Content and news by Geek Girl

Samsung Electronics said Wednesday that it has developed a liquid-crystal display (LCD) panel that uses generic glass used in windows and mirrors instead of using a more expensive and sophisticated glass substrate.

"The adoption of ordinary glass in making LCD panels is expected to give more room to Samsung in choosing glass suppliers and thus help reduce its LCD TV and monitor prices.

So far, only a handful of companies have been capable of making special, high-endurance glass substrate used in LCD panels, and they have made large profits by selling it to electronics makers."

However, The largest LCD glass supplier in Korea is Samsung Corning Precision Glass, a joint venture of United States’ Corning and Korea’s Samsung Electronics. The company outperforms other firms in the field and dominates the market with about an 80-percent share.

Does this not strike you as odd? Samsung Korea holds profits on an 80% share of the market in glass substrate and yet is now developing a way to make that division of their company obsolete? As soon as someone high up the food chain realizes that the left hand is effectively chopping at the wrist of the right hand, these generic glass LCD’s will suddenly be fraught with issues.

Source: Korea Times

Recycle that plastic contraption gripped in your hand, the ever familiar mouse has gone green. The cordless Felt Mouse is made mostly of natural wool felt and laminated bamboo ply, both highly renewable and sustainable resources. I do doubt however that the laser sight on the bottom is made of either of these products.

Yup that’s a mouse apparently, though just thinking about it makes my hand cramp. According to its designer, Joey Roth, "The felt’s softness and plyability makes the mouse comfortable without looking cartoonishly ergonomic." Um thanks but I think I like my cartoonishly ergonomic mouse just as it is. Besides, we all know the grunge that builds up on a mouse – is this thing machine washable?

 Visit Joey Roth’s Felt Mouse page.

The time has come in many cultures that All Hallow’s Eve is celebrated, often with the mutilation and humiliation of a pumpkin. Happily, there is a geek way to do this! Now when you read the title, I’m sure you groaned to yourself, but I was being serious.

That my friends, is a Mac’o’Lantern. ‘Nuff said.

Find out how (and why) by clicking on the Macmod pic on this site. Plus there is a bonus PC mod from 2005.

And if you’re a really big fan of gutting and carving your pumpkins each year, then perhaps you need to see this video, it will change how you see this particularly macabre ritual.

Edited: Please note, I was inspired by this article and wanted to share with you my creation: See this Geek Girl’s Hallowe’en Tribute.

Codemasters have announced that they’ve made their Sci-Fi MMOG Rising Force Online (RF Online) totally free to download and play.

Codemasters Online is pleased to announce that RF Online is now a completely free-to-play MMORPG with the full game now available for download with no monthly subscription required.

RF Online is an epic mix of traditional fantasy and futuristic Sci-Fi set in the deep space galaxy of Novus where three races compete in an ultimate struggle for power and resource. Celebrating the games re-launch, new players can now also experience the all-new free expansion, Episode II: Pioneers of Novus available for free to all players of the game.

For more information on RF Online, visit the official community website at http://www.rf-onlinegame.com.

In order to focus on Star Trek Online, Perpetual has decided to shelve Gods & Heroes online.

The Perpetual team is faced with a unique challenge of simultaneously developing both Gods & Heroes and Star Trek Online in addition to growing our Online Game Platform business. After assessing all of Perpetual’s opportunities, we have made the decision to put the development of Gods & Heroes on indefinite hold.

I want to express my overwhelming gratitude to the community, engineers, designers, artists, animators, and the game services team for the support and effort that has gone into Gods & Heroes. –Chris McKibbin

Read More: Gods & Heroes

This Geek Girl is a gamer. If you’re not completely appalled like we are, you haven’t been paying attention.

Sign the Wall of Protest to let governments know to leave your video games ALONE!

The Wall of Protest represents opposition to the government regulation of video games, and is composed of citizens who are standing up to the government’s infringement upon this burgeoning form of interactive entertainment.

Education, not regulation, is the solution. Stand up against video game regulation and join the Wall – It’s simple:

1. Grab a sign or make your own statement (please keep it clean) – View Guidelines.
2. Take a picture with your sign
3. Share your photo – Submit your photo here

Want to do more? 1. Take Action 2. Learn More 3. Spread the Word

Webcams come in various shapes and sizes, but HUE’s HD webcam is unique. Besides being offered in six different colors, it has a bendable arm that allows for precise positioning. Or so we thought…

Psuedotransparancy for occlusion-free direct input.

Sounds like a lot of big words, but what it actually means, is: this is really cool! Watch the video to get a full understanding of the potential of this technology. When the tech catches up with the concept, I see this as being a big handheld revolution, whether it be game console, phone, pda or all of the above..

