An anonymous reader writes to mention a New York Times article entitled Life After Earth. The article looks at 'bio-vaults,' be they in the frozen north or on the moon, which might allow the human race to continue on after a globally catastrophic event. From the article: "The trouble with doomsday, Dr. Shapiro argues, is that it is almost always rendered in popular culture as grandiose, though in reality, many minor incidents present substantial everyday threats. In 1918, an influenza strain killed some 30 million people; a possible new bird flu strain spurs contemporary panic. In January 2003, a computer virus shut down airlines, banks and governments. That same year, a tree fell on power lines outside Cleveland, resulting in a blackout for much of the Northeast. Doomsday can be understated."

Grooves writes "Microsoft has shipped a 'Vista Industrial Design Toolkit' to PC manufacturers, meant to encourage them to design computers that are more visually appealing. From the article: 'From color palettes to suggestions about how the power and reset buttons should appear, the kit basically describes Microsoft's vision of what a Vista PC should look like. The look features accelerated curves and purposeful contrast, among other qualities.' The report goes on to say that Microsoft wants 'PCs to be objects of pure desire.' Sound familiar? It's hard to see budget-conscious OEMs stepping up to this."

Ground Glass writes "Most top ten or top 100 lists are pure opinion, and thus a source of great debate as their objectivity is questioned by everyone with a personal favorite. Next Gen has chosen a different route — this is the top 100 games on PlayStation 2, Xbox, and Gamecube, calculated since the start of the decade by unit sales in America." As you'd expect, GTA, Halo, and Madden are in the top ten ... but did you know Smash Brothers Melee has sold 3.2 million units? Interesting stuff.

An anonymous reader writes "With today's release of three movies on Blu-ray, Warner Home Video has become the first studio to release movie titles on both high-def formats, making it finally possible to do an apples-to-apples comparison of the same titles on both formats . High-Def Digest has just posted reviews of all three titles — 'Training Day,' 'Kiss Kiss Bang Bang' and 'Rumor Has It' — comparing video, audio and extras to the previous HD DVD releases. Their verdict? Due to issues with image cropping, audio selection and supplemental features on the Blu-ray discs, the HD DVD versions win this first face-off."

garzpacho writes "In recognition of the fact that its subscriber-based revenues continue to plummet, AOL is planning to shift to an ad-supported business model. AOL's subscriber base, which peaked at 30 million users, now has less than 19 million subscribers and is still dropping — over 800,000 subscribers dropped the service in this year's first quarter alone. In addition to seeing fewer AOL CDs, a shift to ad revenue also means some serious cuts in staff size, especially in the customer service and retention departments. From the article: 'Time Warner plans to announce a series of changes at AOL that analysts say will mark the end of the company's paid-subscriber model. The company will begin relying on advertising sales rather than monthly fees paid by customers, according to the Wall Street Journal. 'I don't know whether advertising will work, but my thinking is (the changes) are basically an acceptance of what is happening,' says Joseph Bonner, a media and telecommunications analyst at Argus Research. 'This is a reflection of reality, that they have to find some other source of revenue.''"

An anonymous reader writes "1UP has posted another feature with the best worst videogame advertisements of all time. There are some absolutely laugh-out-loud ads and descriptions for the Jaguar, 3DO, Super Metroid, Bubsy, Super Street Fighter II, and a bunch of others, including some bizarre peripherals from the '90s such as the Interactor, a subwoofer that you'd attach to your chest. 'It's the kind of thing you'd expect to see on a particularly lame supervillian, except he'd at least be able to knock people down with some kind of ripply sound wave effect, as opposed to just looking like a dip while playing Mortal Kombat.'"

Lord Satri writes "New around the corner, Microsoft Live Labs' Photosynth, will 'take a large collection of photos of a place or object, analyzes them for similarities, and displays them in a reconstructed 3-Dimensional space.' There's a demonstrational video and a 'smart photos' example page. From the site Very Spatial: 'The word is that Photosynth will be available for free, at least at first, but no word yet on an exact release date.' I must admit, seems like Photosynth may offer interesting features with an clean interface. This tool will directly compete with Stitcher, and to some extent, Google SketchUp. The virtual world reconstruction tools market is getting crowded, and competition is good. Microsoft doesn't yet have software to tie a photo library with Windows Live Local (Google does), but don't be surprised if it comes to life."

