After Further Review: Ryan rewinds tape on final drive of NFC title game (CBS News)

Sorry, I could not read the content fromt this page.Sorry, I could not read the content fromt this page.

View the original article here

Heathrow puts case for expansion to Davies review

Heathrow is better located for passengers, business and jobs than a new hub airport at Stansted or in the Thames Estuary according to new analysis published today… by London Heathrow.

The new report, entitled “Best placed for Britain”, argues expanding Heathrow is the quickest way for Britain to get ahead in the global race, connecting the UK to growing markets around the world faster and at less cost to the taxpayer than any other hub option.

The report has been compiled by Heathrow Airport with architectural and planning consultants AECOM and Quod, and was commissioned as part of new evidence to present to the Airports Commission under Sir Howard Davies.

The report shows that compared to a new hub Heathrow is:

Best for passengers: Building a new hub airport to the east of London would increase travel times for 90 per cent of hub passengers. Even if a new hub airport came with a major investment in new transport infrastructure, Heathrow would still have four million more people within 60 minutes travel time. The economic cost of longer journeys to a new hub could be £26 billion net present value – the equivalent to cancelling out all the benefits of reduced journey time delivered by High Speed 2. Best for business and the economy: The area around Heathrow is home to some of the world’s most highly productive business clusters in industries like IT and pharmaceuticals. In total 202 of the UK’s top 300 company HQs are in close proximity to Heathrow. The area has 60 per cent more international businesses, twice as many US businesses, and three and a half times as many Japanese businesses than the national average. Best for local jobs: The 76,600 people directly employed at Heathrow would face re-location or redundancy if Heathrow was replaced by a new airport. Direct job losses would be far greater than those that occurred when the largest single redundancy in the UK took place at Shotton Steel in 1985 and MG Rover closed its factory at Longbridge in 2005 (both 6,500 jobs), or the worst year of pit closures in the UK, 1984 (30,000 jobs). Best for speed of delivery: Additional capacity at Heathrow could be delivered around seven years more quickly than any new hub airport could be built. Any delay is critical, as the UK is losing some £14 billion a year in trade and export earnings due to constraints in aviation hub capacity. Each additional year of delay would see the UK fall further behind European hub competitors in the global race for growth and jobs. Best for taxpayers: Adding capacity at Heathrow will cost the taxpayer much less than building a new hub airport. The report calculates for the first time that £20-£25 billion of sunk rail infrastructure cost has been committed around Heathrow since the 1970s. Any new hub would need to build vast new infrastructure from scratch using public money. Mayor of London Boris Johnson estimates that a new hub airport would cost in the region of £70-80 billion of which £25 billion would require public subsidy.

Colin Matthews, CEO of Heathrow, said: “Britain already has one of the world’s most successful international hub airports in Heathrow.

“Expanding Heathrow will put Britain ahead in the global race, connecting UK business to growth more quickly and at less cost to the taxpayer than any other option for new capacity.

“Heathrow is better located for passengers, business and jobs. Why build from scratch at a new hub when we can build on the strength that already exists around Heathrow today?”

View the original article here

CCNA v1.1 Exam Review: Critical Concepts of the 640-802 CCNA Exam

On June 25, 2007, Cisco announced major updates to their Cisco Certified Network Associate (CCNA) curricula, including the new version of the CCNA Composite Exam 640-802 CCNA. In late 2010, Cisco did a "minor revision" of the CCNA curricula, which includes discussion of some newer technologies. The CCNA exam number did not change with the latest curriculum revision. The two courses that comprise the CCNA exam preparation curricula are Interconnecting Cisco Networking Devices Part 1 and Part 2. Global Knowledge also offers a CCNA Boot Camp (CCNAx), which is also at version 1.1.

To reflect these changes, we have updated our popular overview, CCNA Review, to bring you CCNA v1.1 Review. This paper can help students understand what types of information would be required to pass the new version of the composite exam by providing a convenient review of the exam's critical concepts.

This paper can help students understand what types of information would be required to pass the latest version of the CCNA exam, by providing a convenient review of the exam's critical concepts.

Please Note: This document is intended to help students understand what types of information would be required to pass the CCNA test. This is only intended as a review and additional training and knowledge would be needed in order to take and pass the CCNA exam. This document does not help with the simulation portion of the test.

