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OCAU News |
Apple's iPad is to be released in Australia today. The iPad, which beat industry expectations by selling 1 million tablets in the first month of sales in the U.S., will be released Friday in Australia, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Spain, Switzerland and the UK. I imagine it's going to be pretty crazy in our Apple Hardware & Software forum!
Meanwhile from disfunctional, Dell's iPad challenger. DELL will release an iPad rival based on Google's Android operating system in June. Called "Streak," the tablet will have a 5-inch screen, wi-fi, Bluetooth and work on a 3G network. Users can download music, interact with social networking sites, send email, text and instant messages and make phone calls.
Marty sent word of a further battery recall from HP. HP has added battery packs to the replacement program originally announced on May 14, 2009 and revised on October 15, 2009. Product model series were also added to the list of products that may have been sold with affected batteries. The battery packs have the potential to overheat, posing a fire and burn hazard to consumers. The affected battery packs were distributed worldwide in certain HP, HP Pavilion, HP Compaq, and Compaq Presario Notebook Computers.
BP's "Top Kill" effort to block the gulf oil leak is being cautiously called a success so far, but the scale of the disaster is still being determined. Scientists observed 130,000 to 270,000 barrels of oil on the water's surface on May 17, and think a similar amount had already been burned, skimmed, dispersed or evaporated. That would mean 260,000 to 520,000 barrels had been leaked as of 10 days ago. The Exxon Valdez leaked about 250,000 barrels into Alaska's Prince William Sound in 1989.
Warner Brothers are being sued for pirating anti-piracy technology. "We disclosed our anti-piracy technology to Warner Bros. in 2003 at their request, under strict confidentiality, expecting to be treated fairly," the company said in a statement. "Instead, they started using our technology extensively without our permission and without any accounting to us."
There's a new PhysX in Mafia II demo video out, and I don't have much to say about it, except: very nice, but can we really not do all that with a normal GPU? Really? But then I've said that about every PhysX thing I've ever seen, so I'll just move on.
Fans of the show The IT Crowd who are eagerly awaiting the fourth season will be pleasantly surprised to hear it has already been renewed for a fifth season. Speaking at preview screening of the show's fourth season – which will be broadcast this summer – Linehan said that a fifth series had already been commissioned. Linehan, who also wrote Father Ted with Arthur Mathews and Black Books with Dylan Moran, said that after four seasons of writing The IT Crowd alone, he intended to put together a team of writers to work on the fifth series.
For some reason I find this wooden tool chest fascinating. Massachusetts piano maker Henry Studley built his magnificent tool chest over the course of a 30-year career at the Poole Piano Company. The chest lived on the wall near his workbench, and he worked on it regularly, making changes and adding new tools as he acquired them. Using ebony, mother-of-pearl, ivory, rosewood, and mahogany -- all materials used in the manufacture of pianos -- he refined the chest to the point that now, more than 80 years after his death, it remains in a class of its own.
Today's timewaster is circle the cat from Sciby. I think we've seen it before but it's quite fun - I got it on my third go.
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