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TOKYO (AFP) — A Japanese company Tuesday unveiled a new device that will allow people "speak" through their ear so they can use their mobile telephones in noisy places.

The device -- named "e-Mimi-kun" (good ear boy) -- doubles as an earphone and a microphone by detecting air vibrations inside the ear, developer NS-ELEX Co. said.

The earpiece and an accompanying device can be connected to a mobile phone, or wirelessly to a Bluetooth handset, so that users no longer have to cover their mouths when speaking in a loud environment, the company said.

Exterior noise is reduced six-fold by the earpiece, it said, while a chip developed by Sanyo Electric for the accompanying device reduces sound levels ten-fold, it added.

NS-ELEX believes the product would be useful for people working in places such as factories, restaurants and amusement parks.

The open-source DVD is a compilation of 310 currently freely available programs with open source code for daily use has been released. Among these are also hot versions, such OpenOffice 2.3.1 or Firefox 2.0.0.11.

Also, open-source CD games is in the list of available downloads in the link provided below.

Download: here
Changelog: here

According to a message sent by AMD and published on Planet3DNow, customers will be able to purchase Phenom CPUs from them at the cost of current dual-core CPUs. The quads entering the dualie price are the Phenom 9500, 9600 and 9600 Black Edition (unlocked).

"And what's more, to enable you to experience the true performance of the AMD Phenom 9000 series processors, we are offering our loyal customers an early Christmas gift - the Phenom 9500, 9600 and 9600 Black Edition with clock multiplier, at a traditionally Dual-core price!

That's right! With effect from Monday 17th December you will be able to harness quad-core power at a traditionally dual-core price!"

Could this be because of the TLB bug that AMD decided to cut down the prices of its quad-core CPUs? Or pressure coming from Intel that they decided to continue the price war?

Google is testing a system called Knol, a free tool to “encourage people who know a particular subject to write an authoritative article about it”. Knol is dubbed as the Mahalo/Squidoo/Wikipedia killer. One of the project's feature is to highlight authors.

Would Knol be better than Wikipedia if you are able to see the name and picture of the author in every article? And what if Wikipedia will do the same before Knol's launch date?

And as an answer to Google's move, Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales backed an open-source search engine to rival Google, Yahoo, MSN and the likes. 

Search Wikia could go live as an early test version as soon as next week according to news circulating over the net. Search Wikia will not share search data with advertisers, or invade privacy by storing users' search terms.

It is interesting to see how Knol will fare against Wikipedia and how Search Wikia will fare against Google.

TIME has published its 50 Top 10 lists of 2007. It is grouped into five categories: News; Arts & Entertainment; Science; Business, Tech & Sports; and Pop Culture. For the tech category: Halo 3 on the no. 1 slot for the top 10 games, Apple Iphone topping the list of top 10 gadgets and Lemonade.com for the top 10 websites.

Here's the list:

Top 10 Video Games

1. Halo 3
   
2. The Orange Box
   
3. Rock Band
   
4. Super Mario Galaxy
   
5. BioShock
   
6. Call of Duty 4
   
7. Legend of Zelda: Phantom Hourglass
   
8. Mass Effect
   
9. Ace Combat 6: Fires of Liberation
   
10. God of War 2
    

Top 10 Gadgets

1. Apple iPhone
   
2. Nikon Coolpix S51c
   
3. Netgear SPH200W Wi-Fi Skype Phone
   
4. Palm Centro
   
5. Sony Handycam HDR-CX7
   
6. Samsung P2
   
7. Toshiba Portégé R500-S5004
   
8. FlyTech Dragonfly
   
9. Iomega eGo Portable Hard Drive
   
10. Belkin N1 Vision Wi-Fi Router
    

Top 10 Websites

1. Lemonade.com
   
2. AskSunday.com
   
3. Wink.com
   
4. TechPresident.com
   
5. Goodreads.com
   
6. MenuPages.com
   
7. DontForgetYourToothbrush.com
   
8. VolunteerMatch.com
   
9. Fatsecret.com
   
10. Indeed.com

View the complete list: here

A post on Yahoo Message Board called AMD's ACP as Fake-o-watts. AMD claims that its Average CPU Power or ACP is a more realistic measurement of power usage with its four-core K10 offerings compared to Intel's measurement.

Two versions of documents from AMD shows that the K10 has a power problem.

The original document, Version A, AMD shows three TDP: 68W, 95W and 120W.

On the new document, Version B, the values have increased to: 79W, 115W and 137W.

Is this one of the reasons why AMD didn't release the 2.6Ghz Phenom this year?

This is really a bad news for AMD fans. Should they wait for a fix or change camp to Intel's Core?

Doctors in China are puzzled over a man perspiring green sweat. It all started in the middle of November when Cheng Shunguo, 52, of Wuhan city noticed that his underwear and bed sheets were all green, and even the water in the shower.



The doctors have carried out blood tests on Cheng, but found everything to be normal.

In this modern time and with the advancement in medicine, they still couldn't find the cause to cure the problem.

Microsoft is to withdraw an anti-piracy tool from Windows Vista, which disables the operating system when invoked, following customer complaints.

The so-called "kill switch" is designed to prevent users with illegal copies of Vista from using certain features.

But the tool has suffered from glitches since it was introduced with many Windows users claiming that legal copies of Vista had been disabled.

Microsoft says its efforts have seen a drop in piracy of its software.

In a statement released by the company, Microsoft corporate vice president Mike Sievert, said: "Users whose systems are identified as counterfeit will be presented with clear and recurring notices about the status of their system and how to get genuine copies."

Full story: BBC News 

The guy on video is so desperate in installing Windows Vista in his computer. A lot of hardware incompatibilities and the dreaded BSOD, he decided to install it on another machine. Watch and learn.

Here are some review from Digital Trend. If you're a serious hardcore gamer, this one's for you. The HP Blackbird 002. This is the first product of HP/VoodooPC.



It boasts the latest chip from the chip giant - Intel. A mobo from ASUS that supports SLI, and tweaked to support Crossfire. It's some kind of magic.

Should you want to hear this bird sing, you have to pay $5,000. Read the full review here.

Next review features the latest gaming mouse from Microsoft. Designed to compete with products from Logitech and Razer and targeted towards as usual, the hardcore gamers.


Read the full review here.

Microsoft founder Bill Gates has finally named the successor of Internet Explorer 7. The news was revealed on IE Blog over at MSDN.

The new name is surprise, surprise - Internet Explorer 8! lol

But before the IE Team decided to go with IE8, here's the list of possible name they looked for the product as listed on the blog:

• IE 7+1
  
• IE VIII
  
• IE 1000 (think binary)
  
• IE Eight!
  
• iIE
  
• IE for Web 2.0 (Service Pack 2)
  
• IE Desktop Online Web Browser Live Professional Ultimate Edition for the Internet (the marketing team really pushed for this one ;-)
  
• Ie^2.079 (we might still use this for the Math Major Edition)
  

I think it's better if the IE Team before deciding for the final name should have made the list available to the public. Then let the public decide through voting which is the best name. IE 1000 sound pretty cool to me. What's yours?

Based in the beautiful monastic village of Disentis, Switzerland, Simon Jacomet and his team at Zai have established a gloriously understated reputation for designing and crafting the most advanced, high-spec skis in the world. Only 500 pairs are made a year. Innovation - indeed to blaze a trail for the whole skiing industry - has always been at the heart of their mission.



These very special limited edition Spada (the Romanic word for sword) skis are the first ever made to have a heart of Grisons granite. Using stone in skis may sound incredible but stone has ideal characteristics for this application. Rendered bendable by Technocarbon of Munich’s new Carbon Fibre Stone technology, stone has enormous compressive strength (the same specific mass as aluminum) and resilience, retains its shape and dampens vibrations. The result is a ski with incomparable agility, grip and smoothness.

