565806
submission
Z00L00K writes:
As any of us know the fans are evil creatures hiding in our computers. Noisy and prone to give up at the worst possible moment. Ville 'Willek' Kyrö has now done something about this problem by creating the "Passive cooling consept case." The end result is a completely fan-less PC.
I have wanted to build a fully passively cooled computer case since I had my first Athlon Thunderbird 800 MHz. That time the fan noise was amazingly high, and manufacturers didnt much care about the noise levels, and didn't offer products for building a quiet PC. Nowadays a quiet PC is not much of a challenge to build, but totally silent? It would require that there were no moving parts at all. But of cource there has to be the compromise of a hard-drive. One could buy a SSD drive, but at least I don't have that kind of money to spend. :)
478330
submission
Z00L00K writes:
The magazine InfoWorld has started a petition in order to save Windows XP as a product.
Microsoft will end OEM and shrink-wrapped sales of Windows XP on June 30, 2008, forcing users to shift to Vista. (System builders, meaning those who do white-box PCs, can sell XP through December 31.) Don't let that happen!
Millions of us have grown comfortable with XP and don't see a need to change to Vista. It's like having a comfortable apartment that you've enjoyed coming home to for years, only to get an eviction notice. The thought of moving to a new place — even with the stainless steel appliances, granite countertops, and maple cabinets (or is cherry in this year?) — just doesn't sit right. Maybe it'll be more modern, but it will also cost more and likely not be as good a fit. And you don't have any other reason to move.
If this is good or not remains to be seen, but there are reasons to not move to Vista (yet), and even if not everyone loves XP it's wide-spread and well-understood (mostly) while a step to Vista can require the same amount of learning as a step to a different desktop like Linux or OSX.
467068
submission
Z00L00K writes:
A Paralympic gold medal winner will not be allowed to compete in the Beijing Olympics later this year after athletics' governing body ruled that his specially-designed prosthetic limbs gave him an unfair advantage over other runners.
The International Association of Athletics Federations ruled that Oscar Pistorius' shock-absorbing carbon-fiber prosthetics gave him a "demonstrable mechanical advantage" compared to able-bodied athletes.
All this according to an article at CNN.
Maybe he has an advantage during the race — but there are certainly disadvantages involved too. And it's not like this equipment will be useful to other runners. End result — a complete PR disaster.
464966
submission
Z00L00K writes:
The holder of the Swedish site www.teflonminne.org is threatened by a lawsuit from DuPont for the use of the word "teflonminne". (Translates to "Teflon Memory" or "Teflon Storage" — essentially a linguistic joke that means that one has a brain where at least some information doesn't stick.)
The cause is that teflonminne infringes on the product name TEFLON that is registered by DuPont and that they don't like some of the information on his site, more specific two pictures, one of a pierced ear and one of a tattoo.
This is referred in an article in the Swedish newspaper Aftonbladet.
A name collection is also started in support for the current owner Stefan Svensson.
And a search on Google reveals more than 30000 uses of the word "teflonminne", and also that there are several other persons and organizations that has registered a domain name with this word.
(Sorry for only linking to Swedish pages.)
330957
submission
Z00L00K writes:
And finally in an article at NewScientist — just another proof that Microsoft are the evil overlords of the universe:
Not content with running your computer, Microsoft now wants to read your mind too.
The company says that it is hard to properly evaluate the way people interact with computers since questioning them at the time is distracting and asking questions later may not produce reliable answers. "Human beings are often poor reporters of their own actions," the company says.
Instead, Microsoft wants to read the data straight from the user's brain as he or she works away. They plan to do this using electroencephalograms (EEGs) to record electrical signals within the brain. The trouble is that EEG data is filled with artefacts caused, for example, by blinking or involuntary actions, and this is hard to tease apart from the cognitive data that Microsoft would like to study.
Read the full
Microsoft mind reading patent application.
So one must ask: Will the next step be to mind-read you to verify that you aren't running a pirated version of their software?
219523
submission
Z00L00K writes:
This may be old news to some, but anyway...
According to an article there is a serious problem with Vista when Quicktime is used.
I thought I was just unlucky the first time but when something happens two times in the exact same fashion, you just got to check into it a little more.
System is Vista Ultimate 32-bit with RAID 10 on Intel ICH8R chipset. A couple of weeks ago I tried running a .mov file using Apple QuickTime software (latest version) and that is when things started to go downhill. The file seemed very slow to load and eventually QuickTime crashed after a lot of persuasion. Once QuickTime was closed, I was notified of a RAID error through the Intel Matrix Storage Console but the same thing will happen if you reboot during the lockup as well.
The problem here is that a rather normal application is able to cause data corruption on this level. This means that there is an obvious problem with Vista that can be exploited by malware.
Maybe it's the cause of "Beauty is only skin deep but ugly is down to the bone." from where I refer to that Vista has got a new skin of security but under the skin it's still the same ugly security handling.
77264
submission
Z00L00K writes:
Now it seems like Blu-ray also is cracked according to "muslix64" in a post at Doom9.
The supposedly cracked film is "Lord of war" and playable with VideoLan.
It's just to continue to consider the fact that copy-protection only benefits those with resources to circumvent it.
74672
submission
Z00L00K writes:
Wibu-Systems posts a chance of winning of 32,768 Euro via the Hacker's Contest 2007
The challenge is to decrypt the encrypted competition software that is to be protected with a CM-Stick/M for the USB interface. The first contestant who can enable the protected demonstration software to run without a CM-Stick/M and describe the right solution will win the prize of 32,768 Euro. The competition will be completed when the first contestant can enable the protected software to completely run without a connected CM-Stick/M and if the contestant has sent the hidden solution text to Wibu-Systems.
The conclusion of the competition will take place at CeBIT during a press conference on March 15, 2007, 1 p.m., room 13 in the Convention Center by C.E.O. Oliver Winzenried.
So any /.:ers that are up to this challenge may register (registration started January 17, 2007).
73712
submission
Z00L00K writes:
According to Swedish newspaper Ny Teknik (Swedish article, I haven't found any info about this elsewhere) Airbus moves all the A380 manufacturing to Toulouse instead of having part of the construction made at the Airbus plant in Hamburg.
One of the reasons behind the troubles with the Airbus problems is that different versions of the CAD program Catia was used in Germany and France. The Germans used Catia 4 while the French used Catia 5. Bloomberg has an old article about this.
I hope that somebody will learn a lesson from this and figure out that it is a good idea to be consistent of software use within a corporation.
28028
submission
Z00L00K writes:
- Already there
- When my ISP does.
- Later
- Never
