News and other tidbits that Chad Cloman finds interesting enough to share
Seagate has announced it will discontinue manufacturing IDE hard drives by the end of the year. The interface, also known as PATA, is losing ground to the newer, faster, and more popular SATA format.
Link: http://arstechnica.com/…
Chad’s News has previously discussed the Blu-Ray/HD-DVD format war, but we thought it worth noting that Blu-Ray has recently received an unexpected vote of confidence. Thieves broke into a video store and stole the entire stock of Blu-Ray discs while ignoring the HD-DVD section.
Link: http://www.engadget.com/…
(via digg)
J.K. Rowling has revealed some additional details [WARNING: LINK CONTAINS SPOILERS] that were cut from the epilogue portion of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows (via Bureau 42). On another note, it appears that The New York Times will not allow this latest book to appear on its bestseller list even though it sold more than 8 million copies in the US on its first day. Children’s books are not eligible for the list (via Digg).
Turns out that you can get better deals on certain items by purchasing them on specific days of the week. The linked article has the details.
Link: http://finance.yahoo.com/…
(via digg)
Smokers rejoice! Starting Aug. 4th, you can take cigarette lighters on an airplane. According to the article, 22,000 lighters are currently confiscated each day by airport security officials.
Link: http://consumerist.com/…
Apparently there is still a strong demand for Windows XP, despite Vista having been available for the last six months. I personally am totally satisfied with XP and see no reason to upgrade.
Link: http://www.sciam.com/…
(via Kim Komando)
This is a new gymnastics competition known as sports acrobatics. I didn’t think this stuff was even possible.
Link: http://www.youtube.com/…
(via Neatorama)
A major power outage hit San Francisco and brought down some heavy-duty web sites, including Second Life and craigslist. They were offline for a few hours. This, despite the fact that their hosting facility advertised seamless, 100% uptime. Guess it’s not enough to have just one hosting location.
Link: http://www.latimes.com/…
(via Kim Komando)
Advertisers are moving away from the tech print media and towards blogs—in large part because the blogs are more specialized, thus allowing ads to be better targeted.
Link: http://www.forbes.com/…
(via Slashdot)
This system reads vinyl records with a laser instead of a needle. It can handle fragile and even broken records. Developed for the Library of Congress to help preserve old recordings, I can see a modified version becoming popular with audiophiles.
Link: http://www.npr.org/…
(via Slashdot)
Windows Vista, we hardly knew you. Microsoft has announced the next major Windows version, code-named “Windows 7”, to be released in 3 years. Maybe we can keep using WinXP until “7” comes out, thus completely circumventing Vista.
Link: http://news.com.com/…
(via lifehacker)
Scientists have created a computer program that cannot be beaten at checkers, once the number of pieces gets down to 10. (I guess you could win if you still had 10 or more pieces left.) The way they worked this out is neat. For every possible combination of 10 checkers or less, the researchers have pre-computed the next move to take—a move that has a certainty of not losing. If the opponent also plays a perfect game, it will result in a draw, but the scientists have proven that the computer cannot lose.
Link#1: http://news.bbc.co.uk/…
Link #2: http://www.nature.com/…
(via Slashdot)
Link #3: http://www.foxnews.com/…
(via Kim Komando)
