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Really? Vista suppports 99.9% of the XP drivers, in addition to Vista drivers. And you think Vista is more unstable than XP or has driver issues?

Yes: NVIDIA drivers responsible for nearly 30% of Vista crashes in 2007.

Ok, so you admit by proxy you know nothing about DX10

Oh, I know about it being able to do "more", but nobody is really doing much with it, certainly not to an extent that's worth spending £120+ on an OS to get, especially when by doing more you get reduced performance; bit of a concern when you like to run in 2560*1600.

The Vista APIs are more about developers and development than the 'pretty'

Right, but I'm not a Windows developer, and no Windows developers are going to be doing things only supported by Vista for a long time, so why should I, or any other user, care? An OS is there to run apps, and those apps run just fine on XP.

Again you are proving you don't use Vista or know much about it either. More memory, ya it does like 1GB to outperform XP and 2GB is even better.

Performance can be measured. I've seen such measurements, none of them show Vista appreciably outperforming XP. If it's so much better, demonstrate it, don't just call me an idiot, cite something.

Just like Vista itself, the Flip3D is crap in comparison to the technology actually setting underneath that makes it happen.

Yes, the fancy GPU pipeline/virtualization/etc stuff is very impressive, and hardware compositing is one of the main reasons I might consider Vista, but it could be powered by fairies from the 10th dimension for all the difference it makes to me.

However, running Vista WDDM drivers (which every card made since the Geforce 5200 years ago has), not only runs mainly in User Mode, but Vista has several layers of video Crash recovery that you can't even get in another OS at this time.

Yes, and isn't it nice when your video card crashes and doesn't take out the OS, but it still crashes, and it doesn't necessarily always recover. What difference does it make if I hear it happening from a friend who's using it instead of on my own machine, where I haven't seen an nvidia.sys crash in about 18 months?

Yes, Vista has some very impressive aspects, it's very advanced in some areas, but I'll buy it when it actually provides a reasonable amount of benefit to me, thanks, not before.

LTE is not GSM.

It's not directly GSM and I never said it was, I said VARIANT, as in based on GSM

GSM is not 4G.

Duh, I never said that it was

Verizon dumps CDMA for GSM-based LTE in 4G networksengadget.com

In fact, there *is* no 4G, no such thing exists.

It doesn't?

Verizon had a choice of three competing 4G technologies: LTE, WiMAX, and UMB. UMB (Ultra Mobile Broadband) was formerly known as EV-DO Rev. C, and is supposed to be fully backwards-compatible with other CDMA technologies while providing a significant speed boost. The technology has had few takers so far, however, and Verizon's decision to move away from EV-DO may doom UMB to a niche.arstechnica.com

Ralph de la Vega, president and CEO for AT&T's wireless unit also his commitment to LTE, for the company's upgrade path to 4G.telecoms.com

Perhaps you should write to Verizon and AT&T and tell them they have no clue what they are talking about. They could probably use a good consultant like yourself.

The FCC currently defines broadband as 768Kbps or faster. So even if he has a 512K ADSL line, he's still not on broadband. And I'd agree with him that much of the "broadband" in the US really shouldn't be called that, especially compared to the baseline connections in the rest of the developed world.

I dunno... in this bit of the developed world (UK), out in the 'countryside' (green fields + cows, etc) I can only get 600kBytes/s and we call it broadband. The FCC seems a bit optimistic there.

The FCC currently defines broadband as 768Kbps or faster. So even if he has a 512K ADSL line, he's still not on broadband. And I'd agree with him that much of the "broadband" in the US really shouldn't be called that, especially compared to the baseline connections in the rest of the developed world.

Calling someone a troll when you're so woefully misinformed only makes you look stupid and mean.

Here is an accident where a driver who was texting killed someone because he was not paying attention to the road.

http://www.engadget.com/2007/08/31/researchers-develop-a-360-degree-holographic-display/

http://www.engadget.com/2008/03/06/robotic-snake-moves-by-pushing-off-obstacles/ I remember reading an article about a guy designing robotic snakes more than 10 years ago. Hardly surprising that they have found an application for them now.

