Many Modifications—USB still NOT Perfect yet!

Almost 19 years back from today, Toshiba invented the memory. The name ‘flash’ was derived from the way by which memory was erased redolent of the camera i.e. “Flash”. It was just the flash memory that was invented by Toshiba; the first USB drive was introduced by Intel in1988. When these two drives (Flash drive and USB drives) were merged to form a device, USB flash drive was invented. In early 2000, Trek Corporation was the first one to launch a proper USB flash drive in the market. The first USB flash drive that was available in the market had the capacity to store only 8MB of data. Latter, IBM captured the North American market introducing this amazing drive there. The USB flash drive has become much more capable and powerful since its evolution. Like every invention, it takes ages to make it perfect, similarly, USB jump drives have passed through several stages, and the drive we use today are almost 3000 times more competent than the first USB flash drive. USB flash drive had the capability to store much more than a standard CD (Compact Disk), it was easy to carry. The USB flash drives were and are as small as the size of human thumb. That is why, this amazing portable data storing device has several names such as; thumb drive, flash drive, jump drive and some others.

USB flash drive has easily become the ruler of the market of the portable data storing devices, but, still, these drives are the perfect ones. If you study the result of the surveys conducted to know the trends of data breach, you would probably found that this small data storing device is on the top of the list that leaks data. Other than that, these USB memory sticks are the ones that are to be blamed for spreading viruses. Studies have suggested that more than quarter of the malware is being spread through these portable data storing devices. USB flash drive has also given employees, and other workers to steal data easier than ever before. The employees are allowed to bring their devices to work according to the new principle BYOD (Bring Your Own Device), this principle is adopted by the companies to increase the output of the employees. Other than that, employees want to take their data home so that they can complete their task at home. This can boost their performance and can bring bigger opportunities for them ahead. Among these kind of employees, there are also some workers who do not have the same intentions and they take data to sell it to some other competitor or organization.

The biggest threat is imposed to the data by USB flash drive is due to its small size. These drives are tough to take care of and are very much prone to getting lost or stolen. The majority of the user of these drives does not pay serious attention towards its security and keep the thumb drive unsecure. The users can make their data that is saved in the USB flash drive secure by using security software that cans Secure USB. Even if you misplace or lose your portable drive, your data will remain inaccessible for any crook.

More Information Visit:

http://www.newsoftwares.net/usb-secure/

Meet The “Best Racecar That Never Was”

John F. Kennedy famously said, “Success has many fathers, but failure is an orphan.” Then what does that make a car that could have been a success, but was never given the chance? This is the story of one such car; its near miss with history, and the crash that removed it from the limelight.

In the 1950s, Jaguar was a prominent face in auto racing. By 1960, the British automaker has begun talking about a mid-engined car, as other makes had brought mid-engined cars to Le Mans with success. Also, the idea of a V12 engine had been bandied about since 1950, with the hopes of dual overhead cams. While the single overhead cam V12 that started in the XK would eventually make its way into a racecar, this particular DOHC V12 was a dedicated design for a car that would come to be named XJ13.

This engine was essentially two inline-6 engines mated together, and would make its way into a body that was crafted byMalcom Sayer. Having designed the C-Type, D-Type, E-Type and XJS, Sayer formed the aluminum body using lessons learned from his career at the Bristol Aerospace Company.

The front suspension had a similar design as that of the E-Type, but the rear was of a unique layout. During the time this car was being developed, Jaguar driver Lofty England was a presence at Le Mans, fielding the C-Type and D-Type through the 1950s. Lofty and Jaguar designers had high hopes for the XJ13, but the car was never a priority for the company, especially with its current front-engined cars in service.

With the dominance of the Ford GT40, the XJ13 was already considered obsolete before it ever ran a race. So, if anything the car was a study in performance and design. As such, it was intended to be used for promotional purposes of the V12 engine, with the V12-powered Series 3 E-Type debuting in 1971.

