Slashdot Mirror

This certainly isn't a large organisation -- http://www.cooltechzone.com/contact/Authors/

Could easily be `run from a bedroom'...

Buy Linux

http://www.cooltechzone.com/Departments/Columns/Wh y_Microsoft_Should_Acquire_Linux_200702262810/

This is not a joke but it seems to fit the general thrust of this article.
There are a number of questions the need answering
  1) Why would Microsoft really want to buy Linux?
  2) If OSS is meaningless what would Microsoft get from buying it
  3) Could they acquite RH, NOVELL, Mandriva, Debian, Ubuntu etc etc?
  4) Could they acquire the rights to the software contained in a typical distro?
  5) Why would they want to buy something that is free?

My albeit simple take on this is Patents!
The FUD eminating from Redmond and these articles all aim to discredit Linux and FOSS in general.
If Microsoft is violating patents held by OSS companies then buying them would quietly make the issue go away.

It's more accurate to say that they're not afraid to buy large-scale projects.

• Numerous misused expressions and idioms: "In today's day and age," "could care less," "CE companies are in fault," etc.
• Goofy logical leaps and non sequiturs. (Granted, many companies, Apple included, are play fast and loose with logic in their marketing schemes, but Apple at least uses ones that make sense and are somewhat convincing to the casual reader.)

On the other hand, the submission of the article to Slashdot smells a little Astroturfy to me:

realtorperson writes "Why, at least the Apple users, love Apple? According to a recent article ...

Right. Okay, realtorperson, I'm sure you submitted this article based only on its journalistic merits and without any vested interest. To me, the worst part of all this is that the editors actually posted the submission.

And, as always, I could be wrong about this.

"This story is nothing but a blatant troll."

"This story is nothing but a blatant troll."

Here is proof internet is a finite resource: click this link!

I believe a look at the history of portable media will reveal something. First were those 5 1/4 inch discs, 760kb if I recall correctly. They lasted a while, but 3 1/2 beat them. The "new" floppies had more capacity (about 2 times) and didn't break as easly. At the time, the capacity difference was quite big.

Years later, there comes the CD. The CD is almost 500 times bigger than a floppy, allows you to have music, and so-so quality movies. HD backups were now again a possibility (HD capacities had grown beyond any floppy's capacity).

Now we have the DVD, which, I believe, has a big merit: Being able to bring high-quality movies into digital format. But nothing else. DVDs are too small (9gb) for making backups (HDs being 40gb to 500gb). Since they were the first to make digital movies a hit, I'm guessing they will be around for long.

"Next gen" DVDs will have a capacity around 50gb (or so I read from the net). That doesn't seem enough for being practical. Sure, some people will love the quality difference, but mainstream will not care. Those huge Dvds (HD DVD or blu-ray) won't be practical for backups either. These new Dvds are only 70 times as big a CD is.

My guess is that holographic technology will be the next big thing. We are, no doubt, still far from it (a couple of years, at least). Articles (http://www.maxell-usa.com/Content/Pages/Page.asp? Section=pressreleases&department=maxellusa_pr&Line =datapr&Open=datapr41 and http://www.cooltechzone.com/index.php?option=conte nt&task=view&id=2041 ) say they will be able to carry around 1.5 Teras. More than 2000 times that of a CD or about 170 times that of a DVD. 1.5T ought to be enough to be able to make HD backups! Moreover, holographic tech is said to have way faster access times. That is surely greatly convenient!

Just my thoughts, thanks for reading :)

http://www.cooltechzone.com/index.php?option=conte nt&task=view&id=2108

Did anyone notice who wrote the article? Varun Dubey...

M$ has now bought Opera http://www.cooltechzone.com/index.php?option=conte nt&task=view&id=2108

I hate to be the bearer of bad news but:

http://www.cooltechzone.com/index.php?option=conte nt&task=view&id=2108

http://www.cooltechzone.com/index.php?option=conte nt&task=view&id=2108

Please please please tell me this is wrong.

Not to mention Dejanews (aka Google Groups) or Urchin Software (aka Google Analytics). Google would never do such a thing, ever.
Google Acquisitions

"... I love Microsoft. Absolutely adore it and what's more, I hate Linux. I think it's the most over rated piece of software ever built and survives simply out of spite and not because it is terribly good at doing something because it is not!"