It's called the MacBook Air. People have been slicing bread and cutting cakes with the thing for over a month now. Some people even claim to have sliced themselves open on the seemingly harmless laptop.

It's called the MacBook Air. People have been slicing bread and cutting cakes with the thing for over a month now. Some people even claim to have sliced themselves open on the seemingly harmless laptop.

Openmoko FreeRunner Why settle for anything less?

My Feeds: Select: All 95 subscriptions, None, Unassigned A to Z Kids Stuff children http://www.atozkidsstuff.com/atoz.xml ABC News: Top Stories news http://my.abcnews.go.com/rsspublic/fp_rss20.xml About Computing Center technology http://z.about.com/6/g/pcworld/b/rss2.xml About.com Archaeology Archaeology http://z.about.com/6/g/archaeology/b/rss2.xml All Things Digital technology http://feeds.allthingsd.com/atd-feed/ Archaeology News Archaeology news http://www.topix.net/rss/science/archaeology.xml Ars Technica tech news http://feeds.arstechnica.com/arstechnica/BAaf ArsTechnica: Security Content Security technology http://feeds.feedburner.com/arstechnica/security BBC News | News Front Page | World Edition U.K. http://newsrss.bbc.co.uk/rss/newsonline_world_edition/front_page/rss.xml BBC News | Science/Nature | World Edition Science/Nature http://newsrss.bbc.co.uk/rss/newsonline_world_edition/science/nature/rss.xml Boing Boing odd http://feeds.boingboing.net/boingboing/iBag Breaking News: CBSNews.com news http://www.cbsnews.com/feeds/rss/main.rss Breitbart.tv varied news topics http://www.breitbart.com/xml/recentvideo.xml ChannelWeb Complete Feed Computer news http://www.crn.com/cwb/globalcontent/cweball/index.xml;jsessionid=L0I1HBDQISHBCQSNDLQSKH0CJUNN2JVN Christian Science Monitor | Top Stories news http://www.csmonitor.com/rss/top.rss CNN.com - Offbeat odd http://rss.cnn.com/rss/cnn_offbeat.rss CNN.com - Politics politics http://rss.cnn.com/rss/cnn_allpolitics.rss CNN.com - U.S. U.S. news http://rss.cnn.com/rss/cnn_us.rss Computerworld Breaking News technology http://feeds.computerworld.com/Computerworld/News Cool Tools technology http://feeds.feedburner.com/CoolTools Courant.com - Connecticut News Ct. news http://feeds.courant.com/Courant/ConnecticutNews Defense Tech U.S. defense news http://www.defensetech.org/index.rdf Discovery News - Technology technology http://dsc.discovery.com/news/subjects/technology/xdb/topstories.xml Drudge Report news http://feeds.feedburner.com/FeedPalooza/lwDu Dvorak Uncensored news http://www.dvorak.org/blog/?feed=rss2 Engadget robots & gadgets http://www.engadget.com/rss.xml Extremetech technology http://rssnewsapps.ziffdavis.com/extreme.xml Fark.com news http://www.pluck.com/rss/fark.rss FileForum software http://fileforum.b

• Dilbert - do I need to describe this?
• Explosm.com - Cyanide and Happiness comic
• Fokke & Sukke - Dutch comic. Popular daily cartoon (yes, I'm dutch and the name is intentional)
• Little Gamers - gaming comic
• Penny Arcade - gaming comic
• FAIL blog - epic fail every day

Finance & Economy

• BusinessWeek Online -- Most Popular Stories
• Calculated Risk - general blog
• The Economist - News analysis and views
• NRC | EconomieDutch newspaper, economy section

Space

• Bad Astronomy - Phil Plait's blog about astronomy and skepticism
• Chris Lintott's Universe - Astronomer, Galaxy Zoo co-founder and co-host of BBC's The Sky at Night
• NASA Astronomy Picture of the Day
• New Scientist, Space - Astronomy section of New Scientist
• Space.com - More space news...
• Starts With a Bang! - Astrophysicist Ethan Siegel, tries to answer some common but very complex astronomy questions.
• Universe Today - One of the most well known astronomy blogs