Visit: Yankodesign site

Expreview has a clear photo of R680. The GPU is covered by a large copper-based-aluminum-fin and a big fan.



They say that both cores’ frequency are 777MHz, the same as HD 3870’s. And R680 is using 1GB GDDR3 memory. Their source indicate that the retail version’s frequency is still unidentified.

It is really a big card.

SEOUL, South Korea - Tired of irritating smudges, dust and fingerprints on laptop computer screens? LG.Philips LCD has come up with a dirt-resistant, easy-to-clean panel.

A special coating on screens used to reduce glare also had a tendency to retain dirt and oil, the company said. A second coating to make screens dirt-resistant was costly and time-consuming.

Now, a single coating can do both jobs, LG.Philips said.

"Our new panel employs a principle similar to that used on non-stick frying pans," Ahn Byung-chul, who leads development of advanced technology at the company, said in a statement. "Dirt and oil can easily be wiped away."

LG.Philips LCD Co., the world's second-largest manufacturer of liquid crystal displays, said the new coating even facilitates the removal of ink.

The new technology is slated to go into production the first half of 2008, first on the 15.4-inch widescreen panels LG.Philips makes for notebook computers and later for notebook panels of all sizes by the end of next year.

John Soh, an analyst at Goodmorning Shinhan Securities Co. in Seoul, predicted the technology will be popular with students as they often use writing instruments such as pens in conjunction with laptops.

The Seoul-based company competes with South Korean rival Samsung Electronics Co. for global dominance in liquid crystal displays, which are used in flat screen televisions, computer monitors and mobile phones. While ranking second in the overall LCD market, LG.Philips is first in screens for laptops.

A service of the Associated Press (AP)

Sucking the bandwidth.

A study from Nemertes Research Group suggests the increasing use of video services such as YouTube could see the internet reach breaking point in just three years’ time.

The research firm says the flood of new video content could overwhelm the web by 2010 unless backbone providers invest up to $137bn in new capacity, more than double what service providers plan to invest, according to the study. In North America alone, backbone investments of $42bn to $55bn will be needed in the next three to five years to keep up with demand, Nemertes said.

Full story: here

A very entertaining video on Youtube. This is a simple DIY. All you need is a Gatorade and an onion. Its kinda messy compared to traditional charging using cable and electricity. I haven't tried this (simply because I don't have an Ipod, lol) so do it with caution. Your Ipod is at risk should you decide to try this.



And also, don't forget to clean your USB cables. :)

2,500 comics including the back issues of comic-turned-movie characters like Spiderman, X-Men, Fantastic Four are now available online at marvel.com for $59.88/year-long commitment or $9.99/month.


Image courtesy of xinhuanet.com

For that amount, you can read the first 100 issues of Stan Lee's 1963 creation "Amazing Spider-Man" at your leisure or any recent titles you want to read.

I haven't tried the service or I'm willing to because I don't have a bottom-less wallet to shell-out that amount. What bothers me is if those issues are downloadable, sooner than later it will surely hit the pirates bay. You know what I mean - big headache for Marvel.

China's largest cellphone service provider, China Mobile, successfully tested a transmission station on Mount Everest which makes it the Worlds Highest Mobile Base Station.

This station will serve the calls of climbers and next year's Olympic torch relay.

Because the base is incredibly difficult to construct due to the low level of oxygen, China Mobile had to hire yaks and porters to help transport equipment up to the station site at 21,325 feet.

Full story: here

AMDZone have an exclusive pic of the Phenom box. AMD Phenom will be launched this November and the Phenom FX hopefully this December as a Yuletide present to all AMD fans. Here's the pic in its full glory. :)

Linux Journal, the oldest surviving Linux magazine on the market, is offering a free download of its November 2007 issue in PDF format. Just give your valid email address and they will send you the direct download link.



Once you have requested a free issue download, you will not be able to download subsequent free promotional issues from their page.

Download request link: here

Nickel Metal Hydride or NiMH is a very popular type of rechargeable battery. They can be used over and over again up to 1,000 times. Applications of NiMH type batteries includes hybrid vehicles such as the Toyota Prius to digital cameras, flashlights, and other consumer electronics.



A popular brand of battery, the Energizer D, is under investigation at NewsTarget. They are wondering why Energizer "D" batteries are so weak. After taking a closer look, they found out that it only provide "AA" battery capacity, with a price of 400% more.

The stated capacity of the said battery is 2,500 mAh - the same capacity of smaller "AA" size batteries. The reason? The "D" cell is actually just an "AA" cell inside a larger casing.

The picture above says it all.

Its kinda like a house without windows and only doors :)

How long does it take for Windows to boot? On a newly installed PC, it is around 1 to 3 minutes depending on the system specs. Then as you install softwares and games, it will take a while for Windows to boot. A little more time if Wi-Fi is installed.

Enter fast-boot with HyperSpace, developed by Phoenix Technologies, the same company responsible for most PC's BIOS.

This program is actually an operating system that sits on top of BIOS. This allows most Windows software to run without Windows. Phoenix says all you need to do is press F4. HyperSpace can load most used apps like web browsers, e-mail and media players.

Phoenix is currently in talks with most major PC manufacturers, with the notable exception of Apple.

Turning-on a PC will soon be like turning-on a TV.

Seagate agrees to settle the lawsuit filed against it. Qualified hard drive buyers, those who have made a purchase during the last six years will be paid by choosing either cash or backup software.

Michael Lazar and Sarah Cho both purchased Seagate hard drives in the US. They are the ones who filed the initial lawsuit after finding the drives were 7% less than what is indicated on the product.

Cho alleged that Seagate's use of the decimal definition of the storage capacity term "gigabyte" (GB) whereby 1GB equals 1 billion bytes, was misleading to consumers because computer operating systems instead report hard drive capacity using a binary definition of GB, whereby 1GB equals 1, 073, 741, 824 bytes -- a difference of approximately 7% from Seagate's figures.

More here.

AMD is developing an application called AMD Overdrive to boost performance and extract more processing power from its chip. This app allows the cores of Phenom to be adjusted independently. This is a good news for AMD fans and overclockers.

Here's a screenshot courtesy of Expreview:

Windows 7 is the next version of Windows after Vista. It was recorded on video along with MinWin - an internal project to build the most efficient Windows kernel which will in turn be used in Windows 7.

Presented by Microsoft’s distinguished engineer Eric Traut, the whole presentation (WMV) goes for approximately 1 hour and includes a very deep look into hypervisors.

Video link: here

BUG is a new kind of device, one that's designed by you, not us. BUG is an open source, modular consumer electronics platform that makes building hardware just as easy as writing software or Web applications.


To view Bug Labs video content, you need the latest Flash Player. Get it here.

Product link: here

Can't wait to centralize and showcase your family's memories and media? Order the Windows Home Server 120-Day Evaluation Kit today. You're just a few clicks away from a new digital life.
What will you receive?

• Windows Home Server Installation DVD
  
• Windows Home Server Connector CD
  
• Home Computer Restore CD
  

To install the Windows Home Server 120-Day Evaluation Kit, you need:

• Computer with 1 GHz Pentium III (or equivalent) or faster processor
  
• 512 MB of RAM or more
  
• 70 GB or larger ATA, SATA, or SCSI hard drive as the primary hard drive and any number of additional hard drives of any size
  
• DVD drive—your home server must be capable of booting from this drive
  
• VGA or higher-resolution monitor for software installation
  
• Keyboard and Microsoft Mouse or compatible pointing device (needed only during initial home server software installation)
  
• 100 Mbps or faster Ethernet network interface card

To run Windows Home Server, your home network must meet the following minimum requirements:

• Internet broadband router/firewall device with a 100 Mbps or faster wired Ethernet connection for your home server
  
• Windows Home Server assumes that your home computers get their IP address from the router/firewall device on your home network
  
• Broadband connection (fees may apply)
  

Order link: here

Sharp-eyed members of vr-zone forum posted "leaked" pictures of the upcoming Nvidia 8800 GT. The card is manufactured by MSI.