Provides services to network applications. This layer is responsible for determining resource availability, identifying communication peers, and synchronizing communication between the applications.Simple Mail Transport Protocol (SMTP)
Telnet
File Transfer Protocol (FTP)
Trivial File Transfer Protocol (TFTP)
HyperText Transfer Protocol (HTTP)
Provides the coding and conversion functions that are applied to the data to/from the application layer. This layer ensures that there is a common scheme used to bundle the data between the two ends.ASCII (text)
EBCDIC (text)
JPEG (image)
GIF (image)
TIFF (image)
MPEG (sound/video)
Quicktime (sound/video)
Establishing, maintaining, and terminating communications sessions between upper layer applications.Session Control Protocol (SPC)
Remote Procedure Call (RPC) from Unix
Zone Information Protocol (ZIP) from AppleTalk
Responsible for end-to-end data transmission. Can be either reliable (connection-oriented) or best effort (connectionless). This layer organizes data from various upper layer applications into data streams, handles end-to-end flow control, multiplexing, virtual circuit management, and error checking and recovery.Transmission Control Protocol (TCP) from IP
User Datagram Protocol (UDP) from IP
This layer allows both connection-oriented and connectionless data flows to access the network. The network layer addresses help define a network hierarchy. Network devices are normally grouped together based on their common network layer address.Provides either reliable or best effort transmission of data across a physical medium. Most networks use a best effort data link layer, such as Ethernet. The data Link Layer for LANs provides a physical address to each device called a Media Access Control (MAC) address. MAC addresses are typically burned into the network interface card (NIC). The LAN data link layer also uses a Logical Link Control (LLC) to indicate the type of network layer data that is encapsulated inside the frame.LAN:
Ethernet/IEEE 802.3 (include Fast Ethernet)
802.3z (Gigabit Ethernet)
Token Ring/IEEE 802.5
FDDI (from ANSI)

WAN:
High-Level Data-link Control (HDLC)
Point-to-Point Protocol (PPP)
Frame Relay

Defines the electrical, mechanical, and functional specifications for maintaining a physical link between network devices. This layer is responsible for such characteristics as voltage levels, timing and clock rates, maximum transmission distances, and the physical connectors used.LAN:
Category 3 cabling (LAN)
Category 5 cabling (LAN)

WAN:
EIA/TIA-232
EIA/TIA-449
V.35

Transmission Control Protocol (TCP) is a reliable, connection-oriented, protocol that uses sequence and acknowledgement numbers to provide reliability. TCP verifies that the remote end is listening prior to sending data, using a 3-way handshake: SYN, SYN/ACK, ACK.

User Datagram Protocol (UDP) is a best-effort, connectionless, protocol that does not have sequence or acknowledgement numbers, and does not do far-end verification.

View the original article here

Review: Facebook Gets Hold on Phones

Walt Mossberg gives his take on the new Facebook Home, which becomes available to Android users on Friday. He says it gives Facebook a great mobile user experience, but will deactivate or bury certain features on your Android phone. (Photo: Facebook)

Facebook wants to take over your phone. It aims to immediately immerse you in its social network with just a glance at the phone's opening screen, without making you run its app or even unlock the device. Right from the lock screen of your phone, you'll be able to see your Facebook news feed—including text posts and eye-catching, full-screen photos posted by friends—and to comment on, or Like items.

Facebook Facebook Home uses the lock screen to show new posts and other things.

Facebook's Home app is the boldest attempt by a non-software company to re-imagine a phone's interface, Walt Mossberg says on digits. Photo: Getty Images.

Also, with one swipe, you can go right to Facebook Messenger, the social network's chat feature, to communicate directly with people and even send and receive text messages.

All of this is possible before you even see the usual start or home screen of your phone filled with app icons, by using a new suite of software Facebook is introducing for Android phones on Friday called Facebook Home.

The idea is that during spare moments—say, while waiting in a line—you'll get immediately hooked by Facebook.

Facebook Home, which replaces several key aspects of a phone in addition to the lock screen, will be an optional, free download for U.S. users at launch on four leading Android phones, including the very popular Samsung Galaxy S III. It also will be available that day, preloaded, on a midrange, $99 model, the HTC First, from AT&T . At least two other major Android phones also will be compatible when they hit the market.

I've been testing Facebook Home for five days on the HTC First, but this isn't a review of the phone hardware, which is unremarkable. I focused my testing on Facebook Home, the boldest attempt by any non-hardware company to alter a phone's native user interface.

Facebook Swipe your round photo to one of three icons: Facebook Messenger, app-launcher screen and Last App used.

In effect, Facebook has created its own phone without having to build or sell hardware. The HTC First, so far the sole phone on which it's preloaded, even boots up with the Facebook logo.