Tech

• Engadget - THE gadget blog
• Evil Mad Scientist Laboratories - making crazy electronic stuff (and drooling over niche market product catalogues)
• Gametrailers' ScrewAttack - funny gaming videos
• Kotaku - THE games blog
• Reuters Science
• Reuters Technology
• Slashdot
• The Brainy Gamer - in-depth articles about (the history of) games in general
• Tweakers.net - the dutch Slashdot

Misc

• Greggman - American gamedev'er who lived in Japan
• Jort Kelder - Dutch dandy. Ex-editor-in-chief of Quote, a magazine about entrepeneurs and the life of the nouveau rich. Co-host of the dutch Dragons Den.
• Scalzi's Whatever - Sciencefiction author.
• The Sartorialist - Fashion photographer. If you'd like to dress like a man with some class, instead of a fake tan metrosexual...look here for inspiration.

parallax.com - it's a company that makes chips, boards, etc, and they offer classes for hobbyists. they're in CA, so if you're elsewhere, might want to look at a similar company in your location (sorry, no ideas there). check out this link: http://www.engadget.com/?06051835 to see some things the propellor chip (from Parallax) is used in.

why Jason is driving this car?

It's just another speaker cable scam, based on the fact that audiophiles are idiots. Tests have been conducted to demonstrate that most audiophiles cannot tell the difference between Monster cables and coat hanger wire.

On the other hand, fMRI scans by Caltech showed that people who were given samples of the same wine physically enjoyed it more when they thought it cost more.

There is little reason to believe that humanity will survive much longer.

Ok. I hope this will clear up some confusion about this and whether they are claiming to violate thermodynamics... Although the hype articles and the company itself are calling it the "H2O car", the slashdot summary says "The car has an energy generator that extracts hydrogen from water that is poured into the car's tank," so obviously they are not really claiming that water is the energy source. Something else (the real energy "generator" - which is actually an energy carrier itself, see last paragraph) splits the water to make hydrogen which is then used in a hydrogen fuel cell to produce electricity to power an electric motor and drive the vehicle.

The engadget article says the same: "The key to that system, it seems, is its membrane electrode assembly (or MEA), which contains a material that's capable of breaking down water into hydrogen and oxygen through a chemical reaction."

So most likely they have something that is reactive with water sitting on or near the electrode of the fuel cell (MEA) which splits the water, and then the fuel cell electrode consumes the resulting hydrogen. This material could be a metal, which spontaneously gets oxidized and reduces the water, for example Zn + H2O = ZnO + H2. In which case zinc is the energy source. Lots of metals have been tried for similar systems for vehicles. Or it could be other materials besides pure meatls that can get oxidized (e.g. an iron oxide (FeO) to a more oxidized iron oxide (Fe3O4)).

The claims that get very close to lies are when the company says you only ever need to put water in the car. Well, if they load it up with enough zinc (or whatever splits the water; probably not actually zinc) to begin with to last for the life of the car, that is true, but very unlikely. They would more likely have to sneak in and replenish the water reducer without you knowing for the claim to appear true. In any case, regardless of if you are replenishing the real energy source or you get the car containing a huge stock of it, it's going to be as expensive as hydrogen. The reducer must be produced by using a similar amount of energy as hydrogen. e.g. if Zn, one starts from an oxidized form of the metal, either zinc sulfide or zinc oxide (like the "spent fuel" of the vehicle) and must reduce it with energy (see zinc smelting). The reducer is an energy carrier and the energy that is stored during its production (or extraction from an oxide) comes from heat or electric energy sources. This is analogous to water splitting to produce an energy carrier - hydrogen (so the water in the vehicle is just one of the last steps in a chain of energy transfers).

Audiophiles can't tell the difference between Monster Cable and coat hangers: http://www.engadget.com/2008/03/03/audiophiles-cant-tell-the-difference-between-monster-cable-and/

Photo of the water car.

