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Comments: 68 + -   World's Fastest Hybrid OK'd For Production on Thursday July 29, @07:40PM

Posted by timothy on Thursday July 29, @07:40PM
from the probably-can't-use-the-hov-lanes-though dept.
transportation
thecarchik writes "The Porsche 918 Spyder hybrid supercar, first shown as a concept at this spring's Geneva Motor Show, got official approval as a production model today from the company's board of directors. Just consider the specs: a 500-horsepower, 3.6-liter V-8 engine with a 9200-rpm redline, 0-to-62-mph acceleration of 3.2 seconds, and top speed of 198 miles per hour. Oh, and did we mention it gets 78 miles per gallon on the European cycle? The astounding fuel efficiency comes courtesy of an E-Drive mode that lets the 918 Spyder drive up to 16 miles on pure electric power, though [ahem] not at 198 mph."
Read More... 68 comments story

Comments: 161 + -   Sometimes It's OK To Steal My Games on Thursday July 29, @06:54PM

Posted by timothy on Thursday July 29, @06:54PM
from the eternal-debate-continues dept.
piracy
spidweb writes "One Indie developer has written a nuanced article on a how software piracy affects him, approaching the issue from the opposite direction. He lists the ways in which the widespread piracy of PC games helps him. From the article: 'You don't get everything you want in this world. You can get piles of cool stuff for free. Or you can be an honorable, ethical being. You don't get both. Most of the time. Because, when I'm being honest with myself, which happens sometimes, I have to admit that piracy is not an absolute evil. That I do get things out of it, even when I'm the one being ripped off.' The article also tries to find a middle ground between the Piracy-Is-Always-Bad and Piracy-Is-Just-Fine sides of the argument that might enable single-player PC games to continue to exist."
Read More... 161 comments story

Comments: 67 + -   Thermoelectrics Could Let You Feel the Heat In Games on Thursday July 29, @06:03PM

Posted by timothy on Thursday July 29, @06:03PM
from the better-than-bullet-wounds dept.
games
myshadows writes "Tech Review has an interesting article on how Tokyo Metropolitan University researchers have been able to give a sensory addition to gaming peripherals — namely, temperature. 'As the range of interactions with digital environments expands, it's logical to ask what's next: Smell-o-vision has been on the horizon for something like 50 years, but there's a dark horse stalking this race: thermoelectrics. Based on the Peltier effect, these solid-state devices are easy to incorporate into objects of reasonable size, i.e. video game controllers. In this configuration, just announced at the 2010 SIGGRAPH conference, a pair of thermoelectric surfaces on either side of a controller rapidly heat up or cool down in order to simulate appropriate conditions in a virtual environment.'"
Read More... 67 comments story

Comments: 106 + -   KDE SC 4.7 May Use OpenGL 3 For Compositing on Thursday July 29, @05:40PM

Posted by timothy on Thursday July 29, @05:40PM
from the that's-software-compilation-to-you dept.
kde
An anonymous reader writes "KDE SC 4.5 is about to be released and KDE SC 4.6 is being discussed. However, Martin Graesslin has revealed some details about what they are planning for KDE 4.7. According to Martin's blog post, they are looking at OpenGL 3.0 to provide the compositing effects in KDE SC 4.7. OpenGL 3.0 provides support for frame buffer objects, hardware instancing, vertex array objects, and sRGB framebuffers."
Read More... 106 comments story

Comments: 125 + -   Perl 6, Early, With Rakudo Star on Thursday July 29, @05:22PM

Posted by timothy on Thursday July 29, @05:22PM
from the if-you-call-that-early dept.
perl
Perl 6 may have been "finally coming within reach" in 2004, but now it's even closer. Reader rnddim writes "The Perl 6 implementation Rakudo Star has been released today for 'early adopters.' This release of Rakudo is different from the normal monthly compiler releases in that is it bundled with a draft of a Perl 6 book, and several modules. It's not complete, and it's not as fast as it should be, but Rakudo in its current state is proving to be usable and useful. Rakudo Star releases will come monthly or as major features or bugfixes are made. It is available for download at github.com."
Read More... 125 comments story

Comments: 273 + -   Internal Costs Per Gigabyte — What Do You Pay? on Thursday July 29, @04:29PM