One of the forum moderator in a ninja mode posted the performance of this card. The GT outperforms the existing 8800 GTS models in some tests. And what's more if the post is true, it outperforms the Radeon HD 2900 XT in ALL but ONE test.

This card will surely bring headache in the AMD/ATI camp.

"The development marks an important step in the evolution of nano-electronics and could lead to the production of the world’s smallest radio"

Almost 1,000 times smaller than current radio technology, thousands of times smaller than the diameter of a human hair.

Researchers in University of California used it to transmit classical music wirelessly from an iPod to a speaker several metres away from the music player.

The study marks the first time that a nano-sized detector has been demonstrated in a working radio system.

Full details of their findings will be published next month in the American Chemical Society's Nano Letters.

BEIJING, Oct. 22 (Xinhua) -- China is planning to launch its first moon orbiter at around 6 p.m. on October 24 from the Xichang Satellite Launch Center in Sichuan Province.

"The satellite will be launched between October 24 and 26 and our first choice is around 6 p.m. on October 24," a spokesman for the China National Space Administration (CNSA) said.

The circumlunar satellite, which has been named Chang'e I after the legendary Chinese goddess who, according to legend, flew to the moon, and the carrier Long March 3A have passed all pre-launch tests and have been transported to the launch site.

The lunar probe is expected to enter earth-moon transfer orbit on October 31 and arrive in the moon's orbit on November 5.

More: here

Scientists have unveiled plans in controlling one of the forces of nature - the hurricane.

The first approach from Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), which has only been tested only using a computer simulation, is to "paint" the tops of hurricanes black by scattering carbon particles – either soot or black particles from the manufacture of tyres – from aircraft flying above the storms. The particles would absorb heat from the sun, leading to changes in the airflows within the storm. Satellites could also heat the cloud tops by beaming microwaves from space.

The second approach simulated by scientists at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, is by sowing clouds with microscopic dust to cool the hurricane's base, also weakening it. The dust would attract water but would form droplets too small to fall as rain. Instead, they would rise and evaporate, cooling hot air at the hurricane base.

Two teams, one goal. I just hope it doesn't have any side effects.

A tattoo that changes
The SKIN; Tattoo project investigates the use of 'electronic' ink that would allow people to have dynamic tattoos with an infinite number of display options. In much the same way as make-up is put on and taken off to suit the occasion, a tattoo could alter whenever desired. The tattoos could even change in response to gestures or emotions, which opens up novel ways of communicating and interacting with others.

Skintile The Electronic Sensing Jewelry
Electronic Sensing Jewelry has been conceived alongside a European project, STELLA, (www.stella-project.de) developing stretchable, flexible electronic substrates that integrate energy supply, sensors, actuators, and display.

Skintile the Electronic Sensing Jewelry further explores emotional and physiological sensing. It is a new genre of product; a generation of wireless, stick-on body sensors that re-define traditional body adornment.


It explores a range of functionalities in new product forms that are playful, sensual, mood affected, bio activity stimulated, and arousal enhancing. It is a semi disposable, bio compatible, non-allergenic, breathable, mass customizable, self contained body worn accessory.

More Designs: here

“If you had a device like this in your shoes when you walked, you would be able to generate your own small current to power small electronics”

Brilliant scientists have discovered a way to make small generators to create electricity on their own, enabling us to hopefully one day replace batteries.

Enough electricity could be generated to power a small biosensor implanted within the human body which has great benefits since typical batteries cannot be used in the body because of toxic materials like lithium and cadmium.

Get ready for a big change. By 2010 your mobile phone may be powered by water. Samsung Electro-Mechanics has developed a micro-fuel cell and hydrogen generator that runs on H20.



The micro-fuel cell can generate up to 3watts of electricity and could power a handset for 10 hours, twice as long as rechargeable batteries.

More: here

The Sphelar takes on a spherical shape, which makes it capable of power generation with greater efficiency and flexible applications. This tiny solar cell measuring a mere 1 mm across holds huge potential, standing ready to contribute to the realization of everything from ubiquitous network society to clean-energy society.



The traditional flat panel solar cell will become history. The purpose of this rounded solar panels is still the same - to capture energy. But the difference is that it doesn’t have to precisely face the sun to capture energy. It can generate electricity from sunshine coming in any direction.

Vista Service Pack 1, still in beta, has been released to selected beta testers. If you can't wait for the final Service Pack (I don't care what's your reason), here's a tip to get it. This is from ghacks.net, and several sites reports that this simple registry tweak is fool proof at the the time of writing this post - unless MS finds a way to fix it.

Downloading Windows Vista Service Pack 1 from Windows Updates:

• Download Windows Vista Service Pack and unpack it to your system.
  
• Run SP1Beta_Hack.cmd with administrator privileges and Windows Updates afterwards. It should show KB935509 which you should download and restart afterwards.
  
• Run Windows Updates again, it should display KB937287. Download and restart your PC afterwards.
  
• Run Windows Updates for a third time. Download the now appearing KB938371, restart your computer.
  
• Finally, visit Windows Updates again and you should see the Service Pack 1 Beta for Microsoft Windows Vista available for download.
  

Removing the Evaluation Copy message:

• This is fairly easy to accomplish. Run watermark_fix.reg first
  
• Rename user32.dll.mui to user32.dll.mui.old in C:\Windows\System32\en-US\
  
• copy user32.dll.mui from the archive to that location
  
• Reboot Windows Vista
  

Warning: Do not blame me or this blog if something bad happened to your system. I'm just posting what I've digged on the net. :)

According to ZDNet, the Vista "out of memory" error pops up when a user tries to copy 16,400 files or smaller groups of files that add up to 16,400 between reboots. 

After that, a range of other errors can occur such as menus and tabs disappearing within the Windows environment and even reboots and BSODs.



The problem is common to users running Kaspersky security products though the root of it is the kernel leak. Both Microsoft and Kaspersky know the issue for months and only now Microsoft issued the patch to solve the problem. You have to request online just to obtain the said patch.

IDF Taiwan 2007 - The Inquirer reports that Charles Wirth a.k.a Fugger, owner of xtremesystems.org, overclocked Intel's 3.2 GHz FSB1600 Yorkfield Extreme with the same 200-pound cooling gear (pic below), and broke the 5.8 GHz barrier. The previous record was 5.56GHz on a 3GHz X9650 Yorkfield Extreme.



Over at VR-Zone's forum, Shamimo, the forum's moderator and overclocking genius hits 6Ghz with 429 FSB. "Funny thing doesn't boot into windows at 6 gig", he said. But runs superpi 1M at 5.97gig: 22seconds! Running through a loop of 3D Mark at 5.8Ghz, with just 595/1350.

Amazing chip, really!

Is this the promised "new earth" written in the bible? Scientists have discovered a warm and rocky "second Earth" circling a star, a find they believe dramatically boosts the prospects that we are not alone.



Researchers detected the planet orbiting one of Earth's nearest stars, a cool red dwarf called Gliese 581, 20 light years away in the constellation of Libra.

Measurements of the planet's celestial path suggest it is 1½ times the size of our home planet, and orbits close to its sun, with a year of just 13 days. The planet's orbit brings it 14 times closer to its star than Earth is to the sun. But Gliese 581 burns at only 3,000C, half the temperature of our own sun, making conditions on the planet comfortable for life, with average ground temperatures estimated at 0 to 40C.

