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| Wired Top Stories |
German boutique automaker Gumpert teams up with Lithium Technology Corp. to build the fastest hybrid ever. They're taking it to the 'Ring to prove "green" and "performance" aren't mutually exclusive.
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Writer Vince Gilligan tells about directing the classic X-Files team and working with Will Smith to craft the perfect movie about a dysfunctional crime-fighter.
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The local airwaves a little too boring for your tastes? Take matters into your own hands by starting your own radio station. Follow our guide in Wired.com's How-To Wiki.
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Charter Communications, one of the nation's largest ISPs, says its users can opt out of its plans to spy on their web usage to serve more targeted ads. But what few technical details are available suggest that there's no way to skip the spying part, and raise questions about whether the plan opens a gaping internet security hole.
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Marc Andreessen has made two mid-year resolutions: “No more public speaking” and “More blogging.” They both seem related to his dissatisfaction with reporters. But Andreessen, in his widely-read blog, doesn’t exactly say what the problem is, and why now is the time to do something about it. Has he really stepped off the non-virtual stage for the last time?
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The coolest helicopter in the history of television is for sale. Yeah, yeah, it's a replica. But it's freakin' Airwolf!
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A new app called iSlsk lets users of unlocked iPhones and iPod touches tap into the Soulseek network.
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Skydiving? B.A.S.E. jumping? Pfft. Child's play compared to flying 185 mph on rocket-powered wings you made yourself.
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Digg CEO Jay Adelson, Slide CEO Max Levchin and a host of other Silicon Valley movers and shakers turned up to help celebrate the publication of BusinessWeek columnist Sarah Lacy's new book, Once You're Lucky, Twice You're Good.
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Facebook has blocked Google's new Friend Connect service, ostensibly to protect its users' privacy. But the battle is really over which company gets to control all your personal information. Don't believe it? Read the terms of service.
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Two powerful congressmen are asking ISP Charter Communications to put a hold on its proposal to eavesdrop on its customers' web surfing in order to serve targeted ads. The Friday letter questions whether the plan would violate federal privacy law.
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It turns out more pixels doesn't equate to a better camera. Casio's latest snapper is only 6 megapixels but is loaded with so many fun features, like 1200 fps video capture, that you won't notice or care.
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News from Portfolio.com
When credit was easy, private equity's multibillion-dollar buyout frenzy was like a great party: The champagne was flowing and no one was too concerned about who was picking up the tab.
After the summer's credit crunch, the party ended. Some deals collapsed. One that may survive is the buyout of the radio-station chain Clear Channel Communications after the private equity buyers and six banks reached a settlement this week over $22 billion in financing.
In the sober light of today, are there lessons for dealmakers from Clear Channel?
Yes, lawyers say.
"We need to look at ways to get the financing lined up and locked in sooner—potentially right away, right after or before the merger agreement," says Marilyn Sonnie, a partner with the New York office of Jones Day, who advised Harman International on its failed buyout with Kohlberg Kravis Roberts & Co., which was terminated last August.
In the case of Clear Channel, the financing for the deal was memorialized in a May 2007 commitment letter that left open many terms, heading toward a closing.
By late fall and winter, those open terms, according to Clear Channel and the two private equity firms sponsoring the leveraged buyout, became an opportunity to inject "poisonous terms" to jettison the financing deal. Two lawsuits in New York and Texas followed.
Defending the lawsuits, the six banks, led by Deutsche Bank and Citigroup, were put in the bizarre position of arguing that their standard operating procedure—the use of a commitment letter to memorialize financing—could not be enforced.
The New York case sought to hold the banks to $22 billion in financing—"specific performance" in the legal jargon. In one deliciously schizophrenic line, the banks' motion seeking summary judgment dismissing the claims said: "The commitment letter is a binding preliminary agreement that left open numerous terms to be negotiated over time by the parties." It is Contracts 101 that an agreement with open terms is an illusory contract. Leaving the law aside, taken away from the litigation, the argument has the hint of commercial suicide for its relationships in the marketplace.
The banks were confident that they were going to win the summary judgment motion, but Justice Helen Freedman of the New York State Supreme Court said that the breach of contract claims could go to trial. But her opinion pretty much evenly divided the risks of going to trial between both sides. She described the plaintiffs' evidence that the defendants had threatened to refuse to finance the deal unless they agreed to "poisonous" terms as "not compelling."
The deal lawyers who read her May 7 opinion had one word for it: She wrote a "settlement document." It offset the early wins by Clear Channel in the Texas case, accusing the banks of "tortuous interference" with the merger agreement—a claim with potentially unlimited damages, filed in the state known for the landmark Pennzoil verdict. (Clear Channel even tapped Joe Jamail, who won the $11 billion Pennzoil case in 1985, as its lead counsel. For a peek at Jamail in action, watch this video.)
