Standard & Poor (S&P) on Wednesday warned it may end up cutting Sprint's credit rating because of "weak" performance this year, news of which made some investors skittish enough to dump the wireless provider's stock. Shares fell 9 cents, or 2.8 percent, in midday trading, Businessweek reports.

"We remain concerned that the company may have difficulty in improving operating trends as industry conditions mature and competition intensifies," S&P analyst Allyn Arden said in a statement.

Sprint, which ranks as the the third-largest wireless carrier in the U.S., has been losing customers and piling up debt as of late. Arden said even if post-paid subscriber losses level out and Sprint continues to adjust its cost structure, earnings may still not grow enough to materially improve credit measures, at least not any time soon.

Linux certainly has its advantages, and if Ubuntu 8.04 LTS happens to be your distro of choice, you'll be able to take advantage of Arkeia Software's Network Backup version 8 at no cost, Arkeia announced.

"Arkeia Network Backup is a proven network backup solution with broad platform support and a robust enterprise feature-set," said Steve George, vice president of sales and product management, corporate services at Canonical. "With the Arkeia Network Backup Enterprise Edition for Ubuntu, Arkeia Software makes a significant commitment to the Ubuntu user community and supports Ubuntu’s ongoing growth in the enterprise."

The fully licensed backup solution can be downloaded from the Ubuntu 8.04 LTS repository by using the Synaptic Package Manager or by typing the "apt-get install arkeia" command. The license is not time limited and includes one backup server running on Ubuntu, up to 250GB capacity for backup to disk, support of any single drive, tape, or disk, and 2 client agents to backup different types of client machines, including Windows workstations and desktops, most Linux setups, Mac OS X, and BSD computers.

BitTorrent, as you're probably already aware, is a decentralized peer-to-peer file sharing protocol ideal for transferring large files (and if you didn't know that, don't worry, we also include some lightweight tips to get you started). In a nutshell, the way it works is when you're downloading a massive file -- like a Linux distribution, for example --bits and pieces of the file will be uploaded at the same time. Typically BitTorrent allows for a more efficient and faster transfer method than traditional, Direct Connect P2P software.

To get started, you need a desktop client. We recommend using uTorrent, or uT for short. We prefer uTorrent based on its combination of advanced features, performance, and small footprint -- in other words, it has all the makings of a power user program.

On the following pages, we'll not only show you how to get the most out of uTorrent, but out of BitTorrent in general. We'll cover both basic and advanced tips, and then toss in some of our favorite third-party add-ons for good measure. Whether you're new to BitTorrent or a seasoned vet, there's something in this guide for you.

Read on to get started!

As it turns out, Google's been busy developing its own programming language called "Go," and on Tuesday, the search giant released what they've managed to build so far. As an open source project, the rest may be up to you.

To describe the programming language, Google reached into its bag of adjectives and came up with simple, fast, safe, concurrent, and fun. Typical builds take a fraction of a second but run nearly as quickly as comparable C or C++ code, Google clams. Go is also touted as being memory safe.

So what's it for? One of the things Go was designed to do is take advantage of multicore processors that can perform multiple tasks in parallel, as well as give programmers the ability to quickly write code.

"It seems it's getting much harder to build software than it used to be," said Rob Pike, a principal software engineer working on Go. "The process of software development doesn't feel any better than it did a generation ago. We deliberately tried to make a language that focused in part on rapid development, that compiles really efficiently, and that expresses dependencies efficiently and precisely so the compilation process can be controlled well. I find it much more productive to work in."

Intrigued? Get started with Go right here.

Microsoft has decided to yank its Windows 7 USB/DVD Tool from its Website following allegations that the utility makes improper use of open source code, CNet reports.

"Microsoft is looking into this issue and is taking down the [Windows 7 updating] tool from the Microsoft Store site until its review is complete," the company said in a statement. "We apologize to our customers for any inconvenience."

That's bad new for existing netbook owners and anyone else without an optical drive and hoping to upgrade to Windows 7. Before it was taken down, the tool made it possible to take a downloadable copy of the OS and create a bootable drive.