The car was brought to a racetrack so it could be filmed at speed. It had a wheel with a plugged leaky tire, which deflated over the course of the driving session. When the tire had become too low, the XJ13 flipped, and crashed hard. Thankfully driver Norman Dewis was not hurt, but the car was not so lucky. The nearly destroyed car was put into storage at Jaguar.

Years later, Edward Loades saw the wreck and suggested that the car should be rebuilt. Loades was crucial to the creation of most of the aluminum bodied Jag’s of the era, and his Abbey Panels Companywas capable of many gorgeous and functional shapes. Loades used some of the original parts as templates to create new ones. As such, Jaguar disclaimed that the finished restoration was not an exact reproduction. Though Jaguar did not consider it to be original, it was impressive enough that Lofty England drove it around the circuit at Silverstone prior to the British Grand Prix. The car currently resides at the UK’s Heritage Motor Centere Museum.

It has since been called the “best racecar that never was” by Jaguar fans. Perhaps, but it could also have been the prettiest Jaguar that never was. Considering cars like the XK120and E-Type, that is high praise, indeed.

Bruce Willis Out, Harrison Ford In For 'The Expendables 3'

Harrison Ford joins 'The Expendables' crew (Photo: Lionsgate/Getty)

We actually have a good feeling about this.

There has been a lot of speculating as to which old-timer action star(s) Sylvester Stallone will be recruiting for the third installment in his over-the-hill shoot-'em-up series, "The Expendables." But one name that probably no one was expecting to show up on the roll call is Harrison Ford (even though rumors had been swirling about it).

The man who brought life to both Han Solo and Indiana Jones has joined the cast of "The Expendables 3," according to Stallone himself and later confirmed by The Wrap. The writer-star announced the news via Twitter:

The tweet also reveals that Bruce Willis won't be reprising his role as Church in the third film. Willis and Stallone apparently didn't part on good terms, as Sly slammed his former co-star (confirmed by Stallone's reps via Huffington Post) in a tweet following the announcement about Ford:

Sheesh, way to go, Bruce! No more friendship for you!

Anyway, this has us thinking that Ford will be taking Willis' place in a new "handler" kind of part (Ha! We get goosebumps just thinking about it!). We'll see if we're right when details on Ford's character come in, whenever that may be.

Sylvester Stallone has been having almost as much fun with Twitter as an announcement platform as "X-Men: Days of Future Past" director Bryan Singer. On March 12, he posted, "Writing EX3 at the moment ... there are going to be mountains of surprises." And when a rumor began to circulate thatMel Gibson was being courted to direct "The Expendables 3," Stallone posted, "Mel is a MAGNIFICENT director! Pure passion on every level. We'd be blessed to have him. A REAL long shot, but LIFE is a long shot — right?"

[Related: Stallone Casts Snipes in 'Expendables 3' (on Tax Day, Of Course)]

A new addition to "The Expendables" family was Sly's "Demolition Man" buddy Wesley Snipes, who rather ironically joined the cast of the third film on April 15 as tax preparers scrambled to prepare their last-minute reports. As of May 2013, Nicolas Cage, Jackie Chan and Milla Jovovich were in "advanced negotiations" to join the cast, though their involvement has yet to be confirmed.

While Arnold Schwarzenegger reprising his role as Trench seems to be a question mark, series regulars Jason Statham, Jet Li, Dolph Lundgren, Terry Crews, and Randy Couture are all expected to return, with Mickey Rourke coming back to reprise his role as Tool after sitting out "The Expendables 2":

Ultimate Truth
They're soldiers for hire, and this time they have a massive axe to grind -- playing out ultimate revenge on behalf of a fallen comrade. When it comes to the making of "The Expendables 2" there is a lot of fact to sort out from the fiction. Find out what's true and what's false in this week's Five Film Facts. less 

 

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And then there are the casting rumors, which usually end up being more fun than any actual "Expendables" movie. Steven Seagal claimed that he'd been offered a role in the third film even before the second one came out last summer, and Clint Eastwood's name has been floating around as a possibility (which would probably be just too awesome for an "Expendables" movie to handle).

