Got broadband? There’s no need to shell out your hard-earned cash for movies and TV shows


Cable and satellite TV deliver a lot of shows and movies, very conveniently… and very expensively. If you want features like DVR and high-defi nition cable TV and a few extra channels, your bill could easily hit $100 or more a month. That’s a cool $1,200 a year. If you’re a sports junkie, count on adding another few hundred bucks a year to follow your favorite team, player, or sport. Is it possible to satisfy your TV and movie jones while ditching the cable/satellite bill? Sure it is—the secret lies in that broadband connection you already pay for every month. Let’s look at ways to fulfill our couch-potato cravings for fewer dollars.

NETWORK AND CABLE TV SHOWS
Whether you’re a hardcore fan of a particular TV series or you just like the occasional episode, you can fi nd the current episode of most of your favorite TV shows online. If you know the network or cable channel, you can go directly to those sites and watch recent episodes. Few of these are real-time streaming—in other words, you may have to wait a few hours or days aft er the show airs to catch it online. Aggregator sites, particularly Hulu.com, also off er recent episodes of many series. The base Hulu service is free, but coverage of shows is spotty. It’s also in standard defi nition, and you can only technically watch it on a PC. Hulu Plus, which costs $7.99 a month, is Hulu’s premium service. Hulu Plus adds high-defi nition support, more shows, and compatibility with a variety of different devices, including Apple iOS devices, the PS3, and certain Internet-enabled TVs. But even with Hulu Plus, coverage can be spotty; sometimes this service leaves out a couple of episodes of a given season.
Netflix Watch Instantly, ata minimum cost of $7.99 for the streaming-only service, off ers an increasingly large array of shows, plus access to a huge variety of movies. What we like the most about Watch Instantly, though, is ample access to shows not commonly available on Hulu, such as documentaries and BBC miniseries.

OVER-THE-AIR HDTV
Windows Media Center, built into Windows 7 Home Premium and Windows Ultimate, also contains an Internet TV streaming service. Coverage of shows is inconsistent, however, so you may only see samplers of various TV series with just a few episodes to give you a taste. Our preference—and one of the hidden secrets of HDTV— is to add a high-defi nition, over-the-air TV tuner to our HDTV or our HTPC. This is particularly useful if you live in a metropolitan area with a large media market. Free OTA high-defi nition plus Windows Media Center gives you full DVR capabilityfor local stations, without added cost. You don’t need Media Center, of course. Third-party applications like SageTV (www.sagetv.com) also support HDTV tuner cards and have similar scheduling soft ware built in.

MOVIES
Film buff s have a rich array of online services to choose from when it comes to great content at low cost. We’ve already mentioned Netflix Watch Instantly,at $7.99 a month, which is probably the best deal on the planet right now. Other streaming services, like Amazon.com’s Video on Demand and CinemaNow charge per movie, either for renting or for owning a DRM’d version. That can get pretty pricey pretty fast. If you’re happy with standard defi nition on your PC, Hulu off ers a variety of free movies, although advertisements are present.
A variety of “free” movie aggregator sites exist, but the legality of many of these are questionable. These sites don’t actually host movies, but stream from other sources, including off shore sources and BitTorrent sites. Our guidance here? Approach with caution.
If you really want free and legal, a number of old movies, documentaries, and shows are now in the public domain. Sites like Entertainment Magazine Online (www.emol.org) offer tons of free, legal movie downloads, albeit of older films. EMOL also aggregates links to TV network and studio sites that off er free streaming of their shows.

SPORTS
Watching your favorite teams online is usually not a bargain. You can watch some less-popular sports events at sites like ESPN.com, but major sports, like the NFL, Major League Baseball, and NASCAR can’t be found legally, unless you’re willing to pay substantially. In a pinch, we’ve used aggregator services, but these sites exist in a gray area. For example, www.atdhe.net, one such popular aggregator service, had its domain seized by the U.S. government for copyright infringement during the course of us writing this story.
If you do follow a single sport, then the cost might still undercut cable. An NFL all-season pass, for example, is $14.99 a month. But that’s not exactly cheapskate territory.
The two best deals around are the NBA and MLB. Both off er aff ordable season passes, and both allow you to watch games across diff erent devices—your PC, smartphone, and, in the case of MLB, your PS3.

