Hasta La Gadget!

You can benchmark the cycles of your CPU, power of your GPU, speed of your internet connection, and a myriad of other seemingly important things. However, there’s one missing benchmark that could make all those seem rather frivolous: the openness of your connection. Google wants one and has just awarded Georgia Tech a $1 million grant over two years (with a possible $500k bonus for a third year) to come up with a benchmark capable of detecting just how neutral your net is. When ready, it’ll look for any artificial throttling that’s been set in place and will also check for evidence of digital censorship. No word on when an early version might see release, but hopefully it comes before we need to start paying extra for the ability to download non-ISP-approved content.

Continue reading Google gives Georgia Tech $1 million to build a benchmark for the open internet

Google gives Georgia Tech $1 million to build a benchmark for the open internet originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 22 Mar 2011 11:44:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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We all remember when the first Xperia Play commercial creeped us out during the Super Bowl, and now Sony Ericsson continues to bring on the creepy with its latest ads for the phone. The new series feature actress Kristen Schaal, telling us a little bit about the phone with her cartoonish little voice, oh, and some kittens, violence, cussing, and demons thrown in, too.

In the one ad, she starts out saying “If you’re like me, you have eyeballs” and then she goes on to explain her fondness of looking at cute kittens on the phone, before morphing into a warrior to declare her love for defeating ogres and demon lords, and then she goes back to the kittens. 

But perhaps the creepiest ad of the bunch shows Schaal’s description of the phone played backwards, where she becomes possessed, like the girl in the Exorcist, with burning, red eyes and a demonic voice as she tells you that the phone gives you power, intense gaming, violence, and adrenaline. Yep, scary and creepy, check.

And if that doesn’t do it for you, you can always watch Schaal thoroughly enjoy stabbing and shooting herself in another ad. If these ads don’t convince you to buy a Xperia Play, I don’t know what would…

Check out a few of the freakiest Xperia Play ads after the jump.

You know who took the iPad 2 launch pretty seriously? Samsung, that’s who. Just as we had heard, the company’s executives were impressed by Apple’s ability to slim down its tablet and, well, it turns out that it took it as a challenge to come up with some thinner tablets of its own. That’s right, in addition to the Samsung Galaxy Tab 8.9 that we have seen repeatedly teased over the last few weeks the company’s announcing a totally revamped Galaxy Tab 10.1, and both slates are incredibly thin yet very well spec’d. On top of that, both will be the first Honeycomb tablets to stray from the pure Android 3.0 experience and add what Samsung’s taken to calling its TouchWiz UX or TouchWiz 4.0. We’ve got all the details and some hands-on impressions waiting below, so hit the break!

Updated: Samsung came clean with the pricing at its press conference this morning. The WiFi 10.1 will hit on June 8th — the 16GB version will cost you $499 and the 32GB $599. The 8.9 is $469 and $569 for 16GB and 32GB, respectively.

Continue reading Samsung Galaxy Tab 8.9 and new Galaxy Tab 10.1 hands-on: thinner than the iPad 2, dual-core power, TouchWiz 4.0

Samsung Galaxy Tab 8.9 and new Galaxy Tab 10.1 hands-on: thinner than the iPad 2, dual-core power, TouchWiz 4.0 originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 22 Mar 2011 11:01:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Allegiances are being drawn and battle plans laid out as the USB 3.0 vs. Thunderbolt war truly begins. Toshiba is, for the moment at least, staying friendly with the USB side, announcing updated versions of its STOR.E external HDDs, both packing Superspeed tech. On the smaller side is the ALU 2S, packing a 2.5-inch HDD internally that has up to 1TB on platters. If you need a little more you can step up to the Steel S, another external unit containing a 3.5-inch HDD with up to 2TB of storage. That one, unfortunately, will require an external power supply, while the littler ALU 2S will get by with only a USB cable. Both feature metal exteriors, increasing their usability as impromptu bludgeons, and both are slated to start shipping before this first quarter is through — which should mean any time now.

Continue reading Toshiba updates STOR.E external HDDs to USB 3.0, sees no lightning and hears no thunder

Toshiba updates STOR.E external HDDs to USB 3.0, sees no lightning and hears no thunder originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 22 Mar 2011 10:56:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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This article was written on October 18, 2006 by CyberNet.

If you are wondering how secure your password is then maybe you should go checkout the Microsoft Password Checker. It isn’t anything super special but to have the most secure password it looks like they require you to have a combination of letters, numbers, and special characters. If you have less than 14 characters in your password then it will only give you a rating of “Strong” but more than 14 characters will get you the “Best.”

This reminds me of a post I did a few months back that listed the top 10 most common passwords. Ever since then I changed my password from “123″ to “123456″ because it is much less used.

Copyright © 2011 CyberNetNews.com

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