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eBay Jewellery Store Fined $400,000
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Some people would quit when they are ahead, but not these guys. They made over 232,000 false bids on their own auctions in order to jack the price up by as much as 20%. As disgusting as it is, it’s certainly not surprising. By the sounds of things though, they earned $5 million through all of these auctions, so a $400K fine is unlikely to teach anyone a lesson.
In around a year, these bids totalled some $5m, the attorney general’s office claimed. Attorney general Andrew Cuomo said: “This scam highlights the growing vulnerability of online auction shoppers. Consumers should not have to surf with sharks.”
Source: The Register
Worlds Largest Hello World
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Some people know no boundaries, one of them being this German programmer. He hit up a huge field, and mowed a “Hello, World!” in a Semacode design. It’s a good thing he didn’t run into any compile errors. Wheat takes a while to grow back.
An ambitious German programmer decided to write the world’s biggest “Hello, World!” result. Those of you who are programmers know that writing your first code in a programming language usually involves writing a program to print out the words “Hello, World!”. It’s been a tradition for several decades now. This guy decided to show the words in a crop field so it would be visible in aerial photos.
Source: Google Earth Blog
Google Rated Worst For Privacy
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This will likely come as a surprise to no one, but Google has officially been rated the worst for privacy. Who’s to disagree with an organization known as Privacy International? Notes brought up include the inability to expunge your personal data, unstated duration for held data and failure to accept popular privacy practises.
If you are worried that Google might have too much info on you, and no doubt they do, you may want to consider using other services to break free from the Google Grasp (I coined it. Ok maybe not in order to avoid being sued). While I don’t necessarily disagree with their data tracking, I do disagree with the inability for a user to request an expunge of their data. They allow you to delete your GMAIL account for example, but they still keep all retained data indefinitely.
Privacy can be a touchy subject; generally people want their privacy maintained and yet the delivery of many services from Internet startups is dependent on personal data to deliver personalized content.
Source: Tech Crunch
Apple WWDC Begins Today
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The WWDC 07 conference begins today, and if you listen carefully, you may just be able to hear the millions of Apple fans twitching in unison. While the conference will likely focus most on Leopard, iPhone will no doubt be brought up many times as well. Will we find out more about the supposed 12th application? I heard that it was a one-click access to the newest porn, but I could be mistaken.
The guys at Gizmodo promise to post immediate updates of their findings, as will CrunchGear and Engadget. For those of you who would like to listen on in, iPhone Alley is streaming the entire keynote.
Should anything monumental happen throughout the day, we will relay the information to you.
Nikon D3 Rumors Heating Up
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The Nikon D3 rumor is heating up again, and hopefully for good reason. It’s been a while since the D2xs has been released and people are waiting for an upgrade, especially one that has a full frame sensor. Apparently, the rumor is that the D3 will come at least close, with a 1.1 near full frame sensor, which might very well deem a lot of the newer DX lenses useless. Compared to Canons high-end Mark III, the D3 is supposed to have a much higher megapixel rating, at 18.7. Will it be able to keep up to the Mark III’s incredible 110 images burst speed?
Nikon didn’t respond to requests for comment. And it should be noted that rumors are not reliable: one report of a Nikon D3 with similar specifications predicted that Nikon would announce the D3 at the Photo Marketing Show in March, which came and went without a peep.
Source: News.com
Departed First Movie To Sell 100,000 On Hi-Def Formats
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Warner Home Entertainment has a reason to be proud, as their movie, The Departed, has sold over 100,000 units since its release in February, effectively becoming the first movie to reach that milestone. This accomplishment was helped by the fact that they support both HD-DVD and Blu-ray formats.
While Warner is not the only format-neutral studio, it has been the most aggressive, releasing more titles than any other studio, and even planning to release (and license to other studios) its own hybrid format (dubbed “Total Hi-Def”) sometime later this year.
Source: High-Def Digest
Turtle Beach Packs Eight Speaks, Two Subwoofers Into Headphones
Turtle Beach makes some great headphones for those who want quality sound at a good price. Now they have outdone themselves, fitting four speakers in each earpiece along with dual woofers, to create true 5.1 sound. I have used another one of their 5.1 headsets for well over a year now, but these new ones are the clear winner. At least on paper.
Besides sporting a removable boom mic, it features a 10-band, six-channel EQ and allows you to hear outside sounds as well. (Though I’m not sure why you’d want to be distracted by the real world or your girlfriend during a hardcore fragging session.)
Source: Gizmodo
TorrentSpy Ordered To Track Users
Those of you using BitTorrent sites may want to be careful, as TorrentSpy has been ordered to track its visitors. TorrentSpy in the past has vowed to never track their users, so considering the fact that this is ordered for US visitors only, there might be a slight chance that they will just ban all IPs that reside there.