Top 10 Most Visited Parks

Great Smoky Mountains
Photograph by Kushal Mukherjee
The clouds covering the valley of the Great Smoky Mountains National Park. The nation's busiest park, Great Smoky Mountains to pay more than nine million visitors a year, twice the number of other national park. It is located in Tennessee and North Carolina.


Grand Canyon
Photograph by Mihail Diaconu
The setting sun frames the Grand Canyon North Rim. Nearly five million people travel through the canyon each year.


Yosemite
Photograph by Phil Hawkins
The 317-foot Vernal Fall is seen from a canyon in Yosemite National Park in California. In addition to the waterfalls, the park has deep valleys, ancient trees, and hundreds of animal species.


Winter sun seems to set the Yosemite National Park, Horsetail Falls in flames. Thirdly, the most visited national park, Yosemite is also a UNESCO World Heritage Site.


Yellowstone
Photograph by Rade Svorcan
The Lone Star Geyser eruption of Yellowstone National Park. Located in Wyoming, Idaho and Montana, the park has more geysers and hot springs than anywhere else on Earth.


Rocky Mountain
Photograph by Mark Sanders
Panoramic views are a major attraction in Rocky Mountain National Park in Colorado. The park includes 150 lakes and 450 miles of streams and wetlands ecosystems ranging from pine forests in mountain areas of alpine tundra.


Olympic
Photograph by David Yegerlehner
Outcrops called sea stacks are home to birds and other animals on the Pacific coast of Olympic National Park Washington. The coast is one of three different ecosystems within the park.
Olympic National Park covers 1441 miles square of the Olympic Peninsula. Due to the conditions of the park is relatively untouched and unforgettable landscapes, UNESCO declared both an International Biosphere Reserve and World Heritage Site.



Grand Teton
Photograph by Daman Sidhu
Autumn brings brilliant colors, and the valley of Wyoming Grand Teton National Park. While visitors may enjoy the park throughout the year, September and October bring a pleasant day, windy nights, fewer crowds and better chances of seeing moose in summer.


Zion
Photograph by Victor Novikov
Rising in Utah’s high plateau country, the Virgin River carves its way through Zion Canyon to the desert below. The park’s striking vertical topography—rock towers, sandstone canyons, and sharp cliffs—attracts 2.5 million visitors a year.


Acadia
Photograph by Alex Filatov
Eagle Lake is visible from a wooded hill in Acadia National Park. The park has over 120 miles of trails ranging from easy walks along the ocean to climb steep mountains and Cadillac others.


Cuyahoga Valley
Photograph by James Crotty
Although the Brandywine Falls based mostly tourists, Ohio Cuyahoga Valley National Park, Blue Hen Falls in less crowded, pictured here, is like an oasis in the wooded valley.


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How to Save Money on PC Hardware


PACKAGE DEALS
Some resellers will bundle motherboards, CPU, and memory, or graphics cards and PSUs. These deals can save you some money, but make sure you know the components in the bundle.

REFURB OR NOT?
Sometimes open-box or refurbished deals can be good, but be wary. Gear refurbished by the manufacturer itself can also be a good deal.

TRY TO BUY FROM ONE RESELLER
You may fi nd yourself saving a few bucks here and there by purchasing components from different sites—but you may lose all those savings in shipping costs. Many e-tailers will waive shipping costs if you buy above a certain dollar amount.

SELL YOUR OLD STUFF!
Considerate builders will often hand down gear to family members, but you can also fi nance your PCbuilding hobby by selling old gear on eBay. You’d be amazed at how much you can get for an old motherboard or graphics card.

WATCH AND WAIT FOR PRICE REDUCTIONS
When Nvidia launched the GTX 560 GPUs recently, AMD dropped the prices on a number of its products. A spiffy new GPU might be expensive when it fi rst launches, but at the same time, a competitor’s products might be a steal. Best of all, these components are often still part of the current generation.

CPU PRICE-DROPS
Intel (and AMD to a lesser extent) cuts CPU prices regularly—as often as quarterly—as new processors hit the streets. Even current-generation CPUs will drop in price after a quarter or two.

STOCK UP ON MEMORY
DDR3 prices are amazingly cheap currently, so buy more than you originally think you need. Get 8GB instead of 4GB, or 12GB instead of 6GB.
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Live Free(ware) and Prosper


Our top picks for awesome alternatives to popular and pricey commercial software

You just dropped a wheelbarrow full of cash upgrading your videocard and CPU, leaving only a
little bit of pocket lint left over for software. Relax, Bobby, it’s going to be fine. The truth is that soft-ware is mother-lovin’ expensive. Seven hundred smackers for Photoshop? Pshaw! Thankfully, free and powerful alternatives to the most popular apps abound. Put your PayPal card away and follow along.

