After receiving endless flak for their silly tiered Vista Compatibility scheme, Microsoft has decided to issue a single “Windows 7 Capable” sticker for hardware that works with the new OS. That means no more “Windows Home Basic”, “Windows Ready”, “Certified for Windows” and “Windows Ready When You Are, Asshole” labels slapped on every piece of hardware in the computer aisle at Best Buy.
Just last month we were reporting “Seagate to begin to switch to SSD” and now company CEO Bill Watkins has said that that’s not quite the truth. Seagate will indeed be launching an enterprise-level SSD in 2009, but will not enter the “mobile SSD” market. Whyever not? Because there’s no money to be made there: “Right now if you look at it whether it’s Micron or Samsung or SanDisk – they’re selling at a loss. To do the product is not a big deal but to make money at it – it’s important to us.” he notes. Instead the company is banking on post MLC technology, something like “a spin around magnetic RAM, it could be a phase shift type of process” says Watkins. Seagate hard drives might be around for a while longer. [Silicon via MRAM-info]
Anime fans can now store information on two of the genre’s most famous characters–Lupin the Third and Gundam. Both USB figurines come with little extra accessories (like a pistol for Lupin and a shield for Gundam) and store 4GB of stuff. When you want to use them, twist their legs into sitting position and a USB port will pop out the back. Yeah, you’re loading info into Lupin and Gundam’s butts. Got a problem with that? The Gundam USB will be available in late November, and the Lupin one will come mid-December. Pricing was not yet available. [Buffalo Japan via Akihabara News]
The Guardian has a great interview with the head of Tudou.com, China’s answer to Youtube. Tudou means potato in Chinese, meant to denote “couch potato.” CEO Gary Wang started the video-sharing site up four years ago after discovering the immense amount of government regulation involved if he wanted to go into television entertainment.
Why is it that there are people out there who spend their days trying to prove a correlation between violence in movies/games/online/tv and violent behaviour? You’d think that after almost half a century of TV and still no final conclusion, these researchers would realise that they will never be able to prove anything.
The latest, courtesy of News.com.au, comes from Pediatrics, and was conducted by a group called “Internet Solutions for Kids”. Yeah, like they don’t have an agenda. They surveyed 1,588 young people aged 10 to 15 years old about their online media habits and predilection towards violent behaviour. The researcher then went on to claim that the interactive nature of the internet could mean that its influence is more powerful than other media… wait, isn’t that what critics say about games?
So, even though I’m not a scientist or a professional researcher, I do have a small amount of common sense, (which the people who conduct these studies always seem to lack) and I’m going to use it to explain why every single one of these studies is a waste of time, money and effort and only diverts attention away from the real problems of the world. You ready? Here goes:
Solid-state drives already enjoy speedier read and write speeds than their hard disk counterparts, but SanDisk is promising technology that can make them a hundred times faster. The company’s new flash file system, called ExtremeFFS, uses a page-based method that writes and alters data positions based on an algorithm that detects where it would be the most efficient.
Hey Brian, I’m writing this not from the Herman Miller Embody chair we reviewed, but from the detached “saucer section” of the Treychair, which I reviewed last year. Why? Because I can’t see the TV that well from my couch, so I need to sit closer. I’m getting old.
Telstra’s been talking up their NextG network for some time as the world’s fastest, and for good reason. At 14.4Mbps, it currently is the world’s fastest, although there aren’t a lot of devices on the market that take advantage of that speed (most HSDPA phones and modems run at 7.2Mbps).
But, at the company’s annual Investor Day briefing today, they unveiled a new modem produced in conjunction with Qualcomm, Ericsson and Sierra Wireless, to blow the current network’s 14.4Mbps speeds out of the water. The new modem will be capable of 21Mbps, which is the speed Telstra will be taking its NextG network to early next year, with trials starting next month.
The technology, called enhanced HSPA (or eHSPA), will not only offer much faster speeds than are currently available, but will also improve network efficiency and offer increased capacity for all the consumers that will flock trickle over to NextG.
Of course, knowing Telstra, when they do launch this super-fast modem, they’ll also price it beyond the reach of us mere mortals. But still, for wireless internet that covers most of Australia and offers near ADSL2+ speeds, you’d expect to pay a premium of some kind, wouldn’t you?
[Telstra]
Remember the Phantom Lapboard? Yeah, it’s been so long that we’ve heard any news of it (despite them telling us that it was finally released), that most people have plumb purged it from their memory. According to Phantom Entertainment’s recently updated blog though, the lapboard still exists and it’s coming by the end of the year – for real this time! The Phantom Entertainment folks have paid for their first shipment of manufactured lapboards, and they’ll be posting a delivery time frame soon. Good luck trying to generate buzz on your four-year-old almost-product, guys! [Phantom Entertainment]
The Economist has a great piece about researchers at the Chinese Academy of Sciences have developed a digital cinema projector that uses lasers as the main display technology. In doing so, these projectors are able to display a staggering 80 percent of the colour range visible to the human eye. Previously, the 60 percent range that 35mm film offered was considered the benchmark for other projectors and displays to measure themselves up against.
