Nikon held a contest to find the best microscopic pictures. Some of these images are amazing.
"The Nikon Small World Photo Competition draws entries from scientists and amateurs all over the world whose photographs reveal hidden worlds not visible to the naked eye."
MS is shifting from the 90nm process to the 65nm process for it's CPUs. This should lower power consumption which may fix the problems plaguing the earlier XBox 360s and their crashes.
"Chartered Semiconductor will update the 360 CPU to a 65nm process, the current state-of-the-art in chip manufacturing techniques. The new Xbox 360 CPUs will benefit from lower power consumption, and thus much lower operating heat. The change will likely have a dramatic impact upon Xbox 360 reliability, as the console, especially the first batch of units manufactured before January 2006, has something of a reputation for being prone to hardware failure and the dreaded "Red Eye of Death."
Following in Dell's footsteps, HP has agreed to acquire Voodoo PC.
"Voodoo becomes the latest company acquired by HP since CEO Mark Hurd arrived at the company last year. Hurd, who spent Thursday testifying before Congress as part of the investigation into HP's boardroom leak scandal, has also given the nod to purchases of Mercury Interactive and Peregrine Systems, in addition to smaller acquisitions."
"IBM Corp. and Lenovo Group, the world's third largest computer maker, were seeking the recall of rechargeable, lithium-ion batteries purchased with ThinkPad computers. A laptop caught fire at Los Angeles International Airport this month.
It is the fourth recall in recent weeks involving Sony laptop batteries. In August, Dell asked customers to return 4.1 million batteries and Apple recalled 1.8 million batteries worldwide, warning they could catch fire. Last week, Toshiba said it was recalling 340,000 laptop batteries due to a problem that caused the laptops to run out of power."
Internet | Suit blames video game for N.M. slayings
This is along the lines of sueing McDonald's for heart attacks. It's all about self control here folks. Oh yeah, good parenting also helps here and there.
" ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. — Family members of three people slain by a 14-year-old on newsman Sam Donaldson's New Mexico ranch sued the makers of the video game "Grand Theft Auto: Vice City" on Monday, claiming the crimes would not have occurred had the teenager never played the violent game.
The $600 million lawsuit names several companies and Cody Posey, who it alleges played the game "obsessively" for several months before he shot his father, stepmother and stepsister in July 2004. Posey, now 16, was sentenced earlier this year to state custody until he is 21."
The two big firms want power supply makers to increase efficiency of units from the typical 70% to 90%. This in turn will help cut power usage across the board and possibly save some trees.
"Noting that the power supply is often the component that consumes the most energy in current PCs, Barroso highlighted findings from a newly published Google white paper.
The paper, >"High-efficiency power supplies for home computers and servers," by Google engineers Urs Holzle and Bill Weihl, states that Google has managed to increase the typical efficiency of power supplies from 60-70% to at least 90% efficiency, reducing lost energy by a factor of four."
"IOGEAR's Germ Free Laser Mouse is coated with a Titanium Dioxide (TiO2) and Silver (Ag) nano-particle compound. The coating uses two mechanisms to deactivate enzymes and proteins to prevent a wide spectrum of bacteria, virus, fungi, and algae from surviving on the surface of the mouse. The compound has been tested and proven effective against the settlement of harmful microbes on the insulated surface."
In an ironic twist in everything that is HP, they're giving away an award for privacy.
"BOSTON - Insert your own punch line: Hewlett-Packard Co., the technology company facing federal and state investigations for spying on board members and journalists, is co-sponsor of an award for "privacy innovation."
Nominees are currently being accepted for the fourth annual HP/IAPP Privacy Innovation award, which Hewlett-Packard gives in conjunction with the Maine-based International Association of Privacy Professionals."
Not again, another agency loses laptops containing consumer private data.
"Based on the review in response to the public inquiry, the Department determined that within its 15 operating units for the years 2001 to the present, out of over 30,000 laptops within the Department's inventory over that time period, 1,137 were either lost, stolen or missing. Of these laptops, 249 contained personally identifiable information (PII), although access passwords, complex database software, systemic safeguards and/or encryption technology significantly limit the potential for misuse of data on the laptops."
"Sony Corp. said Friday it will slash the price of its much-anticipated PlayStation 3 video game console in Japan by 20 percent, heating up the competition in the next-generation gaming war against rivals Microsoft and Nintendo.
The announcement comes just days after Microsoft Corp. announced that it would roll out an external high definition DVD player for its Xbox 360 in an effort to match the PlayStation 3, due to be released in November with its own Blu-ray DVD technology."