GIMP YOUR PHOTOS, NOT YOUR WALLET
GIMP, or GNU Image Manipulation Program if you can’t stand acronyms, is a popular opensource alternative to Photoshop. Don’t let the fact that it’s free fool you; even though it’s not quite as polished or feature-rich as Photoshop, there’s a lot you can do with GIMP beyond just resizing and re-touching. A robust set of integrated tools and an extensive plugin library make it a more-than-capable image manipulator, not just an editor. GIMP is also platform-fl exible in that it supports Windows, Mac OS X, and of course, Linux. FREE, www.gimp.org

MICROSOFT ANSWERS THE CALL FOR FREE ANTIVIRUS
What started off as Windows Live OneCare eventually morphed into a capable and free antivirus solution known as Microsoft Security Essentials. Surprisingly effective for a relative newcomer, the latest version adds heuristic scanning and improved Firewall integration. Just be sure you’re rocking a legit copy of Windows. FREE, www.bit.ly/9ikpqC

USE PHOTOSHOP FOR FREE (LEGALLY)
Don’t need the feature-rich complexity of GIMP? No problem. Most photo-sharing sites, like Flickr and Photobucket, let you make basic changes, but the cool thing about Adobe’s online Photo Express Editor is that it aggregates your photos from those and other portals, including Facebook, and neatly organizes them. You can also upload up to 2GB of photos for free. FREE, www.photoshop.com

KICK MALWARE IN THE NADS… TWICE
Microsoft Security Essentials does an outstanding job at beating back viruses, but sometimes you need an extra bodyguard or two to keep things in line. Unlike antivirus soft ware, which digs deep into your OS, antispyware applications can be run in tandem. Malwarebytes and SuperAntiSpyware provide a potent one-two punch combo, oft entimes catching what the other doesn’t. Combined with Microsoft Security Essentials, you’ll have a three-headed monster that loves to munch on malware. FREE, www.malwarebytes.org and www.superantispyware.com

VIVA LA LIBREOFFICE 3.3!
We love a good Cinderella story, and that’s what we have with LibreOffice. You see, when Oracle took over Sun Microsystems, it created a near-instant riff with the developers of OpenOffice, whose open-source ideology didn’t mesh with Oracle’s proprietary mindset. Several key programmers jumped ship and went on to create Libre-Office, a fork of OpenOffice with the backing of several industry bigwigs, including Canonical, Google, and Red Hat. Ready for the clincher? You can save documents compatible with Microsoft Word (including .docx) sans the heavy price tag! FREE, www.libreoffice.org

LIVE IT, LOVE IT WITH UBUNTU
Whether you’re rocking a desktop, server rig, or a netbook, there’s a version of Ubuntu designed just for you. Ubuntu is perhaps the easiest of all Linux distros to use, providing a pain-free way of cutting those costly Windows shackles. What about games, you ask? If a title isn’ t supported natively, use WineHQ, which lets you run Windows software in Linux. FREE, www.ubuntu.com and www.winehq.com

SUGARSYNC BRINGS SWEET FILE SHARING TO THE DESKTOP AND BEYOND
We still adore Dropbox, we really do. It’s just that SugarSync is a tad more fl exible. It offers cloud-based fi le syncing, just like Dropbox, and you can easily share fi les between PCs. But SugarSync goes the extra mile by letting you sync multiple folders across multiple systems. We also appreciate its robust mobile platform support (iPad, iPhone, Android, BlackBerry, Windows Mobile, and Symbian devices) and remote access from any web browser. You get 5GB for free, and 500MB for every successful referral (if they sign up for a paid plan, you both get an additional 10GB). FREE, www.sugarysync.com

CLONING MADE FREE AND EASY
Let Professor Penny Rich and Doctor Deep Pockets debate which is better, Norton Ghost or Acronis True Image. Both are great, but both will set you back at least $50. Sir Savea- Lot’s solution? Macrium Reflect, a no-cost cloning program that works with XP, Vista, and Windows 7 in both 32-bit and 64-bit form. With it you can create a disk image even while running Windows, a rare trick for free cloning software. There’s a built-in scheduler and you can even image to a network, USB, or FireWire drive, as well as optical media. FREE, www.macrium.com/reflectfree.asp