It will be interesting to see how this film takes shape. Meanwhile, we can hopefully look forward to a scene in which Harrison Ford puts that young whippersnapper Jason Statham in his place.

"The Expendables 3" will hit theaters on August 15, 2014.

Newspapers Are Billionaires’ Latest Trophies, New York Times

.Just $250 million.

That’s all Jeffrey P. Bezos paid on Monday for The Washington Post, which was once worth several billion dollars.

$70 million. That’s all John Henry paid on Friday for The Boston Globe, a paper The New York Times had acquired for $1.1 billion in 1993.

Next to nothing. That’s what IBT Media paid to buy Newsweek over the weekend from IAC, which itself had paid only $1 plus $40 million in pension obligations to buy it two years ago.

How do you explain the prices that these storied media institutions have been sold for over the last 72 hours?

The answer has little to do with dollars and cents, spreadsheets and valuation metrics. If it did, in truth, the buyers might have paid even less.

If it wasn’t clear that newspapers have become trophies for the wealthy with an interest in journalism or power — or a combination of both — it should be now.

“These deals don’t make financial sense,” said Ken Doctor, an analyst at Outsell, a research and consulting firm for the publishing industry.

He suggested that Mr. Bezos’s valuation of The Washington Post was a generous gift. “It is a combination of good will and real estate,” he said, before adding, “I mean good will in the moral sense, not the financial sense.”

Mr. Bezos, the chief executive of Amazon.com, is paying cash for The Washington Post out of his own personal wealth, currently estimated at more than $25 billion. The Post will cost him roughly 1 percent of what he owns in Amazon stock alone.

Some billionaires like cars, yachts and private jets. Others like newspapers.

“Newspapers have gone from the public markets to the hands of a relatively few billionaires who have an appetite for social, civic and financial roles,” Mr. Doctor said.

Based on the math, it is hard to justify a $250 million valuation for The Washington Post. The company reported it lost nearly $50 million for the first half of the year on its newspaper operation that generated $138.4 million in revenue. Of the $50 million loss, nearly $40 million was a noncash pension expense. So you could argue that the company lost only $10 million on operations. But it lost $33 million in the first half of 2012, too, also including pension costs. Circulation fell about 7 percent in the first half of 2013.

At the end of last year, the company valued its newspaper assets at $293.6 million, no doubt a generous figure.

For the Washington Post Company, which will remain publicly traded and renamed, probably to reflect its focus on its education business, Kaplan, and its television stations, the sale of the newspaper represents a very small part of its business. The Washington Post Company’s market value is $4.2 billion.

But the newspaper, which has been owned by four generations of the family since 1933, was not just a business.

Underscoring the size of the newspaper to the company, Katharine Weymouth, publisher of the newspaper, justified the sale by saying this in an interview with The Washington Post: “If journalism is the mission, given the pressures to cut costs and make profits, maybe (a publicly traded company) is not the best place for The Post.”

By taking the newspaper private, Mr. Bezos can afford to be a patient owner. Profit and loss is probably the least of his concerns. A running joke on Monday was this from Ben Popper, the editor at the Web site the Verge, on Twitter: “Jeff Bezos has reputation for building great companies with little to no profit, perfect guy to own a newspaper.”

While Mr. Bezos may not be buying the paper for immediate profits, it may not be entirely altruistic either. His parents, Jackie and Mike Bezos, run the Bezos Family Foundation, which is not expected to be involved in the business.

As part of the deal, Mr. Bezos is assuming the pension obligations of the current employees of the newspaper. Compared with the deal John Henry, owner of the Boston Red Sox, struck for The Boston Globe on Friday, Mr. Bezos looks like a lavish benefactor. Mr. Henry paid $70 million, but The Boston Globe has approximately $110 million in pension obligations, which The New York Times Company is keeping on its books.

