Chad's News

Here at the Chad’s News network command center, we strongly believe in getting every possible bit of use out of our aging computer equipment. Hands-on exposure to new technology, therefore, is not something we often experience. Thus the need for articles such as the one below, which gives a good overview of current and upcoming display connectors. It covers VGA, DVI, HDMI, UDI, and DisplayPort, as well as some of their relative strengths and weaknesses. Definitely something to read before purchasing a monitor or video card.

Link: http://www.extremetech.com/…
(via Slashdot)

TurboTax customers who e-filed at the last minute this year ran into some serious problems. The company’s servers were overwhelmed—I heard a report on the radio saying they were getting 50-60 requests per second. Some customers printed out the forms and made a midnight run to the post office, while others missed the deadline. Fortunately the IRS was merciful and gave TurboTax users a 48-hour reprieve.

Link: http://news.com.com/…

The picture tells all. (The discount is $1.24.)

Link: http://www.consumerist.com/…

Regular Chad’s News readers will recall the disastrous results that occurred when Sony included a rootkit as part of its audio CD copy protection. Well now they’ve done it again. They’re selling DVDs that, because of anti-copy measures, are unreadable in some players—including ones that they manufacture. Oops. Sony, perhaps learning a lesson from the last snafu, was quick to recall the defective discs and offer replacements.

Link: http://arstechnica.com/…

This site has some unique cell phone ringtones—they’re the alert/warning messages from the cockpits of various airplanes. My favorite is “Whoop! Whoop! Pull Up!”

Link: http://www.aviationringtones.com/
(via Neatorama)

Ethanol is being touted as an alternative fuel because it emits less greenhouse gases than gasoline. Unfortunately, all is not wonderful in ethanol land. A recent study found that the overall health effects of ethanol would be slightly worse than gasoline, because ethanol exhaust has increased amounts of ozone—which contributes to smog and kills people with respiratory problems.

So while ethanol would free Americans from the oil tyranny of the Middle East and would reduce greenhouse gas emissions (thus saving coastal cities from flooding), its health benefits are actually worse.

Link: http://www.iht.com/…
(via digg)

Link #2: http://news.bbc.co.uk/…

The digg post calls this “the scariest X-ray you will see all day.” It’s the scariest one I’ve seen, period. Amazingly enough, the guy recovered and has vision in both eyes.

Link: http://www.theage.com.au/…
(via digg)

This video had me laughing and laughing, especially the part at the Last Supper.

Thanks to John for the link.

Link: http://www.youtube.com/…

The US Postal Service web site has free, downloadable, high-resolution images of the upcoming Star Wars stamp set. Not only is the full sheet available, but each stamp also has its own download. Some of the images are impressive. You can also vote for your favorite stamp. The winner will be made into its own sheet of 20 stamps, while the losers will only be available on the mixed, 15-stamp sheet.

Link: http://www.usps.com/…

Ever wondered if Microsoft does anything with those error reports that get sent when a Windows program crashes (via the “Send Error Report” button)? Apparently they do. The linked article is about an error so perplexing to Microsoft engineers that they asked for phone numbers in order to get more information. Now -that’s- customer service!

Link: http://blogs.msdn.com/…
(via digg)

While it’s been known for some time now that computers can be cooled by submerging them in cooking oil, the linked article discusses a company trying to do this commercially with server racks. The oil doesn’t conduct electricity and is better than fans at transferring heat away from the computer components.

Link: http://www.newscientisttech.com/…
(via Slashdot)

Here’s a discussion on the various writable CD/DVD formats, and how good they are for data storage. I found the article to be a bit too detailed in places, but it has some good points. One thing I took from it is DVD+R is more reliable than DVD-R.

Link: http://adterrasperaspera.com/blog/…
(via Slashdot)