But according to Rafael Rivera of the "Within Windows" blog, the tool may violoate several GPL terms and conditions. Rivera says the source code was "obviously lifted from the CodePlex-hosted (yikes) GLLv2-licensed ImageMaster project" without the author's knowledge. He also contends that Microsoft neglected to provide source code for their modifications to ImageMaster or their tool.

We'll have to wait to see how this one unfolds.

One of the hottest trends in electronics right now is digital readers, but no matter how many companies jump on the bandwagon -- and several of them have -- prices will have to come down before the public embraces them, according to Gartner.

"At the moment it appears that $199 will be the lowest price for fully featured e-reading devices for the 2009 shopping season, but prices will need to drop closer to $99 to gain significant traction," Gartner noted.

At the same time, Gartner predicts e-reader "mania" in 2010, though getting to that point won't be without a few hurdles. The market research firm says a wider variety of retail channels is needed, and more publishers need to be seen buying into e-readers.

"It's the perfect time for a trial and to establish relationships with others in the value-chain -- that is service providers and digital warehouses -- that can be positioned to assist in a rapid deployment if the market takes off earlier than anticipated," Gartner added.

After a flurry of activity earlier this year, which seemingly saw a new SSD being released every week, we're beginning to see the SSD market cool down a little. But rest assured, manufacturers are still devoting R&D to the flash-based storage segment, as evidenced by G.Skill's new Falcon II 2.5-inch SSDs.

G.Skill says the Falcon II series comes equipped with the new Indilinx ECO controller. Seeing the ECO tag, the first thing that came to mind was what effect will that have on performance, and G.Skill rates its new SSDs at up to 220MB/s reads and 150MB/s writes (110MB/s writes on the 64GB model).

The drives, which are available in 64GB, 128GB, and 256GB capacities, also boast 64MB of DRAM cache and advanced wear leveling algorithms. G.Skill says the Falcon II series also feature the latest Indilinx 1819 version firmware, which purports to offer improved support for the Windows 7 TRIM command, something Intel's 34nm SSDs have struggled with as of late.

No pricing information was available.

AT&T contends it's unfair to show 3G coverage maps from the two carriers side by side because it makes it look like AT&T doesn't have service in most areas. The maps only depict 3G zones, ignoring AT&T's existing 2.5G network, which is sufficient for email and other tasks portrayed in the commercials. The bottom line is, the ads are accurate in terms of 3G, but neglect to tell the whole story. Is that misleading?

AT&T thinks so, and as we previously reported, the wireless carrier has dropped a lawsuit on Verizon's lap. How that plays out will be for the courts to decide. In the meantime, expect the ads to keep rolling, especially with Verizon's Droid attracting so much attention.

Logitech announced it has agreed to acquire LifeSize Communications, a privately held company specializing in high-definition video conferencing equipment, for $405 million in cash. The deal gives Logitech instant access to some 9,000 video conferencing customers across 80 countries in businesses both big and small.

"We expect this acquisition to enable Logitech to extend our leadership in video communication beyond the desktop," said Gerald P. Quindlen, Logitech president and chief executive office. "Together we can make life-like, HD-quality video communication as mainstream and seamless as a telephone, for meeting participants in the boardroom, at their office desk, in a remote-location meeting room, telecommuting from, or on the go with a laptop."

Logitech said it plans for LifeSize to continue to operate as a separate division under the direction of Craig Malloy, the start-up's co-founder and CEO.

The deal also thrusts Logitech into direct competition with market heavyweights such as Cisco, Microsoft, HP, IBM, and others. Cisco especially will be one to look out for, as the company just recently announced it would spend $3 billion acquiring Tandberg, a Norwegian video communications company, following share holder approval.

Microsoft has revamped its Bing Video interface, and over the next few days will be rolling out a new unified online video destination, the software maker announced. The overhauled service, which meshes MSN Video with Bing, promises to be more organized and contain plenty of high-quality content.

"With the New Bing Video you can now access videos from across the web, MSN's array of high-quality videos, and videos from sites such as Hulu, ABC, and YouTube," Microsoft said on its Bing blog. "Bing videos viewing options are nearly endless."

Microsoft said its video portal grants users access to over 900 television shows, all of which it says are organized and easy to sort through, even if the episode you're looking for is from last season. Users will also be able to share videos, and the portal now includes a 'dim the lights' feature. 

