fiber

Subaru is creating a variant of its Impreza STI, called the WRX STI Carbon. With a name like Carbon, you just know that this is going to be a hardcore, lightweight, performance variant that will slap that smarmy grin off of the Mitsubishi Evo's face, right? Wrong. Because it seems that Subaru's forgotten to add the performance.

The STI Carbon starts out well enough. It replaces the roof panel with light-and-strong carbon fiber to lower the center of gravity. Then, the Recaro seats are wrapped in grippy suede to hold your butt in place while you whip through … Read more

SAN FRANCISCO--You've probably heard about fiber optics for years--some kind of exotic technology used to carry gargantuan quantities of data across continents. But in the not-too-distant future, you might be plugging these tiny glass strands straight into your computer.

That's if Intel gets its way. At its Intel Developer Forum last week, the chipmaker demonstrated fiber-optic technology called Light Peak for connecting many devices to PCs with fiber optic lines. Intel secured major Light Peak endorsement from Sony and now it's has begun trying to make it into an industry standard.

But bringing optical technology to the masses will require more than Intel Chief Technology Officer Justin Rattner taking the stage to connect a thin white Light Peak cable into the back of a prototype PC. According to sources familiar with the situation, the most likely mechanism to carry Light Peak out of the R&D lab to the edge of your laptop will be the venerable Universal Serial Bus, and Intel has begun pounding the pavement to try to make that happen.

"Now all the pieces are in place," Rattner said. "We need to get a standard established to turn on the entire ecosystem to Light Peak." … Read more

One in five households worldwide will be wired up to the Internet by year's end, according to new estimates from Gartner.

The number of households with fixed broadband connections is expected to reach 422 million across the globe this year, a jump of 10.5 percent over 382 million in 2008, the analyst firm said Friday. This number will further swell to an estimated 580 million by 2013.

Over the next four years, global broadband services revenue will also help offset declining voice revenue and account for 40 percent of the consumer fixed voice, Internet, and broadband services market … Read more

John Cioffi joins the show to explain the difference between fiber optic cable and copper cable. Find out what you should know and why you should care.

Zappos has been acquired by Amazon, meaning Amazon will have even more shoes to sell, but also a new corporate culture to integrate with. Windows 7 gets released to manufacturing, meaning it's on its way to you. And Microsoft and UBIsoft are getting into the movie business. Is that a good thing?

Windows 7 Has Been Released to Manufacturing http://windowsteamblog.com/blogs/windows7/archive/2009/07/22/windows-7-has-been-released-to-manufacturing.aspx

Fiber to the home deployments will grow 30% CAGR to 130M installed by 2013 http://www.earthtimes.org/articles/show/fiber-to-the-home-deployments-to-grow-more,902195.shtml

Open Source gets it's own lobbying organization http://arstechnica.com/open-source/news/2009/07/new-advocacy-group-pushes-oss-for-the-usa.ars

ATandT activates 2.4 million iPhones; Second quarter tops estimates http://blogs.zdnet.com/BTL/?p=21579

Microsoft and Ubisoft get into the film business http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-ct-videogames23-2009jul23,0,5232624.story

Instant search comes to Splashtop http://news.cnet.com/8301-17938_105-10293479-1.html

Major League Baseball Beans Jon Stewart, and Obama's Pitch Vanishes http://mediamemo.allthingsd.com/20090722/major-league-baseball-beans-jon-stewart-and-obamas-pitch-vanishes/

Artificial brain '10 years away' http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/8164060.stm

Camaro Transformers Edition http://www.autoweek.com/article/20090722/CARNEWS/907229993

… Read more

Fiber to the home (FTTH) installations are expected to shoot up 30 percent annually over the next five years, according to a report released Thursday by Heavy Reading.

Growing from 36 million households with fiber hookups last year, a record 130 million are likely to have fiber by 2013, according to a summary (PDF) of the report from Heavy Reading, the market research arm of Light Reading, an event company serving the worldwide communications market.

FTTH installations employ fiber-optic cables to replace the traditional copper wiring used in the last mile from the central office to the home. Fiber can … Read more

More people throughout the world are hopping onto the high-speed bandwagon.

Global broadband access jumped by 16.6 million lines in the last quarter, reaching a total of 429.2 million lines throughout the world, says a report released Tuesday by industry group Broadband Forum.

Despite the sluggish economy, growth was slightly higher in the latest quarter than over the prior three months, according to the report.

In this past quarter, broadband access grew by 10 percent in 20 different countries. The biggest gainers were India at 13.4 percent, the Ukraine at 15.2 percent, Egypt at 10.6 … Read more

Well, according to one listener, you can't get away from underwear in Japan so the Google StreetView cameras shouldn't try. Also if you deleted those pictures of you in your underwear from Facebook, I can still see them. In fact, deleting photos from social media doesn't make it as deleted as you might like. We also talk Pirate Bay, RealDVD, and other court cases.

Web sites ‘keeping deleted photos’ http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/8060407.stm… Read more

A simple snip of a few fiber-optic communications cables left thousands of people in Silicon Valley and throughout parts of the San Francisco Bay Area without phone, Internet, or wireless service for more than 12 hours on Thursday.

The San Jose Police Department is investigating the incidents, which took place in two different locations in San Jose and San Carlos and classified as acts of vandalism. Now that the network is up and running again, people are asking how difficult is it to take down the nation's communications network? And should we be more worried about the fiber optic … Read more