Posted by timothy on Thursday July 29, @04:29PM
from the wonder-what-the-dept-of-education-pays dept.
storage
CodePwned writes "I recently took over a position at a rather large company where I discovered my group was paying $30 per gigabyte per month! That's $360 per year per gigabyte to our own IT department. While I understand costs are different depending on the scale, redundancy, backup and support methods, there doesn't seem to be any good papers on what range you should expect your costs to be. So far, my research shows an average of $1 per gigabyte or less for internally hosted space. What do you pay?"
Read More... 273 comments story

Comments: 90 + -   Stieg Larsson Is First Author To Sell 1M E-Books on Thursday July 29, @03:46PM

Posted by timothy on Thursday July 29, @03:46PM
from the nice-tattoo dept.
Hugh Pickens writes "The Guardian reports that the late Swedish journalist Stieg Larsson, author of The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo, The Girl Who Played with Fire, and The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet's Nest, has become the first author to sell more than one million e-books on Amazon. The Swedish noir thrillers features Lisbeth Salander, an asocial and extremely intelligent hacker and researcher, specialized in investigations of persons, and investigative journalist Mikael Blomqvist. Quercus has sold 3.3M copies of Larsson's books in the UK, and estimates that worldwide sales of the three novels are somewhere between 35-40M copies."
Read More... 90 comments story

Comments: 128 + -   A $20 8-Bit Wikipedia Reader For Your TV on Thursday July 29, @03:00PM

Posted by timothy on Thursday July 29, @03:00PM
from the thought-experiments-welcome dept.
wikipedia
An anonymous reader writes with this excerpt from Wired about another entry in the ongoing quest for low-tech-high-tech educational tools to take advantage of distributed knowledge: "The Humane Reader, a device designed by computer consultant Braddock Gaskill, takes two 8-bit microcontrollers and packages them in a 'classic style console' that connects to a TV. The device includes an optional keyboard, a micro-SD Card reader and a composite video output. It uses a standard micro-USB cellphone charger for power. In all, it can hold the equivalent of 5,000 books, including an offline version of Wikipedia, and requires no internet connection. The Reader will cost $20 when 10,000 or more of it are manufactured. Without that kind of volume, the each Reader will cost about $35."
Read More... 128 comments story

Comments: 311 + -   HDMI Labeling Requirements Promise a Stew of Confusion on Thursday July 29, @02:14PM

Posted by timothy on Thursday July 29, @02:14PM
from the thick-viscous-stew dept.
networking
An anonymous reader writes "In many ways HDMI has revolutionized the way we connect devices. By unifying video and audio into a single cable manufacturers have been able to make their products easier to set up than ever before. Until recently there hasn't actually been much difference in HDMI cables. But things are about to get confusing with the introduction of HDMI 1.4. By the 1st of January 2012 manufacturers of products with HDMI ports won't actually be able to call HDMI 1.4 by its real name. In fact, come November 18 this year those selling cables won't be able to use HDMI 1.4 or HDMI 1.3 to delineate between different products. Instead cables that support version 1.4 of the HDMI standard will have to use one of five different labels. The new labels? Well, as this story explains, they're going to cause a new level of confusion for anyone hooking up a home cinema. Add to this the fact that the HDMI organisation keeps the details of its specifications secret, and translation between version numbering and marketing-speak will be well nigh impossible."
Read More... 311 comments story

Comments: 87 + -   LCD 'Engine' For Spacecraft Attitude Control on Thursday July 29, @01:29PM

Posted by kdawson on Thursday July 29, @01:29PM
from the little-more-to-the-left dept.
space
Bruce Perens writes "Japan's IKAROS satellite, which earlier performed the first successful demonstration of a solar sail, has broken more new ground. Liquid-crystal displays — yes, like in your video monitor — were fabricated into strips on the edges of the solar sail. By energizing some of the LCDs and changing the reflective characteristics of parts of the sail from specular to diffuse, JAXA scientists successfully generated attitude control torque in the sail, changing the spacecraft's orientation."
Read More... 87 comments story
 
The World's Strongest, Most Expensive Beer Served Inside a Squirrel
Onion Story Gets Blown Out of Proportion
Sound As the New Illegal Narcotic?
Twitter Says Americans Are Happier In the Morning
Poll How Big Is Your Primary Display?
Under 15"
15" to 17"
18" to 20"
21" to 23"
24" to 27"
27" to 30"
Over 30"
I use a neural interface, you insensitive clod!
[ Results | Polls ]
Comments:360 | Votes:36698

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