Give Bing Videos a peek here, then hit the jump and tell us what you think.

Intel this week became the latest company to enter the e-book market, only Intel's is specifically intended for the visually impaired. The launch is being spearheaded by Ben Foss, a 36-year old who grew up with such a severe case of dyslexia that his mother used to read him books during his school years.

Not unlike other e-book readers, the Intel Reader is capable of reading digital files aloud. But it doesn't stop there. The Intel Reader can also capture images from any printed material and convert it to speech at a variety of listening speeds. It also boasts a high res camera used to convert printed text to digital text, and it can even capture words from Websites.

"We want people to experience the independence of being able to read on their own in a public place or anywhere they want to," said Foss. "A metaphor for this are the ramps that make buildings wheelchair accessible. This reader is like a ramp."

The reader's also worth its weight in gold, and then some. It's available now, but for $1,500.

The troubles just keep piling on for Oracle as of late. Earlier this week, the European Union formally objected to the company's takeover bid of Sun, and if that wasn't enough to deal with, a bunch of existing Oracle users are voicing complaints with the vendor's new My Oracle Support portal.

"We've been having severe problems with the new My Oracle Support all day. Sometimes we can't log in. When we can log in, we can't get an SR [service request] logged - it errors out at various points in the process," one user complained in a post Monday to an official Oracle forum.

The disgruntled user said tech support wasn't much help, and he wasn't alone in his complaints. Other users said similar things about the Support portal, with one noting "it looks like a total disaster today."

The worst part is Oracle doesn't appear to have a grip on the situation, or at least the vendor's not communicating that with its customers.

Wyse on Tuesday announced its new thin clients and new zero client will support VMware View 4 and its PC-over-IP (PCoIP) display protocol. Both of these devices are expected to be listed on the VMware Hardware Compatibility List (HCL), Wyse said.

"We have been relentlessly addressing the needs of end users for many years now, and with the introduction of the Wyse P class we have successfully addressed many of the challenges in rolling out a client virtualization model to high-end specialty workers," said Curt Schwebke, CTO at Wyse. "Designers, scientists, architects, engineers, and artists will be able to run their most sophisticated applications on a virtual client that uses as much energy as a small light bulb."

The company's existing devices will support PCoIP when View 4 is released later this month. Wyse also said it will offer support of View 4 in its Wyse PocketCloud software enabling users of Apple iPhones to access a View 4 environment from their smartphone.

Hewlett-Packard is stepping up to the plate with improved data protection and better backup solutions for small and medium businesses, The Register reports.

First on the list is HP's LeftHand Networks P4000 SMB storage area network (SAN) lineup, which will now come equipped with application-integrated snapshots. This will make it easier on admins, who can use the P4000 GUI to signal that a snapshot needs to be made of a volume, and the P4000 array software will handle the rest.

The second change comes to HP's Disk-to-Disk (D2D) backup product, which has been given a file interface allowing applications to view it as a NAS box. In the long-run, customers will be able to reduce their reliance on tape.

For those who want to keep using tape, HP introduced its new DAT320 tape drive. The 8mm DAT320 packs 320GB, or twice as much as the DAT160.

It turns out our favorite browser might also be the most susceptible to security breaches. According to application security vendor Cenzic, Firefox leads the way in terms of total vulnerabilities, accounting for 44 percent of all browser vulnerabilities reported in the first half of 2009.

Coming in second is Apple's Safari browser, which accounted for 35 percent. And what about everyone's favorite whipping browser, Internet Explorer? A comparatively low 15 percent. The Opera faithful will be stoked to learn that their favorite browser was the least vulnerable of the bunch with just a 6 percent share.

As to why Firefox's numbers were so high, Cenzic said it was a combination of things.

"They've gotten more traction as a browser, which is good for them and the more you get used the more exposure you have. As well a fair amount of the vulnerabilities have come by way of plug-ins," noted Lars Ewe, CTO of Cenzic.

In other words, Firefox's biggest strength -- customization through plug-ins -- might also be its biggest weakness. However, it's important to note that just because the tweakable browser had the most vulnerabilities, it doesn't mean that Firefox users were more at risk. According to Ewe, Ceznic looked at all reported vulnerabilities and made no distinction between a zero day bug and less serious security holes.