John Callaham writes "FiringSquad examines what happened to cause the Electronic Entertainment Expo to implode and retrench for 2007, and posts opinions on the expo's revamp from game industry insiders. Interviewees include 3D Realms' Scott Miller, Gearbox Software's Randy Pitchford, Rusty Williams of Flying Lab Software, Feargus Urquhart of Obsidian Entertainment and more."

An anonymous reader writes "AMD has taken 25 percent of the server market for itself, according to a News.com article. This gives them some 21 percent of the entire x86 market, and is an increase from only 16 percent in the second quarter of 2005." From the article: "AMD has been picking away at Intel's server market share for several years based on the superior performance and power consumption of its Opteron processor. But Intel fired back last month with a new Xeon processor based on its Core microarchitecture that appears to be outperforming current Opteron processors on several tasks. Intel is pinning its hopes of resurrecting its market share--and its stock price--on the new Core generation of processors."

HiTech writes "eWeek has an article looking at Oracle's frustration with both XenSource and VMware over their reluctance to work together. The goal is to develop a single interface for virtualization solutions in the Linux kernel. Oracle's comments follow those by Linux kernel maintainer Greg Kroah-Hartman at Oscon last week that XenSource and VMware were butting heads instead of working together to come up with a joint solution. Brian Byun, VMware's vice president of products and alliances, admits the company had been approached by a neutral third party for offline mediation to establish how best to make this happen. But Simon Crosby, the CTO for XenSource, rules out any mediation, saying he believes the two companies are committed to solving the real technical issues."

mysticalgremlin writes "In a recent presentation, Semacode founder Simon Woodside presents his company's bar code scanning technology that is used in mobile phones. Simon also discusses many places where bar code scanning powered phones are being used. Not bad for an 'image recognizer for a 100 MHz mobile phone processor with 1 MB heap, 320x240 image, on a poorly-optimized Java stack'"

kjh1 writes "Armor Holdings Inc. plans to start selling their 'liquid armor' next year. The new armor, originally envisioned to be spread on like peanut butter, is instead sprayed onto Kevlar in ultrathin coats. From the article: 'it's a mix of polyethylene glycol, a polymer found in laxatives and other consumer products, and nanobits of silica, or purified sand. Together they produce a "sheer-thickening liquid" that stiffens instantly into a shield when hit hard by an object. It reverts to its liquid state just as fast when the energy from the projectile dissipates.'"

Burlap writes to tell us the MIT Technology Review is reporting on a new DARPA venture to create an "ultrasonic tourniquet" to help stem bleeding on injuries sustained in battle. The project plans to commit $51 million over the course of 4 years. From the article: "[I]t aims to create a cuff-like device that wraps around a wounded limb. Rather than applying pressure to the wound to stem the flow of blood, the device would use focused beams of ultrasound (sound waves above the audible frequencies) to non-invasively clot vessels no matter how deep they are."

An anonymous reader writes "DesktopLinux.com is reporting that four countries have together ordered 4 million low-cost, Linux-based laptops from the One Laptop Per Child (OLPC) project. The countries of Nigeria, Brazil, Argentina, and Thailand have each placed the 1 million unit orders."

BostonBTS writes "Researchers from TransMolecular, Inc. have used chlorotoxin -- a component of giant yellow scorpion venom -- to target radioactive treatments for the deadly brain cancer glioma. From the article: 'In the study, 18 patients first had surgery to remove malignant gliomas, a lethal kind of brain tumor. Then doctors injected their brains with a solution of radioactive iodine and TM-601, the synthetic protein. The solution bound almost exclusively to leftover tumor cells, suggesting that it could be combined with chemotherapy to fight cancer. Furthermore, two study patients were still alive nearly three years after the treatment.' Their paper is slated for publication in the August issue of the Journal of Clinical Oncology."