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The latest challenge to the ban on hunting with dogs, was dismissed by the law lords yesterday when they ruled that the Hunting Act does not contravene human rights. |
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It is a truth that has been written and rewritten into the rich tapestry of
boxing since James J. Corbett, the original pretty boy, dismantled the
brutal pretensions of John L. Sullivan in 1892 to become the first
heavyweight champion of the modern era: a great boxer will always beat a
great slugger. |
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A car worker who had previously put women in a stranglehold is jailed for life for his girlfriend's murder. |
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Some of the world's rarest treasures go on display at the Natural History Museum in a new gallery called The Vault. |
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Google launched a location service for mobile users on Wednesday that doesn't rely on GPS.Google Maps with My Location, currently in beta, locates users who don't have GPS-enabled phones based on their location to nearby cell towers. The result isn't as accurate as GPS but works for people who lack the positioning technology in their phones."It helps users speed up search by showing the general neighborhood they're in," said Steve Lee, product manager at Google for the service. Without the location service, users must type in their address or neighborhood in order to find nearby businesses using Google Maps.Google Maps with My Location will use GPS data to locate the user if the phone has the capability. But even for users of GPS-enabled phones, the cell location service might be useful, Lee said. That's because the cell tower feature works better indoors than GPS, it doesn't drain the phone battery as quickly and can bring up a result quicker, he said.The service could be useful to a person who might be traveling in an unfamiliar city and looking for restaurants or other businesses. A user pulls up Google Maps and hits the zero key on the phone. A blue dot will appear on the map in the user's location. If the service used GPS in the phone, the blue dot will be solid. If the service used cell towers to determine the location, the blue dot will have a halo around it, indicating that the location isn't precise. The user can then search for nearby businesses.Google says the cell tower technique will locate the user within about 1000 meters. It doesn't use triangulation, which calculates a user location based on the user's distance to three nearby towers. Instead, it essentially shows the range of the tower that the user's phone is connecting to.But the accuracy should improve as more people use the service, Lee said. That's because Google is keeping a database of location queries, minus any personal information like individual phone numbers or names. That will allow Google to learn more precise information about the range of each tower so that it can deliver a more accurate location area to users. The coverage area of cell towers can vary from about a quarter of a mile to several miles based on whether the tower is in an urban or rural area.For now, Google Maps with My Location doesn't feature any advertising, but it could in the future. "This product makes a lot of sense for advertising," Lee said.In order to use the service, phone owners must download a free application from Google. The application will work on BlackBerry, Windows Mobile, and Symbian phones as well as many phones that support Java. A few notable exceptions include the Samsung Blackjack, Moto Q, and Palm Treo 700W, which don't support the APIs Google requires to find cell towers, Lee said. |
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Micron Technology plunged headfirst into the nascent solid state drive marketplace Wednesday with the unveiling of its RealSSD family of storage devices.The RealSSD portfolio features serial ATA II-enabled 1.8-in. and 2.5-in. solid state drives in 32GB and 64GB capacities. Early next year, the company will start mass producing the drives, which are currently being "sampled," said Dean Klein, vice president of memory system development at Boise, Idaho-based Micron.Micron's RealSSD drives, noted Klein, require less than 2 watts of power during active mode and are about 50 percent lighter than hard disk drives of similar capacities. The devices do not require a SATA bridge chip but rather rely on a single-chip controller (optimized for four-channel control of NAND flash) directly targeting the solid state drive application, he added.The new RealSSD line also includes the Embedded USB and Module products. The RealSSD Embedded USB can be plugged into a PC or blade server system to provide operating system storage and boot capabilities via a USB 2.0 interface. The RealSSD Module is a SATA-enabled solid state drive for server-based applications that measures 25mm high by 133.5mm long and less than 4mm thick.Klein acknowledged that adoption of solid state drives for corporate users has been very slow, mostly because of the technology's high price tag. However, he predicted that declining prices of NAND flash technology and the inevitable development of applications for solid state systems will accelerate demand."Technology is going to make [solid state] real. The cost of the NAND components will be a large determining factor in terms of acceptance," said Klein. "Even if we could bring speed of light performance to these devices, there's a lot of applications that still won't take them because the cost is too high or the density isn't high enough."Of the many first-generation solid state drive devices currently available, Klein remarked, "benchmarks have proven them to be fairly lame in terms of performance." Going a step further, he panned BitMicro Networks' 1.6TB solid state drive unveiled this month as a "pricey piece of art." Samsung Electronics and SanDisk are considered two established leaders currently providing solid state drive offerings, analysts noted.Although initially focused on providing solid state drives for the notebook audience -- a natural fit, said Klein, because solid state is lightweight, and offers power savings and a small size -- Micron does have interest in examining larger-capacity solid state products for the desktop and enterprise industry.Jeff Janukowicz, an analyst at IDC, said his IT research firm has forecast that demand for solid state technology will "substantially" increase over the next few years. An IDC report released in July predicted that sales of solid state drives will grow from $373 million in 2006 to a total of $5.4 billion in 2011.While notebook computing will fuel solid state adoption, Janukowicz said he expects the need for improved performance and specialized applications in servers, blade servers, and enterprise storage systems to attract growing solid state interest over time.Janukowicz said Micron's decision to debut an entire family of solid state products with RealSSD and its established NAND and flash memory expertise could prove to be a key differentiator with OEMs. But much work still needs to be done, he noted."Micron needs to work well with PC OEMs that deliver solutions acceptable for the PC market," he said. "The challenge there is [a traditional] usage model of using hard disks in notebook PCs. There is a bit of education process in terms of using solid state disks as primary storage in network computing that needs to take place."Computerworld is an InfoWorld affiliate |
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After months of intense back-and-forth in both parties, the earliest-starting race in American campaign history is now just weeks away from a six-day sequence that appears certain to put its stamp on both the Democratic and Republican nominating campaigns. With poll numbers showing the Democratic... |
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So does history really repeat itself? Not according to onetime White House aide Rahm Emanuel . |
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A trailblazing Chicago school starts economic education early to give inner-city black kids a leg up |
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The disabled children of the Musoma Engineering Project are rehearsing for celebrations on World Disability Day. |
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