More info: here

Did you know that the keyword "sex" is the most frequently searched word in Egypt, India and Turkey. That is according to the statts provided by Google Inc.

Germany, Mexico and Austria's most used keyword in searching is "Hitler" while "Nazi" scored the most hits in Chile, Australia and the United Kingdom. In Canada it is "hangover".

Chile is in the first place for searching "gay" followed by Mexico and Columbia.

This country of mine is in the list too. It is on the first place for searching "Love" followed by Australia and US.

Philippines is on the top list again for searching "Homosexual" followed by Chile and Venezuela.

Here's the top searches in order - from first to third.

• "Jihad" — Morocco, Indonesia, Pakistan
  
• "Terrorism" — Pakistan, Philippines, Australia
  
• "Hangover" — Ireland, United Kingdom, United States
  
• "Burrito" — United States, Argentina, Canada
  
• "Iraq" — United States, Australia, Canada
  
• "Taliban" — Pakistan, Australia, Canada
  
• "Tom Cruise" — Canada, United States, Australia
  
• "Britney Spears" — Mexico, Venezuela, Canada
  
• "Homosexual" — Philippines, Chile, Venezuela
  
• "Love" — Philippines, Australia, United States
  
• "Botox" — Australia, United States, United Kingdom
  
• "Viagra" — Italy, United Kingdom, Germany
  
• "David Beckham" — Venezuela, United Kingdom, Mexico
  
• "Kate Moss" — Ireland, United Kingdom, Sweden
  
• "Dolly Buster" — Czech Republic, Austria, Slovakia
  
• "Car bomb" — Australia, United States, Canada
  
• "Marijuana" — Canada, United States, Australia
  
• "IAEA" — Austria, Pakistan, Iran

VR-Zone and Expreview reports that Nvidia is set to introduce 3-way SLI and that is on the 12th of November.



These are the few requirements to get 3-way SLI up and running:

• 3-way SLI drivers
  
• a 680i SLI or the upcoming 780a/780i SLI board with at least 3 PCIe x16 slots.
  
• GeForce 8800 Ultra or GeForce 8800 GTX cards as these cards have 2 SLI connectors on each card. Even the upcoming G92 cards will not support since it has only 1 SLI connector.
  
• a 3-way SLI bridge card.

ME has been used on Windows, which means Millennium Edition. The poor thing! Dubbed as "millennium bug" because of so many bug that it crashes a lot. Windows 98 is even better!

Now, ME is being used again. But this time on a popular Linux distro - Ubuntu. Known for its solid foundation - Debian -, this distro has been customized. And the result is ME - Muslim Edition.

This distro targets our Muslim brothers. UbuntuME has Islamic softwares installed - prayer times, Quran study tool, web content filtering tool etc., and its design has been changed to reflect Islam.

Visit: UbuntuME

As the time of writing, the counter on Gmail log-in page is at 2913.047816 -- and still counting. If you're a frequent user of Gmail, you could easily notice the counter has speed-up.

Gmail announced on its blog they're speeding the counter. "To make good on our promise, today we're announcing we are speeding up our counter and giving out more free storage", as quoted on the blog.

This is I think in response to Yahoo's unlimited storage and Hotmail's 5GB storage. Competition is realy good. :)

View: Official Gmail Blog

In 1965, Intel co-founder Gordon Moore made a prediction, now popularly known as Moore's Law. It states that the number of transistors on a chip doubles about every two years.

Things are about to change. The battle now is on core. Single, dual, quad core cpu's populate the market. But a very odd thing happened inside AMD. Instead of doubling the cores, AMD announced they were coming out with a triple-core processor in the Phenom family of processors in Q1 2008. Still according to reports, AMD plots 8 to 16-core super-CPU for 2009 codename Bulldozer.

AMD's Triple-Core (codename Toliman) is Phenom 7-series and plans to launch the new processor family by Q1 next year.

AMD has come out with the industries first native quad-core processor with Barcelona, unlike Intel's quad-core cpu which is actually two dualie "glued" together.

The idea of triple-core goes like this. Engineers at AMD tests the quad-core cpu core-by-core. If for example, three cores functions at 2.6GHz and the other one at 2.0Ghz, the engineers have to decide. Should they make it a 2.0GHz Quad-core or should they make it a 2.6 Triple-core?

Very clever indeed. I don't think Intel can spoil this thing by simply "glue-ing" a single and dual-core cpu.

Another first from AMD. :)

IBM's Symphony is not in harmony with Openoffice.

While IBM is reporting that its new Symphony suite of office productivity tools is downloaded by 100,000 users, John McCreesh, the marketing executive of OpenOffice.org said he was annoyed that Symphony became the default application for all his OpenOffice.org files. The product installs itself without asking.

Not only that. Upon digging further with the help of an engineer, he discovered that the program was actually "a very old version 1.x release of OpenOffice.org", with a new interface and rebranding.

Visit: Symphony Homepage

TOKYO — With steely arms sprouting cables and wires, the WAO-1 robot looks nothing like a relaxation device.

The WAO-1 robot, which stands for Waseda Asahi Oral Rehabilitation Robot 1, is being developed initially for patients with jaw-related medical problems who require facial massages as part of their treatment, according to project leader Atsuo Takanishi.

The robot's arms are fitted with ceramic spheres the size of golf balls, and the spheres roll over the skin.



The arms' movements are controlled by a complex set of algorithms designed to emulate massages, while six sensors at the base of the arms measure and adjust the pressure applied by the spheres, Takanishi said.

More: FOXNews

According to the latest AMD roadmap leak and compiled by VR-Zone, expect three Phenom CPUs to appear this year, all of them in the 9000 series. Sadly, gamers won't see a 3.0GHz Phenom FX this year.

Phenom FX-82 will be clocked at 2.6GHz or higher while the faster FX-8x model could hit 3GHz. FX-82 DVT samples will be available in Q4 while production will kick off in Q1 2008 while FX-8x DVT sample and production is slated for Q2 2008.

Phenom 9600 and 9500 clocked at 2.4GHz and 2.2GHz respectively will be the first quad-core Phenom processors to hit the market in Nov. Phenom 9700 clocked at 2.6GHz will come along slightly later in Dec. A faster iteration of the quad-core Phenom will come along in Q2 2008 while DVT samples will be available in Q1. Most likely, it will be called Phenom 9800 and clocked at 2.8GHz.

Vixta is a Fedora-based Linux distribution designed to be user-friendly and eye-catching, similar in look and feel to Windows Vista. One of their goal is ABN - AbsolutelyNo Config.

Application bundled with it is Konqueror - the equivalent of Explorer, OpenOffice instead of MS Office, and Firefox of course for browsing the web. Absolutely not WGA infected!



I think the similarity of interface and name will cause problem to this start-up distro. Expect MS lawyers to file lawsuit against them, similar to what had happened to Lindows. Microsoft argues that the Lindows name is misleading and due to the trademark lawsuit, Lindows changed its name to Linspire.

I just hope this "good-looking" distro will last.

Visit/Download: Vixta

October is a busy month for major linux distributions. Opensuse released version 10.3 followed by Ubuntu accepting pre-order cd through ShipIt. Now Mandriva 2008 and Linspire 6.0 has been released. Mandriva installation files are available for download on their site and via torret too.

Linspire on the other hand is available for purchase and download from the company's online store (US$49.95).

French scientist Albert Fert and Peter Grunberg of Germany have won the 2007 Nobel Prize for physics.

