SAMSUNG 4G TECH MOBILE

The Android running Smartphone, Samsung Epic 4G is the 2^nd handset in the Sprint’s list to have WiMax support(1^st is a slider QWERTY handset HTC Evo 4G), will be ready for launch at the end of this month.
Notable features of the phone are 5 MP Camera, the front end VGA camera for video chatting, an mobile hotspot functionalities

Unpredictably light: The Epic 4G weighs only 5.5 ounces because of the slide out keypad adding an extra ounce and the thickness will only be few tenths of an inch. Its a reasonable sized mobile that weighs unbelievably less.  It will be launched on August 31 and you will get a 2 year Sprint contract for 249$, after mail in rebate of 100$.
Dazzling display: The Epic 4G sports 4” inch screen size that works on Super AMOLED technology, which gives HQ colour images better than a Standard AMOLED technology. Super AMOLED images look well indoor but outdoor it looks dim.
Soft, Silky performance: The 1GHZ powered Hummingbird allows you to swap across the home screen and menus real fast. Windows opened swiftly and Switching between portrait and landscape mode will happen pretty quick in no time.
Lovely QWERTY keypad: The QWERTY pad slides across in soft and elastic way. There are 5 rows of keys with a row for numbers alone. There is no dedicated @ key and the space key looks small.
You can have them for sure: The executives from Sprint say that the Epic 4G may not be able to beat the sales of Evo 4G. The interest shown by people is not the same like before (during the launch of Evo 4G). So, all the demands of customers can be satisfied(everybody can get their handsets without any delay).
now take a look at the disadvantages now.Ships with Android 2.1, not 2.2: Epic 4G runs on Android 2.1 only and not on Android 2.2, which means it has no Flash support. It seems Samsung and Sprint has not taken any steps to upgrade the Epic 4G to Android 2.2 Froyo, as the release date is nearing.
Cost is high (50$ more): Be ready with 350$ to buy the Epic 4G (249 $ for contract and 00$ for mail in rebate). This is 50$ more than HTC Evo 4G. The reason given by executives for this is that the Epic 4G has got premium hardware making it a premium handset.
Add on fee of $10/month “Premium Data” 4G tax: It will cost you 69$ for voice and data plans and for the 4G add on fee of 10$ will have to be paid every month, regardless of any place you are situated. The reason for 10$ extra was that the Evo and Epic users use more data compared to other handset users.
Battery life: Just like the Evo 4G, the Epic 4G handset’s battery may get harmed when the handset is used in areas having weak 4G signal. If you live in 4G coverage area, no problem, but if you are in a place having 3G coverage only, it is better switch off the 4G antenna to conserve your battery charge and life.

Face recognition technology fails to find UK rioters

THE response was as aggressive and swift as the riots themselves. Within a few hours of the worst of last week's looting across London and other English cities, attempts were being made to use CCTV footage to track down the individuals who had plundered shops and destroyed buildings.

But those raised on a diet of TV police dramas who expected crack law enforcement teams to simply plug the footage into a computer and then print out a list of suspects are going to be disappointed. The poor quality of most CCTV footage makes it almost impossible to trust standard automated facial recognition techniques.

One of the most common methods used to help identify an individual from camera footage is photoanthropometry, which uses "proportionality indices" to compare a picture of a suspect on a police database, say, with a CCTV image. Key points on a person's face - such as the chin, edge of the nose, or centre of the top lip - are marked and the distance between them measured. Someone experienced with this technique can then judge whether the two faces match.

Reuben Moreton from the London Metropolitan Police's Digital and Electronic Forensic Service tested the techniques on poor quality, low-resolution footage of 13 volunteers. It produced "chaotic, inconsistent results" (Forensic Science, DOI: 10.1016/j.forsciint.2011.06.023). The lack of facial detail reduced the precision of the PI measurements so that individuals with similar PIs could easily be confused with one another.

Imperfect CCTV and poor- quality images can easily thwart more advanced, automated techniques too, says Lyndon Smith at the Machine Vision Laboratory of the University of the West of England, Bristol, UK.

"There is an inherent reliability problem in conventional face recognition systems," he says. "Changes in lighting, image quality, changing background and orientation - even make-up can fool them."

Smith's group is working on a system called Photoface that he believes could help. The system takes a number of 2D images of someone's face and then stitches them together into a 3D model in which the lighting can be manipulated and the face can be viewed from different angles. He envisages Photoface being used on CCTV footage fed to a police control room. "This is a system that could help with the identification of people in unusual situations or low light," Smith says.

Graham Cluley, senior technology consultant at IT security firm Sophos, agrees that current systems are not up to the task. "This is not CSI Miami," he says. "Computers can't do the things you see on TV shows."

While a Metropolitan police source told New Scientist that face recognition technology is being used in some cases, it is only effective for face-on shots. It's far more useful, he says, to post CCTV images of suspected rioters on the Met's Flickr account, and then invite the public to comb through the images and point out suspects they recognise. "We can get a JPEG in front of a million people in 2 minutes. No computer system can match that at the moment."

Some digital vigilantes believe face recognition technology will provide the answer. A group of programmers have formed the Google Group "London Riots Facial Recognition". They won't discuss their techniques, but told New Scientist: "We're just a bunch of computer programmers who want to use technology to try and help the situation."