I found Facebook Home to be easy to use, elegantly designed and addictive. Although I'm a regular Facebook user, I found that, with Home, I paid more attention than ever to my news feed, Liked items more often and used Facebook's Messenger service more often. So, if you are a big Facebook fan, Facebook Home can be a big win.

But I found some downsides. Facebook Home blocks the one-step camera icon some Android phone makers place on their lock screen to allow you to take pictures without first unlocking the phone. It also overlays other lock-screen features some Android phone makers include, such as weather information or favorite app icons. And if you do go to the icon-filled home screen, you'll find that Facebook Home has taken that over as well, topping the screen with a bar that makes posting to Facebook easier and eliminating the bottom bar of heavily used apps.

By default, the first of these Facebook Home app screens contains Facebook's apps, including the popular Facebook-owned service, Instagram, plus apps from other companies, like Google Maps and Google Search, and the camera app. You can remove these and add others.

With Home, Facebook is essentially staging a land grab of Android, the hugely successful mobile operating system made by one of its key rivals, Google. Facebook Home leaves all the standard Google apps in place and doesn't alter the underlying Android operating system. But because it's so dominant, it makes it less likely that a user with limited time will launch Google products that compete with Facebook, such as Google's own social network, Google+, or rival services from other companies, such as Twitter.

Facebook A Home app screen with Facebook's apps, such as Instagram, and standard Android apps from Google.

This is all made possible because Android allows third-party companies to alter the lock screen and other core features, such as the app launcher, which displays app icons and widgets.

By contrast, Facebook Home can't run on Apple's iPhones, because Apple doesn't allow others to take control of these core functions. Apple has integrated Facebook (and Twitter) to some degree into the iPhone, mainly by making it possible to sign into the services as part of its basic settings and to share almost any content to them easily. But that's as far as it goes.

When you first turn on the screen on a Home-equipped phone, you see the time and a small circle at the bottom displaying your Facebook profile picture. If you don't touch the screen, your news feed, called the Cover Feed, starts to display, automatically scrolling from one post to the next. You also can manually swipe through the feed. Each post takes up the whole screen. If it's a photo, it's displayed in all its glory. If it's a text post, the author's larger wall photo appears faintly in the background. The effect is mesmerizing.

If you want to Like a post, you can double-tap it or tap on a Like button. To comment, or read comments, you can tap on a comment icon.

To get beyond the feed, you touch your little round picture and swipe it over to one of three icons that appear. Swipe up to see a home screen, or app launcher of your favorite app icons. Swipe left to go to Facebook Messenger. Swipe right to go to the last app used, whether it's a Facebook app or not.

Facebook Home has another major feature: Chat Heads. These are the profile pictures of people who send you Facebook messages or text messages via Messenger. Unlike message notifications that appear only briefly on most phones, these remain visible, atop any app you're using, tempting you to keep chatting via Facebook. You can move them around if they're blocking something, but you can only get rid of them by dragging them off the screen to the bottom. Whether they annoy or delight you will depend on how much you use Facebook Messenger.

Facebook Chat Heads shows profile pictures of people who send you Facebook or text messages via Messenger.

Facebook stresses that Home is purely optional. Nobody needs to install it, or buy the sole phone on which it's preloaded. You can still use Facebook the way you always have—through the app. In fact, Home doesn't fully replace the app, which has many more features.

And you can turn all of it, or parts of it, off. I was able to turn it off even on the HTC First and also to require the phone to be unlocked before I could see my feed.

Facebook says it hopes eventually to include feeds from other services, such as Twitter, in the automatic stream of updates on the lock screen. Even now, alerts—but not full posts or photos—from other products, such as Gmail or Twitter, appear on top of the news feed. However, this only works on the HTC First. Other phones only display Facebook alerts in Home. There aren't any ads in Cover Feed currently but Facebook says there may be in the future.

You cannot view customized news feeds, like ones containing only certain people, in Cover Feed. You also can't compose new posts from the lock screen, though Facebook says it hopes to add that feature.

I didn't notice that my test phone suffered any significant battery loss while running Home constantly, but Facebook does provide settings for data use and image quality that can lower the battery load of Home. The default setting is "medium."

Facebook Home is a very clever and very well-done product that will delight Facebook fans. If you aren't in that category, or prefer the standard Android user interface, it won't be right for you.

—Find Walt Mossberg's columns and videos at the All Things Digital website, walt.allthingsd.com. Email him at mossberg@wsj.com. A version of this article appeared April 10, 2013, on page D1 in the U.S. edition of The Wall Street Journal, with the headline: Facebook Gets a Hold on Phones.

View the original article here