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Yesterday's News

Would You Like Some Fries With That Download?

Posted by ScuttleMonkey on Monday December 12, @03:53PM
from the happy-meal-tech dept.
Technology
vodkamattvt writes The New York Times is reporting that the Walt Disney Company is hoping to replace happy meal toys with portable media players that could hold Disney movies, music, games, or photos. From the article: "The plan could work something like this: A customer enters a restaurant and buys a meal, receiving the portable media player and an electronic code that authorizes a partial download of a movie, video or other media file, which can be downloaded while in the restaurant, according to a United States Patent and Trademark Office application filed by Disney. Then, with each subsequent return, the customer earns more downloadable data, eventually getting an entire movie or game."

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Hardware: Under the Hood of the Xbox 360

Posted by ScuttleMonkey on Monday December 12, @03:09PM
from the love-the-smell-of-solder-in-the-morning dept.
Technology
An anonymous reader writes "IBM DeveloperWorks is running a behind the design story for the making of the Xbox 360. The 360 has but a single chip with 165 million transistors for it's CPU " From the article: "This chip is in fact a three-way symmetric multiprocessor design. The three PowerPC cores are identical, except that they are physically reflected through the X and Y axis. Each of the CPU cores is a specialized PowerPC chip with a VMX128 extension related to (and partially compatible with) the VMX instructions in the G4 and G5 CPUs. The three CPU cores share a 1MB Level2 cache. Each processor has 32KB each of data and instruction Level1 cache. The chip's front-side bus/physical interface has a 21.6GB/second bandwidth, and runs at 5.4GHz."

Hardware: ATI X1800 CrossFire Cards Reviewed

Posted by ScuttleMonkey on Monday December 12, @02:47PM
from the breaking-the-cost-to-effectiveness-ratio dept.
Graphics
AnInkle writes "ATI finally joins the Christmas party. If money is (virtually) no object and high-end 3D animation is part of your game, you'll want to check out The Tech Report's review of the ATI X1800 CrossFire card before spending your green on the green team. From the review: 'This new CrossFire card also sweeps away some of the limitations of the first-generation CrossFire hardware introduced just a couple of months ago, allowing mega-high-res gaming.' Further, if the latest rumors about the 7800GTX 512MB are true, it would mean that this CrossFire graphics subsystem would arguably stand alone at the top of the graphics benchmarking mountain."

IT: This Text Message Will Self Destruct

Posted by ScuttleMonkey on Monday December 12, @02:09PM
from the should-you-choose-to-accept-it dept.
Communications
mwilliamson writes "Silicon.com is reporting that Staellium UK (cell provider) has created a protocol in which text messages disappear after 40 seconds. This, of course, relies on the implementation of the protocol in the device used to display the message. They're touting a future roll out for photos as well, and service in the US."

Book Reviews: Pro Perl Debugging

Posted by samzenpus on Monday December 12, @01:27PM
from the make-it-clean dept.
Perl
coder4hire writes "The typical computer program has more bugs than there are ants at a picnic -- except ants are usually easier to find. Programs written in Perl are no exception, because the compactness of the language does not make any existent bugs easier to spot; they can simply be packed into fewer lines of code. To help remedy this problem, Richard Foley and Andy Lester, two seasoned Perl programmers, offer a new book, Pro Perl Debugging: From Professional to Expert." Read the rest of Michael's review.

Hardware: Macro Lens from a Pringles Can

Posted by ScuttleMonkey on Monday December 12, @12:51PM
from the things-that-bear-closer-scrutiny dept.
Hardware Hacking
isharq writes "In a cool little feat of extremely low-tech hardware hacking, Photocritic has created a macro lens out of a Pringles can. According to the article: "with less than £1 worth of equipment, a little bit of sweat and tears, you can build yourself a surprisingly good macro lens". The results are astonishing."

Behind the Scenes of Narnia's Special Effects

Posted by Hemos on Monday December 12, @11:38AM
from the behind-the-lion's-mane dept.
Movies
louismg writes "Walt Disney Pictures' Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe took in more than $100 million at the box office worldwide in its opening weekend, riding the back of special effects powering nearly all the movie's characters, from the lion Aslan to the Gryphon, Minotaur, Centaurs and more. VFXWorld has a series of diaries with the technology geeks at Rhythm & Hues behind the special effects. (Part 1, 2) For the fantasy film's special effects, Rhythm & Hues teamed up with Industrial Light and Magic and Sony Pictures Imageworks to deliver more than 1,400 shots for the film, and used cutting-edge technology from BlueArc, NVIDIA and others to keep the effects' production running."

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Cameras Online? How The Shysters Work

Posted by Hemos on Monday December 12, @11:00AM
from the Psst!-Hey,-Mister!-Cheap-cameras-online? dept.
The Internet
earlylate writes "How do certain photo and electronics dealers thrive despite widely-circulated warnings by unhappy customers? According to a new investigative website "many apparently separate and competing dealers are actually jointly owned and run" and "go to great lengths to conceal their locations and management." Further, some comparison-shopping sites "are in effect marketing partners with their affiliates," the very dealers they rate. There's a contest based on the suspicious "flood of similar, glowing reviews some dealers receive," as well as links to several sources of information and advice for the careful online shopper."

