T-Mobile eliminated the 200MB monthly data plan it had offered for $10 a month as the minimum amount of data that its customers could purchase from the carrier for a smartphone. Now, the minimum is the Unlimited Plus data plan that can be obtained for $20 a month.

The $20 gets you 2GB of data that you can use for web browsing, video or any other type of multimedia. What if you have the 200MB plan and want to keep it? In that case, T-Mobile says that you can continue to buy the old minimum amount of data monthly but when you upgrade to a new phone, you will have to pay the full retail price. That should give many T-Mobile customers the incentive to give up the 200MB plan.

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Canonical have announced the release of Ubuntu 12.10, the latest version of their popular Linux operating system, with the slogan "Avoid The Pain of Windows 8", Hitting Microsoft Hard 2 weeks before the announcement of Windows 8.

The release follows 6 long months of development, and introduces many new features. Ubuntu 12.10 is the concept album of releases. It's packed to the rafters with new features that blur the distinction between web and desktop.

This is most visible with the introduction of Unity Web Apps an innovative feature that allows over 30 popular websites to integrate into the Ubuntu desktop as if they were a normal application.

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Sprint, US carrier, has officially acknowledged that it is talking to Japan's Softbank about a strategic investment in the carrier, things are beginning to move swiftly behind the scenes.

The latest word is that Softbank is talking to three Japanese banks, Mizuho Financial Group, Sumitomo Mitsui Financial Group Inc. and Mitsubishi UFJ Financial Group Inc., in an effort to secure $23 Billion in loans that would be used to help the telecommunications and internet firm acquire 70% of Sprint. The third largest carrier in the U.S. has a current market cap of $17.28 billion after the stock rose on word of the talks.

Source WSJ

The long waited Christopher Nolan's Batman epic The Dark Knight Rises will be released on Blu-ray combo pack, DVD, and digital download on December,4th as Warner Bros. Home Entertainment Group has just announced.

The Blu-ray combo pack is stuffed with a bunch of extras, from a documentary about the Batmobile, where all five Batmobiles are together for the first time, to Ending the Knight, an in-depth look featuring about 17 featurettes at how Nolan and his production team made The Dark Knight Rises, from Batman vs. Bane to totally demolishing a city street. There are also trailers and art galleries.

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In this image, the scoop on NASA's Curiosity rover shows the larger soil particles that were too big to filter through a sample-processing sieve that is porous only to particles less than 0.006 inches (150 microns) across. After a full-scoop sample had been vibrated over the sieve, this held-back portion was returned to the scoop to be accessible for inspection by the rover's Mast Camera. The image is part of the first "decontamination" exercise by the Collection and Handling for In-Situ Martian Rock Analysis (CHIMRA) tool on the end of the rover's arm, which includes the scoop, the sieve and other components.

The decontamination exercise involved scooping some soil, shaking it thoroughly inside the sample-processing chambers to scrub the internal surfaces, putting it through a sieve, dividing it into the appropriate portions and then discarding the sample. This process will be repeated three times. The rinse-and-discard cycles serve a quality-assurance purpose similar to a common practice in geochemical laboratory analysis on Earth.

This image was taken by Curiosity's right Mast Camera (Mastcam-100) on Oct. 10, 2012, the 64th sol, or Martian day, of operations. Scientists white-balanced the color in this view to show the Martian scene as it would appear under the lighting conditions we have on Earth.

Image Source (NASA JPL)