547966
submission
ECO Friendly User writes:
It is still very much a work in progress but from the working concept design TweakTown saw in action at the MSI HQ, it is probably not far off from becoming a reality — we hope so too. Since power saving is such a hotly discussed topic, MSI has employed the Stirling Engine Theory to power a cooling fan without the need of conventional electricity.
469044
submission
An anonymous reader writes:
It seems dreamhost.com are starting out early to pay their christmas party bills. They've billed all their customers up from for more than $7.5 million by mistake, Their customers are now struggling with bank charges and overdraught fees :(
http://www.dreamhoststatus.com/2008/01/15/billing-issues/#comments
http://digg.com/tech_news/Dreamhost_mistakenly_bills_customers_for_multiple_years?OTC-ig
Happy 2008, ouch! that has to hurt.
468708
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Dr. Damage writes:
Creative has ruled PC sound almost since the beginning, but Vista's new audio layer changes the game by essentially killing off 3D positional audio acceleration. The Tech Report has reviewed a pair of post-Vista sound cards, with surprising results. Motherboard maker Asus saw the opening and created perhaps the best consumer-level sound card yet, the Xonar D2X, with quality components, an EMI shield, color-illuminated ports, the best objective measurements and subjective listening test scores we've ever seen, and (finally!) a PCI Express x1 connector. Could the Sound Blaster era finally be over?
461430
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statemachine writes:
The USDA and farmers took part in a 5 year study of switchgrass, a native grass to North America. "Switchgrass ethanol delivers 540 percent of the energy used to produce it, compared with just roughly 25 percent more energy returned by corn-based ethanol according to the most optimistic studies." The U.S. government is also partially funding six cellulosic ethanol refineries, the first of which will be built in Soperton, GA.
461338
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philos writes:
Following right behind the recent Apple Quicktime RTSP vulnerability comes another apparent 0-day vulnerability for Quicktime, a buffer overflow when the media player processes HTTP response codes as reported on RioSec. Due to the ubiquity of the program and ease of exploit, this may be worse than the previous round.
461148
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Dr. Eggman writes:
Ars Technica brings us news of Valve's latest acquisition, Turtle Rock Studios. With it, Valve now wholly owns the upcoming game, Left 4 Dead. Left 4 Dead is a co-op multiplayer game centered around the survivors of a zombie apocalypse, running on the Source engine and to be distributed by Steam. A video can be found within the article and here. Other exploits of the Turtle Rock team include the development of Counter-Strike: Condition Zero, as well as the official bot and some of the maps in Counter-Strike: Source.
450692
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MrWizard12793 writes:
Due to poor the XBox Live service's poor performance over the holidays Microsoft is allowing each subscriber a free XBox Live Arcade game.
442232
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yali writes:
The U.S. Transportation and Security Administration has issued new rules limiting travel with lithium batteries. As of January 1, no spare lithium batteries are allowed in checked luggage. Batteries carried in the cabin are subject to limitations on per-battery and total lithium content, and spare batteries must have the terminals covered. If you're returning home from the holidays with new toys, be sure to check out the new restrictions before you pack.
442014
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morpheus83 writes:
Astronomers have discovered the largest diamond in the galaxy, located at a distance of 50 light years from earth in the Constellation Centaurus. The space diamond is virtually an enormous chunk of crystallized carbon, 4,000 kilometers in diameter which makes up ten billion trillion trillion carats or five million trillion trillion pounds. Scientists believe that the diamond is the heart of an extinct star that used to shine like the Sun.
441934
submission
TT writes:
Google is considering building a wind-powered data center in Greensburg, Kan. In addition to the huge solar-panel project it's building in Mountain View, this 20-megawatt data center in Greensburg would go a long way toward helping Google get carbon neutral, as is its goal. The company, like the entire universe today, is on the green kick. It announced last month that it wants to make renewable energy cheaper than coal.
