Several Flight Simulator geeks are flying around the world in the 2007 Round-The-World Flight Simulator Race. The race pits teams from AVSim, FlightSim and Sim-Outhouse against each other in a race around the world with special rules, conditions and bonuses.

All teams were given the rules 24 hours in advance of the start of the race (10a EST on Friday). The rules include route requirements (such as two airports about 3000m above sea level and two airports below sea level), bonus airports and various rules such as if a plane crashes and which planes could be used in the race.

The teams use a SHOUTcast server so you can follow the chatter as they are flying around. Here's Team AVSim's SHOUTcast page. Also, you can perform live tracking and check out the status of race on Google Earth.

Similar to GP2X's release of firmware source code last year, MvixUSA and Unicorn Network Total Solution have released the Mvix MX-760HD HD Wireless Media Center firmware source code for free distribution under the GNU General Public License (GPL). Lately, MvixUSA and Unicorn have taken some heat from users wanting access to the source code citing GPL violations. An email was even sent to the GPL Violations project.

Gizmos for Geeks talked last week with MvixUSA about the GPL issues and MvixUSA alluded to the fact that a solution was coming as early as this week. They had been working with their lawyers to determine their responsibilities as distributors of the product without even having access to the source code which was created by Unicorn (a Korean company)... it turns out they were violating the terms of GPL but had no way to rectify the situation until Unicorn sent the 54.5MB source code.

Apple pwned other manufacturers in several Amazon categories garnering the top spot in categories including MP3 plyaers, laptops and desktops over the holiday season. There were actually six different iPod models in the top ten for MP3 players, three MacBooks in the top ten and four different Apple systems in the desktop category.

Also, Apple recorded an four-fold increase in traffic to the iTunes site this Christmas over last Christmas. Apple's resurgence continues...

Here's a how to guide to help figure out which hard drive is needed to add capacity to your TiVo. Looks like Seagate DB35 is the way to go:

The drives have on board sensors which monitor temperature and adjust various characteristics depending on the temperature. Seagate implemented acoustic management by specifically tuning the drives to run as quietly as possible. Also, the drives have been optimized for DVR usage by being tuned to provide consistent data to the DVR processor. Standard hard drives sometimes can hang while retrying drive needs while the DB35 series move ahead and provide more data to keep video smooth. Finally these drives are tuned to move past errors faster putting the stream of data as top priority. After all, one block being bad might create a dark spot on one frame for 1/30th of a second!

This article brings up several perceived trends in the home video market... several of which are controversial such as DVDs starting to die and Blu-ray and HD-DVD's becoming irrelevant soon.

The third trend states that Internet video delivery and other in-demand video services will actually be the way we purchase video content in the future (much like our musical content now). Also, DVRs will continue to be important but they will employ NAND hard drives. Finally, placeshifting (Slingbox, LocationFree, HAVA) will continue to grow.

According to DVR Playground, it took Jeremy Drake to hack the DRM on TiVoToGo to finally allow Mac and Linux users to use the TiVoToGo service! TiVo has been unable to provide Mac or Linux users with the ability to export recorded programs from a TiVo.

Available as a command line Windows utility or a C source file through the tivodecode project page on sourceforge, the tivodecode utility strips DRM. There is a Wiki with a history of the project so far and updates on the development.

Zatz Not Funny has posted a guide for Mac (and Linux) users to finally view TiVoToGo.

It takes time to get over a loss. Just recently I have been able to go entire days without even thinking about ReplayTV since they stopped making DVRs last year. In December of 2005, ReplayTV announced a change in strategic direction of producing a DVR for the PC. So, just when I think I'm over ReplayTV, they announce that they are "Coming To Your PC Early November 2006".

Neuros Technology released the latest firmware for their BETA OSD (Open Source Device) product. OSD is an open-source Linux set-top box that allows you to watch and listen to your media where and when you want to. Powered by dual core multi-media processor, OSD can record from any source and record to a variety of open formats so you can play your content on various devices from laptops to cell phones.

Neuros Technology has released the beta of what could become the next generation of DVRs called the Neuros OSD. The Neuros OSD (Open Source Device) is an open-source Linux set-top box that allows you to watch and listen to your media where and when you want to. Powered by a dual core multi-media processor, OSD can recprd from any souce and record to a variety of open formats so you can play your content on various devices from laptops to cell phones.

The OSD was created to be hacked on many levels. You can hack the kernel or hack the open source application. Also, hackers are discussing implementing Lua on the device which would allow for the use of scripts to control Neuros functionality without having to build or cross compile. Some users are even thinking about hardware hacking to include the OSD in other products for security, adventure and other applications.

Neuros Technology is the poster company for embracing their user community and open source and have released a truely revolutionary product.

Why oh why would Onkyo sue little ole me...