New Scientist Breaking News - 3D plasma shapes created in thin air

"The night sky could soon be lit up with gigantic three-dimensional adverts, thanks to a Japanese laser display that creates glowing images in thin air.
NS Forum
Would you like to see the night sky full of pulsating plasma adverts?


The system is being developed by the National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology (AIST) in Tokyo, in collaboration with Burton Inc and Keio University.

“We believe this technology may eventually be used in applications ranging from pyrotechnics to outdoor advertising,” says a spokesman for AIST. According to Burton Inc, the technology might also be used for emergency distress signals or even temporary road signs."

InformationWeek | Internet Search | Search Engines Fight Copyright-Infringement Suits | February 24, 2006

"Two search engines sued by the Motion Picture Association of America Inc. for allegedly providing links to illegal copies of movies and TV shows said Friday that they are forming a coalition to fight the lawsuits.

IsoHunt.com and TorrentBox.com said they would work together with defendants in MPAA suits and other file-sharing operators to battle the trade group.

'We will fight for the right for technological progress and the legality of the search engine itself,' IsoHunt.com said in a posting."

KREM.com | News for Spokane, Washington | AP Headlines

"On the Internet, the traffic cops are blind - they don't look at the data they're directing, and they don't give preferential treatment.

That's something operators of the Internet highway, the major U.S. phone companies, want to change by effectively adding a toll lane: They want to be able to give priority treatment to those who pay to get through faster.

Naturally, consumer advocates and the Web companies that would be paying the toll are calling it highway robbery.

'Allowing broadband carriers to control what people see and do online would fundamentally undermine the principles that have made the Internet such a success,' Vinton Cerf told a Senate committee recently. Cerf, who played a key role in building the Internet, is now the 'Chief Internet Evangelist' at Google Inc.

On the Internet, information is carried in 'packets,' small chunks of data. An e-mail might be divided into several packets and travel different routes to the destination, much like cars have multiple ways of getting somewhere. The packets may arrive out of order, a few even late, but data can be reassembled to reconstitute the e-mail."

John C. Dvorak is Nuts

Now I am sure of it, these Mac people are the internets equivelent of religious fundementalists. How can people feel so strongly over an electronic device? It is truly rediculous in my opinion. The validity of this mans claims of course....wait....thats right, there is none, it's all conjecture. Now I must head off so that I may prepare for the onslaught of Mac suicide bombers!

IBM's Octopiler, or, why the PS3 is running late

"All afternoon I've been slogging through IBM's 25-page paper on their newly released Octopiler, and now things are clearer to me. See, Cell's greatest strength is that there's a lot of hardware on that chip. And Cell's greatest weakness is that there's a lot of hardware on that chip. So Cell has immense performance potential, but if you want to make it programable by mere mortals then you need a compiler that can ingest code written in a high-level language and produce optimized binaries that fit not just a programming model or a microarchitecture, but an entire multiprocessor system. This isn't just a tall order, or even a doctoral dissertation. It's a generation's worth of doctoral research. Meanwhile, the PS3 is due out in 2006."

AMD removes 100 series Opteron pricing

"A TECH Report review commented that AMD had removed the pricing of its 100 series Opteron processors. Checking the chip maker's Web site confirmed that was true. The processor model numbers are still there but the prices have been asterisked out. Why has that happened?"

Writers Block Live � Blog Archive � The HD Boycott Begins Now

"This is important. I really want you to understand what's going on with the video industry's push towards HD. They are engineering a complete removal of the concept of fair use. They are setting up systems that will completely control how, when and where you can use content that you buy. Even worse, they can retroactively change the rules!
Today the AACS (aggressive automatic consumer screwing) organization announced availability of the interim version of their system for protecting content providers from their criminal customers. Their noble intentions are pretty well summed up in this choice excerpt:"

Wired News: A Solid That's Light As Air

"If you wanted to catch a few particles of comet dust speeding through the vacuum of space at 6 kilometers per second -- without damaging or destroying those particles -- how would you do it?"