The Motion Picture Association of America, which represents Columbia Pictures and other top Hollywood film studios, sued TorrentSpy and a host of others in February 2006 as part of a sweep against file-sharing companies. According to the MPAA, the search engine was sued for allegedly making it easier to download pirated files.
Source: News.com
Santa Rosa MacBooks Benchmarked
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The folks at Bare Feats have taken a performance look at the latest MacBooks out of Apple, utilizing the Santa Rosa chipset. I feel sorry for anyone who just bought a MacBook prior to these ones being announced, because the 8600GT really adds a nice punch.
The new MacBook Pro with the GeForce 8600M runs 3D accelerated games significantly faster than the previous 2.33GHz model with the Mobility Radeon X1600. For example, Quake 4 ran 60% faster, Prey 55% faster, and Doom 3 ran 38% faster. The “Rosa” even beat the 4-Core Mac Pro desktop with a GeForce 7300 GT in 4 out of 5 of our tests.
Source: Bare Feats
Want iPhone “Slide-To-Unlock” On Your PDA?
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One of the most talked about features of the iPhone, is probably the simplest. When the phone is locked, you can simply touch the screen and slide the virtual lock in order to unlock it. Who says the iPhone should have all the iPhun? Not one developer apparently, who wrote a screensaver that offers the same functionality on a PDA.
It works on an Pocket PC phone and gives it the same “slide to unlock†capability. It’s essentially a glorified screensaver, but since anything even remotely related to the iPhone is “in†these days, it can’t hurt to mention it.
Source: Crunch Gear
Top 10 Network Utilities
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If you’ve ever wanted to have interesting fun with networks but didn’t know where to begin, Life Hacker might be able to give you a head start. In yet another top ten, they are taking a look at network tools that you should know about. It’s hard to disagree with a few of them. Angry IP Scanner, DynDNS and Himachi are of the few listed.
Looking at the history of computing, anyone can see that it wasn’t until some brilliant folks connected a couple of computers together that the real fun began. Countless tools let you do all sorts of network trickery, many with their roots at the Unix command line. But forget arcane command line tools.
Source: Life Hacker
Bill Gates Finally Acheives Law Degree
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Despite the fact that Bill Gates is the richest man in the world, he values education. He went back to Harvard to acquire his law degree he originally set out to get in ’77.
“We recognize the most illustrious member of the Harvard College class of 1977 never to have graduated from Harvard,” said Harvard University Provost Steven Hymen, who didn’t seem too humbled to present the honorary degree. “It seems high time that his alma mater hand over the diploma.”
I am not sure how much work Bill had to do in order to earn the degree, but at least now he has something to add to his already impressive resume.
Source: Engadget
Intel’s V8 Platform Reviewed
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Just when you were excited about your QX6800, Ryan Shrout of PC Perspective comes along and stomps on your pride and joy with his Intel V8 system, which consists of dual Quad-Core Xeons running at 3.0GHz alongside 4GB of DDR2-667 FB ram.
When compared to current CPUs on the market, it’s no surprise that the V8 creamed them in every synthetic benchmark. In some cases, the V8 outperformed the 2.93GHz X6800 CPU by more than 4.0x. While the performance results are drool-worthy, the setup is not that affordable. The motherboard alone will set you back a minimum of $600.
The current top of the line Xeon CPU, the X5355 that runs at 2.66 GHz on a 1333 MHz FSB, is selling for just under $1200. If we transpose that price to the upcoming X5365 as the new top-end Xeon processor in that family, then we can assume that it too will fit in at the $1200 price point. That makes the entire system configuration including the processors, motherboard and memory price out at something like $3400. For comparison, you can get a QX6700, an Intel 975XBX2 and 4GB of memory for $1600-1700.
Source: PC Perspective
More Wal-Mart/Dell Prices Released
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Don’t get too excited, but more prices have been ‘leaked’ for Dell machines at Wal-Mart. For $498 you can get a decent box without a monitor and a few other extras, while $200 more will get you the same computer with a monitor, printer and a few other extras. As lackluster as these computers may be, it’s Wal-Mart we are talking about. If they sold body parts, people would buy them.
A little later in the month, those lucky enough to have been accepted into Sam’s Club will have their choice of an $828 multimedia bundle featuring the same Dimension E521 desktop supplemented by NVIDIA GeForce 6150 LE graphics and another gig of RAM, or a 15.4-inch dual-core Inspiron 1501 notebook with a DVD burner, 2GB of RAM and a 120GB hard drive for a few cents under $900.