The Nobel panel in Stockholm awarded Albert Fert of the University of Paris-Sud, in Orsay, France; and Peter Grunberg, of the Julich Research Center, in Julich, Germany, each with the medal and split the $1.5 million prize for the discovery of giant magnetoresistance.

The knowledge has allowed industry to develop sensitive reading tools to pull data off hard drives in computers, iPods and other digital devices. It has made it possible to radically miniaturise hard disks in recent years.

The rumor has been confirmed. A report circulated over the net saying Google shows phone prototype to vendors.

Google is showing the prototype to cell phone manufacturers and network operators as it continues to hone the technical specifications that will allow the phone to offer a better mobile Web browsing experience than current products.

The prototype cell phone that could reach markets within a year, and plans to offer consumers free subscriptions by bundling advertisements with its search engine, e-mail and Web browser software applications.

Are you willing to listen to ads before making or accepting a call in exchange with the free subscription? Another question, how long will the ads be? I just hope its not loooong like the ads shown in the Pacquiao-Barrera fight.

CHIBA, Japan (AP) - It's like a personal trainer. It's with you wherever you go. The phone, unveiled this week at the CEATEC electronics show outside Tokyo, has an inbuilt motion sensor that detects body movement and calculates how many calories you burn. The sensor can tell whether you're walking, running, climbing stairs, or resting.

The phone can take your pulse, check your body fat, time your jogs and tell you if you have bad breath. It even assesses stress levels and inspires you with a pep talk.

No more WGA for Internet Explorer 7. Previously, to download Internet Explorer 7, users had to authenticate to WGA. That is Microsoft's tactic to prevent users with pirated copies of Windows from running/installing IE7.

Microsoft said that it had dropped the requirement for WGA for security reasons. But I see it in a different way. It think its rival Mozilla Firefox is eating its browser share.

To increase or take back its share, Microsoft finally dropped that nasty WGA. Good for them, but I'm happy and I'll stick with Firefox and Opera. This blog is best viewed using those browser. :)

StarCraft II is the ultimate competitive real-time strategy game, and the sequel to the hit original, StarCraft. The game will include three completely distinct and balanced races, the Protoss, Terran, and Zerg, which have been overhauled and re-imagined with a number of new units for each, as well as new tricks for some of the classic units that are returning.



When is the game coming out?
At this point, it's too early to provide an initial estimate on the release date. As with all Blizzard games, we will take as much time as needed to ensure the game is as fun, balanced, and polished as possible.

How will StarCraft II be different from StarCraft?
StarCraft II will run on a vibrant new 3D-graphics engine that will be capable of rendering beautiful landscapes as well as massive individual units and army sizes. Also introducing a number of distinct new units to the Protoss, Terran, and Zerg, and even some of the familiar units that return in StarCraft II will have new tricks up their sleeves, which will give the game its own unique flavor.

In addition, Battle.net will be overhauled with some new and exciting features to enhance online play and competition, while the campaign will also offer some unique aspects for players who enjoy single-player content. More details on all these aspects in the months to come.

Visit: starcraft2.com

Ubuntu's ShipIt system has started accepting pre-orders for "Gutsy Gibbon", the upcoming Ubuntu 7.10.

Ubuntu is available free of charge and they can send you CDs of the latest version (7.10 "Gutsy Gibbon") with no extra cost, but the delivery may take up to ten weeks. So if you have a fast internet connection, you should consider downloading the CD images.

Pre-order CDs: here
Download: here

A company called Fushion io has developed a super fast solid-state flash hard drive. The product under the ioDrive name, is actually a PCIe card and will start at 80 GB and will scale to 320 and 640 GB next year. By the end of 2008, Fusion io also hopes to roll out a 1.2 TB card.



The card as reported here, has 160 parallel pipelines that can read data at 800 megabytes per second and write at 600 MB/sec. When tested on a benchmark set for the worst case scenario by using small 4K blocks and then streaming eight simultaneous 1 GB reads and writes, the ioDrive clocked in at 100,000 operations per second, thrashing the performance of a regular hard drive.

Though this blog focus on Science & Technology especially on computers, sometimes I create post which is of public interest in this country of mine. Our Pambansang Kamao (National Fist), defeated Mexican legend Marco Antonio Barrera via unanimous decision in 12 rounds of action.

The news of victory spreaded like a wildfire over the internet, radio, and text messages (SMS) even before the opening bell of round one of the much awaited rematch which was aired at GMA TV.

Pic courtesy of Fightnews.com

The problem with shows like this, it is overloaded with TV commercials. The fight which started at 10am ended five minutes before 4pm, Sunday in the Philippines. The excitement is gone, if you watched it on local channel. If you want to see it without ads, go and pay on a local cinema or if you know a friend who is subscribed in a cable or satellite tv, go over to their place and watch with them.

The Pacquiao-Barrera main event have a more than 1-hour airtime, and that is for the tv commercials alone! Three national anthem and in between those anthems is a 5 minute commercial. The shortest tv commercial in between rounds is 4 minutes and more than 8 minutes for the longest.

That is the price you'll pay if you're not on a PPV channel. :)

There is a report at Fudzilla which according to their sources, AMD's Quad Core Phenom FX, will launch a 2.8 if not even a 3.0+ GHz in 2007. This will finally give Intel a good reason to reconsider its roadmaps, they add.

Over at The Inquirer, they managed to capture pics of working RV670, Phenom system. AMD Phenom, RD790 and RV670 are all supposed to arrive in at the same time, the report said.

AMD is calling its CPU+GPU+Chipset package "Spider". Feast on this pics:

Starting January 1, 2008, Intel will change the brand of its processor offerings to consolidate and simplify its line-up according to a report on vnunet.com

Intel's vPro and Viiv platforms will be known as Core2 vPro and Core2 Viiv. These are Core2 based microarchitecture.

The Centrino, Centrino Duo and Centrino Pro lines, which had appeared under five different logos, will now be known as Centrino and Centrino vPro.

At the high end, the Xeon brand will remain the same, while the Itanium 2 brand will be shortened to Itanium. The Core2 family, as well as the Pentium and Celeron brands, will remain the same.

Two handy utilities, similar in interface. The goal is the same, to provide info about a system's CPU and GPU. And some additional info too about the motherboard model, memory module info, etc.

CPU-Z is a freeware detection program base on the Panopsys hardware detection engine.

Some features:

• Processor name and vendor
  
• Core stepping and process
  
• Processor package
  
• Processor current core voltage
  
• Internal and external clocks, clock multiplier
  
• Partial overclock detection
  
• Processor features, including supported instructions sets.
  
• L1 to L3 cache information : location, size, speed, technology.
  
• Motherboard information : name, vendor, BIOS, chipset, memory, AGP.
  
• Memory information : size, type, timings, specifications
  

Download: CPU-Z 1.41

GPU-Z is a lightweight utility designed to give you all information about your video card and GPU

Main Features

• Support NVIDIA and ATI cards
  
• Displays adapter, GPU and display information
  
• Displays overclock, default clocks and 3D clocks (if available)
  
• Validation of results
  
• No installation required
  
• Support for Windows 2000 / XP / Vista (both 32 and 64 bit versions are supported)
  

Download: TechPowerUp GPU-Z v0.0.6 (still in beta)

Novell has announced the release of openSUSE 10.3: "Novell today announced the availability of openSUSE 10.3, the newest version of the award-winning community Linux distribution. Enhancements to openSUSE 10.3 include the newest versions of the GNOME and KDE desktop environments, including a KDE 4 preview. OpenOffice.org 2.3 makes sharing files easy, and the newest version of AppArmor protects the Linux operating system and applications from attacks, viruses and malicious applications. OpenSUSE 10.3 also now includes MP3 support out of the box for Banshee and Amarok, which are the default media players in openSUSE. In addition, openSUSE 10.3 offers the latest open source applications for developing applications, setting up a home network and running a web server."