Microsoft mistakenly posts secret plans for new operating system :: Hack In The Box :: Keeping Knowledge Free

"Microsoft, the world's largest software maker, prematurely posted information about its much-anticipated Windows Vista operating system on one of its Web sites, the company said Tuesday. Microsoft disclosed information about a plan to release eight different editions of the new operating system on a company help page that was under development. The company has not made any official statements about the different versions of Windows Vista it plans to offer. The company has since taken down the Web site and declined to confirm the information and said it will offer more details about the Vista launch, targeted for the second half of 2006, in the coming weeks."

MSN Money - Privacy alert: Your phone records for sale

"You can't turn around these days without discovering some new way that your privacy is being invaded. Egregiously.

But the recent furor over 'pretexting' and the sale of consumer phone records on the Internet is missing a couple of important points.

Yes, less-than-ethical companies posed as consumers or even phone company employees to get copies of people's phone records -- whom they�ve called, when they called, plus the names and addresses associated with various cell and landline numbers. The practice is called pretexting because these companies get the records based on the pretext that they're someone they're not.

And yes, the records thus purloined could be purchased for about $100 a pop on any one of at least 40 Internet sites"

World's largest Windows error message | NetworkWorld.com Community

This is just hilarious!!! Thank you for this Adam Gaffin!!

SHELL EXTENSION CITY

"VISTA START MENU..........Each time you start programs from the Start menu, you use the interface that has not changed for 10 years. No wonder that it becomes more and more difficult to use it due to the increase in the number of programs... Vista Start Menu is a completely another approach to the interface.It is much easier to find and run the program you need. Everything is visual and extremely easy to use. Your applications are arranged in a table with icons divided into groups, which makes it easier to work with a lot of programs. And one more really important nuance: when you remove programs or install new ones, other icons remain in their places so you do not have to waste time on looking for 'drifted icons' as it usually happens in the system.....(free).....GO THERE!"

iB::Topic::Palm Zire 72 and Bluetooth Networking

"I had a hell of a time setting up this little beast for bluetooth communications with my win xp sp2 machine. While it may be a little tricky, it can and will work if set up properly, here is how I did it."

iB::Topic::Exit68.net Mobile

"I had been looking into some content management software for the site to make it prettier to read. After tinkering around with my Zire 72 for net access and visiting exit68.net for testing connectivity I realized that the format is GREAT for mobile net surfers."

U.S. Reclassifies Many Documents in Secret Review - New York Times

"WASHINGTON, Feb. 20 In a seven-year-old secret program at the National Archives, intelligence agencies have been removing from public access thousands of historical documents that were available for years, including some already published by the State Department and others photocopied years ago by private historians."

This is a widely reported news piece about this administrations lack of transparency in government. What purpose would it serve to reclassify so many documents that have been available to the public for so many years? It makes no sense to me politically, or just common sense wise for that matter. Anyways, read up. Important to pay attention to these types of things.

Wired News: The Cyclotron Comes to the 'Hood

"Albert Swank Jr., a 55-year-old civil engineer in Anchorage, Alaska, is a man with a mission. He wants to install a nuclear particle accelerator in his home.
But when neighbors learned of plans to place the 20-ton device inside the house where Swank operates his engineering firm, their response was swift: Not in my backyard. "

FrozenCPU.com :: Product :: Auzentech HDA X-Plosion 7.1 DTS Connect Sound Card - Dolby Digital Live Certified!

"AuzenTech HDA X-Plosion 7.1 DTS Connect is the most anticipated 'World first', high quality, Dolby Digital Live and DTS Connect logo certified soundcard for your PC. It sounds phenomenal and is feature rich."

This looks like the Blue Gears in a different package. I will do some poking around and see if I can find some comparisons for you guys on this.

