- Qualcomm Launches Snapdragon 4 Gen 2 Mobile Platform
- AMD Launches Ryzen PRO 7000 Series Mobile & Desktop Platform
- Intel Launches Sleek Single-Slot Arc Pro A60 Workstation Graphics Card
- NVIDIA Announces Latest Ada Lovelace Additions: GeForce RTX 4060 Ti & RTX 4060
- Maxon Redshift With AMD Radeon GPU Rendering Support Now Available
Social & RSS Feeds
Latest Videos
Latest News
Tech News
Man Sues IBM Over Firing
A man who was fired by IBM for visiting an adult chat room at work is suing the company for $5 million, claiming he is an Internet addict who deserves treatment and sympathy rather than dismissal. James Pacenza, 58, of Montgomery, says he visits chat rooms to treat traumatic stress incurred in 1969 when he saw his best friend killed during an Army patrol in Vietnam.
Not that I don’t feel bad about someone losing their friend, but using it as an excuse? In the article, it mentions that he had a previous warning, but continued visiting adult chat rooms anyway. He doesn’t seem to have tried to help himself any, so this only sounds like a guy who’s trying to get rich quick. I’d be surprised if this went anywhere.
Source: CNN
Nikon Canada Announces COOLPIX S50C and COOLPIX S50
Mississauga, ON, February 20, 2007 – Nikon Canada Inc. today introduced the COOLPIX S50C and COOLPIX S50, two outstanding compact digital cameras with stylish wave-surface designs, offering a range of advanced functions The COOLPIX S50C has the added convenience of built-in Wi-Fi capability for wireless transfer of images to a computer.
Source: Nikon Press Release
Nikon Canada Announces COOLPIX S500
Mississauga, ON, February 20, 2007 – Nikon Canada Inc., today introduced the COOLPIX S500. Blending sophisticated styling and quality construction, the COOLPIX S500 offers easy-to-use advanced features and superior performance in a compact body.
Source: Nikon Press Release
Nikon Canada Announces COOLPIX S200
Mississauga, ON, February 20, 2007 – Nikon Canada Inc, today introduced the COOLPIX S200. Packing style and advanced functions into an ultra-slim design, this compact digital camera demonstrates the superior quality COOLPIX owners have come to expect from Nikon.
Source: Nikon Press Release
Nikon Announces Three Additions to L-Series Compact Cameras
Mississauga, ON, February 20, 2007 – Nikon Canada Inc. today announced three new models in its entry-level COOLPIX “L-Series” of digital cameras. The COOLPIX L12, COOLPIX L11, and COOLPIX L10 combine distinctive lightweight design and superior performance with ease of operating, giving even first-time users the ability to take great-looking pictures.
Source: Nikon Press Release
First DDR3 For Desktops To Come From Super Talent
DDR3 is set to be the next PC memory standard and the successor to DDR2 memory. It holds a number of technological advantages over its predecessor. Power consumption has been decreased to 1.5 Volts, while clock speeds have gone up. Currently, DDR3 frequencies range from 800 MHz to 1600 MHz. The 512MB module that appeared on Super Talent’s website late last night uses a Samsung SKU that has not been publically announced yet.
Is it possible to be excited over this? Sure, we will see DDR3-1600 speeds, but only 512MB sticks?
Source: Daily Tech
Linus Still Hates GNOME
Some bad blood between Linus Torvalds and GNOME developers is flaring up again. Previously, Torvalds has said that Linux users should switch to KDE instead of GNOME because of the GNOME team’s “users are idiots” mentality. Now he has “put his money where his mouth is” by submitting patches to GNOME in order to have it behave as he likes.
Linus knows how to keep things lively in the programming community. He had harsh comments to say to the GNOME team… and said them. I am not a fan of GNOME personally, but it’s for slightly different reasons than his. There seems to be some truth to what he’s saying though.
Source: Linux.com
Chinese Hackers Attack Anything and Everything
At the Naval Network Warfare Command here, U.S. cyber defenders track and investigate hundreds of suspicious events each day. But the predominant threat comes from Chinese hackers, who are constantly waging all-out warfare against Defense Department networks, Netwarcom officials said.
It’s assumed that Chinese hackers are trying to breach US government computers with the Chinese governments support. It’s noted in the article that one Chinese attack in recent memory forced a shutdown of e-mail servers for a few weeks. Something will need to be done if the hackers are that determined.
Source: FCW.com
Microsoft, Google, Yahoo Work Stories
During my freshman year in college, I joined and eventually chaired our school’s ACM Windows programming student group. One day, one of my friends, who is now at Microsoft Research, mentioned that Microsoft was looking for a new Student Consultant for next year. His friend was the current SC and his only job seemed to be giving away xboxes and software, so I thought, hey I want to do that.
