TSWN.com

Nice story on how to build a huge storage system on the cheap (sortof).

"At Backblaze, we provide unlimited storage to our customers for only $5 per month, so we had to figure out how to store hundreds of petabytes of customer data in a reliable, scalable way—and keep our costs low. After looking at several overpriced commercial solutions, we decided to build our own custom Backblaze Storage Pods: 67 terabyte 4U servers for $7,867."

Read the rest of the story here.

(CNET) -- Apple's exclusive deal with AT&T to offer the iPhone may end within the year, according to a prediction from financial analyst Gene Munster, a senior research analyst at Piper Jaffray.
The iPhone could be available next year on wireless carriers such as Verizon, an analyst predicts.

The iPhone could be available next year on wireless carriers such as Verizon, an analyst predicts.

If Munster is correct, opening up the iPhone to other carriers in the U.S. could be a boon for Apple, which would likely see iPhone sales go through the roof. On the flipside, if this prediction were to come true, it would likely mean very bad news for AT&T, which has relied heavily on the iPhone to boost its own wireless sales and revenue.

Munster noted recently in his published research that Apple has been moving away from exclusive deals in other countries, according to AppleInsider. Specifically, in France the company ended an exclusive deal with Orange and opened up the device to multiple carriers. Munster said the change pushed the iPhone's marketshare upward to about 40 percent in France. In the U.S., where the iPhone is exclusively offered through AT&T, the iPhone has a marketshare in the teens.

There are several other countries where Apple has a multi-carrier model. In fact, its most recent deal with China Unicom to bring the iPhone to China is also not exclusive. Apple declined to discuss which carriers it might be in talks with, but analyst firms such as Piper Jaffray expect Apple to sell more than 3 million iPhone units in China next year.

Details of Apple's relationship with AT&T have never been made public. But many people have speculated that the exclusivity contract with AT&T would last at most five years from when the first iPhone hit the market in 2007. This would mean that AT&T would have exclusive rights to the iPhone until around 2012.

Joel Tenenbaum has to pay $22,500 for each of the 30 songs he downloaded and shared on Kazaa in 2004.

(CNET) -- At a hacker conference no one is safe.

When I first went to Defcon in 1995, the halls were mobbed with teenagers and attendees seemed more concerned with freeing Kevin Mitnick and seeing strippers than hacking each others' computers.

Jump forward to Defcon 17 this year, which was held over the weekend in Las Vegas, things certainly have changed. The attendees are older and wiser and employed, most of the feds aren't in stealth mode, and even the most savvy of hackers is justifiably paranoid.

"Welcome to the hacker world," said Defcon founder Jeff Moss.

When football season hits, the owners of this six-screen video wall don’t have to decide which game to watch. They can view six different match-ups at once, switch to a totally different set of games at halftime or put a single image (see photo below) on the entire wall for a bigger view of the action.

Designed and installed by the custom electronics pros at Hi-Tech Home in Clovis, Calif., the wall consists of six individual 42-inch Panasonic flat-panel displays, mounted in two horizontal rows of three. Each TV is connected to its own DirecTV high-def satellite receiver, all of which reside out of sight in an equipment closet.



Company president Jay Cobb explains that these particular displays feature circuitry that enables them to create one merged image on all six TVs or just four (leaving the remaining two TV free to display two different programs). This circuitry, he says, doesn’t make the Panasonic units any more expensive than a typical flat-panel TV. However, any time you put six high-def flat panel TVs together, the potential for an astronomical price tag exists.

Cobb kept the cost of this project in check by paying close attention to the size of the TV bezels and the sophistication of the device that would control the video wall. The Panasonic units chosen for the job each have a 1.5-inch bezel, creating a 3-inch gap between the TVs.

The gaps are most prominent when a single image is spread across the entire TV array. The cost: $15,000 for equipment, programming and labor. Had Hi-Tech installed TVs with 1/16th-inch bezels instead, the cost would have skyrocketed to $60,000, Cobb says. For these homeowners, having a more seamless video wall wasn’t worth the extra $45,000 they would have had to spend.

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