I know Creative is the mainstream by the way but there is an issue with the new XFI cards supposedly with bass distortion and that is just not cool. I want something that sounds better than what I am using now. Besides that, just like your OS, it is always nice to try a little something new.

AnandTech: Inside Newegg: They give us a Tour and you a Prize

"Established in 2001, Newegg has quickly become a household name among AnandTech readers. They originally won the hearts of many readers by offering extremely competitive prices and keeping customer service a top priority. Since their humble beginnings the company has grown tremendously, with net sales in 2005 of approximately $1.3 billion, a 30% increase over the prior year. Newegg currently stocks over 60,000 different products and ships up to 25,000 orders per day, 98% of them within 24 hours."

iB::Topic::Linksys WRT54GX4

"This thing impressed me right out of the box...with its looks. To me this piece of equipment looked much better than the shotty cheap plastic looking WRT54G. This though, is one of those cases where you do not judge a book by its cover"

Timely Delivery? I think not!

UPDATE: After contacting Newegg regarding my shipping issues they apologized and offered compensation. There is something to be said about Newegg and their employees! I hope to continue working with them in the future.

Well as some might know I do not have all my cards in order yet to gain review pieces from companies and nobody I have spoke with has let me in on the methods to go about obtaining such peices. Because of thise I am bringing you reviews from money I have spent on my own. What this does allow me to do is let you in on my experiences with various retailers.
This time around my experience was with Newegg.com. Usually I would have nothing but praise for Newegg. In this case I can say that I was not as satisfied as usual. I ordered with rush processing and next day delivery, unfortunatley it did not ship until today even though I had placed the order at 11:30 am cali time yesterday. I was hoping to be able to take the piece apart for those of you interested but that will not happen yet. The wireless router that I should be getting in tomorrow is the LINKSYS WRT54GX4 Wireless-G Broadband Router with SRX400. The reason why I chose a router at this price point is because I noticed that many people that purchare wireless routers get the cheaper ones. I want to see if this one really has the range expansion that it claimes to (3x normal range) It will be relatively easy to test that as my buddy downstairs gets low signal from the old linksys at the ground level. This router will have 1 extra wall to go through plus toward downstairs. If this thing can pull it off I will be more than impressed.

Wireless Router Review, gnomes, and DOD: Source

I will be recieving a new wireless G router in the mail tomorrow. I promise to a do a full review on the unit in as many areas that I can think of. All reviews and discussions will take place in the forums area. You will still know when it is up because I will post a clip here in the blog section.

In other news I am investigating migrating the site to a content management suite that will make the site much more appealing for the eyes and offer more content. I have to make some upgrades to the Unix machine in order to do this but in the mean time I will start it on my own personal box to try and get a beta going. I would love more commentary by our readers and hopefully some usefull contributions.

I am interested in people that would like to write how to's and write news bits for the site.

Also of interest to some of you gamers. There is a [Exit68.net] DOD: Source clan! If you would like to join up, join the forums and let your intentions be known. If enough want to play together and the skill level merits it we will may try league play, but that is far off. Please please, anyone interested in contributions to the site in any form or just want to leave a comment join the forums and make your voices heard. You will be the first people in a growing community and therefor the foundation. Be polite and respect eachother! That is the news for today! Good night, and good luck.

Don’t use Google toolbar

I have fowarded this to people in my company and felt it should be shared with others online as well. As you are probably well aware privacy issues to home consumers is one thing but when the information sensitive to a company is stored on anothers servers that is ASKING for trouble. Please take the time to follow the link and read the EFF's site on this. Thank you to the INQ for raising this issue.

"THE Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) has warned that people should not download Google Desktop because it 'greatly increases the risk to consumer privacy'.

A spokesEFF said that if the toolbar chooses to use it, the new 'Search Across Computers' feature stores copies of the user's Word documents, PDFs, spreadsheets and other text-based documents on Google's own servers.