If you want an idea of what it’s like to work for either Microsoft, Google or Yahoo!, this guy has the answer. It’s easy for him to relay the stories, since he’s worked for all three.
Source: Tasty Research
Declutter Your Desk
Small desk? No problem. This fellow has three monitors on his petite desk and still has room to spare.. simply because he stores -everything- he can underneath. That includes modems, routers, power bars, CD-roms… et cetera. Seems like a fair amount of work, but if you are desperate for space, it may be worth looking at.
Source: Van Mardian
Vista Boxed Copies Not Selling As Well As XP Did
First-week retail sales of boxed copies of Windows Vista were almost 60% below sales of boxed copies of Windows XP in the week after its 2001 launch, according to one leading market research group. The dollar value of retail box copies of Vista sold during the week of Jan. 28 also fell 32% from the value of XP box copies sold during its first week in October 2001, according to figures from Port Washington, N.Y-based NPD Group Inc. released Thursday.
Once again, I will exclaim that this is no real surprise since Vista is not that impressive. The main thing that hurts sales is (I assume) is the fact that so many current applications (or video drivers) are not compatible. I wouldn’t be surprised to see a lot more action on the retail shelves in the coming months.
Source: Computer World
Consumer Vista Upgrades Moving at Snail’s Pace
But as the January 30 launch date came and went, customers waiting for their Express Upgrade have found that there’s nothing “express” about it. Some two weeks after launch, few—if any—customers have received their upgrades from major OEMs, despite the fact that you can walk into any retail computer store and pick one up right off the shelves. What gives?
I can think of ten people I know right off that have suffered the same fate, but none of them deal with Dell or HP. I didn’t realize it was such a widespread problem. The reasons mentioned in the article might surprise you.
Source: Ars Technica.
Jimmy Wales Still Hardcore Against Ads
While Wales wants to keep Wikipedia free of ads and corporate influence, others say that this is exactly what the site needs to grow and ensure its financial stability. Weblogs Inc. CEO Jason Calacanis has been harping on Wikipedia for months, arguing that the encyclopedia could rake in as much as $100 million a year with only minimal advertising.
I love Wikipedia and reference it daily, but its hard to not disagree with Jimmy. The intentions are good and I am sure a lot of people agree with him, but advertising as mentioned above would take care of all the financial worry. On top of that, potential new employees could be hired too help things progress even further. Ads seem like an inevitability.
Source: Ars Technica
Grid Computes 420 Years of Data In 4 Months
The project, dubbed WISDOM (World-wide In Silico Docking On Malaria), ran between 1 October, 2006 and 31 January. 2007. With the use of computers from EGEE (Enabling Grids for E-sciencE), scientists were able to analyse an average of 80,000 drug compounds each hour, in search for a drug that will combat malaria. Up to 5,000 computers were used at any one time, generating a total of 2,000GB of useful data.
This is impressive, but no more so than F@H, Rosetta or the others. Has “folding” like this ever solved diseases in the past? If not now, it will be an exciting day when it does happen.
Source: Computer World
Macrovision Responds to Steve Jobs On DRM
While your thoughts are seemingly directed solely to the music industry, the fact is that DRM also has a broad impact across many different forms of content and across many media devices. Therefore, the discussion should not be limited to just music. It is critical that as all forms of content move from physical to electronic there is an opportunity for DRM to be an important enabler across all content, including movies, games and software, as well as music.
Who would have thought that Steves open letter would get so much response, so fast? Well, anyone I guess. Macrovision has a few of their own ideas though, but urges people to realize that it’s not just music that is DRM ridden.
Source: Macrovision
Top 10 Largest Databases in the World
There are currently organizations around the world in the business of amassing collections of things, and their collections number into and above the trillions. In many cases these collections, or databases, consist of items we use every day. In this list, we cover the top 10 largest databases in the world.
If you are a server guy or gal, then you will love this list. Of course, most are obvious, but the #1 may surprise you. A few notables include YouTube, CIA, Amazon and Techgage. Well, I exaggerate.
Source: Business Intelligence Lowdown
Vista Today, Tomorrow, What Never Was
Windows Vista has been released to the hounds (that would be us). As just about every publication has reiterated a thousand times over it took 5+ years of design and development and cost USD 5.5 billion both directly and indirectly. We were promised (maybe not even promised, but bullshitted) a revolutionary operating system and what we got is for you to determine for yourselves. I personally think it’s a disappointment to say the least.
As blatantly hardcore as this author rips on Vista, I have to agree on most points. Despite using Vista over the past couple months for use in articles, I have uninstalled it simply because it’s much more of a hassle than it’s worth. There’s just no solid reason for anyone to move to Vista. I have high hopes for a service pack though, or even Vienna if it takes that long.