PARTITION LIKE A PRO
Microsoft continues to improve upon Windows’ built-in partitioning tool, but sometimes it’s not enough. Easeus Partition Master Home Edition comes to the rescue with a robust partition manager priced at 100 pennies less than a buck. It supports hard disks as small as 2GB and as massive as 4TB, and it also works with removable devices. The list of tricks is long, including the ability to extend a system partition; resize, move, merge, split, and copy partitions; redistribute free space; scan a disk for bad sectors; support hardware RAID; rebuild the MBR; convert FAT to NTFS; convert partition types; secure fi le deletion; and more. FREE, www.partition-tool.com/personal.htm

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Syrian Military Assault Mounted In Another City


BEIRUT, Lebanon - The Syrian Army has defied growing condemnation and launched a new assault on the most contentious in the country on Sunday, the deployment of dozens of tanks and armored vehicles in the parts of a city is that Syria had always feared provoking activists and residents. Dozens of people died, they said, and thousands have fled the city.

The attack before dawn in the eastern part of the city, in Deir al-Zour came exactly one week after Syrian troops attacked Hama, Syria, in the city center, in turn largely wrested control of the state this summer . As Hama, Deir al-Zour, Syria's oil and gas production, was the scene of mass protests, with hundreds of thousands in the streets. But the military, wary of powerful and well-armed clans advanced cities, had largely stayed out.

Together, the two cities - the fourth and fifth of Syria - were the most suspicious of a survey of five months against four decades of rule by the Assad family. After a week of sharp rebuke by a chorus of international voices, the United Nations for the Pope renewed the attack confirmed what many consider the determination of President Bashar al-Assad to stay in power through violence.

Including some human rights groups, has more than 2,000 people were killed in the attacks so far.

Other signs of pressure on the government were introduced, perhaps above all indications that the business elite in Damascus, he began to prepare for the fall of the government. This elite has long proven one of the most important pillars of the Syrian authorities, especially during the Islamic uprising in 1982.

"The regime is its own worst enemy, and can be saved from itself," said a Damascus-based analyst, who asked to remain anonymous. "It has been the collapse, but the question is what will lead to and when."

Residents of the death toll at Deir al-Zour, 42, and one of them said that a family of six people trying to escape - a couple with four children - was among the dead. The activists said that many residents have left in recent days. A local man who gave his name as Mamun said the truck filled with no fewer than 25 women and children fled to the streets every abandoned.

He said there were shortages of fuel and bread. Other residents said the private hospitals have closed, but that families were reluctant to take their wounded to the government, not to be arrested. At night, another resident said that Syrian forces had come to a roundabout in the center of the city, formerly called Assad and the Plaza of Martyrs name. "

"The city has never known a day like this," said Maamoun telephone, with bursts of gunfire heard in the background.

On weekends, calls for restraint mounted. The Arab League expressed "growing concern" Sunday and asked the authorities to stop attacks against the demonstrators. Pope Benedict XVI called Sunday for Assad to meet the "legitimate aspirations" of the people of Syria and Turkey announced it was sending his foreign minister, Ahmet Davutoglu in Damascus on Tuesday, with a similar message.

In a statement to Al Arabiya television on Monday, called King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia to the violence unacceptable and said he remembers the Saudi ambassador in Damascus.

For weeks, activists had predicted that the Syrian Muslim holy month of Ramadan would bring an escalation of the insurgency, as every night demonstrators gathered in mosques, then organized the demonstrations. Instead, the government decided it was time for a large-scale assault on the cities seemed most determined to shake off the yoke of the security forces everywhere.

From Deir al-Zour and Hama are the targets of repression that involve risks specific to Syria.

In 1982, Hama was the victim of one of the bloodiest moments in the history of the Modern Middle East, where the army crushed an Islamist revolt there and killed at least 10,000 people. The attack last week in which more than 200 people lost their lives, feelings inflamed by Syria.

Deir al-Zour may be no less frustrating for the government, but for different reasons. Armed and fiercely independent, the clans have extensive ties there are tribes in eastern Syria and western Iraq. In recent days, some of its leaders had sworn to give to the peaceful demonstrations and to take up arms if the attacking force, but no reports of injuries on Sunday the government.