By Monday, May 12, Freedman's tactic seemed to have worked. Court was adjourned and CNBC's David Faber reported on a deal to settle the litigations. The next day at 2 p.m., the plaintiffs' first witness, John Connaughton, a managing director at Bain, took the stand and offered a rare glimpse into the private equity world, suggesting the banks were off the reservation, especially in changing language known in the industry as "sponsor precedent," lingo for "terms customer" in these deals.
The clean-cut Connaughton, whose youthful appearance does not show the stress of 19 years in private equity at Bain, was a strong witness on direct, and offered plain English translations of the language of private equity to Freeman with ease. (Even though he had not slept in two nights.) Connaughton would have returned to the stand Wednesday morning to testify that the banks had drawn a line in the sand, restricting use of loan proceeds to pay off Clear Channel's preexisting debts.
But that never happened. The $36-per-share deal, down from the original $39.20-per-share deal, signed late Tuesday night requires the banks and the buyers to put cash into an escrow account to fund the deal while Clear Channel seeks shareholder and regulatory approvals.
An escrow fund is probably an unrealistic option for obtaining certainty outside the context of litigation. But other aspects of the amended deal, as memorialized in an Securities and Exchange Commission filing by Clear Channel on Wednesday, could be adopted by other deals, to make sure they in fact close in a timely fashion. For instance, Clear Channel shareholders will get an increased price if the deal closes after the third quarter.
But lawyers predict the protracted battle will alter the way the players approach these deals in the future: "The way the litigation arose and was concluded will have implications regarding the way in which lenders and private equity firms structure the terms of the debt in future transactions and the way in which the parties—sellers, private equity buyers and lenders—will protect themselves from uncertainty until closing," says Michael Hefter, a securities lawyer with the New York office of Orrick.
But Elizabeth Nowicki, a corporate law professor at Tulane Law School, is not so sure how much things will really change. "A target now knows they need to get something more specific from a bank than a commitment letter," she says.
On the other hand, "the banks want no specific performance" from their end. "The question is whether we are going to see any change. I don't know if we are going to end up with documents or deals that are more clear. This case has highlighted that there is so much room for play and ambiguity and litigation."
It has been a long 18 months since the Clear Channel deal was announced, time in which its management and employees have been districted and its stock has inched down. "It's very hard to run a company and focus on making profits when you are in limbo," says Jones Day's Sonnie.
And Nowicki, for one, doesn't even think the saga is yet over.
"This deal may never close," she said.
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Carbon dioxide may be the bogeyman of global warming, but reactive forms of nitrogen are building up, too, and will pose an equal danger, the author of study says.
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Oscar Pistorius, a double amputee who sprints with mechanical limbs, has been cleared by arbiters of the sport to compete for a spot on the South African team for the Beijing Olympics.
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The OLPC is embracing Windows: It will cost $200 (for now) and ship as a dual-boot machine running XP and a machine-specific version of Linux.
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Strap a weird keyboard to your hand with rubber bands that cut off the circulation -- a feature that keeps you from using too many minutes, perhaps. Speak into your pinky, listen to your thumb. This is a step forward in handset technology? It's a concept ... yeah.
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Today is Bike-to-Work Day. Yeah, yeah, we know what you're thinking. Here are five ways to make it happen this year.
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They fought like cats and dogs for a long time but now the OLPC nonprofit that wants to put a $100 laptop in the hands of every poor kid around the world has let Microsoft into the tent. The inclusion of Windows on the meant-to-be Linux box will raise the price (already $188 anyway) but could lead to new hardware design efficiencies that drops the price.
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Calling it a security nightmare when banning a military-themed social networking site in January, the Air Force now relents. But it may be too little, too late for the site's operator.
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1960: Physicist Theodore Maiman uses a synthetic-ruby crystal to create the first laser.
Maiman began tinkering with electronic devices in his teens and even earned college money repairing appliances and radios. He was working at the Hughes Research Laboratories of the Hughes Aircraft company in Malibu, California, when he built the first working laser.
The laser is a device that produces monochromatic (all the same wavelength), coherent (all the waves in phase) light. Today they're used in eye surgery, dentistry, range-finding, astronomical measurement, and welding and other manufacturing uses. You'll find them at the heart of scientific instruments, communications networks, weapons, music systems and supermarket scanners. Lasers are everywhere.
