Rikardon writes "Nikko Home Electronics has created a DVD projector that looks and moves like R2D2 — with a remote control shaped like the Millenium Falcon. The specs aren't bad: a claimed projection area of up to 6.6m; built-in DVD and CD players; analog and digital video and audio ports; various memory card orifices, and an internal iPod dock. Favorite feature: tilt the legs to adjust the projection height, up to and including projection on the ceiling. No word on whether it projects holograms."

earthforce_1 writes "The vested interests of restrictive copyright are stacking the deck in Canada. The Public Policy Forum Symposium on intellectual property reform has bowed to pressure from certain interests and dis-invited noted copyright scholar Howard Knopf. The forum's stated mandate is '...to strive for excellence in government — to serve as a neutral, independent forum for open dialogue on public policy, and to encourage reform in public sector management.' For some reason, the US Ambassador to Canada and the former head of the Canadian Motion Picture Industry Association have been invited — apparently they are perceived to have a more neutral view of what Canadian copyright laws should be? More information at Howard Knopf's blog."

jayminer writes "We are a relatively newly married young couple who enjoy spending our spare time at home. We don't own a console but have a gaming laptop with DVI output to play games on our TV. My wife is also a CS major so she's computer literate enough. She does not like strategy games, MMORG or any other role-playing game. Apart from "Find the Sausage" jokes, we need quality gaming advice, preferably games which we can play with a single laptop connected to a single large screen, with two gamepads, a console-like experience. What are your suggestions?"

Pioneer Woman writes "Microsoft announced plans to introduce a Web-based service for driving directions that incorporates complex software models to help users avoid traffic jams. The system is intended to reflect the complex traffic interactions that occur as traffic backs up on freeways and spills over onto city streets and will be freely available as part of the company's Live.com site for 72 cities in the US. Microsoft researchers designed algorithms that modeled traffic behavior by collecting trip data from Microsoft employees who volunteered to carry GPS units in their cars. In the end they were able to build a model for predicting traffic based on four years of data, effectively creating individual 'personalities' for over 800,000 road segments in the Seattle region. In all the system tracks about 60 million road segments in the US."

stress_life writes "Recent rumors about AMD firing 5% of its workforce proved to be understated. AMD just announced that the company is going to deliver pink slips to 1600-1700 workers, or around 10% of its employees. AMD needs revenue of $2 billion per quarter, but Q1'08 is expected to come in around $1.5 billion. These firings have to be complete by Q3'08, the quarter by which Hector Ruiz promised to be profitable." We most recently discussed AMD's struggles in February.

willdavid writes to tell us that Sam Ramji over at Port25 has a nice succinct list of the major open source principles that have been used while developing Windows Server 2008. "Overall, we've learned and continue to learn from open source development principles. These are making their way into the mindset, development practices, and ultimately into the products we bring to market. I've focused here on 'what Microsoft has learned from Open Source' - and ironically, I've agreed to do a panel at OSBC on 3/25 with Jim Zemlin of the Linux Foundation on 'what Open Source can learn from Microsoft'. As all of the different organizations in IT continue to evolve, we'll learn from each others' best practices and make increasingly better software. As in science, this incremental improvement will move all of us forward."

dforristall alerts us to an odd move by Microsoft: cutting the price of retail boxes of Vista in many markets. Analysts didn't see this one coming, and they are scratching their heads a bit over it; one called it "very unheard of." The price cuts vary by country — they're largest in the developing world where piracy levels are high — and they don't apply to OEM copies of Vista, which account for 90% of sales. "Gartner analyst Michael Silver said the move... is puzzling... [He] noted that the market for such upgrades is fairly limited. Those who bought XP in the fourth quarter of 2006 got a coupon for a free Vista upgrade, while most of those who have bought systems since then have gotten Vista. Machines purchased prior to 2006 probably aren't all that attractive as candidates for a Vista upgrade... 'The whole notion of upgrading PCs has sort of fallen by the wayside.'"