From Droid Life: After Update, Google’s Music Manager Allows Download Of All Your Music Straight From The Cloud

Thanks to a recent update to the Music Manager for Google Music, the search giant is now giving users a single button to download all of their previously uploaded or purchased music straight to their hard drives from the cloud. This was a feature we had been hoping for since its inception, but later is better than ever. Has your computer crashed and now your new PC has no music? Then this should ease your worries about losing your collection.

Along with that gem, users can now share YouTube videos of songs they have recently added to their library with their Google+ circles. Once you have uploaded a song, just click the drop down button and hit “share video with circles.” Cheers, Google.

Via: Google+

from Droid Life

From Autoblog: Video: Brothers make tribute video for mom who died when Explorer rolled

This is not for the faint of heart… as a parent, just seeing this picture brings me to tears… I hope they grow up well knowing their mother loved them dearly… and for crying out loud Ford, correct the huge mistake and own up to your errors and faults!!

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Nicole Miller Ford Explorer rollover video

It is with mixed emotions that we share this particular video, which stars two young boys who lost their mother, Nicole Miller, in 2004 after the Ford Explorer she was riding in blew a tire and rolled, causing her fatal injuries.

A sad story indeed, and we’re quite certain everyone involved wishes that Mrs. Miller were still alive and that her boys would not have had a reason compelling them to make the tribute video in the first place. Certainly, the powers-that-be at the automaker hate seeing the Blue Oval’s name brought up again in connection to older Explorers and the well-known lawsuits lodged against it after a number of owners reported rollover accidents.

While acknowledging the tragic loss of life, it’s important to remember that the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration investigated the Ford Explorer and found it just as safe – or just as dangerous, as the case may be – as any other sport utility vehicle of the same era, which, importantly, was before stability control had hit the market in real numbers (and long before it became federally mandated, which was only recently). Independent tests were also carried out, none of which found the Ford Explorer to be particularly unsafe. Vehicles with high ground clearance and four-wheel drive are often afflicted with a higher center of gravity, making them easier to roll than passenger cars that sit closer to the ground.

For what it’s worth, Firestone did recall 14.4 million tires, including the ones fitted as standard equipment on many Ford Explorers built between 1991 and 2000, due to “a safety-related defect” (read: tread separation). But it isn’t Firestone that the Miller boys’ video targets, it’s the Ford Motor Company.

In response to a query from The Huffington Post, Ford spokesperson Marcey Evans said that the automaker was “familiar with this tragic accident and our sympathy goes out to the family involved.” Evans added, “We believe it would be inappropriate for us to comment further at this time as the family has brought a lawsuit against Ford, which is coming up for trial later this year.”

In any case, we’ve included Ryan and Gergory’s video after the break. It’s a heartstring tugger that sets new lyrics to Vanessa Carlton’s hit song A Thousand Miles, so bring tissues.

 

from Autoblog

From Reviews Tom’s Hardware US: Install A Hard Drive Or SSD In Your Notebook’s Optical Bay

That’s ingenious!! A very good idea indeed!
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Install A Hard Drive Or SSD In Your Notebook's Optical BayYou want a performance-oriented SSD in your notebook, but you also need the capacity of a hard drive. Why not just remove your optical drive, drop your hard drive into its bay, and load up a brand new SSD with Windows and your apps?

from Reviews Tom’s Hardware US

From Popular Science – New Technology, Science News, The Future Now: The Moon Should Be the 51st State, and Other Space Dreams From Newt Gingrich

As crazy as Gingrich is (not to mention how much I dislike him as a person and as a politician), this is one thing he has right… too bad I can’t vote for him even if this big issue is what I share in vision…
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Newt Gingrich Gage Skidmore via Flickr

At the sunset of Newt Gingrich’s putative presidency, the moon would be the 51st state, colonized by permanent American settlers. Tourists would honeymoon in low-Earth orbit, space factories would manufacture goods in microgravity, and America would have a rocket powerful enough to send us to Mars.

This is all according to a discussion Gingrich hosted Wednesday in Florida, which holds its presidential primary next Tuesday and which lost thousands of jobs as the space shuttle program drew to a close last year. But this is Gingrich talking, so it’s safe to say this isn’t all politics. A self-professed space nut and fan of science, Gingrich has dreamt of a lunar colony for decades. Even if this dream is inherently irrational:

“The reason you have to have a bold and large vision is you don’t arouse the American nation with trivial, bureaucratically rational objectives,” Gingrich said.

It’s odd for a politician to trump his own ideas as grandiose and not rational. But hey, going back to the moon sure fires up the patriots! So America’s space goals are once again a political football – one, incidentally, that seems to rev up Republicans more than it does Democrats. Gingrich has a long list of space dreams, which we’ll get to in a minute. But this debate brings to light an interesting volley since the Reagan administration, between Democratic presidents who seem not to really dwell on America’s space ambitions and Republican presidents (and would-be presidents) who just love the idea of Americans on the moon.