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THE ENDANGERED ANIMALS

 

 

The mountain gorillas of Bwindi Impenetrable Forest are some of the most endangered of primates.

Gorilla beringei beringei is classed as "critically endangered" by the IUCN, as there are only about 300 adults left in the wild.

All species and subspecies of gorilla are either endangered or critically endangered. They are threatened by mining, logging, poaching and human gunmen in general.

They have sophisticated social lives that could shed light on human evolution. For instance, pregnant females sometimes court the dominant male to prevent rival females from conceiving.

(Image: Wildlife Conservation Society/TEAM Network Partnership)

Red Hat RHEV Freed From Windows Fetters

With the next release of its Red Hat Enterprise Virtualization (RHEV) package, Red Hat has finally rid itself of one of its most notorious dependencies, namely the use of Microsoft's Windows Server and SQL Server.
The beta of RHEV 3.0, released Tuesday, will be the first version of the virtualization package that does not require a copy of Microsoft Windows Server to run the management console, said Navin Thadani, Red Hat senior director of virtualization business.
For a company that prides itself on contrasting its open-source strategy against Microsoft's proprietary software model, RHEV's reliance on Windows has been seen as an inconsistency.
The new beta version also shows that the company has put forth considerable effort in allowing the software to handle larger workloads, which should make it competitive with another chief rival of Red Hat in the virtualization space, namely VMware.
"VMware is not the only game in town," Thadani said. "We're in a really good position to capitalize on the growing demand for alternatives to VMware."
Introduced in 2009, RHEV is unique in the virtualization market in that it combines in one console the ability to manage both virtual servers and virtual desktops. The software has gained a number of high-profile users since its launch, such as IBM, NTT Communications and DreamWorks Animation--though Thadani declined to offer an estimate of how many RHEV deployments exist in the wild.
The reliance on Windows Server was unusual given Red Hat's insistence on using open-source software for its own offerings. But Red Hat had acquired the management console for RHEV through its 2008 acquisition of software vendor Qumranet, which provided many of the components of RHEV. For Qumranet, Windows provided an adequate foundation for managing virtual desktops, said Thadani, who worked for Qumranet prior to Red Hat's purchase.
This version of RHEV includes a completely new console, one built with Java that runs on Red Hat's JBoss Enterprise Application Platform, which itself runs on Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL). A browser-based console replaces the standalone Windows program packaged in the previous version.
The new environment will be familiar to those who are comfortable with Linux. Instead of SQL Server, RHEV will deploy the PostGres open-source database. Previous versions forced administrators to use Windows Server's PowerShell to automate tasks through the use of scripts. They now can use the Linux command-line interface to run scripts instead. Red Hat also offers an API (application programming interface) that will allow third-party management tools to operate RHEV. Users of RHEV can still use Microsoft's Active Directory for authentication purposes.
Beyond the revamped management console, the software has undergone significant improvements in scalability. It can now support as many as 64 virtual CPUs and 2 terabytes of memory for hosts, an increase over the previous limit of 16 virtual CPUs and 256 gigabytes of memory per machine. In contrast, Version 5 of VMware's vSphere, released in July, supports up to 32 virtual CPUs and 1 terabyte of memory.
RHEV 3.0 is an improvement on its predecessor in a number of other ways as well. The KVM (Kernel-based Virtual Machine) hypervisor has been upgraded to the latest Linux kernel in RHEL 6. The new version can also use local disks, whereas the previous version could only use shared storage. And for the VDI (virtual desktop infrastructure) deployments, Red Hat's SPICE (Simple Protocol for Independent Computing Environments) has been updated to speed up streaming performance over WANs (wide area networks).
The company expects to release the final production version of RHEV by the end of the year, Thadani said.

Apple CEO Steve Jobs has met personally with mega-carrier China Mobile

As Apple looks to ink an iPhone deal with China Mobile, the largest mobile provider in the world, a new report reveals that company co-founder Steve Jobs has met personally with executives from the carrier on a number of occasions.China Mobile revealed the meetings with Jobs during a news conference regarding its earnings for the first half of 2011, according to Reuters. Jobs has reportedly met with executives from the carrier "several times," and wishes to introduce an iPhone based on China Mobile's network standard.

Officials with China Mobile also reportedly revealed that 7.44 million iPhones are used on its network, despite the fact that the iPhone is not officially available to its customers.

Users who operate an iPhone on China Mobile's network cannot access high-speed 3G, because it uses its own TDSCDMA standard. The iPhone, in its current form, does not support that standard, leaving users who use an iPhone with China Mobile operating at much slower 2G speeds.

The news that Jobs himself has met with China Mobile officials comes a few months after Apple Chief Operating Officer Tim Cook was rumored to have been spotted at the carrier's corporate headquarters. Rumors of a deal between Apple and China Mobile have persisted for some time.

While those rumors have lingered, no official has been announced. Earlier this month, it was claimed once again that the two sides had come to a deal. That rumor suggested the iPhone 4 would be officially sold to China Mobile's customers by the end of October.

Further supporting the latest rumors of an impending deal between the two parties, last month AppleInsider uncovered an unverified photo that appears to show an iPhone 4 running on China Mobile's 3G network.

China has been an important piece of Apple's growth in recent months, amounting to $9 billion alone this year. That trend is expected to continue upward, with China's smartphone market predicted to be worth $70 billion total.