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Hardware Hacking

Submission + - Tour my floor (jaycharles.net)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Concept is simple. Some dude rigged up a webcam to an R/C car and wrote some funky backend code with a Flash interface so you can control his R/C car online, from anywhere and take a tour around his room. And the best bit about it... no cops or speed cameras anywhere!
The Matrix

Submission + - Surfer's Theory of Everything Stuns Physicists (arxiv.org)

Submitted by
Baldrson
Baldrson writes: "The UK Telegraph reports that: A surfer dude named Garrett Lisi has come up with a new theory of everything which physicists are calling "fabulous", "incredibly beautiful", "profound" and "most compelling". Lisi's peer-reviewed paper titled "An Exceptionally Simple Theory of Everything" is being published with the New Scientist. The Telegraph article continues: "Lisi is now calculating the masses that the 20 new particles should have, in the hope that they may be spotted when the Large Hadron Collider starts up.""
AMD

Submission + - AMD Preparing To Release More GPU Documentation (phoronix.com)

Submitted by
Michael Larabel
Michael Larabel writes: "In September, AMD had released over 900 pages of GPU documentation to the open-source community and they are now on the heels of releasing even more documentation. These documents, which will be released to the community without any Non-Disclosure Agreement, will cover their Radeon X1250 and Mobility Radeon X2600. The next documentation release will be more detailed then the first set of documents and they will also be begin delivering the information needed for enabling open-source 3D support. From the article, "There is a real possibility that come Christmas, you could find at least some of the 3D documentation in your stocking. This is a hope by AMD to have them out by the end of the year, but like everything else, there could be a delay pushing it to H1'08 as this schedule is only tentative...The two main things to gather is that AMD has brought upon new staff dedicated towards enabling the open-source community and that new NDA-free GPU documentation is in the process of being released.""
PlayStation (Games)

Submission + - Accellerated X drivers coming for PS3 Linux (ps2dev.org)

Submitted by t0qer
t0qer writes: Over at the PS2dev forums a hacker named Ironpeter has successfully managed to bypass the PS3's Hypervisor to gain direct access to it's Nvidia RSX GPU.

This is s first step and far from a complete working driver, but it seems as word of this spreads, more people are helping with the effort to hunt down the Hypervisors Fifo/Push buffer. It won't be long before we're playing tux racer on the PS3 in it's full OpenGL glory.
Music

Submission + - Gene Simmons: College Kids Killed Music Industry (reuters.com)

Submitted by
drcagn
drcagn writes: "Gene Simmons has blasted 'college' kids and claims that they have destroyed the music industry, with the labels also to blame for not properly suing them out of existence when they had the chance. When asked about Radiohead and Trent Reznor's recent support of a different direction in music distribution, he says "that's not a business model that works. I open a store and say 'Come on in and pay whatever you want.' Are you on fucking crack?" When asked about music being free and making money off of merchandise, he says, "The most important part is the music. Without that, why would you care?" even though earlier in the interview he brags that he believes that KISS's merchandise is more profitable than Elvis's or the Beatles'."
Sony

Submission + - SonyTells Gamer PS3Warranty Voidedby ExcessiveDust (techluver.com)

Submitted by
Tech.Luver
Tech.Luver writes: "Sony refusing to do a warranty repair on one of its PlayStation 3s because the console is "too dusty," citing the console owner. The Los Angeles-based gamer said Sony Computer (SNE) would not honor its 1-year warranty on his $500 console because the game system arrived at its technical support center with "excessive dust in it." "When I learned that Sony wouldn't replace my Playstation because it was too dusty, I paused for a minute because it seemed so ridiculous," said Reid Godshaw, the owner of the dusty Playstation. The dirty Playstation story has flown around the blogosphere — especially on The Consumerist, a consumer-affairs blog where the story originated. The posts regarding the PS3 have gotten more than 150,000 views and have received more than 600 comments from readers. ( http://techluver.com/2007/11/14/sony-tells-gamer-ps3-warranty-voided-by-excessive-dust/ )"
Programming

Submission + - Anatomy of Linux Synchronization Methods

Submitted by LinucksGirl
LinucksGirl writes: In your Linux education, you may have learned about concurrency, critical sections, and locking, but how do you use these concepts within the kernel? This article reviews the locking mechanisms available within the Linux Kernel 2.6, including atomic operators, spinlocks, reader/writer locks, and kernel semaphores. It also explores where each mechanism is most applicable for building safe and efficient kernel code. Also try the Linux Kernal tutorial to learn how to compile, and customize a Linux kernel to suit your needs.
The Almighty Buck

Submission + - US Banks may trigger market crash (economicsbriefing.com)

Submitted by
An anonymous reader writes: IT companies continue to record growth and profits, but as we know, much of this is fueld by outsourcing to other countries. The survival of IT in the US relies on an internal market:

The Royal Bank of Scotland predicts at least a further $100 billion in writedowns by US banks. This could be considered an underestimate by the market (Dow industrials), which today recorded a fall of more than 300 points. Writedowns may, in the end, be as high as $500 billion, which has real implications for anyone with shares or debt, and will kill off consumer sentiment. Whilst the USA is busy with military conquest, it is rapidly losing economic territory, with more and more countries dropping the US dollar peg.