The concept was already bouncing around in the research world in 1960. Arthur L. Schawlow of Bell Labs and Charles H. Townes of Columbia University had written a 1958 paper and patent application proposing an optical version of the maser, or microwave amplification by stimulated emission of radiation.
Columbia grad student Gordon Gould jotted the idea in his notebook in 1957 and applied for a patent in 1959. He'd delayed because at first he thought he needed a working apparatus to apply. But it was Gould who coined the word laser.
Maiman made his own alterations to the Schawlow-Townes concept. He coated the ends of a ruby with silver mirrors, one coating thinner to let some light escape as a beam. He used a flash tube to energize the crystal's atoms. Maiman enclosed the whole shebang in a polished aluminum tube.
Schawlow and the Bell researchers heard of Maiman's realization of their concept with mixed emotions, but they soon bested him by using an arc lamp to produce a continuous, rather than pulse, laser.
Bell got its patent in 1960. Maiman applied for a patent for "Ruby Laser Systems" in 1961, but didn't receive it until 1967. Gould spent decades mired in lawsuits before winning some patents in 1977.
The 1964 Nobel Prize in Physics went to Townes for the laser and Soviets Nicolay Basov and Aleksandr Prokhorov for their earlier work on the maser. Schawlow was acknowledged in the 1964 presentation speech and went on to share the 1981 Nobel Prize in Physics for his "contribution to the development of laser spectroscopy."
Maiman was nominated twice for the Nobel Prize, but did not win it. He received many other awards before his death in 2007 at age 79.
Source: Scientific American
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 : Lasers are like your favorite uncle who can do no wrong. You know, the one who's always hip to the latest technology, does amazing magic tricks at all the family dinners, always photographs well, and has more than once saved baby Med-Tech from a burning house of boring. All the other technologies wish they were he, and Wired.com readers openly admit he's their favorite.
So in celebration of one of our greatest news topics here at Wired.com, we've selected a compilation of the best recent laser appearances on our site. Thanks for the memories, Big L. (Have your own favorite laser news item? Let us know in the comments.)
Left:
Texans Build World's Most Powerful Laser
Scientists have switched on the world's most powerful laser, which for one-trillionth of a second is 2,000 times more powerful than all the power plants in the United States. The laser's output tops a petawatt, which is a quadrillion (1,000,000,000,000,000) watts of power.
(More in next slide)
Photo: Courtesy Mikael Martinez and Texas Petawatt Project, led by Todd Ditmire
 : (Continued from previous slide)
The power of a laser, its output in watts, is determined by the energy of the laser pulse, measured in joules, divided by its duration, measured in seconds (tiny fractions of a second in this case). So, to get high power, you can either turn up the energy or cram the same amount of energy into a shorter duration pulse -- or do both. The problem is that turning up the energy makes it more difficult to get short pulses.
The solution to this problem requires an almost Rube Goldberg setup inside a 1,500-square-foot clean room. The most powerful laser in the world starts, poetically enough, with a "seed laser" that puts out a wimpy nanojoule of energy for a couple of hundred femtoseconds (that's 10-15 seconds). It must be run through a series of amplifiers, compressors and stretchers before it can recreate the conditions inside the sun for a trillionth of a second.
Photo: Courtesy Mikael Martinez and Texas Petawatt Project, led by Todd Ditmire
 : Beamz Music System Lets You Compose a Symphony With the Power of Freaking Lasers
If Dr. Evil of Austin Powers fame were more musically minded, he may have demanded something like the beamz -- a musical instrument with "fricking lasers" attached to it. This large USB peripheral includes six laser beams that, when broken, activate elements of 30 songs stored on your computer.
 : Laser-Etched QR Codes: Digital Graffiti For Gadgets
Forget stickers. Real geeks show their commitment with something more permanent: laser engraving. And Jason Fields takes your etching and raises you one QR code. Sure, it's too big for most little QR readers to handle, and the gray on gray isn't exactly contrasty, but Jason has squeezed in his "e-mail signature file, postal address, with links to my blog and twitter pages as well."
 : The Geekiest Van Conversion Ever
This is the Tele Atlas map machine, a Toyota van tricked out with tens of thousands of dollars worth of cameras, laser range detectors and global-positioning hardware. The laser sensors on the back (the devices labeled SICK) are used to determine the height of overpasses and buildings to help delivery vehicles find the route with the most overhead clearance.
Photo: Michael Calore/Wired.com
 : The Ultrashort Pulse Laser in Action
Raydiance, a startup company in Petaluma, California, has developed a laser it says can cleanly cut just about any material you can think of -- from human skin to glass -- without throwing off heat or damaging the surface.
This glass slide is seconds away from being ablated by the Raydiance USP laser.
