Nightly Tech Reading - tech
(hx) 03:59 AM CEST - May,24 2002
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- Sony ships PS2-Linux PC conversion kit - It includes hardware
and software for essentially turning the PlayStation 2 games console into a Linux PC, with a 40GB
hard disk, 10/100Mbps network adapter, USB keyboard and mouse, monitor cable and a Linux
installation DVD-ROM. The hard drive can't be used with PS2 games, Sony warned.
The keyboard is in the standard U.S. layout, but can be reconfigured for other layouts, or
replaced with any USB keyboard, Sony said. The kit began shipping worldwide on Wednesday,
meeting a deadline Sony set itself at LinuxWorld Conference and Expo in January. In the
United States, Sony has been taking orders for the kit since March. It sells for £155 ex.
VAT (£182.13 inc. VAT) in the UK, and 292.58 euros inc. VAT in the rest of Europe, or
$200 in the United States.
- Xbox Live Beta test program - Sign up today for a chance to participate in the Xbox Live Beta test
program.
- Transforming a laptop into a robot - The company is at the E3
this week demonstrating a series of "personal robot systems" that can
transform an average laptop PC into an intelligent robot. The basic kit includes a
rolling platform to mount the laptop on, a Webcam for capturing visual data and software
to run on the laptop. Program the software to recognize a beer bottle and a refrigerator,
for example, and next time you're running on empty, you just need to wave a bottle in
front of the laptop's camera and request a refill.
- Echelon's Architect Interview - Meet Bruce McIndoe. He
has information that the Danish government and several others around the globe,
continuously pretends isn't there. McIndoe knows that Echelon is real. Because he helped
to build it. "Yes, that's right", McIndoe confirms to the Danish paper Ekstra Bladet today Bruce McIndoe dedicated
more than ten years of his life to Echelon. He helped to finalize the original Echelon
system starting in 1987. After that, he started to design Echelon II, an enlargement of
the original system.
- Music start-up FightCloud.com offers CDs free, but says it's making a
profit. - "You
want to stop piracy?" asks Jack Scalfani, CEO of independent music site FightCloud.com. "Make your CDs affordable. I'm
not going to spend three hours turning and burning a CD ... if it's an $8 CD. I'm
going to walk across the street to Tower Records and go, 'Here's my $8, thanks for the new
Madonna.' My time is worth more to me than the money, so I will put the money out if it's
a good price." At FightCloud.com, the price is right. Scalfani sells CDs for free.
That is, if you don't count the $4.95 "shipping" charge. Of course, that would
be a mistake. Buried in the shipping charge is the secret ingredient: a modest profit.
Less costs of $2.31, the company nets $2.64 on each "free" disc, half of which
goes to the artist. But with only 1,000 or so CDs shipped to date, no one's getting rich.
Yet.
- Label tests MP3 in song sale - The companies put the track, a
dance version of "Earth" by Meshell Ndegeocello, online Thursday on sites run by
Vivendi Universal Net USA, including MP3.com, RollingStone.com, GetMusic.com and MP4.com.
People can purchase the file for 99 cents and then burn the song to a CD-ROM disc or
transfer it to a portable device. The companies said subscribers of EMusic's MP3 music
service will be able to download the track as part of their memberships.
- Hollywood bemoans Attack of the Pirates - The film industry is
claiming that more than a million Star Wars fans saw the film on the internet before it
was released. Studio executives say that hundreds of thousands of illegal copies of Attack of the Clones were
downloaded prior to the film's premiere last Thursday.
- Samsung Demos First 40-Inch TFT-LCD TV Panel - Samsung announced
that it will demonstrate the world's first 40-inch
TFT-LCD panel for use in high-performance, wide-screen digital TVs at the Society of
Information Display (SID) 2002 Conference, May 21-23 in Boston, Mass. This is the largest
TFT-LCD panel ever produced.
- Netscape 7.0 beta fuels browser war - The new 7.0 release has a number of features
specifically aimed at winning greater support for the browser in the enterprise. These
include S/Mime to enable secure encrypted email as well as full Ldap support and the
ability to share mail folders using the Internet Message Access Protocol (Imap).
- Recover from a Corrupted Registry that Prevents Windows XP from Starting
- This article describes how to recover a Windows XP system that does
not start because of corruption in the registry. This procedure does not guarantee full
recovery of the system to a previous state; however, you should be able to recover data
when you use this procedure.
- CloneCD v4.0.1.3 - A new version of
CloneCD
v4.0.1.3 has been released. What is new: Improved Audio extraction speed with several
drives, License Agreement is now able to accept empty lines from Locale Editor, Log Window
is now faster and can hold more entries, Progress Window shows estimated remaining times
greater than 2 hours as "Unknown", AWS could accidently become enabled in
Japan/USA, AWS state will be shown in Japan/USA (should always be off), All default
profiles tweaked for better performance, Support for new writers added, Allow RAW-DAO
write simulation with newer Plextor drives, Allow RAW-SAO with newer ACER/BENQ and
ACCESSTEC/OPTORITE drives.
- Zoom Player 2.60 RC2 - Zoom Player is
a robust Media and DVD Front-End Player. It was designed to be simple at first glance
while being remarkably dynamic and flexible when used to its full potential.
- Quintessential Player v3.33 - The Quintessential Player, v3 (QCD). It supports just about every
audio format, you can customize it even further than Winamp, and it's still free.
- VirtuaWin 2.5 - VirtuaWin is a
"virtual desktop manager" that lets you create a number of desktops and gives
you quick access to switch between them.
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Updated:02:02 PM CEST Jun,21
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