Mizled writes "After buying a new iPhone yesterday and bringing it home to sync and activate it, I found out that Windows 64-bit is not supported. Neither XP 64-bit nor Vista 64-bit works with the iPhone. I called the Apple support line and the rep said I needed to downgrade my computer from a 64-bit operating system. I also posted about my concerns on the Apple iPhone discussion forums, but my post was quickly removed."

Julie Jacobson writes, "It's so much fun to deride some of the worst home wiring jobs in existence. But once in awhile, we should salute some of the cleanest, most perfectly labeled cabling jobs in U.S. homes. At the recent CEDIA Expo, the association for home-technology integrators handed out awards for the Best Dressed Systems, each featuring miles of cable, hundreds of connectors, tons of steel, and a clean aesthetic that could make the most finicky designer swoon. Show them to your own installer for inspiration."

1up reports on rumours of trouble at 3D Realms, the long-term developers of the Duke Nukem Forever project. The duke project is apparently in jeopardy, according to the buzz, as several key developers have left the company for greener pastures. 3D Realms webmaster Joe Siegler has responded to these rumours, saying on the message boards "It's internal business - all employee departures and comings have always been that way. This is nothing new. People have left before, IT IS THE NATURE OF THIS BUSINESS. It's the way it goes ... There's honestly nothing to be concerned about. People leave. People come. There's staff on the project you don't know about."

savio13 writes "Sam Ramji, Microsoft's director of its Open Source Software Lab has invited 4 Mozilla developers to spend 4 days with Microsoft's Vista Readiness ISV team. The invite can be found on mozilla.dev.planning and was posted on Saturday (Aug. 19). Schroepfer replied by indicating that Microsoft and the Moz guys are already in contact via email and will follow up on the offer there. This is interesting because Sam posted the offer in a public forum (and indicated that he'd sent a PM, but was posting in case they had an @microsoft.com email filter). Sam also made a point of stating that the Vista ISV Readiness offer is typically only for commercial ISVs."

Daysaway writes "Gamasutra is reporting that the Phantom Game Service will be replacing the Phantom Game Console. The company formerly known as Infinium Labs has stated that the Phantom hardware was originally designed to run on a Windows XP platform, so it is not a stretch to believe this service will be launched sometime in the very near future." From the article: "A recent update to Phantom Entertainment's website, though, indicates that 'The Phantom Game Service was originally engineered to run on a Windows XP embedded operating system on a Phantom Game Receiver managed by Phantom content servers over the Internet.' The site now suggests that: 'The Company intends to modify the Phantom Game Service software to run as client software on personal computers operating Windows XP and Windows XP Media center operating systems.'"

rtt writes "Jack Thompson is back on the video game scene and has followed through with his threat to file a law suit against Rockstar, Take-Two and Walmart for Rockstar's upcoming "Bully" title. bit-tech was sent a copy by the man himself which started as follows "Take-Two has until five o'clock p.m., Eastern time, Monday, August 14, 2006, to inform me in writing that it will forthwith provide me with a copy of Bully so that I and others can analyze it to determine whether it still poses a threat of copycat violence in our schools.""

denebian devil writes "According to Cory Doctorow at Boingboing, the RIAA has dropped its case against the family of a dead man. 'Today, an RIAA spokesperson, Jonathan Lamy, contacted me today with this statement: Our hearts go out to the Scantleberry family for their loss. We had decided to temporarily suspend the productive settlement discussions we were having with the family. Mr. Scantleberry had admitted that the infringer was his stepson, and we were in the process settling with him shortly before his passing. Out of an abundance of sensitivity, we have elected to drop this particular case.'"

This past weekend, the OSU Linux Users Group descended on a field in Oregon to create a 45,000+ square foot crop circle of Firefox. The photos and write-up are worth checking out.

Stern Thinker writes "In a 2005 poll covering 33 countries, Americans are the least likely (except for Turkish respondents) to assert that 'humans developed ... from earlier species of animals.' Iceland, meanwhile, has an 85% acceptance rating for evolution." The blurb on the site for Science magazine is less circumspect about the findings: "The acceptance of evolution is lower in the United States than in Japan or Europe, largely because of widespread fundamentalism and the politicization of science in the United States."

gardenermike writes "The BBC is reporting on some backlash against the British Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act (RIPA) that came into force in 2000, which makes it a criminal act to refuse to decrypt files on a computer. Not surprisingly, the bugaboos of child pornography and terrorism, while unquestionably heinous, are being used to justify a law which does little to protect against either. Lord Phillips of Sudbury is quoted 'You do not secure the liberty of our country and value of our democracy by undermining them, that's the road to hell.'"

saudadelinux writes "To quote a press release on NASA's site, astronomers using the Chandra X-ray Observatory have discovered 'how dark and normal matter have been forced apart in an extraordinarily energetic collision.' There will be a briefing at noon, August 21 ET, on this discovery, with streaming media provided by NASA, and some details of the research posted on Harvard's Chandra site just beforehand."

Gavitron writes "The online Guitar Tablature Archive OLGA.net has been shutdown again, to "ensure that composers and songwriters will continue to have incentive to create new music for generations to come." Scant details exist, but there is more information in forums and blogs."

Krishna Dagli writes "This weekend provides one of the year's best opportunities to see some "shooting stars". The annual Perseid meteor display is expected to peak on Friday and Saturday night. Meteors are bits of dust or rock that plunge into the Earth's atmosphere and burn up, making bright streaks in the sky. It does not take a large object to produce a visible meteor — most are the size of a grain of sand or a small pebble."

Roland Piquepaille writes "Nuclear bombs can kill people even if they're not used. In the U.S. alone, the Department of Energy estimates that more than 2,500 billion liters of groundwater are contaminated with uranium as a consequence of nuclear weapons production. In "Uranium 'pearls' before slime," scientists from the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL) say they discovered that some common bacteria could "convert deadly heavy metal into less threatening nano-spheres." In fact, these bacteria can convert soluble radioactive uranium into a non-toxic solid form called uraninite. Still, more research needs to be done before using these bacteria on a large scale, but it's a step in the good direction. Read more for additional references and photos showing how Shewanella oneidensis can help us to decontaminate groundwater at nuclear waste sites."

An anonymous reader writes "AJAXWorld Magazine is running an article entitled "What's So Special About AJAX?" in which the majority of the contributors agree among themselves that AJAX "heralds a new, global sense of what the web can be and what the web can do, in ways that are so different but so much better than what we have been used to." While many of those the magazine consulted adduced technical reasons for the spread what one of them, Rich Internet Application pioneer Coach Wei, calls "the AJAX wildfire," only two mention how human nature — including that of software developers — is, well, notoriously susceptible to the latest fad. Which side would you agree with?"