Comment: Re:our first solid metric (Score 1) 87
So.... why Win98?
Skin-Based Display Screens From Nanotech Tattoos 200
Posted
by
timothy
from the your-epidermis-is-showing-a-movie dept.
from the your-epidermis-is-showing-a-movie dept.
destinyland writes "Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in New York is developing flexible nanotubes
inserted under the skin to create a handheld display — inside your hand. They wirelessly receive data and display reminders and text messages, and the concept has also been broadened to suggest endlessly programmable digital tattoos, while Netherlands-based Royal Philips Electronics is also exploring the concept of
the body as 'a platform for electronics and interactive skin technologies'." That middle link is quite old, but is still loaded with interesting links.
17 Million People Stopped Buying CDs In 2008 375
Posted
by
kdawson
from the off-a-cliff dept.
from the off-a-cliff dept.
Houston 2600 sends along an Ars Technica writeup on the continuing downward trend in the traditional music business: NPD's annual survey found that 17 million CD customers dropped out last year. Among the good news is that streaming services such as Pandora are growing fast. "While overall music sales were up 10 percent in 2008, the year saw a drop not only in CD sales, but also in the number of customers actually purchasing music. But according to a new report, the act of listening to music is actually on the rise. ... NPD's annual Digital Music Study found that there were 17 million fewer CD customers in 2008 than in past years. CD sales have been dropping for quite some time, and while 1.5 billion songs were sold digitally last year, the number of Internet users paying for digital music only increased by 8 million in 2008."
DB Query Becomes Browseable In Virtual World 82
Posted
by
ScuttleMonkey
from the kill-that-query-takes-on-a-whole-new-meaning dept.
from the kill-that-query-takes-on-a-whole-new-meaning dept.
Jani Pirkola writes to tell us that Green Phosphor's new project "Glasshouse" allows users to take database queries or spreadsheets and create 3D representations in a virtual world. Man what I wouldn't give to mash my level 80 death knight up with some of the ugly joins I have run across in the past. "Users can see data, and drill into it; re-sort it; explore it interactively - all from within a virtual world. Glasshouse produces graphs which are avatars of the data itself. We've tailored the system for the use of biotech companies, specifically for drug discovery and development. Dr. David Resuehr, a molecular biologist, recently joined Green Phosphor as our Chief Scientist."
Roland Piquepaille Dies 288
Posted
by
kdawson
from the in-memoriam dept.
from the in-memoriam dept.
overheardinpdx writes "I'm sad to report that longtime HPC technology pundit Roland Piquepaille (rpiquepa) died this past Tuesday. Many of you may know of him through his blog, his submissions to Slashdot, and his many years of software visualization work at SGI and Cray Research. I worked with Roland 20 years ago at Cray, where we both wrote tech stories for the company newsletter. With his focus on how new technologies modify our way of life, Roland was really doing Slashdot-type reporting before there was a World Wide Web. Rest in peace, Roland. You will be missed." The notice of Roland's passing was posted on the Cray Research alumni group on Linked-In by Matthias Fouquet-Lapar. There will be a ceremony on Monday Jan. 12, at 10:30 am Paris time, at Père Lachaise.
Scientists Achieve Mental Body-Swapping 297
Posted
by
kdawson
from the put-yourself-in-my-place dept.
from the put-yourself-in-my-place dept.
SpaceAdmiral notes the news that scientists have succeeded in convincing experiment subjects that a mannequin's body is their own, and even feeling at home in the body of someone of the opposite sex. The effect could prove useful in virtual reality applications and in robot technology. Here's the paper on PLoS ONE.
IRS Looking at Google/Mozilla Relationship 261
Posted
by
CmdrTaco
from the can't-imagine-why dept.
from the can't-imagine-why dept.
ric482 writes "With the release of the Mozilla Foundation's 2007 financial report, questions have been raised by the IRS, who are due to perform an audit on the non-profit organization behind the massively popular Firefox browser.
Last year, the Foundation received $66 million of its total $75 million revenue (88 percent) from search engine maestros Google, so the IRS are looking for blood over the organization's tax exempt status. Back in 2006, Mozilla got $59.5 million from Google — around 85 percent of the organization's revenue.
Google and Mozilla are part of a 'you scratch my back, I'll pay your bills' sort of agreement, with the Google search bar firmly placed in the toolbar, and on the default homepage. Things were a bit rocky a couple of months back when Google unveiled the Beta-run of its Chrome browser, but Mozilla and Google hugged it out and sealed a deal that will last for another three years. That deal will expire in November 2011."
Apple's New MacBooks Have Built-In Copy Protection 821
Posted
by
timothy
from the presumption-from-on-high dept.
from the presumption-from-on-high dept.
raque writes "Appleinsider is reporting that the new MacBooks/MacBookPros have built-in copy protection. Quote: 'Apple's new MacBook lines include a form of digital copy protection that will prevent protected media, such as DRM-infused iTunes movies, from playing back on devices that aren't compliant with the new priority protection measures.' Ars Technica is also reporting on the issue. Is this the deal they had to make to get NBC back? Is this a deal breaker for Apple or will fans just ignore it to get their hands on the pretty new machines? Is this a new opportunity for Linux? And what happened to Jobs not liking DRM?"
Preview the New MythTV User Interface 229
Posted
by
CmdrTaco
from the it-might-be-time dept.
from the it-might-be-time dept.
