NumberField - Slashdot User

Submission + - Notebook screens keep getting wider and shorter

Submitted by NumberField on Friday May 08, 2009 @06:49PM

NumberField writes: A few years ago, all major notebook makers switched from 4:3 displays to 16:10 displays. Now, they are transitioning to 16:9 aspect ratios. The reason: consumers buy laptops based on the diagonal width of the display, and displays with wider aspect ratios cost less because their area is smaller. For example, a 4:3 display has 12% more screen area and 22% more vertical size than a 16:9 display of the same diagonal size. Users who do word processing, web browsing, or code development, and other vertical applications are frustrated. If the trend continues, soon we'll be viewing the electronic world through a very wide, but vertically tiny, slit.

Submission + - 1000 HD-DVD Indies: Free HD disc burning to DVD+R (createspace.com)

Submitted by NumberField on Friday August 10, 2007 @09:07PM

NumberField writes: In an effort to revive the HD-DVD format, Microsoft and Amazon/CreateSpace are offering to make up to 1000 HD-DVD movies for free. The service burns video to legacy DVD+R media, so duration is limited to ~60 minutes. The high definition discs will play on most HD-DVD players (though obviously not DVD/Blu-ray players). Is this a token effort to gloss over HD-DVD's lack of mainstream titles and poor showing in the format war against Blu-ray? Or will the free offer resuscitate HD-DVD through the power of independent producers?

Submission + - Microsoft wants both HD-DVD and Blu-ray to go away

Submitted by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday June 12, 2007 @10:42PM

An anonymous reader writes: At the Digital Hollywood conference, Richard Doherty of Microsoft stated that Redmond wants both HD DVD and Blu-ray to go away, saying "I don't know that [HD] will be delivered on an optical disc in five to 10 years. At Microsoft, we'd rather it wasn't [on a disc]." Does this mean that Microsoft's backing of the underdog HD DVD format is intended to delay HD DVD and Blu-ray from gaining traction to create a market for Windows Media Player/DRM? Microsoft's leading role in AACS also didn't help either format — the highly-publicized security collapse of AACS has been a massive embarassment for both HD DVD and Blu-ray.

Submission + - Tough new optical disc coatings

Submitted by Anonymous Coward on Saturday February 03, 2007 @06:33PM

An anonymous reader writes: As everyone who uses Netflix knows, scratches on DVD are frustrating and create significant customer support costs. Blu-ray is the first major disc format to address the problem. The chemistry [1] [2] [3] behind these coatings a radical-curing urethane(meth)acrylate and a curing monomer, and is applied unformly over the disc. The results are impressive — this video shows a Blu-ray disc surviving steel wool and a pizza cutter, which would have destroyed traditionally-coated formats (e.g., CDs, DVD, or HD-DVD). Fewer scratched discs also means less waste.

Submission + - Mooninite "Bombs" Setoff Copyright Battle

Submitted by

buckminster

on Saturday February 03, 2007 @06:26PM

buckminster writes: "If you had any doubt about America's national priorities, consider this: Yesterday's bomb scare has become today's copyright violation. Those Aqua Teen Hunger Force signs that brought Boston to a halt earlier this week are now setting off copyright alarms on eBay. It's strange because the signs being auctioned are apparently authentic. Which means they aren't copies, and as a result are not in violation of copyright. Could it be that someone just wants these signs to go away so they won't suffer any more embarrassment? Medialoper has the details in How To Copyright An Atomic Bomb."

Adult Brains Grow From Specialist Use 260

Posted by kdawson on Sunday December 17, 2006 @04:21PM from the use-it-or-lose-it dept.

Xemu writes "Researchers at University College of London's Institute of Neurology have discovered that taxi drivers grow more brain cells in the area associated with memory. Dr Eleanor Maguire says, 'We believe the brain increased in gray matter volume because of the huge amount of data memorized.' She warns against the use of GPS and says it will possibly affect the brain changes seen in this study. This research is the first to show that the brains of adults can grow in response to specialist use." London cabbies, unlike their American counterparts, have to learn the layout of streets and the locations of thousands of places of interest in order to get a license.

Submission + - Microsoft's Laws of Physics

Submitted by Anonymous Coward on Sunday December 17, 2006 @01:10PM

An anonymous reader writes: It's fun to revisit Microsoft's past hype. First, read Jim Allchin's 2001 interview ("Windows XP is dramatically more secure... We have gone through all code and, in an automated way, found places where there could be buffer overflow, and those have been removed"). Next, browse the buffer overrun bugs in XP. Finally, read Allchin's lastest on Vista security. Another funny example: read how Microsoft's Amir Majidimehr used to boost HD-DVD and claim that 50GB Blu-ray discs violate the laws of physics, then observe that these impossible 50GB Blu-ray discs started shipping last October and lots are for sale now. Anyone have more fun Microsoft before/after examples?

Submission + - High-performance flexible organic transistors

Submitted by

Roland Piquepaille

on Sunday December 17, 2006 @12:25PM

Roland Piquepaille writes: "Organic — or carbon-based — transistors are not new and can be used to design flexible computer displays, RFID tags and sensors. However, these organic single crystals could not be mass-produced because they needed to be individually handpicked. But now, researchers at Stanford University and the University of California-Los Angeles (UCLA) have developed a new method for building flexible organic transistor arrays. Even if the researchers have reached a density of 13 million crystals per square inch (or 2 million per square centimeter), there are still several issues to solve before this method can be used for commercial applications of these fast transistors. Read more for additional details and a photo of such a flexible organic transistor array obtained with this new method."

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