Dubbing himself a “visionary” for his space plans, the former House speaker and GOP presidential hopeful compared himself to John F. Kennedy, Abraham Lincoln and the Wright brothers. But he didn’t compare himself to another conservative Republican, George W. Bush, who also wanted the U.S. to go back to the moon as a launch pad for Mars. His new vision was gestated in the wake of the Columbia disaster, and centered on the retirement of the aging shuttles, but it also sought a more ambitious future for the space agency. The Constellation program never really got off the ground, however, and critics found plenty of faults.

But contrast this with Bill Clinton’s presidency. While he was in the Oval Office, the U.S. partnered with Russia to build the International Space Station – certainly a major achievement, but it was arguably more impressive for its geopolitics than its science scope. Both countries already had space stations before, and the ISS took way more time and money to build than anyone had anticipated. Otherwise, Clinton apparently didn’t have much to say about the space program, even in his autobiography “My Life.”

Then, a while after taking office and organizing a blue-ribbon NASA review commission, President Obama harrumphed at the idea of returning to the moon – “we’ve been there before,” he famously said – and charted a bumpy course for a future NASA that will eventually visit an asteroid and someday Mars.

Now Gingrich has set his sights back on our natural satellite, with a much tighter timeline. But there is one catch – he favors private development, not necessarily NASA leadership.

As Charles Houmans notes in Foreign Policy, the space program presents a conundrum for dedicated conservatives. It’s the most unassailably awesome achievement in American history, and as such it’s fertile ground for jingoists. But it’s also plagued by huge federal spending overruns, a risk-averse bureaucracy and – let us not forget – scientists, whose findings do not always comport with the conservative worldview. Gingrich seems able to toe this boundary carefully, coupling his love of science and space with his free-market beliefs.

In a debate earlier this week, he said privately funded prizes spurred Charles Lindbergh and Burt Rutan to reach new milestones, and private incentives could do the same for lunar settlement and Mars exploration.

For his part, his rival Mitt Romney has been a little more vague and a little more NASA-centric, discussing a space agency with more partnerships with universities and commercial enterprises.

Wednesday’s talk is just the latest in a long list of Gingrich’s space ideas, some of which are wackier than others. In 1981 he sponsored an unsuccessful bill called the National Space and Aeronautics Policy Act, which set forth “provisions for the government of space territories, including constitutional protections, the right to self-government and admission to statehood,” the New York Times reported in 1995. He proposed a lunar mirror network that would illuminate highways and dark alleyways. He envisions space factories creating new opportunities for the unemployed.

“If we’d spent as much on space as we’ve spent on farm programs, we could have taken all the extra farmers and put them on space stations working for a living … in orbiting factories,” he told a science fiction convention in 1986.

But other predictions and desires have borne out. A quarter-century ago he said “space tourism is coming,” predicting Hiltons and Marriotts of the solar system. There are no space hotels yet, but space tourism is likely just around the corner.

So does anyone really think a president Gingrich would set up a successful moon base? Not really, especially given this country’s economic situation and (depending on whose hyperbole you believe) debt crisis. Gingrich has given no indications of how he’d pay for it, incentives or otherwise, and the details are sparse. And most of the reaction from space observers has been tepid at best.

Space policy expert John Logsdon, professor emeritus at George Washington University, called it a “fantasy,” according to Space.com. “It would be much better to set realistic goals, but that is not Mr. Gingrich’s strong suit,” he said.

But you can hand Gingrich one thing: At least he’s talking about American leadership in space, something that’s been sorely lacking of late. Maybe his grandiose visions will start a real conversation.

from Popular Science – New Technology, Science News, The Future Now

From Engadget: Source code theft prompts Symantec to issue warning to customers

It’s a good thing I abandoned Symantec software long time ago! 😀
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Source code theft prompts Symantec to issue warning to customers

Security software publisher Symantec has confirmed it was the victim of a cyber attack, resulting in the theft and disclosure of product source code. Earlier this month, the online-collective Anonymousstated, via Twitter, that it possessed portions of the code in question and planned to release it in support of a class-action lawsuit filed by consumers — the suit claims Symantec employed scare tactics to encourage users to purchase its wares. Via its website, the company affirmed Anonymous’ claims, citing a source code heist dating back to 2006. The post goes on to suggest that users running Norton Antivirus Corporate Edition, Norton Internet Security, Norton SystemWorks, Symantec Endpoint Protection 11.0, or Symantec AntiVirus 10.2 apply the latest maintenance patches. If you have the company’s pcAnywhere solution deployed, Symantec suggests only using it for “business critical purposes,” as this software is “at increased risk.” Those looking to stay up-to-date on the breach and what Symantec is doing to ameliorate its effects can get the blow-by-blow from the source link below.

Source code theft prompts Symantec to issue warning to customers originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 26 Jan 2012 13:45:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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from Engadget