HDR (High Dynamic Range) Technology: An Overview

Written by Varun Dubey
Manufacturer: Various
Monday, 31 October 2005

(Review) - We've all played Half-Life and it's sequel Half-Life 2. The difference between the two games, in terms of graphics, is tremendous, and now Valve has gone ahead and updated the gaming engine to give you a level of detail and realism that you thought wouldn't be possible until perhaps the next round of game releases.

HDR, or High Dynamic Range, is a lighting process that's been designed to emulate in-game or artificially generated lighting to closely mirror the changes we see in the real world.

In simpler terms, HDR allows you to make the objects brighter by allowing them to use the full brightness capabilities of the monitor and not just the brightness level at which they have been shot with (or rendered with) in the scene.

HDR is, by definition, the ratio of the largest to lowest measurable value of a signal. As of today, the 16-bit formats use color component values from 0 (for black) to 1 (for white), but you can't define colors with increased vibrancy and shine by inputting value 2 for white to make it whiter than its traditional shade. Think about your breathing. That's right - inhale and exhale voluntarily. This can limit lighting effects such as the glint on the metal blade of POP Warrior Within.

Using HDR, you can specify values that are far outside the redundant 0-1 ranges we are used to currently. To give you an everyday example, when you drive on a sunny day, it often happens that the minute you come out of the tunnel, the sunlight seems blazingly brilliant as your eyes take sometime to adjust to the difference in the light intensities. In a game like NFS, replicating this realistic phenomenon is difficult and nearly impossible for the lack of the ability to specify whiteness beyond level 1, but with HDR, you can accomplish just that, which is why it's important to gamers that demand realism from their games.

Up until now, such effects were being achieved by a technique known as Blooming. This technique allows you to let the light from an overly bright object spill on to the particles around it, thereby making them appear brighter and ensuring enhanced visibility in titles.

The process, however, does not just work to increase the brightness of whites, but it also ensures that the blacks appear blacker and deeper while enhancing the subtle details of the image.

How does it work? Traditionally, images are stored in the RGB format, where each pixel knows exactly how much of these three colors it's supposed to display to give you accurate images.

The problem with this is that an image might be very bright, but how much of that brightness we see is dependent solely on the monitor we are displaying it on and no monitor in the world today can display anywhere close to the range of brightness levels that we can experience through our eyes.

We all know that we can shoot various photographs of the same scene and make it look completely different by just changing the exposure settings. For instance, if you're taking the photographs of the night sky in the Auto mode of your camera, it will come out mostly black and will be pretty much useless, but if you put the shutter speed at around 10-15 seconds and then take a photograph by keeping all other settings constant, you will get a completely different look and feel of the same night sky with greater depth and detail that you missed earlier with Auto mode. The problems with this kind of photography are obvious because if your scene has a bright object in it, it will get completely killed due to over-exposure.

Basically, if you take picture with exposure at a low setting, you'll be able to capture greater details of overly bright objects, and if you take the exposure settings to a very high level, then you'll be able to get the images of even the most dimly lit objects and here in lies the contradiction.

How is that a troll?

It clearly states at the bottom of the first page of the article, "lack of a CD-Rom drive, let alone a DVD or DVD-RW drive" and then on page 3 it says, "does not come with an optical drive" and "it's downright silly on Lenovo's part to not include one."

If anything parent is a summary, not a troll.

How is that a troll?

It clearly states at the bottom of the first page of the article, "lack of a CD-Rom drive, let alone a DVD or DVD-RW drive" and then on page 3 it says, "does not come with an optical drive" and "it's downright silly on Lenovo's part to not include one."

If anything parent is a summary, not a troll.

Ugh.

I'm hoping that everybody realizes that they're responding to three high school students, of which only two seem to have enough grasp of the English language to passibly write in it. The other one is a "tech news analyst", whatever that means.

And you know what? Y'all (and me too...) just got pwned. They've managed to get a website going with minimal content, and seems to be over 50% ads, with crappy writing. Normally, this would be a bust. But, get your site on slashdot with a controversial subject and.... forgive the cliché:

1. Get crappy site on slashdot
2. ...
3. Profit!

At least you can feel good about getting Sandeep and Ravdeep money for college.