The city is also home to the complaints of government neglect, compounded by the feeling that people have not participated in the region's oil and gas wealth. "I can say that the clock will never return," said a leader of a clan, who identified himself as Abu Mohammed Ala'aqidi.

Days, the army forces had been built on the outskirts of Deir al-Zour. Traveler recently there about 150 tanks, 200 armored vehicles and 200 microphones mounted machine guns were posted throughout the city. Local Coordination Committees, a group that has tried to document and organize the protests, said the attack began before dawn, the soldiers captured nine suburbs.

"We're completely surrounded," said the pilot who gave the name of Abu Omar.

Introduction The attack was familiar. Although no weapons were seen Hama visit shortly before the siege, officials claimed the army had come there to fight the armed Islamists, who were terrorizing the city of 800,000

On Saturday, he offered a narrative similar to that of Deir al-Zour, with a population of 500,000. A report by the official Syrian news agency, SANA, the clan elders had called the army to go into "protect citizens and preserve public and private property."

Residents reached by telephone offered a different account.

"Syria needs to now be managed by the officials hard, not politicians," said Ammar, a 26 year old activist in Deir al-Zour. "I fear that the country is entering a dark cave, and everyone is a loser. Loser The first is President Assad and his regime."

Tensions have mounted in Deir al-Zour last month when security forces arrested Sheikh Nawaf al-Bashir, a figure bearing the clan. Clan elders and Syrian security officials and military have been negotiating for several days, but Sunday assault seemed to signal the government's intention to take the city by force, activists said.

"The government has been very careful to start a military operation in our region," Ammar said, "because most of the tribesmen are armed with AK-47 rifles and others, and are willing to fight and let the system to do the same thing as he did in Hama, or Dara'a "the city where the rebellion began in March.

"If the government has attacked Deir al-Zour, which all the tribes in the other provinces show against the Assad regime," he added.

There have been periodic reports of defections in the military Deir al-Zour, although still seem to be limited, and does not constitute an immediate threat to Assad, who inherited power in 2000. Coordinating Committees, said that other soldiers have deserted Jour quarter of the city on Sunday.

"He jumped soldiers trying to protect residents of the storm the city," the committee said. There was no immediate confirmation of the report by the inhabitants there.

Deir al-Zour was not only to attack the government. Syrian forces also attacked Houla, near Homs in central Syria, and northwest of Idlib. The committee said 12 people died in Hula, including three children.

The scale and ferocity of the repression gave a facade almost surreal persistent desire to reform government. In the last Foreign Minister Walid al-Moallem said Saturday that the real multiparty elections for Parliament in the first rule of the Assad family, would take place later this year. SANA quoted him as saying that the elections "free and transparent."

The same day, the promise of Mr. Moallem, security forces arrested Walid al-Bunni, a leading opposition figure and former political prisoner, with his two children. Mr Bunni has been a driving force called Damascus Spring, an attempt to organize a movement for democratic reform in 2000, Assad soon crushed.


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How Planets Can Survive a Supernova


When a star dies in a violent supernova, some of the planets survive the explosion, but to be thrown out of orbit and sent wandering the galaxy, a new study.

The theory offers an explanation of a handful of free-roaming planets discovered so far, and can mean a number of other worlds as rogue exist throughout the Milky Way.

"Because each star dies, and many of these stars are massive enough to cause warming of ejection, there is ample opportunity throughout the galaxy of stellar death contribute to the floating population," said chief Dimitri Veras study, is an astronomer at Britain's University of Cambridge.

"We do not know yet how these planets are common, but observational evidence suggests that there may be more planets floating between the two stars that orbit them," he said.

The new model also indicates that in very rare cases, some surviving planets can remain linked to supernova remnants, find new ways around neutron stars or black holes left by the explosions. (See images of supernova remnants.)

A wrinkle in the two-body problem

The new theory is based on a complex computer models that take into account anything known in physics as the problem of two bodies.

This formula for classical mechanics, helps to determine the orbits of two bodies interact, the electron around the atomic nucleus of a planet around a star.

As long as astronomers can measure the masses, positions and velocities of the two objects, they can determine their past, present and future tracks using simple mathematical equations.

The new study, except for a ride on the two-body problem, Vera said, because the stars are losing mass, as they go through their agony.

"In this situation, we do not know if a solution exists only simple equations, so in many cases, we must use computers to simulate the trajectories," he said.