Tombstone-f sent in a cool update on a project that I continue to keep an eye on. MythTV has become a dominant force in the do-it-yourself media-mega-box space, so any improvements to the UI matter significantly. "One of the biggest new features of the next version of MythTV (version .22) will be its new user interface. This new interface will offer many new features to MythTV, including animation, better interactivity, and faster and easier development for themers and developers alike." I think it still has a ways to go to compete with some of the more mainstream PVR boxes in terms of minimalism and good use of whitespace, but hopefully the improvements will get more people into the door.
NVIDIA Releases New Video API For Linux 176
Posted
by
ScuttleMonkey
from the finally-starting-to-play-ball dept.
from the finally-starting-to-play-ball dept.
Ashmash writes "Phoronix is reporting on a new Linux driver nVidia is about to release that brings PureVideo features to Linux. This video API will reportedly be in nVidia's 180 series driver for Linux, Solaris, and *BSD. PureVideo has been around for several nVidia product generations, but it's the first time they're bringing this feature to these non-Windows operating systems to provide an improved multimedia experience. This new API is named VDPAU, and is described as: 'The Video Decode and Presentation API for Unix (VDPAU) provides a complete solution for decoding, post-processing, compositing, and displaying compressed or uncompressed video streams. These video streams may be combined (composited) with bitmap content, to implement OSDs and other application user interfaces.'"
Ubuntu 8.10 Outperforms Windows Vista 689
Posted
by
timothy
from the windows-probably-runs-more-windows-apps dept.
from the windows-probably-runs-more-windows-apps dept.
Anonymous writes "By now a lot has been reported on the new features and improvements in Ubuntu 8.10; it also looks like the OS is outperforming Vista in early benchmarking (Geekbench, boot times, etc.) At what point does this start to make a difference in the market place?" (And though there are lot of ways to benchmark computers, Ubuntu 8.10 with Compiz Fusion is certainly prettier on my Eee than the Windows XP that it came with.)
Comment: Re:Hmm, tough choice... (Score 1) 153
Newegg prices I was looking at last night (from memory, should be pretty close though):
Motherboard - $55 (Gigabyte Socket AM2 / Micro ATX, onboard NVidia 6100 video)
CPU - $30 (Low-end AMD Sempron AM2, plenty for Myth)
Memory - $30 (Corsair Value-series 1GB DDR2-667)
Hard drive - 160gb = $52, 320gb = $74, 500gb+ = $100
Case - standard minitower is $25 at the local store; decent slim cases seem to run about $50
DVD-ROM readers are $17, $30 if you want a DVD writer.
Hauppauge PVR150 tuner - $59 (make sure you get an analog PVR150 and not the new HVR1600, there aren't any Linux drivers for that one yet).
Motherboard - $55 (Gigabyte Socket AM2 / Micro ATX, onboard NVidia 6100 video)
CPU - $30 (Low-end AMD Sempron AM2, plenty for Myth)
Memory - $30 (Corsair Value-series 1GB DDR2-667)
Hard drive - 160gb = $52, 320gb = $74, 500gb+ = $100
Case - standard minitower is $25 at the local store; decent slim cases seem to run about $50
DVD-ROM readers are $17, $30 if you want a DVD writer.
Hauppauge PVR150 tuner - $59 (make sure you get an analog PVR150 and not the new HVR1600, there aren't any Linux drivers for that one yet).
RIAA sues man for downloading five songs
Submitted
by
Ten24
Ten24 writes ""An Augusta, Maine man is in hot water with the music industry after downloading five songs. 23-year-old Scott Hinds has been sued by the Recording Industry of America for illegally downloading the songs through peer to peer networks and now faces a $750 civil penalty for each song...."
Could these guys get any more disgusting? Can the artists stop supporting these guys sometime soon, maybe take a moral stance?
http://www.tgdaily.com/2007/02/06/riaa_sues_august a_5_songs/"
Could these guys get any more disgusting? Can the artists stop supporting these guys sometime soon, maybe take a moral stance?
http://www.tgdaily.com/2007/02/06/riaa_sues_augus
Playing Video Games Improves Vision
Submitted
by
cmill-bigft14CM
cmill-bigft14CM writes "Researchers at the University of Rochester made subjects play games like Unreal Tournament for a few hours a day over the course of a month. Then something incredible happened:
Subjects "improved by about 20 percent in their ability to identify letters presented in clutter — a visual acuity test similar to ones used in regular ophthalmology clinics."
Or to put it another way, playing Halo could improve your performance on a standard eye chart.
Interestingly, the effect only showed up in games like Unreal Tournament — not in games like Tetris."
Steve Jobs: Apple would embrace DRM-free music
Submitted
by
jfruhlinger
jfruhlinger writes "Steve Jobs has posted a letter on Apple's Web site that seems to be a response to European government pressures to open the iPod to other music stores. It's pretty long, but it can be boiled down to this: Apple doesn't want to license its FairPlay DRM because it's afraid that its trade secrets would leak out with so many eyes on it; Apple only uses DRM in the first place because otherwise the big four record labels wouldn't sell their music through iTunes; if those labels would allow DRM-free music, Apple would be more than happy to wash its hand of DRM entirely. Is this a real attempt to pressure the labels, or a bit of jujitsu to deflect government scrutiny away from Apple and towards the labels?"