Nintendo Confirms PR Changes
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We posted the other day about rampant rumors that half of Nintendos Redmond PR department have quit the company, and it is now confirmed by Reggie Fils-Aime. The reasoning is that the PR department should be split up in order to be close to other companies.
“In our minds, it’s essential to spend physical time with people from other companies, to be involved with them as neighbors and do business with them face to face,” he said. A similar rationale was offered for the relocation to Manhattan, where many marketing and advertising firms are located.
Definitely a reasonable explanation, but many notables left Nintendo in this move and it will probably take a little time to replace them.
Source: Gamespot
Long Beach Cops Drive Segways
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The cops in Long Beach don’t mess around. You pull some crap and they will chase you down with their Segways at a staggering 12.5MPH. Don’t think of trying anything funny, they can climb trees and jump fences as well. Alright, I am full of it, but the police actually did catch a 13 year old carjacker using their Segways.
Notably, the Segway was no match for the Mercedes-Benz’s engine at first, but after the obviously unlicensed driver and his partners in crime leaped from the car just before it slammed into a utility pole, their worn legs were no match for the potent battery-powered engine.
Source: Engadget
First Look at Firefox 3 Alpha 5
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The good folks at Ars Technica have taken a hard look at the latest alpha for Firefox 3.0, which seems to be shaping up quite nicely. I will admit that I didn’t notice much difference between Firefox 1 and 2, but 3.0 has a lot in the gameplan. This includes a revamped password manager, bookmarks manager and an all new crash reporting system. I wish I had that now, as my Firefox crashes at least twice a day.
Despite all that sounds good, don’t run out to pick up a copy if you plan on using your 2.0 extensions, as they will be deemed unusable.
One of the most significant features in Firefox 3 is Gecko 1.9, a vastly improved Cairo-based HTML rendering engine. As we reported in our early review of the first Firefox 3 alpha, Gecko 1.9 can pass the Acid 2 test, a CSS test case developed by the Web Standards Project to illuminate flaws in HTML/CSS rendering engines. Support for Cairo-based rendering in Gecko 1.9 also ensures higher quality SVG rendering.
Source: Ars Technica
Computex Round-up: Part 4
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With Computex now on its final day, which is evident thanks to the lack of updates, this might very well be the last round-up we will deliver, so eat it up like there is no tomorrow.
Hexus continues their in-depth coverage with a look at Silverstone’s Grandia GD02 HTPC case which looks promising, Sparkles 8500 GPU based on PCI (wow), iEi’s 2560×2048 monitor, Cooler Masters behemoth 1250W power supply, Lian Li’s expensive PC60 chassis and finally, a look at the only DDR3 SODIMM to appear at the show.
Tweak Town also continues their coverage with a look at… ok wow. ASUS has a motherboard with BUILT-IN DDR3?? Yes, it’s true. ASUS wants to own the market, and that’s evidenced by their internet radio and Eee. Aside from ASUS’ crazy products, they also look at Thermaltakes 2000W PSU, Sparkles on-board temperature LEDs, Foxconns use of SideShow, PowerColors passive 2400/2600 GPUs, MORE booth babes and finally, abits accomplishment of taking a X6800 CPU to 5GHz.
For more round-ups, you can head on over to Legit Reviews, Hardware Logic and Phoronix.
Apples Next OS Going Animated?
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Though not a feature that’s been talked about much in the past, Wired has taken it upon themselves to delve further into the technology known as Core Animation. It’s an integrated part of Leopard which allows developers to add flashy, animated interfaces.
Take for example Disco, a piece of software for burning CD/DVDs. While it burns, the application smokes out the top in a realistic fashion. Blowing into the microphone would make the smoke react as if it were real. While a feature like this sounds great, to me it’s just something “fun”, not a feature you’d want to be using all the time. However, Core Animation doesn’t end there. It’s up to the developer to utilize it in a unique and interesting way.
The WWDC beings on Monday, so chances are we will find out a lot more about this new technology then. Will it vastly change our computing experience? Hard to say, but it appears to be shaping up nicely so far.
Shipley predicts that Core Animation will kick-start a new era of interface experimentation, and may lead to an entirely new visual language for designing desktop interfaces. The traditional desktop may become a multilayered three-dimensional environment where windows flip around or zoom in and out. Double-clicks and keystrokes could give way to mouse gestures and other forms of complex user input.
Source: Wired
JVC Releases Largest Production HDTV
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If you find yourself whining about your small 50″+ HDTV, then how about going bigger? JVC has just unveiled their 110″ HDTV that is actually available for sale. It includes the usual slew of suspects, such as 1080p, HDMI, Component and of course, the amazing input we know as S-Video.