Photo: Jonathan Snyder/Wired.com
 : Laser Death Star
A new patent granted to Lockheed Martin seeks to combine multiple lasers into a single, higher-power beam, which would, in theory, help achieve the power output needed for laser weapons. The patent outlines a method to "combine multiple laser beams into a single coherent beam without requiring insertion of optical elements into the laser beam."
 : This Laser Trick's a Quantum Leap
Ph.D. student Elliot Fraval (left) and Dr. Jevon Longdel perform scientific measurements on light in the lab at Laser Physics Centre at Australian National University.
Photo: Tim Wetherell
 : Navy Pushing Laser 'Holy Grail' to Weapons Grade
For decades, scientists have been slowly working on a laser that never runs out of shots -- and can be "tuned" to blast through the air, at just the right wavelength. For most of that time, all they could get was a laser at light-bulb strength. But researchers at the Thomas Jefferson National Accelerator Facility finally managed in 2004 to assemble a "Free Electron Laser," or FEL, that could generate 10,000 watts of power.
Now the Navy has started an effort to design and build a new FEL, 10 times as strong. That would bring the laser up to 100 kilowatts -- what's considered the minimum threshold for weapons grade. But it would also be just a steppingstone on the way to an energy weapon as powerful as any produced. If ray gun researchers can get the thing to work, that is.
 : Stupid Laser Tricks: Make Your Own Piece of Jesus-Miracle Toast
They can do everything from nuclear fusion to vaginal rejuvenation, so you know it's a mathematical certainty that lasers = awesome. Plus, your right to tinker with dirt-cheap lasers in your basement is all but guaranteed in the Constitution! With that in mind, here are a few of our favorite DIY laser hacks. (Disclaimer: If you are foolhardy enough to try any of these and end up maiming yourself or getting sucked into the Tron game grid, something else was probably going to remove you from the gene pool soon anyway.)
Photo: Gene Lee
 : Laser-Guided Saw: Cool Tool or Novelty Toy?
It might not cut as effectively as a lightsaber, or even a real laser cutter, but at least your lines will be (theoretically) straight.
At $20, though, it's probably too cheap to actually do its job. If you've ever used a cheap saw you know that the blade will flex and buck, leaving your supposedly neat cut looking about as straight as Earring Magic Ken. And the laser doesn't even come with a battery. We say: Avoid. You'll get a better result with an old popsicle stick.
 : DIY Laser Lightshow for $80: Useless but Awesome
What's cooler than a green laser? A green laser that paints semirandom moving spirograph patterns on your wall. Toronto-based hardware hacker Artur Petrovskyy shows you how to make one of your own from about $80 in parts in a new how-to on Instructables.com: Laser show for poor man.
Image: Instructables.com
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In their eagerness to prosecutor a 49-year-old woman involved in the Megan Meier suicide tragedy, federal officials are making novel use of an anti-hacking law, potentially making a felon out of anybody who violates the terms-of-service on any website they visit.
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Deals with a couple of indie labels get the service off the ground.
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The judge who presided over the nation's first file sharing trial says he is considering granting a retrial. The judge said that Jammie Thomas, who was being sued by the recording industry, may not have gotten a fair trial.
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The odds General Motors will have the Volt rolling off an assembly line by the end of 2010 are much stronger now that it's got the lithium-ion battery and gas-electric drivetrain in a test car.
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CNET staffers are joking that CBS bought their company purely for the coveted News.com domain name. But nobody is complaining about the windfall.
"The scuttlebutt … around here is that News.com will be used for CBS' News operations and that our News.com will end up being a tab off that page," said one staffer, who asked not to be identified.
It's inconceivable that CBS paid a staggering $1.8 billion just for a domain name, but nonetheless, most of the reporters at News.com -- the tech news division of CNET -- are expecting that CBS will take the domain name for its own news operation, the staffer said.
"It does seem clear we will lose our domain name," the staffer said. "At least we have a parent that's solid and has some money -- and isn't News Corp."
Once the highflier of online media, CNET has recently been rocked by stock option scandals, hostile takeover attempts, layoffs and staff attrition. Skeleton crews run many departments and morale is low.
While CBS is seen as stodgy, the company is stable and has a solid reputation for supporting the expensive business of news.
Delighted rank and file are busy trying to tabulate the worth of their shares, which they've been told will all vest immediately.
CBS paid a premium $11.50 per share for CNET, a 44-percent premium above CNET's closing price yesterday.
"We feel it's pretty good news, and we're all pretty happy," said another employee at CNET who also asked not to be named. "It was a good price, and we're all going to make a bit of money off of it."