Download Mirrors: here
View: Release Notes
More info: here

A Filipino is being acknowledged as the inventor of the Lunar Rover, or more popularly known as the Moon Buggy which was used by Neil Armstrong, but until now, no Pinoy have set a foot on the moon. The space race belongs to Russia and US, and China is joining them.

NASA has a 2020 deadline for returning Americans to the moon. China would like to beat that.

The Soviets beat the United States at getting a satellite, and a man, into space. Now, the Chinese may get to the moon before the U.S. can make a return visit.

"I personally believe that China will be back on the moon before we are,'' NASA Administrator Michael Griffin said in a low-key lecture in Washington two weeks ago, marking the space agency's 50th anniversary, still a year away.

"I think when that happens, Americans will not like it. But they will just have to not like it."

The U.S. is "more technically advanced. We certainly could be back on the moon faster than the Chinese, but we don't have the political will and therefore the resources to do it,'' said Joan Johnson-Freese, head of the Naval War College's national security decision-making department.

Full Story: here

It is a single slot card.



Due to be released in about three weeks, the G8P/G92 or better yet, the GeForce 8800 GT clock speed are set to hover around 600 MHz for the GPU and 1800 MHz for the memory but, at least the core may be set to a higher level so as to better counter AMD upcoming RV670-powered Radeon HD 2950.

More pics/info: here

The picture says it all! :)







Source: here (needs some translation)

Here are some other suggestions, culled from a range of sources, for devising passwords that are both secure and easy to remember:

• Use the calendar. Type in the month, year and a few letters to identify the account, such as "sep06Budgt." The following month, change "sep" to "oct." No repetitions. No-brainer.
  


• Add characters. Take the name of the account or website, then add, say, the last four digits of a familiar phone number (though never your own). That might produce "bizblog9485."
  


• Use mnemonics on random passwords. If you get a password assigned, don't change it — just find a way to remember it. Say you got "4tgGw39DK." That could become, "For the great Google warrior 39 Donna Karens." Not poetry, but say it a few times and it turns into a mental tattoo. You can get random character strings from free online utilities like Passnerd.com and BizFormBar.com.
  


• Combine small, misspelled words. To make a password easier to remember, use words starting with the same letter and perhaps related meaning (hyheihallo), then perhaps capitalize the first letters (HyHeiHallo) or break the words up with numbers (Hi1Hei2Hallo3), or substitute numbers for some letters (h1h3ihall0).
  


• Use first letters of a phrase. "mygolfhandicapis6," for example, would become "mghi6."
  


• Devise a code. Nothing techy here, just a simple scrambling system. For example, if your password phrase is "MyHandicapIs6," move one key to the right for each character: "
  


• Keypad scramble. Take a name or phrase you can easily remember, then type it using the phone keypad. "MyHandicapIs6" could become “my4263422747six."
  


• Scramble words. For instance, alternate the letters of each word, so "MyHandicapIs6" could become "MHI6yasndicap."
  


• Use special keys. Hold down the shift or alt key as you type part of your password. With the Alt key down on every third character, our handicap password becomes "my·anðicåpis§."
  


• Add spaces. Assuming the company's or website's password protocol allows it, it's a good way to foil dictionary searches. You might have "myhan dicapi s6."
  


• Remove vowels. "Mhndcps6."

Aside from these tips, you can also download free program such as  Acerose Password Vault. You install it on your computer, create one strong password that logs you into the program, then the software automatically generates and/or remembers all your other passwords.
Read full article: CBC News

COLUMBUS, Ohio - Ohio State University researchers say a breakfast byproduct could play a role in a new way of powering cars.

The researchers say they've found that eggshells can help produce hydrogen for fuel cells that mix the gas with oxygen to create energy for running a vehicle. Instead of exhaust, all that's emitted is water vapor.

The current process for obtaining hydrogen also produces carbon dioxide, a greenhouse gas. Ohio State engineering professor L.S. Fan says his team has found that when eggshells are added to the process, they absorb the carbon dioxide.

He says they would need to be buried afterward to keep the gas out of the atmosphere.

Fan says using eggshells also would save egg processors money now spent to dump their eggshells in landfills.

Source: The Columbus Dispatch

The Magical Jelly Bean Keyfinder is a freeware utility that retrieves your Product Key (cd key) used to install windows from your registry. It has the options to copy the key to clipboard, save it to a text file, or print it for safekeeping. It works on Windows 95, 98, ME, 2000, XP, Server 2003, Windows Vista, Office XP, Office 2003, and Office 2007.

Upon running this small utility, it quickly displayed the product key of Windows, Office and Winamp Pro. A nice and handy tool.

Download: here

The third largest PC maker and manufacturer of Thinkpad laptops - Lenovo, prepares to introduce budget PCs aimed at entry-level users. The company would bring to the Philippines -- on a test-market basis -- a PC priced below $200 per unit - less than P10,000 at current exchange rates.

This would be done “within the year.”

It was not clear what would be the specs of the said PC, what processor and other parts but the report states that the said sub-$200 PC would be a device with the basic functionality required by everyday computer users.

Full story: here

A prototype pillow developed/invented by Daryoush Bazargani, a computer science professor, was on display during a health conference in Germany. The professor said he invented the pillow because he snores too.

The pillow which is connected to a computer stops snoring by shifting the head's sleeping position until the noise stops. The computer's function is to analyze noise. It will then reduce or enlarge air compartments within the pillow to facilitate nasal airflow to minimise snoring as the user shifts during sleep.

The ergonomic pillow can also be used for neck massage too. 

You don't need laptop to go mobile anymore. Thanks to an application called Mojopac. Capture your PC’s files, programs and settings, and stores them on an iPod or similar gadget.

Plug the device into another Windows XP computer, and your desktop appears, with all your programs and files exactly as you left them—and ready for action.

Mojopac takes up just 30 megabytes, which means it will fit on most flash drives.

Watch how it works: here.

Sony's upcoming XEL-1 11-inch OLED based TV will be on sale this coming December. Since it is the first, it will come with a high price for sure. Price will go down when it enters mass production, that will be at the end of this decade.

It seems that Sony is making good on its promise to deliver the first commercial Organic LED (OLED) based TV in 2007. The new XEL-1 (organic EL based panel) will be the first to go on sale on Japan this December for around $1735. The new ultra thin (3mm) 11-inch display will boost a remarkable contrast of 1,000,000: 1 (or higher) compared to around 20,000:1 on today's high end Plasma displays. The high contrast will result in much deeper (more realistic) black color and should also allow to view the TV in a brightly lit room.

The XEL-1 has a small 11-inch display, 960 x 450 resolution, HDMI, USB and Ethernet connections as well as 2 x 1W speakers. This configuration is not intended to replace a 50' full HD home-theater display but could used as a high quality screen for a small bedroom or office. If successful however, larger version from Sony (and possibly other manufacturers such as Samsung, Pioneer and Philips) could reach the market in 2008-2009 offering real alternatives to LCD and Plasma displays.

Microsoft is an amazingly transparent company. Google is not. Any peek is a good peek.

These are the words from a blogsite. And from the title of the post, "Life at Google - The Microsoftie Perspective", it looks like it's from an ex-Google employee who is now at the MS camp or an MS employee trying to bring down Google.

Well, whoever that person is, it's up to you to decide if the post is true or not.

View: No2Google blog

Clearlooks has been the default theme for many distro using Gnome. One of them is Fedora. Clearlooks is the default for a long time.

Now, Nodoka theme will try to give Fedora a new distinct and modern appearance. By modifying the Murrine engine, an extremely fast rendering theme was born.

