $ 159.99 128 GB and 256 GB $ 299.99. Plextor will finally focus on after-sales service of quality, offering a "VIP" access to buyers of the M5S on its support site, including allowing download PlexTool, a tool that allows you to manage and monitor the best his DSS and be updated easily. We do not yet know if the SSD will benefit from the guarantee of 5 years of Plextor, or only a 3 year warranty.

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Ultima Forever: an RPG free and virtuous in preparation

The information still lacking precision, but the announcement is: EA, via its Play4Free brand, is working on an RPG free-to-play based on the universe of Ultima!

It is true that the final episode of the series was now 13 years ago (Ultima IX: Ascension), plus Ultima Online, and at the time of the thrilled and other prequels, it we belatedly to see revived this mythical series.

On the internet site dedicated to the game and freshly opened, found as well that the title will be developed by BioWare, that it should be possible to play a warrior or a mage, that there will be a MMO part or Coop, is not too much, and that the game will be cross-platforms (there again, not precision on the name of the platform in question).

On it, it says you it is shared: on the one hand, there is the fear of social trend completely uninteresting and low range (genus Dragon Age Legends) to reach a game. And on the other, the excitement at the idea of power incarnate again the famous avatar of Richard Garriott, and trample the Earth of the immense continent of Britannia.

And for those who know not what it speaks, you can discover a few episodes of the myth via the site Gog, or take advantage of the various remakes that have emerged, such as "Ultima Exult", which brings together the two parts of Ultima VII in a format compatible with our modern systems free of charge. Finish by pointing out that the official website already allows you to register on the future beta of the game.

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New generation of hard drives 10,000 tours in Toshiba

Businesses looking for hard drives quick plates spinning at 10 K rpm can move towards the new Toshiba pro range.

It is the turn of Toshiba occupying the scene with its new generation of disk drives trays specially studied for the business world. With a speed of rotation to 10,500 t/m, the new AL13SE is 2.5 inches with a SAS 2.0 6 Gb/s interface to the format and is offered in several sizes: 300 GB, 450 GB and 600 GB same 900 GB.

With a 64 MB cache, it offers 3.7 ms read and 4.1 ms write response times, we are far from the DSS, but the comparison can be made with this type of business-oriented material with 24/7 operation times since he displays a 2 million hours MTBF and increases the speed of data transfer of 32% over the previous generation. Toshiba ensures that its new drives offer retro-compatibility with the sizes of 512-byte sectors.

In addition, this new series hard drives for companies custody system of decrease in the speed of rotation of the platters to reduce energy consumption and reduce heating. For companies have 3.5-inch disks to the format-based storage systems, Toshiba offers its AL13SE range with an additional adapter to facilitate their installation.

These discs are accompanied by five years manufacturer warranty. Toshiba has not yet release public prices of its new range. Need to make contact with his usual reseller to obtain.

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SugarSync chosen by Samsung for its Galaxy

The passage of Dropbox for SugarSync will be beneficial only to the loyal customers of the Korean firm...

As the Taiwanese HTC, Korean Samsung announced a partnership with Dropbox to offer 50 GB storage space for free with the purchase of a Galaxy S III, but only for two years. After that, should fulfill the usual package in Dropbox to continue to use it. Otherwise, the storage space down to 2 GB, initial free offer of the claimant.

However, Samsung is also closer to SugarSync to offer its features of reading and sharing of multimedia content, but for its TVs Smart TV division. Korean announced today an extension of its partnership with SugarSync for his mobile and tablets to return directly to its AllShare Play program. Thus, the Smart TV, mobile, tablets and computers from Samsung can share content directly and with a single platform easily.

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Free Mobile competitors could easily anticipate

The Chairman of Arcep, auditioned by a Commission of the National Assembly, returned to the entry of Free Mobile telecoms market.

Free Mobile competitors have, in the past months, regularly turned to - regulator Arcep for telecoms - to complain about the conditions enjoyed by the new entrant on the French market of mobile telephony. Arcep which, meanwhile, was very happy to see more competition to interfere in the market, since it benefits directly to the Subscriber. Accused of not sufficiently well assessed the impact of the arrival of a fourth operator on the market, Arcep held to be explained once again by the voice of its president Jean-Ludovic Silicani, at a hearing before the Commission of Economic Affairs of the National Assembly.

Jean-Ludovic Silicani began by recalling an indisputable fact: "everywhere in Europe, we find four fixed/mobile operators." All studies show that the price of the mobile France, was higher than elsewhere. "And the choice of the place to a new entrant was made as early as 2000, when the decision on the distribution of 3 G frequencies".

From there, according to him, nobody can say taking courses. The president of Arcep also does not hesitate to explain that those who complain today, could handle the situation differently. "If they had thought in 2006/2008 to spend a full-MVNO with Free agreement, the issue would not have arisen and they would not be in this situation, perhaps Free have not deployed fourth mobile network." "It is a choice on their part: they did everything to block the development of the full MVNO in France while they were abroad the increasing" he says.

As the price of the licence paid by Free Mobile, competitors believe bradee, yet Jean-Ludovic Silicani presents things flat: "If the conditions were so favourable, if the price was so low, other operators have jumped at the opportunity to be a candidate." "However, despite our efforts, a single operator competed". The price paid for the license is logical, because Free Mobile has a lower volume of frequencies. Not to mention that the new operator arrived very late on its competitors.

Finally, the last difficult question concerns the consequences of the arrival of Free Mobile employment, since its competitors dismiss to restore their margins, and relocate more: "I remember that the sector is facing a trend decline in its numbers, so is somewhat easy to do on the back of Free (...)" For direct employment we are to 1 600 posts deleted via voluntary departures. For indirect jobs, depends on the strategies of operators but 1,500 jobs could be affected (...) Meanwhile, Free have recently created 2,000 jobs including via the launch of two centres of calls in the Paris region. "In all we have 3,000 in losses and 2,000 in gains so the balance is negative 1 000 jobs".