None of the staffers have yet been told CBS's plans but a company-wide meeting is scheduled for next Tuesday, they said.
"Me personally, my initial reaction was 'Oh, fuck, corporate media is getting to us.'" said one CNET designer, who also asked not to be identified. "Every channel of communication in this country is owned by five or six companies, and we're joining that group … I just don't know if there's a way around that anymore."
But the designer said, generally, the staff welcomed the acquisition.
"The general feeling in the small talk going around is that this is a positive development," the designer said. "We're finally going to have some money behind us, because CNET has been hurting for the last couple of months. The first two quarters have been kind of hard, so I think this comes as good news, because obviously CBS is a big company that has a lot of capital."
"The mood is light. People are upbeat about it," said one staffer. "There's no worrying or anything. I think people think it's a good thing overall for the company."
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The silly shill with the fuzzy green hair and the oversize shoes expands his empire with a pair of theme-park rides.
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| The Inquirer |
Paul Taylor the Inquirer, Friday 16 May 2008. 22:15:00 Hardware Rounds Asus M70s, Acer Aspire 8920G ASUS RECENTLY ANNOUNCED a laptop with a gargantuan 1TB storage capacity, the M70S. Naturally these things come in DTR format, and storage is split between 2x500MB drives. They're not supposed to be carried around, nor are they in the least bit cheap.... 
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Sylvie Barak the Inquirer, Friday 16 May 2008. 19:40:00 Exoskeleton duffs up Jackie Chan's tuxedo A ROBOTICS COMPANY IN Utah have come up with a working "Iron man" suit, which is able to multiply a person's strength and endurance by up to 20 times when wearing it. The exoskeleton is being produced by a company called Sarcos, located in Salt Lake City, Utah and has... 
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Sylvie Barak the Inquirer, Friday 16 May 2008. 19:11:00 Fair and square THE CONSUMER-FRIENDLY computer advice site Computeractive claims it has won a victory against Apple, causing the firm to cancel its 'processing fee' charged to customers returning products they don't want. Products bought online falling under the consumer protection law should not incur penalties to the consumer if they want to... 
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Sylvie Barak the Inquirer, Friday 16 May 2008. 18:54:00 Hear ye, Hear ye! THE BRITISH GOVERNMENT is so concerned about noise levels in the UK, it has launched an online map which highlights the main problem areas that need quietening down. Everything from factories, to planes, trains and automobiles make a frightful racket, according to the government.... 
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Ambrose McNevin the Inquirer, Friday 16 May 2008. 16:51:00 Rice reinvented by gargantuan grid IBM HOPES TO ERADICATE world hunger using donated processing power to study the atomic make-up of rice protein. The firm says it will harness 167 teraflops, equivalent to a top-three supercomputer, to the "Nutritious Rice for the World" project using the World Community Grid which uses unused and donated power... 
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Sylvie Barak the Inquirer, Friday 16 May 2008. 16:57:00 Sprinting towards launch THE PARTNERSHIP between Sprint and Samsung Electronics has edged closer to delivering its first WiMax network the firms annouced as they held hands today. The network hardware hass apparently now jumped through all the relevant hoops of Sprint's commercial acceptance criteria, which checks its overall performance, handoff performance and handoff... 
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Ambrose McNevin the Inquirer, Friday 16 May 2008. 17:04:00 Hunger and energy crises averted in single day? BIG BLUE today announced that using a large lens to concentrate the sun's power, it captured a record 230 watts onto a centimeter square solar cell, in a technology known as concentrator photovoltaics or CPV.... 
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Andrew Thomas the Inquirer, Friday 16 May 2008. 17:04:00 Oh Uncle Bulgaria! Yes! Yes! YES! ELECTRIC BOOKSHOP, Amazon, has a nifty mechanism for showing you items you might like based on your previous purchases and searches. Were one, for example, be so bold as to buy a book on 19th Century narrow gauge steam locomotives, one might also be furnished with details of publications concerning... 
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Sylvie Barak the Inquirer, Friday 16 May 2008. 17:30:00 Analysis Won't go gently into that good night AFTER RACKING UP losses of almost $4 billion last year, shedding thousands of staff, including several senior execs, and with its stock price seemingly in a tailspin, you could be forgiven for wondering whether AMD actually has a future ahead of it.... 
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Sylvie Barak the Inquirer, Friday 16 May 2008. 16:34:00 Cell it to me SHARP HAS unveiled a high density, 0.3Wcc direct methanol fuel cell (DMFC), which boasts the highest level of power density yet achieved. The diminutive cell volume, whose tiny frame measures 50 x 30 mm, has a longer lifespan than commonly used lithium ion batteries and is well matched for notebooks,... 