The EFF is concerned that it will make their personal data more vulnerable to subpoenas from the government, which has already shown an interest in what Google keeps on his server."

US plans massive data sweep | csmonitor.com

"The US government is developing a massive computer system that can collect huge amounts of data and, by linking far-flung information from blogs and e-mail to government records and intelligence reports, search for patterns of terrorist activity.
The system - parts of which are operational, parts of which are still under development - is already credited with helping to foil some plots. It is the federal government's latest attempt to use broad data-collection and powerful analysis in the fight against terrorism. But by delving deeply into the digital minutiae of American life, the program is also raising concerns that the government is intruding too deeply into citizens' privacy."

You have to sit back and think when you read something like this "Is this something new?" How can I believe that the government hasn't been doing this in some form for years? The truth is that we are in a state of decline and I guess 200 some odd years of a freedom loving democratic republic isn't such a bad run. You can not tell me that this won't be abused by those in power either, government can never seem to get it right. I am sure they will dig through grandmas email and see that she said she wanted to bomb someplace, maybe a grocery store for they all know where she got screwed over the other day, and wiretap every form of communication that they can on her off that basis. Or what about that 16 year old kid who buys a book off of Amazon about Islam? I could go on and on, but for the sake of saving space and your time ......

Toshiba and NEC Develop World's Fastest, Highest Density MRAM

"Toshiba Corporation and NEC Corporation today announced that they have developed a magnetoresistive random access memory (MRAM) that combines the highest density with the fastest read and write speed yet achieved. The new MRAM achieves a 16-megabit density and a read and write speed of 200-megabytes a second, and also secures low voltage operation of 1.8V.
A major challenge of MRAM development to date has been the acceleration of read speeds: the current drive circuit used to generate the magnetic field for writing degrades read operation from memory cells. The new MRAM has an improved circuit design that divides the current paths for reading and writing, realizing a faster read speed. It also reduces equivalent resistance in wiring by approximately 38% by forking the write current. These innovations together achieve a read and write speed of 200-megabytes a second and a cycle time of 34 nanoseconds — both the world's best performance for MRAM. This performance is underlined by a low operating voltage of only 1.8V, the ideal voltage for mobile digital products.
Alongside advances in performance, the new MRAM achieves advances in chip size. Toshiba and NEC have introduced the above mentioned technologies and optimized overall circuit design, achieving a chip that, at 78.7mm2, is approximately 30% smaller than its equivalent without the new circuit design. The new MRAM is the world's smallest in the 16-megabit era. "

BetaNews | Blogosphere Doubles Every Six Months

"If you think everyone and their mother has a blog these days, you're probably right. Web log aggregator Technorati released details of a study Monday that showed that the site now tracks some 27.2 million Web logs across the Web.
The site indexes 75,000 new Web logs every day, an average of one every second. The percentage of those bloggers still updating their sites three months after its creation remained about the same at a little over 50 percent. It also found that at least 2.7 million of them update their Web logs at least once a week."

t r u t h o u t - Jeff Chester | The End of the Internet?

"The nation's largest telephone and cable companies are crafting an alarming set of strategies that would transform the free, open and nondiscriminatory Internet of today to a privately run and branded service that would charge a fee for virtually everything we do online. "

Take the time to read this article as I think it is very important. The internet that we have grown to know and love may be coming ever so closer to an end.

Microsoft Is Counting Its Vista Chickens

" From Microsoft Watch: Microsoft has some lofty goals for Windows Vista. In the first 24 months the product is shipping, company officials are expecting to have it preloaded on 200 million PCs worldwide. They are counting on the new release making substantial inroads with the Windows 2000 customer base. And they believe they can gain traction with as-yet-untapped emerging markets throughout the world. Read Microsoft's laundry list of business reasons Windows execs are so bullish about Vista."

What's Up With That Pesky Power Problem With Dual Core?

