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OCAU News |
Thursday Afternoon
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Thursday, 20-November-2008 13:34:44 (GMT +10) - by Agg
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Another big one from Matt:
Microsoft will offer free anti-malware in 2009. News just in from Microsoft - the company is to offer no-cost anti-malware to Windows users and phase-out sales of Windows Live OneCare subscription. Code-named “Morro,” the product, which is scheduled for release during the second half of 2009, will offer protection against viruses, spyware, rootkits and Trojans.
Police in Ontario are using games to warn about the effects of drink driving. Yesterday GamePolitics reported that police in Australia and Winnipeg engaged in a bit of game bashing by relating stolen cars and reckless road behavior to driving games. Today, the Peterborough Examiner reports that cops in Ontario are using a driving game in a positive way to help educate high school students about the dangers of drunk driving.
Mininova is testing a new technology to allow ads within downloaded movies. The new advertising technology, Hyper MP, inserts small clickable ads into the corner of the screen. Aside from the ads, there are no limitations to the video content. Hyper MP is currently being tested on an amateur feature length comedy titled “Battle Therapy”.
Kanguru have released a flash drive that uses eSATA as well as USB. Kanguru has developed a new breed of flash drive eliciting one of those 'Why hasn't someone thought of this before?' moments. "We’ve combined the fastest connectivity with the most universal connection for the best of both worlds,” said Nate Cote, VP of Product Management at Kanguru Solutions. “The ultra-fast transfer speed, high capacity and small size combine to make it a great portable solution for users that want the next generation of unbelievable performance."
Apple has prevailed over Psystar, with a court dismissing all claims. This legal saga began last July when Apple first sued Psystar for illegally selling copies of Leopard installed on their own hardware. In response, Psystar initiated a counterclaim where it accused Apple of having a monopoly in the OS X market and running afoul of anti-trust laws. Essentially, Psystar’s defense was hinged entirely on its anti-trust allegations, and now that that has been thrown out of court, don’t expect Psystar to be in business too much longer.
The new Macbook might be faster, but it still cannot play Crysis. Finally, someone with more money that I have (I want a new MacBook Pro, but haven't yet convinced myself to shell out the dough to replace my old yet trusty G4 12" Powerbook) has put the new MBP and those shiny graphics chips to the test, and drummed up some real benchmarking numbers in Boot Camp. It turns out to be PC World, strangely enough. And the verdict? Well, it's not quite so great. The good news is that the MacBook Pro is faster than ever, and graphics have significantly improved. And trust us, any improvement over the old chips is a step in the right direction.
Here is an insight into how NASA get their climate data, and how they modify it. The next day the data was adjusted yet again. The Hudson Bay data is removed (but NW Canada was "re-heated" to its original level). The Siberian hot spot was reduced, and the global anomaly stands - for now - at a whopping 0.25°C lower than their original announcement. NASA acknowledges the changes, but other than that provides no details nor any explanation whatever. The older versions of the maps are removed from their site.
NASA have inadvertently sent something else into its own little orbit. Astronaut Heidemarie Stefanyshyn-Piper suffered an astronaut blunder after she mistakenly let go of her tool bag in space after a grease gun inside of her backpack-sized bag exploded. "Uh, we have a lost tool," Stefanyshyn-Piper said as she watched the bag float away. NASA astronauts will now track the bag for the next few days, watching to make sure it doesn't impact the ISS.
There's something else floating around out there-packets! The EPOXI spacecraft, which carried the Deep Impact probe to Comet Talent 1 in 2005, had its software reconfigured after delivering the payload to work as a test bed for NASA's new Disruption-Tolerant Networking protocol. As the craft dropped back toward Earth for one of the gravity assists that will ultimately sling it back toward the comet in 2010, it transmitted simulated images of the Martian moon Phobos using the new protocol. The trial turned EPOXI into one of 10 nodes in a test network (the other nine were on Earth), to verify the reliability and robustness of the new networking architecture.
Twitter has harpooned the fail whale in favour of a caterpillar and an ice cream cone. Meanwhile, some users bemoaned the apparent demise of the Fail Whale that surfaces when too many people use the service at one time, although Twitter co-founder Biz Stone said the whale isn't quite dead yet. "The whale was related to over-capacity performance issues," Stone said in an e-mail to Wired.com. "Twitter has successfully moved to a more reliable state and the so-called Fail Whale has become an endangered species."
Nanotechnology has been used to create the worlds thinnest speaker. The new carbon material, which is 1/1000th the width of a human hair can produce sound with the "same quality of conventional speakers" but does not require magnetic drivers or any moving parts at all. This means that it can fit almost anywhere.
Do you want a cool and tasty lamp? There was once a television series called Land of the Giants. The plot is the epitome of what old-timey daytime television was all about: “A space flight crashes on earth, but it is not the same earth the ship was from. They have arrived to a land of giants.” Apparently the designers at Jellio would like one to believe that it is okay to be perpetually stuck in a kiddie version of that make believe world.
In a nice dose of building porn, here's a sizeable erection. The Burj Dubai, the tallest building in the world, is at 160 stories and counting, with the tower due to be complete next September. But it's not the only tower under construction in Dubai, not by a longshot. No, the city appears to be sprouting up from the ground like a bunch of weeds, with as many cranes as buildings. And now, The Big Picture has nearly 30 amazing shots of the city in transition. Hit the jump for another of my favorites and then head over to The Big Picture for the rest.
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All original content copyright James Rolfe.
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