Filed under: Misc. Gadgets, Gaming, HDTV

After investing some serious dough in the famed Cell processor powering its PlayStation 3, it's little surprise that Sony actually wants to make a profit off the platform -- and since the console wars haven't been all that favorable to Kutaragi's baby, the company is looking to enterprise as another potential source of ROI. The first fruits of this effort will be borne at next week's SIGGRAPH conference, where Sony will unveil a prototype computer board based around the multi-core CPU and sporting an RSX graphics processor. This so-called Cell Computing Board is targeted at 19-inch rack mount systems, and it promises to put on quite a show at SIGGRAPH by performing real-time processing of the type of 4K footage captured by Red Digital Cinema's RED ONE. And with Toshiba already promising to ride the Cell's coat tails to victory over its fellow co-developer in the living room, -- along with pushing its own graphics workstations -- this is one rollout that Sony can't afford to screw up.

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Office Depot Featured Gadget: Xbox 360 Platinum System Packs the power to bring games to life!

Filed under: Misc. Gadgets

With all the wacky unconventional proposals we've seen people come up with for generating electricity in an environmentally friendly manner, is it really so outrageous to think that giant, man-made tornadoes could be harnessed to power a small city? Well that's exactly the idea being floated around the University of Western Ontario these days, which is currently testing a scale model of retired refinery engineer Louis Michaud's patented vortex engine -- a machine fueled by excess power plant heat that uses the physics of convection inherent in rising air to drive electricity-producing turbines. In its most grandiose realization, the engine (inventor's rendition pictured above) would be 200 meters in diameter and generate a 'clean' (debris-free) tornado stretching 20 kilometers into the sky able to coax 20 megawatts each out of ten independent turbines. Obviously the main concern about the anticipated $60 million project -- which would reportedly operate at just a quarter of the cost of a coal-based facility, even before taking into account the $20 million saved on a cooling tower by the participating power plant -- is that the tornado could somehow escape its confines and wreak havoc on nearby communities. Still, with all the advantages this scheme seems to offer, we're certainly willing to give it a chance -- after all, a 'malfunctioning vortex engine' is a lot less scary than a potential disaster at one of the many nuke plants dotting our landscape.

[Via UberReview]

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Office Depot Featured Gadget: Xbox 360 Platinum System Packs the power to bring games to life!

You may recall earlier this year that law professor Wendy Seltzer received a DMCA takedown notice from the NFL for posting a short clip to YouTube of the part during the Super Bowl where the announcers state the famous warning that often reads something like "Any rebroadcast, reproduction or other use of the pictures, accounts or descriptions of this game without the express written consent of Big Sports League, is prohibited." What got lost in the Seltzer story over whether or not posting that particular clip to YouTube was legal, was that her point in using it was to show how sports leagues were making claims to rights that copyright didn't actually give them. It appears that enough others have noticed this as well that a trade group, backed by various big name tech companies, is now asking the Federal Trade Commission to prevent broadcasters from making such "deceptive" copyright statements. The group is claiming that this incorrect statement that clearly reaches beyond the rights copyright provides, is harmful to consumers and technology companies. Of course, in the sports leagues' (and other content companies') defense, it appears that plenty of people ignore the bogus copyright warning anyway.