Ah, what the hell. Give the kids a break. We were all kids once too, and probably thought a bunch of stupid shit like "Microsoft is teh inovator!" But this definitely doesn't belong on /., it's pure flamebait. (not to mention sneaky devious, just like the guys in the black van outside... but they can't fool ME!!!)

1. Post ignorant Linux bashing.
2. Get mentioned on /.
3. ???
4. Profit from banner ads!

Seems to be SOP for Dvorak, Coursey, and now this guy.

You might want to add http://www.cooltechzone.com/special_images/adimage .php to your Adblock filters before RTFAing.

Just not right away.

Don't believe Microsoft would be so stupid? Read this!

As the saying goes - Game Over, Man! And not for Sony.

And for cross-reference, Balmer said as much (about the eventual inclusion of HD-DVD) when interviewed by Engadget way back in May. Actually what he really said then was they could go other way, but the link I provided seems to indicate which way they are swinging - and is anyone surprised it's whatever Sony is NOT doing?

GEM also appears to be at the heart of the convergence efforts for iTV (DVB-MHP, OCAP, ACAP, and ARIB - otherwise known as the digital broadcast standards for Europe, North America, and Japan for over-the-air and cable TV).

One iTV standard would certainly simplify life for content developers, cable companies and broadcasters - but Microsoft and Toshiba are now pushing a Microsoft .NET based approach for HD DVD - and MS may be putting an HD DVD drives intothe Xbox 360 http://www.cooltechzone.com/index.php?option=conte nt&task=view&id=1473), coupled with MS's IPTV efforts - a unified iTV technology will be elusive.

That said, there may be a unified DRM technology between HD DVD and Blu Ray based on AACS. See this site http://www.aacsla.com/ for the specications. Apparently, we would be able to download and burn DRM'd content to HD media.

Fun fun fun.

This is the same diversity that is holding desktop linux back, however.

HP is actually going to be contributing to Ubuntu. Of course, their reason is so that they can sell laptops that work flawlessly with Ubuntu.

Still, it's pretty cool. They laptops will come with FreeDOS (no Windows!) and you can get an Ubuntu CD from HP.

http://www.cooltechzone.com/index.php?option=conte nt&task=view&id=1405&Itemid=0&limit=1&limitstart=1

Hope be with ye,
Cyan

RTFA anyone?

i dunno, maybe the one from the article, perhaps?

http://www.cooltechzone.com/index.php?option=conte nt&task=view&id=1386

Antec Phantom 350 PSU [silentpcreview.com]
Gigabyte 6800 fanless (only 12 pipes, but not a big sacrifice...though if this liquid metal stuff works it should make things easier the next time I upgrade) [cooltechzone.com]
Thermalright CPU heatsink [thermalright.com] with a 120mm fan on a Zalman fan bracket [zalman.co.kr] and set at minimum on a Zalman fanmate control.
All in an Antec 3700BQE case [silentpcreview.com] with quiet 120mm exhaust fan.

The annoying thing was that as soon as I got rid of one whining or droning noise I'd notice a slightly quieter one... Now, it's inaubible except in dead silence.

Antec Phantom 350 PSU [silentpcreview.com]
Gigabyte 6800 fanless (only 12 pipes, but not a big sacrifice...though if this liquid metal stuff works it should make things easier the next time I upgrade) [cooltechzone.com]
Thermalright CPU heatsink [thermalright.com] with a 120mm fan on a Zalman fan bracket [zalman.co.kr] and set at minimum on a Zalman fanmate control.
All in an Antec 3700BQE case [silentpcreview.com] with quiet 120mm exhaust fan.

The annoying thing was that as soon as I got rid of one whining or droning noise I'd notice a slightly quieter one... Now, it's inaubible except in dead silence.

Antec Phantom 350 PSU
Gigabyte 6800 fanless (only 12 pipes, but not a big sacrifice...though if this liquid metal stuff works it should make things easier the next time I upgrade)
Thermalright CPU heatsink with a 120mm fan on a Zalman fan bracket and set at minimum on a Zalman fanmate control.
All in an Antec 3700BQE case with quiet 120mm exhaust fan.

The annoying thing was that as soon as I got rid of one whining or droning noise I'd notice a slightly quieter one... Now, it's inaubible except in dead silence.