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Tony Dennis the Inquirer, Friday 16 May 2008. 12:38:00 Tricked into £4.50 weekly sub A SCAM that tricked consumers into a weekly £4.50 subscription has been exposed in its full glory by the INQ. The fact that no full refund has yet been received by one complainant [the INQ] was described by industry enforcer, PhonePayPlus (PPP), as "an isolated incident." Consumers had received a... 
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Stewart Meagher the Inquirer, Friday 16 May 2008. 14:59:00 Used keystroke logging to steal identities AN OREGAN MAN has pleaded guilty to selling more than a million US dollars worth of pirated software on online auction sites. It has been estimated that the pirate trousered around $400,000 in personal profit.... 
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Stewart Meagher the Inquirer, Friday 16 May 2008. 13:14:00 Dating game PIXEL PUSHER ATI will introduce the much-anticipated 4800 series of graphics card on a date "somewhere between the 15th and 22nd of June" according to our old mate Theo over at TG Daily. This is, coincidentally, the same week in which Nvidia is expected to unveil the significantly more expensive... 
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Sylvie Barak the Inquirer, Friday 16 May 2008. 14:34:00 Costs its weight in gold JUNE THIRD IS THE launch date of the Asus's new Atom-based Eee PC 901, which will also have Bluetooth for the first time. The company will apparently be selling the new 8.9 inch model for slightly less than $650, which is fairly expensive considering its new, 10-inch rival, MSI's Wind,... 
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Andrew Thomas the Inquirer, Friday 16 May 2008. 13:32:00 Giving up sugar AFTER FALLING OUT BIG TIME with Intel a few months ago, the One Laptop Per Child project has signed up with Microsoft to make Windows XP available on the OLPC. The move will only bump up the price of the low-cost device by $3, says Microsoft.... 
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Tony Dennis the Inquirer, Friday 16 May 2008. 13:42:00 Kids replace happy slapping with happy rapping TALK ABOUT STRETCHING a story. How about this one which claimed that London teenagers were using mobile technology to tackle gun and knife crime? Karate-chopping their assailants with their V1615 phones? Um, no. Using them to make an anti-crime Rap video, actually.... 
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Andrew Thomas the Inquirer, Friday 16 May 2008. 11:05:00 'We are not geeks,' says groom WINDOW CLEANER Bramwell Brightey dressed up as Han Solo to marry Tamsyn Lofts dressed as Princess Leia at Leatherhead Registry Office last week. The service was watched by Chewbacca, Imperial Stormtroopers and Obi Wan Kenobi.... 
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Andrew Thomas the Inquirer, Friday 16 May 2008. 12:23:00 Windows expert gets tool out A KINDLY GEEK has produced a free tool to resurrect AMD machines borked by installing Service Pack 3 for Windows XP. The fault affects mainly HP machines with an OEM splash screen and a number of Asus mobos, to which XP refuses to talk on the grounds that they're not... 
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Tony Dennis the Inquirer, Friday 16 May 2008. 12:38:00 Tricked into £4.50 weekly sub A SCAM that tricked consumers into a weekly £4.50 subscription has been exposed in its full glory by the INQ. The fact that no full refund has yet been received by one complainant [the INQ] was described by industry enforcer, PhonePayPlus (PPP), as "an isolated incident." Consumers had received a... 
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Nick Booth the Inquirer, Friday 16 May 2008. 10:49:00 PR On a Dollar a Day Part 2 CONTINUING our PR on a Dollar a Day Guide to DIY PR, here we look at press briefings. You've written a press release, and the usual undermanned news web sites have dutifully reproduced it, with a few minor changes here and there.... 
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Andrew Thomas the Inquirer, Friday 16 May 2008. 11:05:00 'We are not geeks,' says groom WINDOW CLEANER Bramwell Brightey dressed up as Han Solo to marry Tamsyn Lofts dressed as Princess Leia at Leatherhead Registry Office last week. The service was watched by Chewbacca, Imperial Stormtroopers and Obi Wan Kenobi.... 
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Stewart Meagher the Inquirer, Friday 16 May 2008. 10:48:00 Bandwagon rolling SUN MICROSYSTEMS has announced a slate of six enterprise servers running AMD's quad -core Opteron processors. The firm is the latest heavy-duty outfit to adpoteron the Opteron in its quad-core flavour, after scratching about waiting for it for months.... 
