Welcome to PPV

This is a "No-Return" DVD Rental. This idea of self-destructing DVD was first introduced in 2003 by Flexplay, the technology was called ED-D.

It is here again. The DVD's will self-destruct within 48 hours after they are removed from their packaging. The DVD's look like regular discs, but they are made with a special glue that is sensitive to oxygen. Once the disc is exposed to air, a chemical reaction causes the glue to darken so the laser in the DVD player can no longer read the disc. Sealed discs can last for about one year.

A post on Phoronix caught my attention. Though I'm too busy to update my blog, I can't let this news pass. Here's what the site says:

Receiving publicity on SlashDot today is word that Foxconn refuses to support Linux. Foxconn is a large OEM motherboard manufacturer, but according to a thread on the Ubuntu Forums, they refuse to support Linux. There is a bug in one of their DSDT tables for their BIOS that's causing installation issues with Linux. The DSDT for Windows is correct, but Foxconn isn't interested in issuing a (simple) update to fix the Linux support. However, this isn't surprising to us. We've known that Foxconn does not wish to support Linux at all. Going back to 2006, Foxconn has told us at Phoronix that they aren't interested in Linux on their motherboards and they have no desire to support it. For more on motherboards under Linux, check out our motherboard reviews.

Over at Distrowatch:

A tech-savvy user at the Ubuntu Forums posted that the BIOS of his G33M-S contains different reference tables for various operating systems, and that the one for Linux "points to a badly written table that does not correspond to the board's ACPI implementation" causing "weird kernel errors, strange system freezing, no suspend or hibernate, and other problems." He goes on to say, "After looking through the disassembled BIOS for the last several hours, rebooting it, and tweaking it more, I'd say this is very intentional. I've found redundant checks to make sure it's really running on Windows, regardless what the OS tells it it is, and then of course fatal errors that will kernel panic FreeBSD or Linux, scattered all over the place."

The world is awaiting the official statement from Foxconn regarding this "sabotage".

A combo of pictures shows (left) a handout image released by Iranian daily Jamejam online edition on July 10, 2008, showing three missiles rising into the air while a fourth remains in the launcher on the ground during a test-firing in an undisclosed location in the Iranian desert, and (right) the same image released by the news website and public relations arm of the Iranian Revolutionary Guards, Sepah News, apparently digitally altered to replace the grounded missile and launcher with a fourth successfull
Photo: AFP

The state-run Iranian channel Al-Alam said the missiles test-fired by the Revolutionary Guards included a Shahab-3 with a one-tonne conventional warhead and a range of 2,000km.

But Fitzpatrick, a former US State Department official, said: "In terms of capability, they claimed the Shahab-3 could travel 2,000km carrying a one-tonne warhead. This is very unlikely.

"The Shahab-3 normally has a range of 1300km and the range can be extended to 2000km but it would require a much lighter warhead.

"This is typical of Iran to exaggerate the accomplishments of the missiles and its nuclear program."

Several experts on photography agreed that the photograph had been manipulated.

"It's a doctored image," said Gerard Issert, a technician at Granon, one of the largest photo laboratories in Paris.

"Although the missiles weren't all equidistant from the camera, they're the same size in the picture," Issert told AFP in the southern French city of Arles.

A defiant Iran test-fired more missiles today, as US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice warned Tehran that Washington had beefed up its security presence in the Gulf and would not hesitate to defend Israel and other allies in the region.

The United States believes Iran is covertly developing nuclear weapons, a claim denied by the Islamic republic which insists the purpose of its program is energy.

Source: AFP

AMD then launched the first true native dual-core. Onward to quad-core. When AMD is again aiming for their quad, Intel again glued two dualie to claim the first quad. But AMD is the first to set again "true" quads.

Now AMD have introduced tri-core cpu. So what would Intel do? Combine a single and dual to obtain a tricore? Not an easy thing to do for them. Their current architecture would not allow it.

Since they can't offer a tricore cpu, that market belongs to AMD alone. So to counter it, they provided a marketing promotion at Newegg. Look at the picture below:

In this advertisement, it says that their Core 2 Duo outperforms the tri-core alternative which is obviously the X3 of AMD.

Two heads are better than three, of course Intel's quad is better than the tri-core and dual core, including their dual-core. So it is 4>2>3 thing :)

The Firefox community is the proud new owner of a Guinness World Record — each and every one of you! Mozilla today received confirmation from Guinness World Records that we’ve officially achieved the record for the "largest number of software downloads in 24 hours." From 18:16 UTC on June 17, 2008 to 18:16 UTC on June 18, 2008, 8,002,530 people downloaded Firefox 3!

That's the official statement from Spreadfirefox. And as of the time of writing this post, the stats at SpreadFirefox shows that Firefox has a total of 31,715,253 downloads and my beloved country Philippines have contributed a 195,053 total downloads.

To those who participated in the Download Day, you can download and print your very own personalized Firefox 3 Download Day certificate.

AMD has published two YouTube videos that show off its voxel-based rendering technology.


This video is a shaky-cam clip of a ray-traced Ruby, AMD/ATI’s red-clothed vixen.


This second video is an interview with Jules, talking about technical aspects of OTOY/LightScape technologies. OTOY is JulesWorld’s plug-in that allows cinematic-quality rendering within browsers.