Rumors of an Atom ban turned out to be true, as the Hackintosh community found out with the latest update to Apple's Snow Leopard OS.

"Well, looks like I was right, again,"  Hackintosh guru StellaRola wrote in a blog post. "The netbook forums are now blowing up with problems of [Snow Leopard] 10.6.2 instant rebooting their Atom-based netbooks. My sources tell me that every time a netbook users installs 10.6.2 an Apple employee gets their wings."

While the ban presents a temporary setback, StellaRola  reiterated that "this is OSx86 after all," and predicted that a modded kernel is likely just around the kernel.

In the meantime, a user on the MyDellMini forum claims to have found a workaround that entails running 10.6.2 with a 10.6.1 kernel. The process involved booting from a backup, mounting the 10.6.2 partition, and punching in a few commands, all of which you can read here.

While giving a speech at the American University of Dubai, Nvidia CEO Jen-Hsun Huang held nothing back in declaring his affection for Macs (while taking a dig at Intel in the process).

"Apple uses the best technology for their [computers]," Huang said. "Apple says to their customers: 'If you buy a computer from us, you can be sure we have selected the best technology inside for you.' Their promise to consumers isn't 'we've selected the best technology for you with the exception of what Intel allows us to use'. And that's why I'm all Apple! At home it's just Macs everywhere. It's Nvidia's technology in all of them but I use Macs. My son has two Macs, my daughter has a Mac, there's an extra Mac just in case, and my wife has a Mac. It's just Mac, Mac, Mac!"

Call us crazy, but we get th feeling Huang likes Macs. And that's well and good, so long as Nvidia keeps churning out high-powered videocards for those of us content to be controlled by Intel on the Windows-based PC platform.

On a side note, there's been a bit of buzz over the slick looking tablet pictured in front of Huang. The outspoken CEO didn't say a word about it -- or at least no one's reporting that he did -- leaving us to speculate. Could it be the long-rumored Apple tablet? Is it a Tegra-powered handheld? Maybe both.

After sitting in beta for six months, Panda today announced its Cloud Antivirus is now ready for prime time and is available as a free download for all consumers.

"Since the beta release of Panda Cloud Antivirus in April, we have been judiciously testing our cloud-based protection model, making upgrades in security and performance, and listening to our user community," said Juan Santana, CEO of Panda Security. "With Panda Cloud Antivirus 1.0, we've really changed the game, providing our users the most powerful and lightweight free protection available on the market today."

There's been a few improvements from when we first glimpsed the beta back in April, such as a polished interface, better performance thanks in large part to cache optimizations and memory management schemes, a Collective Intelligence Monitor which keeps a list of malware from the community updated in real time, and new support forums.

You can grab the free download here (and if you're a fan of the banjo, be sure to check out the video in that same link).

Sprint feels awfully confident in Clearwire's WiMax 4G technology, enough so to pump another $1 billion into it, Combined with a $500 million investment from Comcast, Intel, Time Warner, and Bright House, that brings the latest round of funding to $1.5 billion, reports the Wall Street Journal.

As if billion dollar investments needed any additional intrigue, what makes this one so interesting (and risky) is that Clearwire and Sprint are the only two U.S. carriers putting faith in WiMax to usher in 4G wireless broadband. Verizon and AT&T, who happen to be the two biggest heavyweights, are banking on rival technology LTE for their 4G networks.

The gamble is huge for Sprint. Should Clearwire burn through its cash, which the company has been known to do, it will be up to Sprint to invest even more if it's to keep majority control. Sounds simple enough, except that Sprint's net debt was already approaching $16 billion at the end of last quarter.

Looking for an alternative to Photoshop and GIMP? You're in luck - there's a new version of Paint.NET available, and it's a pretty significant upgrade over previous versions.

Version 3.5 sports a refreshed UI with a bunch of new icons, and if you're running Windows 7 or Vista, the developers say it's been enhanced for Aero and "glass."

Paint.NET haslearned a few tricks with the newest release, including Surface Blur, Dents (Distort), and Crystallize (Distort). Russian translation has been tossed into the mix, and the whole shebang promises to be much snappier thanks to extensive optimizations to performance and memory usage.

Check out the laundry list of changes here, and kick the tires by downloading the new version here.