If the US internal market evaporates, does this spell the end of its IT industry? Will Linux come marching in as families, unable to afford PC upgrades, decide to breathe new life into their old hardware?
The Internet

Submission + - FCC Seeks Comment on Regulating E-Mail (blogspot.com)

Submitted by
Telegrok
Telegrok writes: "The Federal Communications Commission (FCC), which has wisely taken a 'hands-off' approach to the Internet, is asking the public to comment on a request that the FCC create rules that would require e-mail service providers to either permit customers to "take" their e-mail address to another e-mail service provider, or require the e-mail provider to forward e-mail to new addresses, much the way the Post Office forwards letters when people have moved. Out of thin air, you might ask? Dang sure — the impetus for the request was a lady whose account with AOL was terminated when AOL discovered that her minor son had opened the account some years ago. Say what you want about AOL's action, but the poor lady lost of all her non-archived, non-backed up business e-mail from several years. Bummer, yes. AOL, bad ISP, bad. But a call for regulation? FUHGETTABOUTIT! The Internet has worked, does work, will continue to work because the Government has taken a 'hands-off' approach and allowed the system to work its kinks out on its own. The request that was filed at the FCC cannot be good press for AOL. So, maybe that will encourage other providers to act more graciously. Or, maybe providers won't give a flying leap, and customers who have something to lose will think about registering a domain name and actually sinking some cents into what they have determined matters. But if this matters to, then send a note to the FCC. Their website is fairly self-explanatory — you want to look for the Electronic Comments Filing System, and do a search for Rulemaking (RM) 11391. Find it, read it, comment, and preserve the light touch that has been accorded the Internet thus far."
Handhelds

Submission + - StyleTap Palm OS Emulation comes to Symbian

Submitted by
Tam Hanna
Tam Hanna writes: "Dear Ladies and Gentlemen,
we have managed to get an exclusive demo of StyleTap for Symbian OS at the Symbian Smartphone show. For all those unfamiliar with the term, StyleTap is a Palm OS emulator that allows developers to run Palm OS apps in it.

Please enjoy the first video ever of a Palm OS app running on a Symbian device:
http://tamspalm.tamoggemon.com/2007/10/17/styletap-for-uiq-and-series-60-spotted-in-the-wild/

Best regards
Tam Hanna"
Television

Submission + - Why Can't I buy a cablecard ready set top box? (arstechnica.com) 1

Submitted by
Al E Usse
Al E Usse writes: "Ars Technica does a write up of the problems that haven't been solved by the July 1, 2007 integration ban on integrated security in your cable box. Three months after the ban went into effect, digging up a third-party, CableCARD-ready set-top box can be an exercise in hair-pulling frustration. The companies who make the boxes don't seem interested in selling to consumers, cable companies still push their own branded devices, and Best Buy employees... well, the less said the better. We've heard the pain of our readers on this issue. One of them described his own epic (and fruitless) quest to secure such a device. His conclusion? "Although I should be able to buy a set-top box of my own, nobody will sell me one. I am standing on the doorstep, wad of cash in hand, yelling, 'Please take my money! I want to buy!' but am turned away."
The Internet

Submission + - Novel Evolutionary Technology Breeds Pictures (picbreeder.org)

Submitted by
Ken Stanley
Ken Stanley writes: "In an unusually explicit demonstration of artificial evolution on computers, users on a website called Picbreeder are breeding pictures through a collaborative Darwinian process that look remarkably like real things. Cars, faces, animals, spaceships, and many other familiar forms have been evolved from scratch with no information about such objects preprogrammed into the system, which was created by evolutionary computation researchers at the University of Central Florida. The ability of unskilled users on Picbreeder to evolve meaningful images raises the intriguing possibility that similar systems in the future may allow humans with little or no expertise to breed anything from car designs and furniture to fashion and music."
The Military

Submission + - Titan missile base for sale (columbiabasinherald.com)

Submitted by
TaeKwonDood
TaeKwonDood writes: "Have $1.5 million to spare and a desire to hold the world hostage? You'll need this 57 acre complex with 16 underground buildings and three 160 foot-tall missile silos. The owner is putting it up on Ebay. Because everyone on Ebay buys missile bases. However, should you need sharks with frickin' lasers attached to their heads, those are endangered so you'll need to go on Amazon instead."

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