" Intel's Core Duo processor, the company's dual-core Pentium M replacement that Intel introduced with a new Centrino platform called Napa, is having some problems. Specifically, some power problems. Both Intel and Microsoft are being quite cryptic about what's going on. But it sounds like a glitch in one Core Duo/Napa system could result in some machines falling victim to an unexpectedly short battery life when USB 2.0 devices are attached to them"

Novell demonstrates Linux Desktop 10

"Novell performed a demonstration of Novell Linux Desktop (NLD) 10 at the LinuxSolutions conference in Paris earlier this week. The next generation of Novell's Linux distribution includes impressive new features that impressed the 1,600 audience members that attended the panel. Acquired from Ximian in 2003, Novell has focused on transforming NLD into a high quality distribution specialized for business desktop deployment. The latest incarnation of the blossoming distribution has received numerous improvements designed to increase its mainstream appeal and make it more appropriate for average consumers. "

OCModShop

"An industry insider revealed today that Halo 3 is finished and is at the mastering plant, awaiting the green light. The final artwork has been finished for the disk, booklets and box art.

It is likely that Bungie will try to build the hype for Halo 3, adding to the frenzy right before its release. Some of the rumored features of Halo 3 include the following: "

Microsoft: No delays to Vista Beta 2, 2006 release | TG Daily

"Redmond (WA) - Responding to press reports that interpreted Microsoft co-president Jim Allchin as saying that the planned Beta 2 release for its upcoming Windows Vista would be 'skipped,' a Microsoft spokesperson late yesterday officially denied that the company would be discontinuing Vista Beta 2.

That said, the company did confirm what Allchin was apparently trying to say in the first place: that the timetable for Beta 2's release had already been altered, to account for the fact that multiple types of installations - for instance, desktops, workstations, enterprise servers - would have to be managed separately. Allchin's original statement, which was an attempt to say that Microsoft would have to handle Beta 2 differently than it did Beta 1, especially in light of the fact that Beta 2's release had been scheduled for January, and it was soon becoming February."

New Scientist SPACE - Breaking News - 'Tenth planet' is bigger than Pluto

"The chilly world dubbed Xena on the outskirts of the solar system has as at least as much claim to be a planet as Pluto, according to a new study confirming that the 'tenth planet' is by far the larger of the two.

Astronomers first spotted Xena, known more formally as UB 313, in 2003, but the discovery was not made public until July 2005. By then they realised it was amazingly distant – at times, about three times as far from the Sun as Pluto is.

From its brightness and distance, astronomers estimated that it must be slightly larger than Pluto – assuming that, like Pluto, it reflects just over half the sunlight that falls onto it."

Google Denies Plans to Distribute OS Based on Ubuntu - OSNews.com

"A post on the Register, claiming that Google might be close to rolling out a 'Goobuntu' Linux desktop distro, has been making the usual rounds in the tech news circuit today. Despite today being earnings release day, presumably a very busy time at the Google press relations office, technology spokeswoman Sonya Boralv responded very quickly to my query on the topic. She said that '[w]e use Ubuntu internally but have no plans to distribute it outside of the company.' Elsewhere, Google's shares kinda dropped today as their earnings fell short of expectations."

Joining the Dark Side: Switching to iPod

"Since this is the first of these regular 'My Tech Life' columns, I thought it best to start with a quick introduction. If you want to read about the iPod stuff, just skip down. In addition to Loyd's regular Notes From the Lab columns every Monday, we're going to start featuring columns on Thursday. Victor Loh and I will alternate each week, so my column will show up twice a month, and I'll bore you (or not) with the details of what's going on with technology in my life. I'm a bit of a media junkie, so expect plenty of columns about digital music and video. By way of history, I was an editor at a games magazine (Computer Games) for five years before landing at ExtremeTech, and an editor at a games Web site (OGR—now part of the vast Internet graveyard) before that. Needless to say, I'm a pretty hardcore gamer, so expect games and game technology to slip in here a lot."