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Nick Farrell the Inquirer, Friday 16 May 2008. 10:32:00 You don't understand the facts YAHOO'S chairman has decided that patronising a shareholder revolt is the best way to end it. After all, it worked really well for Marie Antoinette. Roy Bostock has lashed out at billionaire investor Carl Icahn's attempt to replace Yahoo's directors and complete a deal with Microsoft.... 
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Nick Farrell the Inquirer, Friday 16 May 2008. 09:17:00 Google Earth too intrusive for Euro laws GOOGLE'S PLAN TO PUT detailed street-level images on the Internet will not be allowed in the European Union. The EU's data protection agency said that Google's Street View, which shows ground-level, 360-degree views of streets in 30 US cities, would break EU privacy laws.... 
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Nick Farrell the Inquirer, Friday 16 May 2008. 05:17:00 First European in top Japanese company THE SONY BOSS who doubled the size of the outfit's US operation, despite championing the failed Betamax video recording system, has died aged 80. Harvey Schein, was one of the first 'Europeans' to be a top name in a big Japanese company.... 
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| [H]ardOCP News/Article Feed |
You know, it just doesn’t look good when you try to conceal parts of a lawsuit brought against you by your shareholders. Especially so soon after botching that whole MS merger in the first place. It will be interesting to read what Yahoo is trying to hide, don’t you think?
In a letter sent Friday to the judge overseeing the case in Delaware, a lawyer for the shareholders argued Yahoo is trying "to whitewash embarrassing documents" because the company thinks the information will damage the board's efforts to repel a challenge by activist investor Carl Icahn.
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According to this report, HP is working with Microsoft to fix problems people are having with Windows XP SP3. It seems that AMD based PCs are stuck endless rebooting because, after the update is applied, these PCs look for an Intel drive at boot up (which isn’t there) causing the endless boot cycle.
The main problem, as Johansson and others see it, happened because HP, and possibly other OEMs, used the same images for AMD-based PCs that were used with Intel-based hardware. The result for customers with those AMD machines when the SP3 service pack was applied turned out to be a number of problems, including endless rebooting.
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If you like speed but hate the tickets (and have a spare $25k) then the Motion Pro II is for you. Hit their media page for full videos of this thing in action.
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The weekend is here and that means it is time to Go Mod Something! You can go crazy and build a custom cube from scratch or just lay down some wicked carbon fiber vinyl on your case to give it an awesome new look. It doesn’t matter what you do as long as you go mod something. Need to steal an idea or two? Do what I do and hit up the Case Mod Gallery.
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A U.S. Senate panel has unanimously approved a bill allocating $1B over eight years to fight online child pornography. The story says that the bill encourages authorities “to use and create special software designed to nab child pornography swappers on peer-to-peer file-sharing networks.”
All told, the bill would allocate more than $1 billion over the next eight years for a broad array of efforts aimed at tackling Internet crimes against children. It calls for hiring 250 new federal agents at the FBI, the Immigrations and Custom Enforcement Agency, and the U.S. Postal Service dedicated to child exploitation cases; for beefing up personnel, equipment, and educational programs designed to combat Internet crimes against children.
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Blizzard Evaluating WoW Graphics Overhaul @ Shacknews
Obesity Experts 'Aghast' By Wii Fit @ Wired
SCEA Announces Fall 2008 Game Line Up @ The Earth Times
Sony's Gamer's Day Kicks Off @ Kotaku
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Welcome to Friday’s edition of [H]ard|OCP [H]otDeals! Let’s kick things off with 2GB of OCZ Platinum PC6400 for only $29.99. Save a total of $60 off this XFX nForce 780i 3-Way SLI for a final price $199.99. You can get a nice deal on this XFX 8800GT Zalman Edition for $139.99. If you want an ATi card instead you can get this Radeon 3850 512MB card for $94.99 and then slap it all in this Antec New Solution black & silver case for $104.99 and get free shipping. If you don’t feel like building your own system, remember that Velocity Micros is giving all [H] readers FREE SHIPPING all week, so you might want to take them up on that before the deal expires. Round out your new system with a RatPadz GS or XT and get $5 off and free shipping anywhere in North America.
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According to Shacknews, four player co-op for Gears of War 2 has been confirmed (drop in – drop-out). You can read the Shack’s initial Gears Of War 2 impressions here and watch that video showing of a bunch of new gameplay features again.
Gears of War creator Cliff "CliffyB Bleszinski has confirmed that the much-anticipated sequel will feature four-person cooperative play. Bleszinski had teased the feature earlier in the week, but at the time declined a confirmation.
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First it was Amazon that stood up to NY, now Overstock.com is taking a stand against the state’s sales tax too. The online giant says it will no longer accept NY's advertising until the state internet tax is repealed.