Source: OS News
iPod Called A Criminal Tool
a high school student has been charge with a felony for hacking into school files and downloading sensitive info to his iPod. Here’s where it gets strange. One of the charges is possession of a “criminal tool,” by which they apparently mean the iPod. If you look at it that way, anything used in a crime could be considered a criminal tool.
Careful, the computer you are using right this very moment to read this… is probably a criminal tool. Don’t say that I didn’t warn you.
Source: Tech Dirt
Has Open Source Lost Its Halo?
Open-source software development once had a reputation as a grassroots movement, but it is increasingly a mainstream IT profit center. Citing an online opinion piece by Gordon Haff, an analyst at Illuminata Inc., the article notes that HP and IBM have not only profited from open-source at the expense of competitors, but have also boosted their images in the open-source community.
There’s no denying that Open Source is more commercial than ever, but it’s still a good thing for the most part. One of the largest benefits of open source is the ability to see the code for yourself and adjust it if necessary. It’s core benefits are still there, so who cares if some large companies are using it to their advantage?
Source: Slashdot
One Million OLPC Laptop Orders Confirmed
Quanta Computer, the world’s largest contract laptop PC manufacturer, already has confirmed orders for 1 million notebook PCs for the One Laptop Per Child (OLPC) project, a company representative said Thursday. Quanta is manufacturing the OLPC laptop, and mass production is the key to slashing its cost. Currently, the laptops cost around $130, but the goal is to whittle down the price to $100.
We’ve been hearing about OLPC for what seems like forever, so it’s good to finally see this milestone hit. While the price is hovering around $130 at the moment, they mentioned that if more support is gained (think 5 – 10 Million), then they could be put back at the $100 price point.
Source: Network World
Are Blackberry Owners Chained To Work?
In an online survey sample of 1,600 “nationally representative” Americans between June and September of last year, Digital Life America asked respondents whether devices like the BlackBerry “chain you to work more than they liberate you.” The results were split exactly three ways: a third agreed, a third remained neutral, and a third disagreed. Among just those who own a BlackBerry-like device, the results were also almost equally divided, with 34 percent agreeing and 37 percent disagreeing.
This is not too hard to believe, really. I have a few friends who use Blackberrys and I can tell that it forces them to work “overtime”. Not simply in a manner of staying at the office, but most people take them home where they can be pinged by the boss at any time.
Source: Ars Technica
Hiding Messages In Plain Sight
A technology that can “hide” information in plain sight on printed images has begun to see the first commercial applications. Japanese firm Fujitsu is pushing a technology that can encode data into a picture that is invisible to the human eye but can be decoded by a mobile phone with a camera. The company believes the technology will have spin off implications for the publishing industry.
This technology could have a variety of uses, but the main one that comes to mind for me is shopping catalogues. Imagine sitting back on the couch with a new flyer or catalogue and simply hovering over the item and verifying to place an order. The real goal seems to be being able to scan an article in order to download it into your cell phone, which works as well.
Source: BBC UK
SlySoft Releases AnyDVD HD
First the all-important processing key required to unlock and decrypt HD-DVD and Blu-ray discs was discovered, now just days later comes news that the folks at SlySoft have updated their AnyDVD “backup” software utility to allow for “on the fly remastering” of HD DVD discs, although not Blu-ray discs. As you might expect, they aren’t exactly spilling the details on exactly how they achieved this considerable feat, although those that have tried out the beta software are reporting that it works as advertised.
If you are interesting in giving the new app a try, you can grab the beta off the official forums. All things considered, a tool like this didn’t take that long to come out.
Source: Engadget
New Affordable Killer K1 Network Processor Available
Shiny heatsink and FNApps support aside, the Killer K1 has a lower-clocked variant of Bigfoot Network’s network processing unit, also known as an NPU. The NPU found in the Killer K1 clocks at 333 MHz instead of the KillerNIC M1’s 400 MHz, how much of a performance difference 67 MHz makes is yet to be seen. Memory remains unchanged though, with 64 MB of DDR ram “to offer gamers a faster online gaming experience.”
If you didn’t like the idea of throwing away $250 on a network card, then maybe throwing away only $180 would be more up your alley. Other uses for your $180: Anything else.
Source: Daily Tech
Radeon X2800XTX To Operate At 750MHz/2200MHz
THE RADEON X2800XTX will work at 750MHz core clock and the GDDR 4 memory is clocked at 2200MHz. This is how the R600XTX will be known from now on. As always, these clocks are close to final but ATI can still change them till the launch date sometime in March. The top card has 1024MB of 512-bit GDDR 4 memory working at 2200MHz. This card also has 128 Shaders just as many as Nvidia’s G80 chip. It is made on a 80 nanometre marchitecture and it will sell for $600.
It sounds like we will have some competition to the G80 right around the corner. 1GB of GDDR 4 though? It’s hard to say whether that will be used by any game out there, but it looks good. That’s all that matters, right?
Source: The Inquirer