Talk about zany and fun! If you’re musically inclined and love all things seafood, then the Lobster Claw Harmonica ought to be your musical instrument of choice. Retailing for just $1.99, it looks so realistic that leaving it on the dinner table might just tempt a rather happy diner to take a crack at it only to discover that there isn’t any meat within. Perfect for those meal time tunes whenever you have guests around.
There is a rumor on the NGOHQ forum saying that someone has been able to modify (“mod”) a set of ATI drivers to run NVIDIA’s GPU-accelerated PhysX code on older (pre-4800) ATI cards. At the moment, there is no proof that the claim is true, as the author of the forum post did no release the modified material for others to try. That seems pretty fish to me, as it seems to be a long shot to “port” (rewrite) PhysX over ATI without rewriting the CUDA driver and also parts of the ATI graphics driver that would access CUDA data. All that without the most recent top-secret ATI driver source code. Of course, “in theory” everything is possible, but “in theory” all the traffic from Google could also be diverted to this blog by accident… (and that would make us very happy)
PS: if the guy could actually do it, I’d like to order a DX10 driver for Windows XP, that would be far more useful…
by Darren Murph, posted Jun 30th 2008 at 10:43AM
We heard that Lenovo was shuffling its lineup a bit earlier this month, and sure enough, that IdeaCentre brand is getting its 15 minutes today courtesy of a fresh press release. Hailed as the outfit’s “global entry into the consumer desktop market outside of China,” the IdeaCentre K210 comes with a variety of hardware choices including Intel’s Core 2 Quad processors, up to 3GB of DDR2 RAM, a GMA X3100 integrated graphics set (or a 512MB ATI Radeon 2600 XT), optional Blu-ray drive, gigabit Ethernet, a 16-in-1 multicard reader and an anti-microbial keyboard that comically stands out more than it was likely intended to. Nevertheless, the tower also includes VeriFace facial recognition technology that enables users to log in by simply gazing into the webcam; if it performs anywhere nearly as poorly as it did on our U110 review unit, however, we’d recommend switching the feature off and logging in as usual. Units are available now from a variety of e-tailers starting at $379 (after mail-in rebate).
Filed under: Desktops
From tomorrow (1st July), Sky will be re-branding their Sky HD service to “Sky+ HD“, and reducing the price significantly. I believe the name change has been done to avoid confusion with people thinking that Sky HD does not include the recording and pausing features as offered by the Sky+ service.
Now for the interesting part, Sky has reduced the price of the Sky+ HD box by £100!, down to £149 from £249. I’m sure this price drop will make Sky’s HD service a whole lot more tempting! Sky+ HD really does offer the best HD service in the U.K, you can read my Sky+ HD review here, and join Sky at the best prices here.
There has never been a better time to join or upgrade to Sky HD.
It is good to know that just like sex, drinking is a universal value. How else do you explain the Star Trek Experience bar located at Hilton Las Vegas? Not to mention numerous drinking holes found in the Star Wars universe, but we’re here to concentrate on the former series today with a unique bottle opener.
As well as its supreme practicality, the Starship Enterprise Bottle Opener serves as a constant tribute to the most iconic pretend spacecraft in televisual history. Better still it’s embossed with the legendary NCC-1701 registration, so you can be sure you’re opening your bottle of wallop with a Shatner-era vessel. And that’s just as well because judging by his, erm, interesting cover of Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds, Captain Kirk is the only member of Starfleet who likes a drink. Boldly going where no bottle opener has gone before. Make it so!
Well, only true blue Trekkies need to pick this up, as I don’t see the rest of the drinking crowd willing to fork out £12.95 for a ‘mere’ bottle opener when their teeth double up as one just fine.
Good news and bad news from Canada, in the form of Rogers’ iPhone 3G tariffs. Actually, there is no good news, so we’ll get straight into it. The cheapest monthly rate from the telco we love to hate will be $60 per month ($CAN and $US are so close we’ll skip the conversions) and you’ll get 150 minutes. The crunch comes with the data plans, arguably the most important part of an iphone tariff. At the basic rate, you’ll “enjoy” a whole 400MB per month. And Rogers makes it clear that a Megabyte means 1024 KB, so you’ll get closer to 390MB of the kind you’re used to.
Worse still, the top-flight plan, for $115, gives you just 2GB, which is far from the unlimited we might have hoped for. If you go over these limits, Rogers will sting you for an additional 50¢ per meg, going down to 3¢ after the first 60MB (or after the company had rolled you for another $30).
Depending on plan, included text messages run from 75 to 300 per month. There is one piece of almost good news. IPhone users will get unlimited access to Rogers and Fido Wi-Fi hotspots.
