Tuesday, June 22, 2004
16x DVD writer can burn a disc in less than six minutes.
From Reuters, "U.S. computer maker Dell will be the first customer for the new DVD burner, sources familiar with the Philips activity told Reuters."
"Philips said it planned to produce 600,000 of the devices every month. Computer makers will pay between 80 and 90 euros ($97-$109) per DVD writer when buying in large quantities, while consumers will have to pay around 180 euros."
"The product, which has two layers that take the maximum storage capacity up to 8.5 gigabytes or four hours of DVD quality video, will be a mainstream feature in personal computers by the end of 2004, Philips said."
Posted by
Al on 06/22 at 10:20 AM
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Wednesday, June 16, 2004
The world's first virus that can spread among advanced wireless phones opens the door for future, more destructive, infections.
From Reuters, "The worm, named Cabir, was sent to security software firms Kapersky Lab of Russia and U.S.-based Symantec by a member of 29a, a group of virus writers from the Czech Republic and Slovakia who pride themselves in creating 'proof of concept malicious viruses,' Kapersky Labs spokesman Denis Zenkin said."
"The worm is designed to work in smartphones running on Symbian and Series 60 software, Symantec said on its Web site. This software is used to power millions of Nokia phones, such as the popular 6600 model. Nokia was not immediately available to comment."
Posted by
Al on 06/16 at 10:26 AM
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Tuesday, June 15, 2004
Sony has developed a new navigation system that presents the driver with a Grand Theft Auto-style "on the street" 3D view.
From Wired, "Currently available only in Japan, the XYZ is a removable, dashboard-mounted GPS system that can give drivers detailed, three-dimensional information about where they are and where they're going. 'This navigation system can give you detailed 3-D visual images of the street and corner that you are going to,' said Sony Japan spokesman Shinji Obana. 'Compared to conventional GPS navigation systems, it's much easier to grasp where you are and (in) which direction you have to drive.'"
But besides its advanced 3-D features -- the idea of plotting locations on X, Y and Z axes give the product its name -- what sets the XYZ apart from other car navigation systems are its internal hard drive and its multimedia capabilities.
"A '30 GB (hard drive) is installed in this product, enabling users to enjoy various AV content -- audio, video (and) still pictures,' said Obana. 'You can remove the XYZ series product from the car and connect it to the PC to update map data very easily. Besides, you can download various AV content stored in the PC.'
Posted by
Al on 06/15 at 10:17 AM
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Friday, June 04, 2004
A New Zealand man was angry that his wireless company was putting a cap on the "unlimited" text messaging portion of his service plan. He retaliated by sending over 2,500 text messages per day before the change in protest.
From AZ Central, "Allowing eight hours for sleep every day, Fraser Ray, 24, zapped off 80,012 messages from his phone after Telecom Corp. decided to end a deal giving subscribers unlimited text messaging for $6.29 a month."
Posted by
Al on 06/04 at 10:33 AM
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Thursday, June 03, 2004
Graphics company ATI, long time critic of competitor Nvidia's video card driver optimizations, concedes to using undocumented optimizations of its own.
From Gamespot, "After criticizing rival Nvidia for using optimized trilinear filtering algorithms in its PC graphics card drivers--calling them "unacceptable tricks" in a recent presentation to hardware reviewers last month--ATI Technologies has acknowledged using similar optimizations itself.
The graphics company's admission was a response to allegations raised by German Web site ComputerBase.de. ComputerBase.de staffers voiced concerns that ATI was possibly using application specific cheats or optimized filtering algorithms after observing that the company's drivers rendered colored mipmaps, such as those used in synthetic image quality tests, with full trilinear filtering enabled, but the filtering method seemed to change under real game conditions in Unreal Tournament 2003.
For the layman, mipmaps are a sequence of textures, each of which is a progressively lower resolution representation of the same image. Mimicking real life, where people perceive less detail the farther they are from a subject, games use detailed mipmaps in areas closest to the player's viewpoint while using less detailed mipmaps in more distant areas.
Trilinear filtering is a technique used to blend together two adjacent mipmaps in the game environment to eliminate noticeable areas of "mipmap banding" in the game where high-resolution mipmaps transition to a lower level of detail. Trilinear filtering, however, is notoriously demanding in terms of graphics performance, but optimizations can be made to still create similar image quality with less work.
When asked about trilinear optimizations in light of ATI's recent disclosure, Nvidia's Brian Burke commented, 'In our view, if an optimization produces the correct image while speeding up performance then it is beneficial to the end user and is legitimate. If a change in the driver does not produce the correct image, or functions only in the benchmark, it is either a bug and must be fixed, or a cheat.' "
Posted by
on 06/03 at 04:55 PM
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