"We love New York," said the site's chairman and CEO, Patrick Byrne, "but New York's new tax law required us to choose between New York customers and New York ad businesses. In the end, we chose our customers. The governor and legislature of New York should understand that a tax is a price that a government charges for a service, and when the price of anything is raised, people (including us) buy less of it."
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Deep from within the bowels of PC Club comes even more rumbling. We have been told that PC Club is “open and in business.” A holding company is coming in with supposed long-term investment aspirations with no major restructuring on the horizon. All stores have reportedly checked in for re-opening, but obviously it is a little touch and go with their entire store staffs being previous dismissed. We were told that any previous employees that do return to their jobs are “fully reinstated as if there were no changes.”
While the ClubIT retail Web presence is not currently operational, we have been told that it will return as well. ASAP. More details to come!
UPDATED with official PR from PC Club.
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I posted the press release earlier today but I really wanted to get your opinion on this story. Are you guys for or against Windows XP on the OLPC or does it even better?
Microsoft and the laptop organization announced Thursday that the nonprofit's green-and-white "XO" computers now can run Windows in addition to their homegrown interface, which is built on the open Linux operating system. That had been anticipated for months, but it amounts to a major shift.
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Cases & Modding
Lian Li PC-A09B Classical Series Mid-Tower @ BmR
Cooling
Thermaltake DuOrb CPU Cooler @ Overclockers Club
Motherboards
DFI LanPartyDK X38-T2R @ Ninja Lane
Video
Albatron GeForce 9600GT-512X @ Legit Reviews
VisionTek Radeon HD3870X2 OC @ Neoseeker
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When you think of states that are friendly to the gaming industry, Texas, Washington and California all come to mind but, if the governor of Georgia has his way, you’ll be able to ad his state to the list.
"The new incentives will put Georgia among the top five states in the U.S., in terms of financial competitiveness for entertainment projects," Ken Stewart, commissioner of the Georgia Department of Economic Development, said in a statement. "We expect to see an increase in the number of industry jobs and overall economic impact for the state in the coming years."
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Things just keep getting worse and worse for the RIAA. Decisions being overturned, losing cases and having to pay defendants attorney fees. What’s next? They’ll have to give back all the money they coerced out of college students?
RIAA nemisis Tanya Andersen has achieved another milestone victory. She fought Vivendi Universal, EMI, Warner Music and Sony BMG’s RIAA to a standstill, forcing it to drop its spurious file sharing case against her, and now an Oregon court has awarded her close to $108,000 in fees and costs.
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Yahoo voluntarily removed a security upgrade after complaints from users because it caused a ton of problems for thousands of BT customers who use their own domain name to send email.
The problem arose when Yahoo decided as an anti-spamming measure to stop any emails going through the servers, which it runs for its partner BT, that did not have a matching BT/Yahoo address in the From: field. People who tried to send using their own domain names found the email did not get sent, and received a confusing message saying that they had "error 553" and offering a link where they could "validate their domain".
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NVIDIA has released their highly anticipated DDR3 chipset, the 790i Ultra SLI and we take a look at this new piece of silicon from the green team in the form of the XFX 790i Ultra SLI.
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Thermaltake has come to market with two new coolers. One is a new rub on an old design, and the other looks like something you might find on a forward-looking fighter craft. But of course, how do these things work? Let's find out.
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Best Buy has certainly stepped up its game in the last few years when it comes to better servicing the DIY computer builder or upgrader. But is Best Buy doing you a service or disservice by selling you its own computer power supply?
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The PC version of Rainbow Six Vegas 2, has finally shipped a month after the console version. We've tested Vegas 2, backed by Unreal Engine 3 on six of today's best video cards. What kind of gameplay experience should you expect on which GPU!
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This budget SLI motherboard provides high end performance and deep features for a much smaller cost. As EVGA puts it, the 750i SLI FTW is engineered For The Win. Now let’s get to is and see what For The Win is all about.
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ASUS comes out swinging with their latest NVIDIA chipset based AMD offering, the M3N-HT Deluxe. Based on the AMD version of the NVIDIA nForce 780a chipset, the board packs a lot of promise.
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How does a 9800 GTX compare to SLI, 3-way SLI, and Quad SLI? We have completed an SLI scaling evaluation using our real world gameplay techniques as well as apples-to-apples testing to see what SLI, 3-way SLI, and Quad SLI can do to improve your gameplay experience.
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BFGTech is holding a drawing for HardOCP readers that could net you some very special hardware. [H]'ers will have access to 3 of 10 Commemorative Box GX2 video cards plus a few other BFG products that will give you a very nice system to build on.
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