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Science: Future of Hayabusa Asteroid Probe Looks Bleak

Posted by Hemos on Monday December 12, @10:11AM
from the here's-to-hoping dept.
Space
mj_1903 writes "After landing, then not landing, then potentially landing on an asteroid it appears as though the Japanese spacecraft may have collected specimens of the asteroid. Unfortunately a host of problems is continuing to plague it including a lack of fuel, a shutdown of part of the chemical orientation system, a complete failure of the flywheels and communication issues. The Japanese team are however not giving up on it and are still hopeful that they can return it to the earth in June of 2007."

IT: MS Excel exploit on auction

Posted by Hemos on Monday December 12, @09:40AM
from the brave-new-world dept.
Bug
geo_2677 writes "Someone had put up for auction on eBay the details of an exploit in Microsoft Excel according to a recent article on Securityfocus. According to the article Microsoft has confirmed that this vulnerability exists, but in the meantime the original listing on eBay has been pulled. " The now pulled auction, but it does appear that Microsoft has confirmed the vulnerability in an eweek article.

Developers: A Programmer's Bookshelf

Posted by Hemos on Monday December 12, @09:00AM
from the good-question dept.
Books
An anonymous reader writes "With christmas just round the corner I have been looking for gifts for my geek friends. But what book? I recently found a simple page with one person's bookshelf and explain what's good and what's not. What do you think? Whats on a programmer's bookshelf? (or what should be and is not!)"

IT: The Future of Emacs

Posted by Hemos on Monday December 12, @08:17AM
from the and-with-this-key-command-i've-macroed-child-raising! dept.
GNU is Not Unix
An anonymous reader writes "If you've not heard much about Emacs development in recent years, you might be surprised to find that it is has been very active. Emacs 22 will have many new features such as support for Mac OS X and Cygwin; mouse wheel support and many new modes and packages. It can also be built with Gtk+ widgets and supports drag and drop for X. The NEWS file details all the changes. Although its very stable, don't expect to see it released any time shortly because according to RMS, the Emacs developers haven't been fixing bugs quickly enough. Those who have followed Emacs for long enough might see a different pattern."

IT: China Overtakes US as Supplier of IT Goods

Posted by ScuttleMonkey on Monday December 12, @07:37AM
from the capitalism-at-its-very-best dept.
Technology
Ant writes "CNET News.com is reporting that 'after almost a decade of explosive growth in its electronics sector, China has overtaken the United States as the world's biggest supplier of Information Technology goods, according to a report by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development.' From the article: "The most spectacular demonstration of China's ambition to become a consumer electronics heavyweight came in May this year when Lenovo, the Chinese computer maker, paid $1.75 billion to buy IBM's personal computer unit."

Politics: Radio Telescope Has Military Uses?

Posted by ScuttleMonkey on Monday December 12, @05:22AM
from the where-do-you-think-a-lot-of-scientific-research-comes-from dept.
Technology
schnippy writes "A joint Mexico-U.S. effort to build a monster radio telescope in Mexico is causing concerns because the project, the Large Millimeter Telescope, is part of a U.S. Defense Department effort to develop the target acquisition and directed-energy technology needed for anti-satellite warfare." From the article: " Supporters said links between science and the military are nothing new and emphasized the telescope being assembled on the 15,000-foot Sierra Negra in the state of Puebla wont be some kind of Star Wars defense outpost."

IT: Fingerprint Scanners Fooled By Play-Doh

Posted by ScuttleMonkey on Monday December 12, @03:35AM
from the homer-says-doh dept.
Security
* * Beatles-Beatles writes to tell us YubaNet is reporting that in recent tests by Stephanie C Schuckers, an associate professor of electrical and computer engineering at Clarkston University, she has shown that, among other things, biometric security measures were fooled 90% of the time by simple attacks like Play-Doh molds. From the article: "Schuckers' biometric research is funded by the National Science Foundation (NSF), the Office of Homeland Security and the Department of Defense. She is currently assessing spoofing vulnerability in fingerprint scanners and designing methods to correct for these as part of a $3.1 million interdisciplinary research project funded through the NSF."

NewsWeek Looks at Search Engine Optimization

Posted by ScuttleMonkey on Monday December 12, @01:29AM
from the good-the-bad-and-the-dishonest dept.
The Internet
* * Beatles-Beatles writes to tell us that Newsweeks is taking a quick look at search engine optimization. From the article: "If search-engine rankings are supposed to represent a kind of democracy--a reflection of what Internet users collectively think is most useful--then search-engine optimizers like Fishkin are the Web's lobbyists. High-priced and in some cases slyly unethical, SEOs try to manipulate the unpaid search results that help users navigate the Internet. Their goal is to boost their clients' (and in some cases their own) sites to the top of unpaid search-engine rankings--even if their true popularity doesn't warrant that elevated status."

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