Submission + - A look beneath the "Surface"

Submitted by Hajsky on Wednesday May 30, 2007 @11:56PM

Hajsky writes: Ars Technica takes a closer look at Microsoft's new "Surface" tabletop device. Turns out that Surface isn't actually a touchscreen at all, but uses five cameras located in the table's base to record movement and touch. "The five cameras are near-infrared devices, but that's not because they are trying to read heat signatures from fingertips (or other body parts) on the table. Instead, it's because the entire surface of Surface is bathed in light; by illuminating the top of the table, the cameras can easily see when things are placed on it. Shining colored light across the surface of the table would spoil the effect that Microsoft wants, so near-infrared light is used for invisible illumination." The whole setup runs on a Core 2 Duo and off-the-shelf hardware, and can handle 52 simultaneous touches. How soon till I can stick one in the rec room?

Submission + - Vista no more secure than Windows XP? (arstechnica.com)

Submitted by SkeeLo on Wednesday May 30, 2007 @11:55PM

SkeeLo writes: One of Vista's big selling points is security, but a report from CRN concludes that Vista offers little in the way of security advancements over Windows XP. Ars Technica analyzed the report and found some methodological problems. 'The report faults Vista for "providing no improvement in virus protection vs. XP," but of course Windows Vista does not ship with antivirus software — something the reviewer fails to mention. Faulting an AV-less Vista for not stopping viruses is a bit like faulting a door without a lock for opening when the handle is twisted.' That's not all: 'It was also disappointing to see CRN completely ignore the issue of buffer overflows, which has been addressed well in Vista by most accounts. This was a major weak spot with XP, and so far, Vista looks strong in this area, strong enough that Vista may never get its own "SQL Slammer." Why CRN didn't address this is a mystery, as it is no minor matter.'

Submission + - Does ZFS makes expensive NAS/SANs obsolete?

Submitted by hoggoth on Tuesday May 29, 2007 @07:35PM

hoggoth writes: As a common everyman who needs big fast reliable storage without a big budget, I have been following a number of emerging technologies and I think they have finally become usable in combination. Specifically, it appears to me that I can put together the little brother of a $50,000 NAS/SAN solution for under $3,000. Here's how:

Get a CoolerMaster Stacker enclosure like this one (just the hardware not the software) that can hold up to 12 SATA drives. Install OpenSolaris and create ZFS pools with RAID-Z for redundancy. Export some pools with Samba for use as a NAS. Export some pools with iSCSI for use as a SAN. Run it over Gigabit Ethernet. Fast, secure, reliable, easy to administer, and cheap. Usable from Windows, Mac, and Linux. As a bonus ZFS let's me create daily or hourly snapshots at almost no cost in disk space or time.

Total cost: 1.4 Terabytes: $2,000. 7.7 Terabytes: $4,200 (Just the cost of the enclosure and the drives). That's an order of magnitude less expensive than other solutions.

Add redundant power supplies, NIC cards, SATA cards, etc as your needs require..

So storage experts, tell me why this is or isn't feasible!.

Submission + - 'Racetrack' memory could gallop past the hard disk

Submitted by Galactic_grub on Tuesday May 15, 2007 @07:47PM

Galactic_grub writes: An experimental new type of memory that uses nanosecond pulses of electric current to push magnetic regions along a wire could dramatically boost the capacity, speed and reliability of storage devices. Magnetic domains are moved along a wire by pulses of polarized current, and there location is read by fixed sensors arranged along the wire. Previous experiments have been disappointing but now researchers have found that super-fast pulses of electricity prevent the domains from being obstructed by imperfections in the crystal.

Two US States Restrict Used CD Sales 500

Posted by kdawson on Monday May 07, 2007 @09:17PM from the papers-please dept.

DrBenway sends us to Ars Technica for a report that Florida and Utah have placed draconian restrictions on the sale of used music CDs; Wisconsin and Rhode Island may soon follow suit. In Florida, stores have to hold on to CDs for 30 days before they can sell them — for store credit only, not cash. Quoting: "No, you won't spend any time in jail, but you'll certainly feel like a criminal once the local record shop makes copies of all of your identifying information and even collects your fingerprints. Such is the state of affairs in Florida, which now has the dubious distinction of being so anal about the sale of used music CDs that record shops there are starting to get out of the business of dealing with used content because they don't want to pay a $10,000 bond for the 'right' to treat their customers like criminals."