Created by Martin Sourada, a student of General Physics at the Charles University in Prague and lives in Czech Republic, European Union.

More screenshots: here

Experience virtual world courtesy of AMD. The first 800 visitors will get free T-shirt with AMD logo of course. :)



Register here: Virtual Experience 2.0

This Mini PC from Fujitsu not only saves space. What's more, it saves power. It uses up to 30 percent less power than standard PC, saving at least 90 kWh a year in electricity.

The Esprimo Q5020, is a compact desktop system that ships in a chassis little larger than a DVD drive.


View site: here

360Desktop reorganizes the standard Windows desktop into a panoramic, revolving pane of glass thousands of pixels long.

Grab all of your favorite web apps and content — web widgets, RSS feeds, AJAX start pages, or any part of any web page — and make them available any time, in an expanded photo-panoramic desktop.

Watch it in action:



Visit site: here

Feeling bored on the traditional look of USB flash drives? Try mimobot. Refresh those flash drives with these cool looking one. Watch the video:

View: mimobot site

As I've said, records are made to be broken. Again, the battle for the record of the  smallest is heating-up. This camcorder fits inside a pack of gum. Beat that!

Many camcorders have been billed as the world's smallest, but only one has been small enough to hide inside a pack of gum. The Red Ferret Journal says the Micro Camcorder is the smallest high-resolution, real time digital camcorder ever produced. The camera can record up to 33 hours of video at 15 frames per second via its internal pinhole camera. Hide it inside a pack of gum, and no one will never know you're secretly recording them.

According to its web site, the camstick includes a tiny Micro SD card that can hold 1GB of video and will record video for up to two hours on a single charge. Anything you record will be in 3GP format, which can be played on any PC using programs like RealPlayer or Quicktime.

Read more: Yahoo Tech

The amoeba destroys tissue as it makes its way up into the brain, where it continues the damage, "basically feeding on the brain cells" .

Since I'm a carrier of this damn microscopic thing, I just want to share this scary news to you readers. Not to scare you, but for you to have an insight and to prevent getting infected with this deadly parasite. I was hospitalized for almost two weeks by this invasive amoebiasis inside my intestine. 

Though different from the one featured on the news, still they're on the same family.

Now here's the news:

It sounds like science fiction but it's true: A killer amoeba living in lakes enters the body through the nose and attacks the brain where it feeds until you die.

Even though encounters with the microscopic bug are extraordinarily rare, it's killed six boys and young men this year. The spike in cases has health officials concerned, and they are predicting more cases in the future.

"This is definitely something we need to track," said Michael Beach, a specialist in recreational waterborne illnesses for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

"This is a heat-loving amoeba. As water temperatures go up, it does better," Beach said. "In future decades, as temperatures rise, we'd expect to see more cases."

According to the CDC, the amoeba called Naegleria fowleri (nuh-GLEER-ee-uh FOWL'-erh-eye) killed 23 people in the United States, from 1995 to 2004. This year health officials noticed a spike with six cases — three in Florida, two in Texas and one in Arizona. The CDC knows of only several hundred cases worldwide since its discovery in Australia in the 1960s.

Read more: here

Confirmed by members of Google Group microsoft.public.excel, there is a problem in Excel 2007.

I tried it and I can safely say that Microsoft Excel 2007 has this computation problem or call it bug if you want.

If you try to multiply 850 by 77.1, Excel will display a result of 100000 instead of 65535.


Try this:
Cell A1 Value: 850
Cell B1 Value: 77.1

Then on cell C1, type this simple formula: =A1*B1

The result is 100000. Then on cell D1, type this formula again: =C1+1
Result is 100001 which is wrong. Again on cell D1, type this formula: =C1-1

The result is correct, 65534. Problem indeed.

Visit: Google Group

Windows DreamScene transforms your desktop from a static wallpaper image into a full-motion video. In conjunction with Stardock, we’re pleased to also offer a number of cool, new animated DreamScene desktops, including “Aurora”. Additionally, you can use your own videos as DreamScene desktops or visit Stardock’s Dream.WinCustomize.com website to download Stardock’s DeskScapes (an add-on to DreamScene) as well as a collection of fabulous content created by Stardock and members of the Ultimate community.

View: Release announcement

"640K ought to be enough for anybody." -- Bill Gates, 1981.

Nowadays, many machines are running with 2-4 gigabytes of RAM, and their owners are discovering a problem: When they run 32-bit GNU/Linux distributions, their extra RAM is not being used. Fortunately, correcting the problem is only a matter of installing or building a kernel with a few specific parameters enabled or disabled.

The problem exists because 32-bit Linux kernels are designed to access only 1GB of RAM by default. The workaround for this limitation is vaguely reminiscent of the virtual memory solution once used by DOS, with a high memory area of virtual memory being constantly mapped to physical addresses. This high memory can be enabled for up to 4GB by one kernel parameter, or up to 64GB on a Pentium Pro or higher processor with another parameter. However, since these parameters have not been needed on most machines until recently, the standard kernels in many distributions have not enabled them.

Increasingly, many distributions are enabling high memory for 4GB. Ubuntu default kernels have been enabling this process at least since version 6.10, and so have Fedora 7's. By contrast, Debian's default 486 kernels do not. Few distros, if any, enable 64GB by default.

Read full article: here

A footage compilation of nuclear experiments. Looks great as long as they don't drop one on your house .

Hypens are history, at least for 16,000 words deemed hyphen unworthy. Email (e-mail) and other forms of electronic communication is the culprit.

"When you are sending e-mails, and you have to type pretty fast, on the whole it's easier to type without hyphens. Ordinary people are not very conscious of the fact of whether they are putting hyphens or not."

More: here

A new non-stick gum will be launched commercially on 2008. Developed by British Scientists at the University of Bristol, the said gum can be easily removed from shoes, just in case you stepped on it on sidewalks. It can be easily removed from hair, skin, and clothes as well.

The said gum has a great taste - not to be confused with a brand of coffee :) -, it is easy to remove and has the potential to be environmentally degradable.

They accomplished the "less sticky" Clean Gum by adding polymer to modify the gum's properties compared from todays chewing gums which are made from synthetic latex making today's gums resistant to weather and is strongly adhesive.

Source: Reuters

"You're nothing but a second rate, trying hard, copy cat!" A popular line from a popular actress of the Philippine cinema. It applies also to the continuing rivalry for supremacy on CPU architecture. AMD claims that its rival Intel, is copying its approach on the design of its future products.

Goliath mimics David. From X86-64, Hypertransport to Intel's Quickpath bus, Fusion to Larrabee, and now the built-in memory controller.

Products that are more than a year away, like Nehalem (compare to native quad-core AMD Opteron), and QuickPath (compare to AMD Direct Connect Architecture and HyperTransport) are simply Intel’s admission that AMD was right all along about an integrated memory controller being the key to a superior processor architecture,” AMD said.

Again, from a popular Philippine TV Game Show - Intel, kindly tell this to AMD - "May tama ka!"

More info: Xbit Labs

This transparent toaster allows you to see the bread while it is toasting so you're never surprised by toast that comes out too dark. This idea is based on a transparent heating glass technology. Although the glass does not currently get hot enough to toast bread, the vendor explained with some R&D this application may be possible. The concept was developed by the Inventables Concept Studio.


Product link and more inventions by going to this link.

When AMD introduced 4x4, which was known then by the name "Quad Father" and now known as FASN8, Intel countered 4x4 with V8. Rumor has it that AMD canned its gaming system, but from my previous post, it still has a big chance to see the light of day. 

If FASN8 is still breathing or dead already, Intel doesn't care. It is preparing to unleash yet another beast based on V8. Here it is, Skulltrail.