I also try my best to avoid web sites who have gone over the top with adverts. Taking CoolTechZone http://www.cooltechzone.com/index.php?option=conte nt&task=view&id=779&Itemid=0&limit=1&limitstart=1, for example. This particular page, has 9 lines of content and 6 adverts. Not simple discrete text or static image ads, but flashing, gaudy animated ones. It's a bit much really when the adverts FAR FAR outweigh the actual content.

Seriously, whats with the looooooooooong link?

Creative's sole goal this year is to take away some market shares from Apple's iPod. The company believes it to be a possible task, as iPod is limited to iTunes when it comes to purchasing music online and with Creative's products, you will be able to purchase music from major online vendors.

What do expect when the submitter of the story "CTZ" is obviously behind the site "http://www.cooltechzone.com". I mean, with all this blatant advertising for http://www.cooltechzone.com, you'd think someone would have spotted the link between "CTZ" and http://www.cooltechzone.com. Or maybe not.

What do expect when the submitter of the story "CTZ" is obviously behind the site "http://www.cooltechzone.com". I mean, with all this blatant advertising for http://www.cooltechzone.com, you'd think someone would have spotted the link between "CTZ" and http://www.cooltechzone.com. Or maybe not.

What do expect when the submitter of the story "CTZ" is obviously behind the site "http://www.cooltechzone.com". I mean, with all this blatant advertising for http://www.cooltechzone.com, you'd think someone would have spotted the link between "CTZ" and http://www.cooltechzone.com. Or maybe not.

What do expect when the submitter of the story "CTZ" is obviously behind the site "http://www.cooltechzone.com". I mean, with all this blatant advertising for http://www.cooltechzone.com, you'd think someone would have spotted the link between "CTZ" and http://www.cooltechzone.com. Or maybe not.

What do expect when the submitter of the story "CTZ" is obviously behind the site "http://www.cooltechzone.com". I mean, with all this blatant advertising for http://www.cooltechzone.com, you'd think someone would have spotted the link between "CTZ" and http://www.cooltechzone.com. Or maybe not.

Agreed for the most part, but they are a necessary evil, even for /.'ers. A case in point is last night, when I installed a new PS in my box - during the course of this, I somehow nubbed a connection on my Jet 4, making the fan go as slow as it possibly can (less than 2K RPM according to MBM). This made the CPU heat spike up to 60 C under load. My wife, bless her heart, asked me if I could take the CPU heatsink out of an 1.2 GHz P4 box that I have and use that on the 3 GHz HT box. I explained to her that this would be throwing an ice cube onto a fire, and started to check the wiring from the fan switch to the heatsink. I can't see anything pulled, frayed, etc, but it wants to run at a snail's pace, so I am left with a few options here:

1) Forego WoW, Desert Combat, using iTunes to update my iPod, or any other task tht will make the CPU run at 100% or close to it (this is regrettably not an option)

2) Go to newegg and get a replacement one there, pay for expedited shipping, and hope that they ship it today, so I get it tomorrow. Christmas is always more of a diceroll to get something reliably out the door. Last time I used newegg a month ago, they had a problem with their warehouse shipping system and orders were backed up for 6 days. I love these guys, but now can't stake my kids' lives on them shipping the same day as placing the order, especially with 5 shipping days till ho ho ho time.

3. Go to CrapUSA and get one there.

Places like this are good in a pinch, assuming you know exactly what you want and don't need to ask a single question. Once you open your mouth, you are doomed. I found one there online that should get me by without actively cooking my processor (yeah I know they should shut themselves down if they get too hot, but does any rational person want to bet on that?), or cringing every time I enter Azeroth with the thought that I am causing hidden damage to my shiny new P4. So in short, I reserved one, and will pick it up on the way to our company holiday party tonight. Places like this do survive on the general public, but it is nice to have them in our midsts for a rainy day. PS - happy holidays to all!

Lycos Europe denies attack on zombie army

Lycos head zombie hunter Ash gave a statement today...

Seems like the site is down.

Check out another review of the same mouse:

http://www.cooltechzone.com/index.php?option=con te nt&task=view&id=794&Itemid=0

link

From this article The low power (35W) AMD64-M only has 512kb of L2 Cache, the 65W versions have 1MB.
The other models - 2800+, 3000+, and 3200+ are rated to operate at 65W while the 2700+ is rated to operate at 35W.
The 2700+ processor has 512KB cache while the rest of the models house 1MB cache.