Depending on the model, when the stars at least 7 to 10 times the mass of our sun supernova, the swallows of encouragement to all the inner planets that orbit at several times the distance between Earth and sun.

Planets orbiting hundreds of times the Earth-Sun distance will be rather disturbed and their orbits are elongated so that they are finally thrown into interstellar space.

In some cases, disturbing planets be pushed into more distant orbits, but stable at around supernova remnants.

Planets orbiting these stellar remnants can continue as pulsars and black holes themselves far enough they would not be swallowed up by their intense gravitational pull, but the survivors would be charred, dead worlds.

What's more, these worlds can be easily pulled to the limit the system and become a thief whose attraction to draw others close to the stars.

Billions of rogue planets out there?

In May 2011 a different set of observations, astronomers described the tests up to ten planets, which appear to migrate independently through interstellar space.

New ejection mechanism could explain how they escaped from their planets found in stellar systems, Steinn Sigurdsson said an astronomer at Pennsylvania State University is not connected to research. (See the commentary on the book blog Sigurdsson Dynamics of cats.)

But Sigurdsson warns that there might be another way to play is how the planets are thrown out of their star systems.

"Others may be the dominant mechanism is the planet-planet scattering, in which the planets of mass, remove the other planets in their orbits, and a fraction is launched into space than the bound, Rogues," says Sigurdsson.

It is possible, even the two mechanisms work together, Sigurdsson said, with the scattering effect of putting the planets in orbit and out of the supernova and then expelled from the system.

Regardless, he thinks opportunities add up to a large number of floating planets.

"The numbers [with two mechanisms of expulsion] are broadly consistent, and both involve billions of planets in total thugs," he said.

Worlds can accommodate expelled life underground

A big question, which new research is whether life could survive the separation of planets in the clan.

The answer may be yes, if the world had enough internal heat and is already supported the underground life, says John Debes, a planet hunter are not affiliated team Veras.

"The moons like Europa, which is heated by the tides of Jupiter due to constant interaction with other moons, is probably the best of Paris to eject a survivor," said You, a postdoctoral fellow at NASA Goddard Space Flight Center in Maryland .

"One Earth could live under certain conditions, if there is a moon to survive the expulsion," from the Moon is tidal heating.

Life could also find a way to respond on planets outside the host stars, in good conditions, Debes said. (See "Earth-size" Lone Wolf "planets can support life.")

There have been studies showing that climatic, geodynamic, and biogeochemical might be able to support life on planets without stars, especially those with underlying ocean hot springs, where the movement of energy can still be sufficient to run a biosphere .

Ejection very hard to detect planets

The main objective of Veras and his team had really taken note of the star giving away the planets, which can be difficult if not impossible.

This is because the current technology, the chances are low to find planets of the dying star about to explode.

Now is the test results of what happens to stars when they die, a large orbiting planets, and the free-floating planets, Veras said.

"All the ingredients are there," he said. "But the time to really observe a planet being ejected in most cases is longer than a human life."

The study is currently projected warming on the website arXiv.org preprint and have been accepted for publication in Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society.


source from here
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DEATHMATCH; UEFI vs. BIOS

As the first bit of code that’s run when you hit the power button, the PC’s Basic Input/Output System (BIOS) is responsible for tickling the other pieces of hardware awake, checking their condition, and then fi nally passing control over to the operating system. It’s also ancient and dates back to the very fi rst PC. But there’s a new sheriff in town, fi nally. Called Unifi ed Extensible Firmware Interface (UEFI), it’s meant to update one of the oldest legacy technologies in personal computing. As we know, newer is not always better. This month we rank the major factors in both technologies and determine which you should have in your next PC.



ROUND 1
FEATURES The BIOS is written in Assembly, cannot be translated to another CPUarchitecture, runs in 16-bit real mode, and can only address 1MB of RAM. UEFI, on the other hand, is written in C, supports both 32- bit and 64-bit, and even has network access. UEFI also promises faster boot times over the BIOS, although we have yet to see it in our Lab.WINNER: UEFIROUND 2
PARTITION LIMIT The BIOS would likely continue to be supported if not for its most glaring problem: its inability to support partitions beyond 2TB (2.2TB to be specifi c). UEFI, on the other hand, will support up to 9.4ZB, or 9.4 billion terabytes.
WINNER: UEFI