What is Skulltrail? It is simply a massively massaged Stoakley server board with most of the mods directly affecting gamers. You take a 2S Harpertown system, put in dual Nvidia PCIe chips to allow for 4 true 16x slots, and cut the number of FBD slots from 16 to 4.

The Google Lunar X PRIZE seeks to create a global private race to the Moon that excites and involves people around the world and, accelerates space exploration for the benefit of all humanity. The use of space has dramatically enhanced the quality of life and may ultimately lead to solutions to some of the most pressing environmental problems that we face on earth – energy independence and climate change.

The new prize calls upon teams to create autonomous rovers that could land on the moon, travel at least three-tenths of a mile (500 meters) and send video, images and data back to Earth.

The first team to succeed would win $20 million - that is, if the job is done by 2012. After that, the prize drops to $15 million, and if no one is successful by the end of 2014, the money could be withdrawn. If a second team succeeds before the deadline, $5 million would be given as a runner-up prize. Another $5 million would be reserved for bonus tasks - for example, roving for longer distances, taking pictures of old lunar spacecraft, finding water ice or surviving the long lunar night.

More: here and here

A new satellite by Google's image provider is to be launched on Tuesday and to be broadcast live on the Internet at this site.

DigitalGlobe, provider of imagery for Google Inc's interactive mapping program Google Earth, said it's going to use a new high-resolution satellite - WorldView I - to boost the accuracy of images. Together with the company’s existing Quickbird satellite, it will offer half-meter resolution and will be able to collect over 600,000 square kilometers of imagery each day. Read full report here.

A demonstration of ASUS' motherboard that enables desktops to run two AMD Phenom FX proves that FASN8 is still alive and will soon see the light of day as reported here:

AMD’s FASN8 (first AMD silicon next-gen 8-core) platform is primarily aimed at gamers seeking for maximum possible performance, the highest image quality and technological advantage over other systems on the market. AMD said earlier this year that FASN8 machines will be based on two quad-core processors as well as four ATI Radeon HD 2900-series graphics cards. However, according to numerous recent reports, AMD will only release the new dual-socket direct connect (DSDC) platform in 2008, missing crucial holiday sales season.

Diamond Light Source is a new scientific facility in South Oxfordshire on the Harwell Science and Innovation Campus. This giant machine, called a synchrotron, can be described as a series of "super microscopes". It is housed in a futuristic doughnut-shaped building which covers the area of 5 football pitches. Diamond will ultimately host up to 40 cutting edge research stations, called beamlines, supporting the life, physical and environmental sciences.



Diamond produces x-ray, infrared and ultra-violet beams of exceptional brightness. These highly focused beams of light enable scientists and engineers to probe deep into the basic structure of matter and materials, answering fundamental questions about everything from the building blocks of life to the origin of our planet.

Visit: Diamond website

Though the announcement is still pending with regards to the open sourcing of drivers for ATI graphics cards, Linux.com reports on its site that AMD will make code and specifications for ATI graphics cards available on the Internet.

Many Linux users and developers for sure will be happy upon hearing this great news. Aside from problems Linux users get when installing proprietary softwares like Java and Flash, one of the biggest problem is installing drivers for high-end video cards (SLI and Crossfire).

Linux already have Dell and Lenovo on its side. AMD/ATI on their camp is another win.

Does it mean penguins will consider ATI over Nvidia on their next purchase of video cards?

Creative, are you listening? Provide linux support for your blaster cards!

The ENELOOP battery, developed by Sanyo. It is the first rechargeable battery to combine the advantages of a conventional disposable battery with those of a rechargeable one. Thanks to its exceedingly low self-discharge, the "eneloop" reaches the shops charged, meaning that it is ready for immediate use. Neither does a lengthy storage period present a problem any longer – even after one year, the "eneloop" still has around 85 percent of its charge and, what is more, it can be recharged around 1,000 times before it needs to be replaced.



This makes this rechargeable battery an environmentally friendly alternative to the conventional disposable battery.

View: Eneloop Site

Take a tour at Bill Gates' five acre, 66,000-square-foot uber-house with an assessed value of $53,392,200. Click the image below to go to the source and have an interactive tour:

AMD is set to take the No. 1 spot of the World's Top 500 Supercomputer List. Based on the 29th TOP500 List which was released in Dresden, Germany during ISC07 - for the fourth straight time the no. 1 spot belongs to BlueGene/L System developed by IBM. It is installed at DOE’s Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in Livermore, California.

All of these are about to change. AMD and Sun are working with Texans in TACC Supercomputer project. TACC (Texas Advance Computing Center) won $59 Million from National Science Foundation to build largest supercomputer, and this baby is currently being assembled - plan is to deliver 500 TFLOPS, or almost double the number that Blue Gene/L achieves - with 280.6 TFLOPS.

This monster is consisted of 16,000 AMD Barcelonas, 100TB of RAM and 1.7 PB of storage - all assembled by Sun

The U.S. currently holds the Top 8 Fastest Supercomputers followed by Spain and Germany for the 9th and 10th place respectively.

Russian military officials say this is the most powerful non-nuclear bomb ever made -- four times stronger than the most powerful bomb used by the US military. The vacuum bomb unleashes a powerful shockwave.



After the explosion, the soil looks like the surface of the moon. According to the report, the main destruction is inflicted by an ultrasonic shockwave and an incredibly high temperature. All that is alive merely evaporates.

The new bomb was much stronger than the U.S.-built Massive Ordnance Air Blast bomb - MOAB, also known under its name "Mother of All Bombs". So, Russian designers called the new weapon "Father of All Bombs".

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HP/Voodoo's Blackbird 002 is already unveiled. It made the headline of review/news sites as well as blog like this. Watch the video of HP's newly born baby.



Video taken from no other than the Founder of Voodoo and CTO of HP's Global Gaming Business - Rahul Sood's site.

Very Transformer!

The first Philippine President to be convicted on plunder.

Former president Joseph Estrada is guilty beyond reasonable doubt for the crime of plunder and is sentenced to a maximum jail sentence of up to 40 years, the Sandiganbayan Special Division ruled Wednesday.

Read: Transcript of dispositive portion of plunder verdict
Read: Transcript of dispositive portion of perjury verdict
Source: ABS-CBN

'History will be kind to Barcelona,' said Randy Allen, who leads AMD's server business and predicts industry-leading success for the chip.

And speaking of history, here's a list of Historic AMD chips

• 1991 — Longhorn, AMD's reverse-engineered clone of the Intel 80386 processor, runs faster than Intel versions. The effort gets AMD back in the Microsoft-compatible chip business after Intel had shut the door.
  
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• 1994 — The 486 clone is launched amid a storm of lawsuits between AMD and Intel. AMD makes its chips run faster than Intel's.
  
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• 1996 — K5, AMD's first shot at a Windows-compatible chip of its own design, doesn't run fast and isn't competitive with Intel's Pentium. The chip's flaws force AMD to buy start-up NexGen Inc., which has a competitive design to Pentium.
  
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• 1997 — K6, based on the NexGen design,
  
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• is introduced, putting AMD back in the game again.
  
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• 1999 — K7, formally known as Athlon, is launched and competes well with Intel's desktop chips. Intel and AMD race to put out the first Windows-compatible chip to run at 1 gigahertz. AMD wins.
  
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• 2003 — Opteron is AMD's first processor that is directly aimed at advanced servers and the first to process data in 64-bit chunks. After a slow start, it becomes a hit.
  
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• 2005 — Dual-Core Opteron is launched, and AMD's success in the lucrative server market rises to new heights.
  
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• 2007 — Code-named Barcelona, AMD's first quad-core processor, debuts.
  
  

Read more: Barcelona's glitzy debut