We’re really not surprised at this. A monopoly is a terrible thing for the customer. I have one question to our Canadian friends, though: Rogers is offering additional “Value Packs” for $15 or $20 per month, and these include “Call Display”. Is that what I think it is? Do you really have to pay extra for caller ID?
Product page [Rogers]
Back in 2006 Nintendo were sued by Texas-based company Anascape over patents they had apparently infringed. Those patents related to the design of the Gamecube, WaveBird and Wii Classic controllers. More specifically, the patents relate to the use of a number of analog sensors and analog pressure sensors.
Microsoft were also sued, but have settled with Anascape. Nintendo fought the claims, but a judge ruled in favor of Anascape awarding them US$21 million. Nintendo appealed this amount in an attempt to bring the value down, but the U.S District Court has denied the appeal so the US$21 million stands.
Charlie Scibetta, senior director of public relations as Nintendo of America said:
Nintendo does not agree with the ruling of the trial court on the remittitur motion …Nintendo intends to appeal this case to the Federal circuit court.
Doug Cawley, lead consel for Anascape also commented, saying:
We appreciate the Court’s thoughtful consideration in upholding the jury’s decision … Although not a giant corporation like Nintendo, Anascape has every right to protect its technology.
Even though Nintendo are going to fight on, the court agreed with the patent infringements based on the evidence presented. It looks unlikely they will get anywhere by continuing to fight and it may end up costing them a lot more than US$21 million with all the additional legal fees.
Still, the patents have been infringed, which means there will be ongoing costs possibly with a royalty payment as well. By getting the amount down it may have some knock-on effect for the royalty or license charge in the future.
We will have to wait and see how this pans out, but it doesn’t look good for Nintendo.
Read more at Next-Gen.biz
Back in 2006 Nintendo were sued by Texas-based company Anascape over patents they had apparently infringed. Those patents related to the design of the Gamecube, WaveBird and Wii Classic controllers. More specifically, the patents relate to the use of a number of analog sensors and analog pressure sensors.
Microsoft were also sued, but have settled with Anascape. Nintendo fought the claims, but a judge ruled in favor of Anascape awarding them US$21 million. Nintendo appealed this amount in an attempt to bring the value down, but the U.S District Court has denied the appeal so the US$21 million stands.
Charlie Scibetta, senior director of public relations as Nintendo of America said:
Nintendo does not agree with the ruling of the trial court on the remittitur motion …Nintendo intends to appeal this case to the Federal circuit court.
Doug Cawley, lead consel for Anascape also commented, saying:
We appreciate the Court’s thoughtful consideration in upholding the jury’s decision … Although not a giant corporation like Nintendo, Anascape has every right to protect its technology.
Even though Nintendo are going to fight on, the court agreed with the patent infringements based on the evidence presented. It looks unlikely they will get anywhere by continuing to fight and it may end up costing them a lot more than US$21 million with all the additional legal fees.
Still, the patents have been infringed, which means there will be ongoing costs possibly with a royalty payment as well. By getting the amount down it may have some knock-on effect for the royalty or license charge in the future.
We will have to wait and see how this pans out, but it doesn’t look good for Nintendo.
Read more at Next-Gen.biz
These homemade specs could be straight out of Cory Doctow’s latest (and possibly greatest) new novel, Little Brother . The simple hack consists of mounting two infrared LEDs into the frames of a pair of sunglasses and running the cables to the earpieces, where they hook up with a couple of button batteries.
Putting on the glasses presses the wires against the batteries and the lights glow protectively, unseen by the human eye, but bright enough to obliterate your image from security cameras. It’s a variation on the CCTV-busting infrared headset we featured a while back, only a little more slick. Aside from helping San Francisco’s teenagers bring down the DHS, we’d guess that – if these were built into Armani sunglasses – the paparazzi plague would go away overnight.
The original Metacafe video has been taken down. For now, you can see it at Abrutis, link below.
Lunettes anti paparazzi [Abrutis. Thanks daa dee!]
These homemade specs could be straight out of Cory Doctow’s latest (and possibly greatest) new novel, Little Brother . The simple hack consists of mounting two infrared LEDs into the frames of a pair of sunglasses and running the cables to the earpieces, where they hook up with a couple of button batteries.
Putting on the glasses presses the wires against the batteries and the lights glow protectively, unseen by the human eye, but bright enough to obliterate your image from security cameras. It’s a variation on the CCTV-busting infrared headset we featured a while back, only a little more slick. Aside from helping San Francisco’s teenagers bring down the DHS, we’d guess that – if these were built into Armani sunglasses – the paparazzi plague would go away overnight.
The original Metacafe video has been taken down. For now, you can see it at Abrutis, link below.
Lunettes anti paparazzi [Abrutis. Thanks daa dee!]