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Touch: after the table, Microsoft made the wall

Microsoft bought a very large tactile surfaces specialist, to propose to touch walls.

A few days ago, Microsoft announced its takeover of Perceptive Pixel. A specialist of very large touch screens, which the plateau of the American channel CNN's "magic wall". The idea to Microsoft is clear: offer a very comprehensive catalogue of touch solutions, and take advantage of the release of Windows 8 (and its Metro interface thinking to the touch at the base) to push these products. Thus, tactile walls will be proposed in addition to PixelSense, the new name given to the Microsoft Surface touch table. And for cause, Surface is the brand that Microsoft chose to reuse to its shelves.

It is not known how much money Microsoft has put on the table to Perceptive Pixel, but we know that it is the division Office of the giant who will manage this acquisition, touch walls being clearly solutions oriented professionals. Steve Ballmer, CEO of Microsoft, it is a very intelligent redemption and he promised that the first objective will be to ensure to reduce the price of these impressive solutions. Most importantly, Microsoft weapon new touch recognition technology. Touchscreen is taking a considerable importance in the high-tech market.

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Internet search: the new better than Google Bing?

Bing updates and took the opportunity to highlight its encouraging progress, which would be on the back of Google.

Since a few days, US Internet users confident their search engine Bing of Microsoft are benefiting from a new interface. The latter is being deployed in Europe and particularly in France, and displays a redesigned home screen, more adapted to the display of the search engine on the shelves according to the Publisher. Idem, the results pages have been cleaned. On the other hand, the new community features launched in the United States have them, not even crossed the Atlantic. Idem, the search for images that have a new algorithm is not yet available here.

At the Worldwide Developers Conference, Microsoft managers responsible for Bing explained that Google sees its reputation and its brand down following the controversies that have had courses concerning its practices relating to the personal data of Internet users. They see a good opportunity for Bing to propose a relevant alternative, showing with graphics that Bing continues to gain on the back of Google market share. Thus on the past year, Bing market share would have progressed 14.38-15.41%, and even 25,63% taking into account all of the portals integrating research by Bing, as Yahoo.

Research results more sanitized...

Best, according to the exposed information, the rate of relevance of the results of Bing would for the first time surpassed those of Google. Over the past three years, Google saw its rate of relevance of 55.1% to 59.9%, while at the same time that Bing climbs from 51% to 61.4%. Unfortunately, impossible to know how these figures are obtained. And without clearly exposed methodology, this remains of the illustration without value. Damage.

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Tablet Surface: objective "a few million"...

Steve Ballmer directs his speech to motivate partners manufacturers of Microsoft on Windows tablets, despite the spectrum of the Tablet Surface.

In the Microsoft Worldwide Partners Conference, Surface bars were all mouths, but on the stage or in the spotlight never. Indeed, the Redmond giant has been careful to avoid addressing the subject in its major announcements. Yet, it was unthinkable that the event ends without a Word from Microsoft on their subject. It is therefore in the speech of the CEO, Steve Ballmer, that the case of these famous tablets has been addressed.

Declaration that everyone will retain respect the ambitions of the editor to these products, namely to sell "a few million" in 375 million of Windows PC which will sell in 2013 according to the firm. A way to minimize the impact that will have the Surface tablets on sales of Windows tablets, and reassure the partners? Not impossible, because in reality, it is these partners manufacturers that the words of Steve Ballmer addressed.

He has so multiplied small phrases to give importance to the models of third-party manufacturers, and minimize in parallel to the Tablet Surface. He notably said that "Surface, it is above all the design" and that these tablets will have "a little place to share in the Windows ecosystem". And Ballmer pounding: "our goal is mutual with our OEM partners: bringing diversity to the market of Windows PC, phones, tablets, servers." "We want excellent Windows terminals and we need the support of manufacturers".

Remains to be seen if such statements will be enough to reassure those who market shelves, believe that Microsoft is trying to take advantage of his position to obtain a competitive advantage for the launch of its Surface. Because HP has already cancelled one of its Windows RT tablets for the benefit of Android, and you heard that Microsoft developed its partners to back... The rumors about the Tablet Surface speak output in October, for "all inclusive" bundles with the accessories for $ 599 maximum for the ARM version and $ 799 maximum for the Core i5 version. There is no was formalized at this level, to follow.

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Intel: worms of the wafers of 450 mm engraved in the extreme ultraviolet

An important investment between a manufacturer and the skier to accelerate and reduce the fineness of engraving of chips and processors of tomorrow.

The launch of the latest processors Intel Ivy Bridge serious 22 nm made aware the skier will have to find new technical solutions quickly for more finely burn again and again. Today, the exposure to extreme ultraviolet lithography is still little used and costly for the cross-country skier from Santa Clara. But the situation could change with the signing of a partnership with ASML.

In exchange for nearly $ 4 billion of investments to acquire 15% of the company ASML, Intel will make profit on the possibility to manufacture wafers of 450 mm and EUV (Extreme Ultraviolet) lithography. For the record, ASML is a manufacturer offering large machinery for manufacturing and engraving of processors and other chips in foundries.

"The transition from a size of wafer to another to usually reduce by 30-40% the cost of production, what we also hope from 300 mm to 450 mm to get a similar benefit." "Pus quickly we will do, faster we will get this benefit to improve the production, which will create tremendous value for our customers and our partners," says Brian Krzanich, Vice president and Director of operations for Intel.

Is that these investments are early stage and a production of chips etched in EUV development is planned for late 2013, while the 450 mm wafers will arrive late 2015... If the plan is proceeding as planned.

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