ROUND 3
INTERFACE If you went back in time and sat down in front of your PC and booted into the BIOS, you wouldn’t be able to tell if it was 1989, 1995, or 2010. Yeah, it’s that freaking creaky. Peep a UEFI board and you know you’re not in Kansas anymore. Of the ones we’ve seen, Asus’s implementation (pictured on the previous page) is particularly striking. Not all UEFI interfaces are pretty, though. Intel’s UEFI boards and Gigabyte’s P67 boards, for example, are based on UEFI but still use a standard BIOS interface. Nevertheless, the possibilities with UEFI make it the clear
winner. WINNER: UEFI

ROUND 4
PRONUNCIATION Rightly or wrongly, we pronounce BIOS as buy-ohs and everyone knows
what we mean. UEFI, though, is a tough one. You can truncate it C-3PO (3PO) style to EFI or effy, but we’re leaning toward oofy, as in Goofy without the g. Either way, the winner is clear.
WINNER: BIOS

ROUND 5
EASE OF USE The BIOS has been with us so long, you’d think that most of us could drive it in our sleep. Unfortunately, it’s not always that easy. Every board maker has its own BIOS interface and they are often as diffi cult to set as a digital watch sometimes. UEFI’s graphical interface promises greater ease of use, and, indeed, Asus’s drag-anddrop interface for boot devices is evidence of that. Still, some UEFI settings are as diffi cult to decipher as those in the BIOS, but it’s only going to get easier
and better from here. WINNER: UEFI

And the Winner Is...
Change is difficult for many. It’s like making the switch from Office 2003 to Office 2010, or getting rid of your favorite mouse—many regret it immediately. But moving from the BIOS interface and its legacy underpinnings is more akin to finally getting rid of your 15-year-old skivvies—you know, the ones with worn-out elastic. Yeah, they work, but would you r eally miss them if they were gone? That’s the way we feel about the BIOS at this point. If you’re against change, deal with it. UEFI is the future and we’re only at the beginning.

Is this Jack the Ripper?


New book claims to reveal sensational Jack the Ripper - as Scotland Yard detective who led the hunt for a serial killer.

The Spanish researcher names Chief Inspector Frederick Abberline a man who was brutally murdered at least five women in Victorian London.

José Luis Abad, 84, says in "Jack the Ripper: The murderer the most intelligent of the story of his book, published this week in Spain.

Mr. Abad is an expert in calligraphy and based their claims on a comparison of the editor in chief inspector Abberline with Jack the Ripper diary - a 63-page document that emerged from Liverpool in 1992.

He compared the newspaper writing, quoting the Chief Inspector Abberline 24 times, the police report written by a detective, and his signature at the end of his memoirs.

Mr. Abad, a member of the Spanish Society for Graphology, said: "After comparing the handwriting I have no doubt the inspector Abberline was Jack the Ripper seems incredible, but the fact is that his writing does not lie ..

"His sets are identical."

M. Abad, who studied writing since 1975, began his study Ripper murders seven years ago.

Ripper Area newspaper in 1992 and was assigned to a cotton broker named James Maybrick Liverpool, other researchers have identified as the Ripper.

Many experts rejected the Ripper diary as a hoax. Mr. Abad think that's true, but the author was Chief Inspector Abberline, not James Maybrick.
'Killer' among the cops: Abberline (circled) in a group photo of officers in Whitechapel in 1888 - the year of the Ripper murders
Sickening: The Ripper walks away from his victim in the film From Hell, starring Johnny Depp


JACK THE RIPPER'S VICTIMS: 1888

The detective was put in charge of the investigation following the murder of the Ripper, Mary Ann Nichols, in August 1888. He died in 1929 at age 86 at his home in Bournemouth.

Michael Caine played Abberline chief inspector in 1988 in the TV movie Jack the Ripper, and Johnny Depp was a policeman in 2001 of From Hell.

Jack the Ripper and the capital brought the terror of the meat processing capacity of at least five prostitutes in Whitechapel, East London, in August and November 1888. According to an infamous night, he killed two women in a few minutes away from each other.

The analysis of his methods, has revealed that a number of Ripper victims had their throats slit, while the killing was also removed from the body, like the uterus or heart.

It was argued that, first of all Ripper killing would have to spend some 'time to drink alcoholic beverages in the pub before walking around the Whitechapel district, lower inhibitions.

After each murder, he would return to a safe area where it can wash the blood from his hands and get rid of dirty clothes.