"A touch-sensitive gadget with the sensing panel on its back, instead of the screen, is being developed by US researchers. Using your fingers behind the device allows a firmer grip and more accurate performance without obscuring your view of the screen."

Source: NewScientistTech

EA is at it again… sorry, but to this Geek Girl, this is not good news.

Electronic Arts Inc said on Thursday it is buying two video game studios for more than $800 million in a deal that fills a weak spot in its games lineup by adding role-playing and action titles.

Under the deal, EA will acquire BioWare Corp and Pandemic Studios, privately held firms that have been partners since a 2005 deal brought them together under VG Holding Group with backing from private equity firm Elevation Partners.

BioWare is the maker of a series of critically acclaimed and best-selling role-playing games, including "Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic" and the "Baldur’s Gate" series.

Pandemic makes military-style action and shooting games such as "Mercenaries", "Star Wars Battlefront" and "Full Spectrum Warrior."

Source: Reuters

StreamBase, the leading provider of high-performance Complex Event Processing (CEP) software, today announced that Linden Lab, the developer of the 3D virtual world Second Life, has selected its Event Processing Platform to rapidly build real-time systems that can analyze and act on the massive volume of real-time streaming data generated throughout the Second Life Grid.

“We’ve invested in StreamBase to help our operations team support the increasing infrastructure demands of Second Life,” said Marius Moscovici, Director of Data Warehousing. “We are excited about working with StreamBase to build these new capabilities as well as to improve our data warehousing extraction, transformation and load processing times. “

Linden Lab is the inventor of an extraordinary new form of shared 3D experience. Through “Second Life,” the company offers a collaborative, immersive, and open-ended environment, where together people create and inhabit a virtual world of their own design. Today, Second Life has a rapidly growing population of Residents from all over the world, who are starting businesses, and buying virtual land to create whatever they desire.

“We’re very proud to welcome Linden Lab, the creators of an innovative platform for creativity and development, as a StreamBase customer,” said John Partridge, Vice President of Industry Solutions at StreamBase Systems. “More and more developers are embracing Complex Event Processing as a viable and core component of their MMOs and virtual worlds. Linden Lab is truly an industry thought leader who will continue to drive and influence the future of 3D virtual worlds, and we look forward to helping them further broaden their success and exponential growth.“

Be careful what you do with that old stack of zip disks, the USB that went thru the laundry, or that ancient 1G drive. Don’t just toss them out, and even if you donate them to charity, please ensure they’re completely wiped before you do.

…a third of all secondhand hard drives are not properly wiped before being resold. The criticism applies to drives previously owned by companies, as well as individuals.

The study, conducted in Australia, the UK, Germany and the US, found that 37% of 350 used hard drives bought either online, at retail outlets, or at computer fairs, still contained sensitive data.

Information retrieved from the drives included bank and credit-card information, salary details, medical records, e-commerce purchase histories, and, in the case of former company drives, corporate financial data.

Formatting a disk or deleting files only changes a few pieces of data that identify the location of the files held on the disk, making them ready for overwriting. However, until that data is actually overwritten, these files can be recovered using freely available software.

Source: NewScientistTech

Well, at least in 20 million years we can recycle the place…

Chernobyl is to be laid to rest at last. The radioactive mess at the site of the world’s worst nuclear accident – which last week was named as one of the 10 most polluted places on Earth – will be encased in steel and made safe.

On 26 April 1986, one of the four reactors at the Chernobyl power plant in northern Ukraine exploded. A concrete sarcophagus was hastily built over the wreckage, but it is starting to crumble and has been leaking radioactivity. Now President Viktor Yushchenko of Ukraine has signed a $505 million deal with the French construction firm Novarka to encase the whole lot in a massive steel vault to halt these leaks.

The arched structure, called the New Safe Confinement (NSC), will be 150 metres long and 105 metres tall – big enough to allow the existing sarcophagus and the wrecked reactor to be dismantled and permanently entombed.

At the signing ceremony on Monday, Yushchenko said: “We will be able to say frankly to the nation and the international community… that there has been a response to the problem of building the NSC at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant.”

Source: NewScientist

Ok let me start this news article with :

Don’t try this at home, EVER!”

What you see here, is a modified Viewmaster, with LCD screens, which needless to say, doesn’t translate well onto video itself, but testimonies from friends of the creator who have tried it, seem to be pretty impressed.

I needed a viewer that would present each image to each eye independently while maintaining focus and positioning. For this I took my previously dismantled 3D tomytronic game.

Each LCD (128×160×8) as sat in the viewfinder aligned so each eye saw a different screen. This is similar to how the original tomytronic worked, except they used a single LCD with 2 sets of elements on it offset in position. I used 2 LCDs as mine were fully graphical and it was easier this way.