Feed Owners of E-Gold indicted for money laundering (theregister.com)

From feed by registerfeed on Monday April 30, 2007 @09:52PM

Service allegedly popular among child pornographers and other low-lifes

Three owners of online payment processor E-Gold and an affiliated company have been indicted for money laundering and related crimes for allegedly allowing sellers of child pornography, operators of investment scams and other types of criminals to send and receive payments related to their misdeeds.

Journal Journal: Expose for Vista

Journal by eagle22 on Monday April 30, 2007 @05:50PM

I know that this has been around awhile, but I just found it. A very cool app that let's vista users emulate mac's expose. I tried it out and love it! I would say it beats the pants off "Flip3D" and gives users a nice alternative to the M$ default. Here is the link:
http://http//blogs.labo-dotnet.com/simon/archive/2006/11/08/11485.aspx/

Hope everyone else enjoys this as much as me.

Feed Adult Stem/progenitor Cells Repair Of Damaged Brain, Pancreas, Kidney Cells Newl (sciencedaily.com)

From feed by sdfeed on Sunday April 29, 2007 @06:12PM

New studies are shedding light on the previously mysterious mechanism through which even relatively small amounts of stem/progenitor cells taken from a patient's own bone marrow enhance repair of damaged tissues.

Show Office 2007 Who's the Boss 267

Posted by Zonk on Sunday April 29, 2007 @05:25PM from the not-tony-danza dept.

jcatcw writes "Microsoft knows how you like your Office Suite. You like Ribbons ... they're a given, right? Well, if not, Computerworld reviews some third-party packages that allow you to customize the software's interface. Classic Menu gives you an Office-2003-like set of menus. It'll help you navigate old menu structures to find favorite commands, but don't expect to use all the familiar keyboard shortcuts. ToolbarToggle lets you customize the menus. However, Classic Menu has two advantages over ToolbarToggle: It's available for PowerPoint today, and it includes Office 2007 commands on its menus, a modification you can't make to ToolbarToggle menus. RibbonCustomizer works within the Ribbon's own constraints to let you change the display of icons and commands on existing tabs or any new ones you create."

Feed Level Of Special Protein Is Critical To Proper Formation Of Muscles, Study shows (sciencedaily.com)

From feed by sdfeed on Wednesday April 25, 2007 @08:12PM

Proper formation of the proteins that power heart and skeletal muscle seems to rely on a precise concentration of a "chaperone" protein known as UNC-45, according to a new study. This basic discovery may have important implications for understanding and eventually treating heart failure and muscle wasting elsewhere in the body resulting from burns, brain trauma, diabetes, cancer and the effects of aging.

Feed Samsung builds a better, smaller 4GB DIMM (engadget.com)

From feed by engfeed on Monday April 23, 2007 @07:53PM

Filed under: Desktops, Laptops

OCZ may have recently laid claim to the title of some of the world's fastest RAM, but Samsung seems to have found room to do a little boasting of its own, trotting out its first 4GB DDR2 DIMM based on WSP (or wafer-level-processed stacked package) technology. According to the company, that process not only makes the module smaller, but faster and more energy efficient as well. Not so clear, unfortunately, is what effect the seemingly cure-all technology will have on pricing or availability, with no word on either from Samsung as of yet.

[Via PCLaunches.com]

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Bringing Bandwidth To Iraq 230

Posted by kdawson on Monday April 23, 2007 @07:10PM from the blood-bombs-and-bullets dept.

jemevans sends us a link to his nonfiction tale of two California cypherpunks who went to Baghdad to seek their fortune and bring the Internet to Iraq. A much abridged version ran in Wired a while back. From the original: "Ryan Lackey wears body armor to business meetings. He flies armed helicopters to client sites. He has a cash flow problem: he is paid in hundred-dollar bills, sometimes shrink-wrapped bricks of them, and flowing this money into a bank is difficult. He even calls some of his company's transactions 'drug deals' — but what Lackey sells is Internet access. From his trailer on Logistics Staging Area Anaconda, a colossal US Army base fifty miles north of Baghdad, Lackey runs Blue Iraq, surely the most surreal ISP on the planet. He is 26 years old."