Interestingly, it also includes a Firewire and ethernet so that you can view photos and possibly videos, though the official product site is hard to read since it’s Japanese. If you have a weak floor or a weak wallet, this TV is not for you. It weighs in at 730 pounds and $53,000. Ouch.
Football fans can rejoice knowing that there is now an even bigger screen to watch Tony Romo fumble on. Now you can experience failure on a 110-inch rear-projection screen of awesomeness thanks to JVC.
Source: Crunch Gear
Sony Sells 1 Million PS3s In PAL Regions
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Contrary to popular belief, Sony’s Playstation 3 is producing great sales numbers. PAL regions (Europe) just hit the 1 million mark, which I have to admit is quite impressive given the price of the machine. By comparison, there have been 1.4 million units sold in US/Canada since launch.
Games attributed to the consoles success overseas include Resistance: Fall of Man and MotorStorm, selling 600K and 500K copies respectively. I am a proud PS3 owner, but I will be the first to admit that the games are lacking right now. There are quite a few on the horizon though, so sales for Sony might pick up even further.
Across PAL territories the PlayStation 3 has now sold more than a cool one million units since its March 23 launch–just ten weeks ago. This makes the console faster-selling than either of Sony’s previous living room machines, the original PlayStation or the PS2.
Source: Gamespot
20 Tips for More Efficient Google Searches
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Admit it, you use Google for every-single-thing you do online. But do you know how to optimize your searches? There are many minor tweaks you can do to your search to better help you find out what you need. In this article, there are a total of twenty different tips including wildcards, either or, number ranges and back links. Worth a look if you are interested in becoming a Google master.
Some of these are obvious ones, that you probably know about. But others are lesser-known, and others are known but not often used. Use this guide to learn more about, or be reminded of, some of the best ways to get exactly what you’re looking for, and quickly.
Source: Dumb Little Man
Proposal In Place For Banning Of 101+ MPH Cars In Europe
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If you read the title and are in disbelief, you are certainly not alone. The proposal over in Europe is to have all cars capable of going faster than 101 MPH banned. They have many different reasonings behind this, namely that cars that are capable of such high-speed weigh too much, causing a great amount of CO2 to be released into the atmosphere.
The second thought is that 101MPH is 25% over the speed limit in most Euro Countries anyway. For one thing, banning cars that go faster than the speed limit would be like banning television sets that have the capability to deliver 999 channels, when your cable provider utilizes only 250 of them. Second, cars don’t weigh more because they go faster. They weigh more because they are getting bigger and beefier, partly in thanks to all the added safety features.
We’re all for increased safety – such as the proposed standard fitment of ESP stability control – but to claim that banning the making of cars capable of over 101mph would create a dramatic reduction of CO2 is incorrect.
Source: Autocar
The iPhone Destined To Fail?
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With all of the hype around Apple’s iPhone, can it possibly fail? The folks at Crunch Gear seem to think so. They have a slew of reasons why they believe this, with the first one being the fact that Apple has never released a product on a Friday, which the launch date of June 29 just so happens to be. That in itself is not odd, but they think that it’s evidence that Apple is rushing the phone out the door sooner than their engineers would have liked.
Because the entire front of the phone, or at least most of it, is a touch screen, they foresee mass reports of iPhones with cracked screens. This sounds viable, but how many people do you know that have broken their PDAs screen by carrying it around like that? One thing is for sure, third-party accessory manufacturers are going to make a killing.
Other gripes they have include the keyboard and of course, the forced contract which I can wholeheartedly agree with. It alone is the reason I am not pumped up for what should be the ultimate phone.
What kind of gray market will pop up for contract-less phones? Since AT&T is REQUIRING iPhone purchasers to sign up for 2-year contracts (any lawyers out there know if this is legal?), it isn’t difficult to imagine folks who have no real need for the phone aspect looking for a nice web-browsing widescreen iPod.
Source: Crunch Gear
Santa Rosa to Offer High-Def Decoding Chip On Select Models
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Ars Technica is reporting that revisions of Santa Rosa later this year will include a decoder for next-gen formats with their integrated graphics processors. This will be great for consumers who don’t wish to purchase an expensive laptop for the sake of the beefed up graphics card. With a built-in decoder, Blu-Ray and HD-DVD content will run smoothly, even with that gaming-impared IGP.
Not surprisingly, the support will exist for Windows Vista only, but by the time this decoder sees the light of day, Vista should be more reliable than it is now. Hopefully.
When next-generation DVD playback finally arives, the Intel graphics solution will be optimized for Vista. Currently, Vista loses some of the Aero effects during HD playback on some non-Intel systems, but Intel’s optimizations will let users have the full Aero experience simultaneous with HD-DVD or Blu-Ray.
Source: Ars Technica