News and other tidbits that Chad Cloman finds interesting enough to share
The Consumer Electronics Show was held last week in Las Vegas. The linked article lists some of the more interesting gadgets on display, including nice last-gasp efforts from Palm and Polaroid.
Link: http://apnews.myway.com/…
(via Kim Komando)
The Australian government will be implementing a nation-wide internet filtering system, to prevent its citizens from accessing illegal content. Concerns have been raised over the possibility that, with such a mechanism in place, it would be all too easy for the government to filter legal content that it deems inappropriate. And this appears to be exactly what is happening. At times like this I’m thankful for the Bill of Rights.
Link: http://www.news.com.au/…
(via Slashdot)
So you got drunk and beat up your wife. What’s your next step? Treatment? Alcoholics Anonymous? Nope—you sue the airline that served the alcohol.
Link: http://www.news.com.au/…
Buying music from the iTunes Store has taken a turn for the better. First, all songs will be DRM-free. Existing libraries can be upgraded for 30¢ per song. The music files will still be in Apple’s AAC format but can be converted to MP3 by right-clicking on the song in iTunes. Second, there’s a new pricing system, with three price points: 69¢, 99¢, and $1.29. I’m assuming that popular new releases will be the highest, while older, library songs will be the lowest. The majority of songs are DRM-free right now, with the remainder switching over by the end of March. The new pricing scheme will take effect in April.
Link: http://www.apple.com/…
(via Lifehacker)
I recently joined Facebook to play online Scrabble (R.I.P. Scrabulous), but I found it was a great place to connect with friends new and old. Social networking is quite addictive. On Christmas day, Facebook had a 4.65% market share of the entire internet, putting it in second place behind Google. Facebook’s popularity is such that a judge allowed legal papers to be served via the site. So if you haven’t yet jumped on the bandwagon, give Facebook a try. And feel free to add me as a friend.
Did you know that in some cases, hot water freezes faster than cold water? The linked article explains this and four other weird things about water. The supercooling video is pretty neat.
The 2008 Darwin Awards are out, and the winner is the balloon priest. I don’t agree with this one—it seems more like a tragedy than a case of stupidity.
Link: http://www.darwinawards.com/…
(via Neatorama)
Microsoft’s Internet Explorer has dropped to a 68% market share, while Mozilla’s Firefox is at 21% and Apple’s Safari is at 8%. In this case, at least, competition leads to innovation, which is good for the user.
Link: http://www.tgdaily.com/…
(via digg)
So you just finished up a 14-month gambling spree and lost $26 million in the process. What’s your next step? Sue the casino, of course!
Link: http://www.reuters.com/…
When your laptop is stolen, this new technology will lock the laptop, determine its location via built-in GPS, and send the location to a central server. Nice…
Link: http://www.marketwire.com/…
(via Engadget)
When buying over the internet, if the seller asks you to pay via wire transfer, then it’s most likely a scam. This is because wire transfers cannot be canceled or disputed. The best practice is to use a credit card for internet purchases.
Link: http://consumerist.com/…
It seems like the new thing in computer hardware is to get the most cores. If two is better than one, then why not four, or eight? But the truth of the matter is that processing power doesn’t necessarily increase at the same rate as the number of cores. One of the major problems is the “memory wall”, where the cores still share common memory and you’ll run into a situation where one core is waiting for another to finish using the memory bus. The linked article mentions the case where, for certain types of problems, a 16-core CPU has about the same processing power as a dual-core CPU. Yes, you read that right. The recommended solution is stacking memory on top of the CPU—I’m not sure what exactly that means, but I imagine we’ll be hearing more about it in the coming years.
Link: http://arstechnica.com/…