I'm pretty sure that's not Mr. Fusion unless that's the alter-ego of Jason Voorhees. In which case you might not wish for you Mr Fusion right now after all. It's more like Mr. Fission I'd say. Well I guess at least they got the date of publication right.

but it must be true
I read it in engadget
trustworthy news source!

http://www.engadget.com/2008/06/13/genepax-shows-off-water-powered-fuel-cell-vehicle/

The key to that system, it seems, is its membrane electrode assembly (or MEA), which contains a material that's capable of breaking down water into hydrogen and oxygen through a chemical reaction.http://www.engadget.com/2008/06/13/genepax-shows-off-water-powered-fuel-cell-vehicle/

just the prototype, http://www.engadget.com/2008/06/13/genepax-shows-off-water-powered-fuel-cell-vehicle/

SMART sucks

There have been numerous studies showing that SMART failure predictions are frequently incorrect, saying that a drive is not going to fail when it is, or is late in reporting a failure.

"most intriguing was that drives often needed replacement for issues that SMART drive status polling didn't or couldn't determine, and 56% of failed drives did not raise any significant SMART flags (and that's interesting, of course, because SMART exists solely to survey hard drive health)"

source:

http://www.engadget.com/2007/02/18/massive-google-hard-drive-survey-turns-up-very-interesting-thing/

personally, I think SMART was developed by the drive companies to sell more drives. Frequently, admins (myself included) will replace a drive that they have a bad feeling about.

Drives are cheap enough that replacing a drive that possibly could fail is a trivial process.

Maybe I'm unlucky, but I had three notebook HDs die on me without any warning. Even though I'm using 'SmartMon' program which should warn me about worsening drive condition.

Also, Google's on hard drive survey seems to come to the same conclusion: "One of those we thought was most intriguing was that drives often needed replacement for issues that SMART drive status polling didn't or couldn't determine, and 56% of failed drives did not raise any significant SMART flags"

http://www.engadget.com/2007/02/18/massive-google-hard-drive-survey-turns-up-very-interesting-thing/

This doesn't make sense. There is a reason the Anonymous developer is working the free, unpaid overtime. Anonymous person: bump up your estimates or do something to get that time back. The next time I hear about a programmer whining about their free overtime, I will interrupt their cathartic soliloquy with these two statements:
Work only 40 hours a week. If someone complains, say "Go ahead, fire me. These are not the terms of my employment. If you want me to work more, pay me more."
If you don't have the nerve to say something like that, try this one: "You know, if you're looking to save money on labor, you can always send my job overseas and lay me off. I hear they write really good code over there. And, the ones in China never, ever put back doors in their code."

Then why did this happen?

"Is anyone paying attention in Redmond?"

Yes.

At least OLPC and Asus are.

"Is anyone paying attention in Redmond?"

Yes.

At least OLPC and Asus are.

Looks like they are going to put spore on there.
http://www.engadget.com/2008/03/06/apple-announces-first-iphone-sdk-games/

Trademark, not copyright. Here. I don't really care about the merits of T-Mobile's claims, but there is Supreme Court precedent saying that a color can be trademarked in certain narrow circumstances (the alleged holder must show "secondary meaning"--basically, that customers associate the color with the brand). Recall that trademark traditionally (and arguably still mostly) is geared towards alleviating customer confusion. In that light, such a trademark might make sense (again, not saying it does in T-Mobile's case, as I don't know anything about it).

See Qualitex Co. v. Jacobson Prods. Co., 514 U.S. 159 (1994) for illumination. I disagreed with the concept until I studied the case in IP Law. Now I'm neutral.

all for $500

Imagine a Beow.. Oh what, they have er

First Post, yes, no, Ok I'm off then.

What the heck are you talking about? unsuccessful troll.

Sirius/xm was approved.

I have a theory, and it's not a conspiracy theory. Conspiracy implies conscious intent, and intent requires awareness which such jokers, and indeed many regular people simply don't posses. That theory goes like this. . .

The state of communications technology is mirrored by public awareness. --That is, the more aware people are, the more likely it is that they'll have at their disposal tools like the Model 100 with which to communicate. Over the last decade, the portable writing tools available to us have been seriously limited. Small, awkward keyboards and small, awkward screens represent a very choked up conduit for thought. We've made huge gains in terms of connectivity in the other direction, through distributed 'experience', but that's about telling people what to think rather than giving people the ability to report on their own thoughts and experiences in a useful manner. (A cell phone conversation is not a good way to get an article to press, or to update your blog).

