What do you get when you tell Hitachi engineers that they need to come up with a ridiculously large amount of storage on a single Blu-Ray disc?If your answer was a four layer disc that can hold up to 100GB of data, then you might want to look into a future as a fortune teller or psychic.But what about the player? Do consumers need to...Read more...
Apple is gathering the faithful for a shindig that is rumored to be going down the last week of this month. It seems quite likely that this will be a launch event for Leopard, but could Apple have other product announcements up their sleeve?Still, we expect the big news to be about Leopard. Why? It's all about the timing...Read more...
During a summit with South Korean's president the reclusive leader of the DPRK, Kim Jong Il, described himself as an Internet Expert. While the comment alone is certainly one of those things that will likely live on as a running joke after being taken out of context. A certain Al Gore comment comes to mind.So what was the context?“The...Read more...
The case against Jammie Thomas of Minnesota is (still) over, and the restitution is still $222,000. For somebody making $36,000 a year, that might seem excessive, so what is she planning on doing to pay this off?She's made the following statement:"I'm not going to ask for financial help," she told The Associated Press on Friday. But...Read more...
If you've been waiting for SP1 to be released before giving Vista a try, Microsoft says don't bother. There's not going to be too many new features for the home user, but many of the new features are going to be targeted at the large organizations. Perhaps the same organizations that made public comments about why they wouldn't...Read more...
The Minnesota file-sharing case that we've been reporting on is now over, and the RIAA has won. Perhaps that's not the end of the story, however, as the odd & contradictory statements from the defendant were perhaps topped by some made by a music industry rep.One of the experts called to testify in the trial was none other than Sony...Read more...
Though we now know the identity of the fake Steve Jobs who kept us entertained with his blog, and thus the mystery is over, the story is not. The author of “oPtion$: The Secret Life of Steve Jobs”, Dan Lyons, is planning on going on tour.Before you ask, we'll answer for you: Yes, the fake Steve Jobs is going on a real book tour.“Lyons...Read more...
Intel is planning on improving the performance per core on future Itaniums, which should be evident in the next generation part codenamed Tukwila. While we're all for making sure each core runs efficiently, it seems a bit strange that this would be a major concern for Itanium R&D people like Cameron McNair. Most people would...Read more...
Minnesota has always been an interesting and often unpredictable state when it comes to politics and law. That's why a court case against 30 year old Jammie Thomas is certainly worth following.Thomas has been accused of sharing over 1700 songs via Kazaa. Things get interesting when she, along with numerous other Kazaa users, received...Read more...
Most educators agree that most, if not all, people will fall into one of three categories based on the way their mind acquires and stores new information best: visual learners, auditory learners, and tactile learners. Many educational institutions try their best to include a decent balance of all three aspects in an attempt to make sure...Read more...
AT&T Recently revised their Terms of Service (TOS) for their DSL broadband service to include a clause which more or less seems put there to let AT&T disconnect a user who they believe is using their broadband access to "damage the name or reputation of AT&T, or its parents, affiliates and subsidiaries."Obviously this has been...Read more...
Is Apple working on a new iPhone? We're not sure, but a recent html bug hints and a product called the iPhone Extreme. We're not sure exactly what features an 'Extreme' iPhone might have, but it should be noted that Apple uses the word 'Extreme' to define their high end networking products, and this could just end up being an iPhone...Read more...
If you've been around long enough, you'll remember that there actually was a fairly large gaming market brewing for Apple at one point in time, but somewhere along the way things went sour and the Mac went a long time with a very limited selection of titles. That's slowly changing, especially with developers like Blizzard and even Electronic...Read more...
Things are moving and shaking over at Skype. It seems that since their acquisition by eBay, there will be a shuffling of management between various units. We're not sure exactly why this is happening but perhaps putting execs in different units will stimulate synergy. Here's the rundown of who's going where to do what:“Skype...Read more...
Just about everybody has heard of Second Life, and how many retailers have purchased a virtual store and even hawked virtual goods with a real-world likeness. But a recent report is showing, not surprisingly, that the hype inspired but such stories as mostly that, hype.In fact it seems that Second Life has become less than attractive...Read more...
If you own an unlocked iPhone that was recently put out of commission by the firmware upgrade that just came down the pipe, have hope yet! It appears that the eternal struggle between Apple and hackers isn't over yet, and in many cases you can at least partially resurrect your non-functional device:“These latest instructions allow users...Read more...
The Motion Pictures Association of America (MPAA) has struck out at pirates yet again, and we're not talking about the Jack Sparrow variety of pirates here. We're talking about the kind that put expensive movies on the 'net for all to view for no price.Perhaps the most interesting piece of news in this story is that the MPAA not only filed...Read more...
World of Warcraft will run just about any PC that has been shipped in the past 5 years. Blizzard has obviously spent a lot of time optimizing the game so that it runs well on even the lowest end PC with integrated graphics, and to be honest it still looks pretty decent at those lower settings. Blizzard has continued to strive to make the...Read more...
Just about anyone who lived through the 90's knows what The Gap is. It was almost impossible to escape their advertising blitz, and even harder not to spot people wearing clothing from one of their brands.Life is generally just peachy at The Gap until somebody nabs a laptop with 800,000 personal information belonging to applications, not...Read more...
Phishing, we all hate it. Not the kind with Uncle Earl out on his 14 foot “yacht” and 8 sick-packs that were never going to see the shore again, but the kind of misleading e-mails and/or web sites that result in innocent users (such as Uncle Earl) giving out personal data to people who would intend to misuse it.Despite anti-phishing technology...Read more...
The war between next-gen consoles (are they still next-gen? They're here aren't they?!) often has a lot to do with graphics quality. Given that High Definition (HD) is the current buzz-word of the day, it's not a big surprise. What is a big surprise is that some sharp-eyed forum posters have started looking at the picture quality of Bungee's...Read more...
Windows Vista. Those two words either make users cringe in fear or perhaps evoke happy times with the new OS. It doesn't seem like there's a lot of middle ground here. Perhaps some of the more jaded simply gave Vista a try before there were proper drivers for their hardware, or perhaps before some patch on Microsoft's part that fixed some...Read more...