One billionaire who has been bullish on newspapers, not just as a benefactor, but as a business, is Warren Buffett. His company, Berkshire Hathaway, has acquired a series of newspapers, including The Omaha World-Herald, where he lives and grew up, and more from Media General.

In my conversations with him over the last year, he has stressed that he likes small, community newspapers because there is a built-in audience that can’t get the news elsewhere. But he has expressed doubts about regional newspapers, like The Los Angeles Times. Berkshire is a major shareholder of the Washington Post Company and Mr. Buffett was on the board for many years, until 2011.

At Berkshire’s annual meeting, Mr. Buffett said he expected his newspapers to make a profit, but “it’s not going to move the needle at Berkshire.”

On Monday night, just hours after The Post announced its sale to Mr. Bezos, James Fallows, a former editor of U.S. News & World Report who writes for The Atlantic, said the deal put him in a state of shock.

“Let us hope,” he wrote, “that this is what the sale signifies: The beginning of a phase in which this Gilded Age’s major beneficiaries reinvest in the infrastructure of our public intelligence.”

Once Upon a Time Spin-Off Tells Different Wonderland Tale

Like its predecessor, Once Upon a Time in Wonderland adds new details to a familiar fairy tale to tell an entirely different story.To wit: This Alice (Sophie Lowe) has to escape from an insane asylum to make her way back to Wonderland, where she hopes to reunite with the love of her life, a genie named Cyrus (Peter Gadiot).Once Upon a Time in Wonderland taps Naveen Andrews as Jafar and more scoop from Comic-Con

"It's honoring what came before and leaping off and trying to do our own spin," executive producer Adam Horowitz said at the Television Critics Association fall TV previews on Sunday. The producers note that the 13-episode first season is a contained and complete story that, should it prove successful, could continue with a new tale in a potential second season.

Unlike her literary counterpart, this Alice isn't the weak-willed girl who followed the White Rabbit down his hole. "She's tough, mentally and physically," Lowe said. "She can kick a-- and look after herself." Added executive producer Edward Kitsis: "You'll realize that Alice was an ignored girl growing up, so in a lot of ways, Alice is trying to prove this to her father so she can get his love."

 Once Upon a Time heads to Neverland, welcomes Peter Pan, Tinker Bell and Ariel!

But who is this genie? "We love the idea of a genie who thought, 'If only one day I could get free, I could live [my own] life.' Alice had a really tough growing-up process, so they kind of complete each other in a way." Kitsis noted that it seemed very plausible that a girl who could follow a rabbit down a hole would love a genie who can travel to many different lands.

The producers say that Wonderland won't be nearly as dark as Once. "It has its own unique vibe," Kitsis said. "For us, Wonderland is a psychedelic romance. It's trippy and weird and intense, but it also has some real characters and romance." Levity will come in the form of the hookah-smoking Caterpillar (voiced by Roger Daltrey), the White Rabbit (voiced by John Lithgow) and the introduction of the Cheshire Cat. As for the return of the Mad Hatter, the producers noted they're not recasting Sebastian Stan, but they hope he'll have time to return to their world. 

Further, fans of the flagship series will get a deeper experience knowing some of the characters who cross over, including the Queen of Hearts (Barbara Hershey), who the producers teased would likely appear in flashbacks. The show's main villains, however, will be the Red Queen (Emma Rigby) andAladdin's Jafar (Lost's Naveen Andrews), both of whom will have backstories that expand upon their existing personas. "What we want to do is present the audience with something they've never seen before," Andrews said. "There has to be ambiguity."

But you don't have to have watched Once to get it. "This show exists concurrently with Once," Horowitz said. "We hit the ground running in the pilot of this show and hopefully you can come right in."

Once Upon a Time in Wonderland will premiere Thursday, Oct. 10 at 8/7c on ABC.