The case is one of the greatest unsolved murder mysteries in the world, and over the years, many suspects have been imported into the frame, including Prince Albert Victor, grandson of Queen Victoria, Sir William Gull, physician to the Queen, and Sir Walter und Sickert, a famous painter of his time.
Identity parade: New Scotland Yard's four suspects in the Ripper case (from left to right) include Montague John Druitt, Michael Ostrog, Aaron Kosminski and Dr Francis J.Tumblety

At that time, the events of New Scotland Yard, was reduced to four suspects, but at the same time, they were not able to nail the murderess.

The pseudonym Jack the Ripper came from a letter to a London news agency at the time of the murders, allegedly by the killer himself, but was later dismissed as a hoax.

Last month Scotland Yard revealed it is fighting a legal battle reserves the Ripper and the secret files compiled by the protection of police officers in 1880.


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Bromo Tengger Semeru National Park


Bromo Tengger Semeru National Park is located in East Java, Indonesia, Malang to the east and south-east of the capital, Surabaya East Java. And 'the only nature reserve in Indonesia, which is a sea of ​​sand, Tengger Sand Sea (Indonesian: Laut Pasir Tengger), which is the caldera, an ancient volcano (Tengger) which was founded four new volcanic cones. This unique feature will cover a total area of ​​5250 hectares at an altitude of about 2,100 m. The plateau is also the highest mountain in Java, Mount Semeru (3,676 m), four lakes and 50 rivers.

The Tengger Sand Sea has been protected since the Bromo Tengger Semeru 1919th The national park was declared a national park in 1982.

The national park is named after its two mountains, Mount Semeru (the highest in Java) and Mount Bromo (most popular), and the people who live in the Tengger region. The park also includes large areas that are very rich, fed by rivers from the high summit. The average altitude dressed in a much thinner forest before it gives way to the arid plateau and peaks.

The national park is named after its two mountains, Mount Semeru (the highest in Java at 3,676 m), Mount Bromo (the most popular) and the Tengger people who inhabit the area.
Mount Semeru also known as Mahameru ("Great Mountain"), is one of Indonesia's most active volcanoes. What stands out most about this mountain is the fact that it erupts periodically (and very reliably so). Every 20 min or so, the volcano belches out a huge cloud of steam and smoke, sometimes interspersed with ash and stones. Climbing Mount Semeru requires some planning and a permit from the national park authority. The mountain is often closed due to its highly active nature.

Mount Bromo (2,329 m) is easily recognized as the entire top has been blown off and the crater inside constantly belches white sulphurous smoke. It sits inside the massive Tengger caldera (diameter approximately 10 km), surrounded by the Laut Pasir (Sea of Sand) of fine volcanic sand. The overall effect is unsettlingly unearthly, especially when compared to the lush green valleys all around the caldera.

The major access point is Cemoro Lawang (also Cemara Lawang or Cemora Lawang - blame the East Javanese accent!) at the northeastern edge of the caldera, but there are also trails from Tosari (northwest) and Ngadas (southwest). The village of Ngadisari, on the road from Probolinggo about 5.5 km before Cemoro Lawang, marks the entrance to the national park. Both Cemoro Lawang and Ngadisari are rather picturesque, with brightly-painted houses and flower beds outside.
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6 Technologies That Will Stick Around

6 Media Players
Somehow, the portable MP3 player is one of the few gadgets to defy the pending onedevice-to-rule-them-all convergence. Why? Smaller non-phone form factors, jogging, and simplicity, for starters. All we know is that Apple sold a whopping 17 million iPods in the fourth quarter of 2010, that’s 3 million more MP3 players than iPhones.


5 Landline Telephone
More and more people are ditching their landlines, but they’ll never go away entirely. Service is cheap, call quality is reliable, and given how easy it is to overload mobile networks, they’ll probably work better in case of an emergency. And we don’t see businesses and corporations switching anytime soon.


4 Internal Combustion Engine
Hybrid tech is intriguing, but it’s a stop-gap measure that, ultimately, is still gas-powered. With lots of oil left on the planet, slow-moving auto makers, and no good fuel alternative, we’re going to be driving internal combustion engines for a long, long time.


3,2,1 The PC, Keyboard, and Mouse
We lump them together because in our minds, they’re a package deal. We hope we’re not jinxing ourselves, but in some way, shape, or form, the desktop computer will continue to sit at the center of our technological lives for some time to come.

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