Source: Pyrofers Projects
View more here

Now here’s something I’d love to review for TechGage!

Ah I love translations.

The box states: Multimedia super and thin keyboard + Handwritten Identity the System

I’m guessing this means the handwriting section is only for identity theft protection, and it does actually look like a $25 keyboard. However if that handwriting recognition is up to par and is for more than simply identity protection , this is a pretty decent catch!

I wonder if they make a leftie’s version?

Source: DealExtreme

Wow, the best way to keep something secret is to show it to the press…..

According to IGN, EA accidentally revealed the rumbling SIXAXIS to the press in its pre-TGS media briefing. The PS3 version of Burnout Paradise had a heftier feel to it: the controller was heavier and had a giant sticker that said "RUMBLE." With the cat out of the bag, IGN also added that "A formal announcement is expected tomorrow at Kaz Hirai’s keynote address." Early word on Kaz’s keynote suggests that other significant announcements will headline Sony’s presentation.

Source: Joystiq

Firefox users are being warned to update their browser as soon as possible to prevent a security flaw being exploited.

The flaw affects the QuickTime media player, and could allow a hacker free access to your PC.

"QuickTime Media-Link files contain an attribute that could be used on Windows systems to launch the default browser with arbitrary command-line options. This could be used to install malware, steal local data, or otherwise corrupt the victim’s computer," a posting on the Mozilla website said.

Mozilla has posted an update which will close the vulnerability and can be found here.

"Moore’s Law" — actually an axiom — says that the number of transistors in a given integrated circuit will double in some fixed amount of time. That time originally started out as eighteen months, but has since been pushed back to about every two years. That has had a corollary effect on performance as well as power consumption.

Tuesday, Moore said he expects his famous law to expire in ten to fifteen years. The reason, he explained, is fundamentally theoretical: "any physical quantity growing exponentially predicts disaster," he said. "It comes to an end. You can’t go beyond any major limit."

Moore also revealed that the original name of Intel was "Moore-Noyes Electronics," the combination of Moore’s name and Intel co-founder Robert Noyes. However, as Moore pointed out, an electronics firm advertising itself as "more noise" doesn’t exactly sell itself.

Source: ExtremeTech.com

While I see the usefulness of this product, I question its recyclability. We dispose of enough paper as it is, but at least now it breaks down. If we embed metals into this paper, they’re not going to be easily separated without another step in the recycling process. Still, yeah ok, it’s kinda neat.

Boxes that sense the weight of their contents and books that talk back when pages are turned could be developed using technology being tested by researchers at MIT in the US.

They are making paper with wires, sensors, and computer chips embedded, a technology dubbed ‘Pulp-based’ computing.

To make electronically-enhanced paper the team produces a layer of paper pulp and lays down wires or patterns of conductive ink on top. Adding another layer of pulp, pressing and drying it leaves electronics embedded within the paper.

Adding two layers of conductive ink allows the paper to sense when it bends. If incorporated in a book, such pages "could play sounds or light up as they are turned, supporting more interactive forms of storytelling," Coelho suggests. They could also allow cardboard boxes to sense the weight inside them by measuring the stresses on their walls, he adds.

"The advantage of paper over other materials is that we can make interactive objects that still look and behave like paper," Coelho says. People can interact with pulp-based computers as they would with paper, he adds, folding or writing on it, or even ripping it up.

Source: NewScientistTech

PRIZE: One DVD containing full versions of War Rock, Red Stone, Knight Online, and Global MU Online, courtesy of K2 Network. These games are free to play. For more information about these games, visit http://www.gamersfirst.net .

CONTEST: The first original 25 people who reply to this post, who are not staff, will be contacted via Techgage’s private message system.

To win, you must:

1. Be registered with the site, and have a minimum total of 10 posts on our forums.
2. Have an up to date valid email in your forum profile.
3. Place the words "K2 Network – Gamers First!" in your reply post.
4. Be willing to share a physical mailing address with me in a private message. Do -not- post your mailing address in your forum reply!

You must reply to your PM within 10 days of being directly contacted or your DVD will be passed on to the next non-winning, non-staff person on the list.

So even if you see more than 25 original non-staff posts, go ahead and post, you never know!

Good luck!
~Geek Girl

Get off my lawn! Jeez I kinda feel violated.

Microsoft apparently pushed out a Windows Update a few weeks ago of which no one had been notified. There were 9 files, on both XP and Vista, pertaining to the Windows Update process which were modified. All the files reside in the WindowsSystem32 folder on your machine.

So why is this such a big deal? As it turns out this update was sent to all Windows computers, even those that have the automatic installation of Windows Updates disabled.

Read more about what Microsoft had to say, and how to tell if you’ve been secretly updated.

Source: CyberNetNews