When you're out in the field and you want to express your findings and thoughts to the world, the available devices became next to worthless despite the fact that we are capable of making stunningly effective and easily affordable machines using today's technology. The Iraq war and the public perception of it is an excellent example of the mirror. People were very, very ignorant, wanting information served to them, (like poor Bill O'), and invested very little into actually trying to divine the truth for themselves. The communication devices broadly available mirrored that head-space perfectly. i.e., there weren't any.

But things are changing! Many more people today DO want to find out the truth for themselves; they are becoming increasingly fed up with the nonsense fluff offered up by the traditional channels. And just look at the mirror. . . We've got a slew of new portable devices coming down the pike.

The Asus eee 1000 has a 10" screen, a full laptop keyboard and the new Atom chip offering up 7 hours of battery life. And it's around the same size, if not smaller, (and certainly lighter), than the Model 100. All for $550, half the price of the original Model 100 of yore.

While I do like a text-only machine for strict writing, the shape of knowledge collection and dissemination today has grown to include the internet. Today, real journalism requires access to the web in a meaningful way. You need to be able to check facts and current events, compare notes with your peers, and update your blog or whatever from the field, and now you can. The Model 100 was an excellent conduit for knowledge in a time when knowledge itself was less robust. The light was dimmer, had less octane. My opinion, and please remember that this is an OPINION, is

The version of Windows is XP Home, and it will only be available for OEMs selling ultraportable computers that cannot run Windows Vista, or won't run it very well. As such, Microsoft will only license it if your computers don't exceed some maximum specifications as defined by Microsoft. Some more information here: http://www.engadget.com/2008/04/03/windows-xp-to-live-until-2010-on-the-eee/.

And lets not forget both the PQI Intelligent Drive i820 or the Kingmax Super Stick, both about the same size as the Sony. All three are much smaller than the article's.

Just found out that hybrid drives are already in the market. http://www.engadget.com/2007/03/07/samsungs-hybrid-hard-drive-hhd-released-to-oems/

XP home or Ubuntu, according to Engadget.

Considering 802.11 uses 20Mhz channels, a 25Mhz allocation doesn't sound all that interesting.

It's already been reported that the US price for the Linux (SuSE) version will be $399 and the XP version will be $549. The XP version will supposedly include more RAM, Bluetooth, and a higher capacity battery. There's also mention of a $499 "base" XP version.

Also, I believe that "new kit is always significantly more expensive than the USD/GBP exchange rate would imply." Last time I checked, the exchange rate wasn't capable of rational thought (ha!), and thus can't infer.

Or it could be $399

.. Google demonstrated the first HTC device running Android with multitouch support.

http://www.engadget.com/2008/05/28/google-demos-the-htc-dream-at-i-o-conference

This is real news, a working device that we can buy. Not a slow demo running on a laptop (want to guess the laptop specifications?)

Sony, the dirty bastards that they are, will offer you a crapware-free machine for the measly sum of $50.

I have no idea why people keep blindly repeating this, but the Dell Ubuntu machines are not more expensive than the Windows models, in fact they are cheaper. The author apparently hasn't done his homework... I just bought an Insiprion 1420N with Ubuntu which arrived at the end of last week, and it was about $50 cheaper than the same configuration running Windows (before coupons).

Don't take my word for it:

http://www.engadget.com/2007/07/04/ubuntu-based-dell-systems-50-cheaper-than-windows/

Or just go to http://www.dell.com/ubuntu/ and price it out for yourself, if you still don't believe me...

AFAIK, Electric Universe doesn't even have a *hypothesis* to explain the cosmic microwave anisotropy. Which was, by the way, a huge vindication for Big Bang theory, since it was predicted in advance.

By the way -- has anyone else looked up CMEF, his source of funding? Right on the front page, a big pitch for cash:

The Company is privately offering 1,000,000 shares

Centre for Environmental and Energy Resources Sweden AB is raising funds, for demonstrate the scientific feasibility of Hydrogen-Boron fusion and production of net energy by selling shares. Please contact the company at arnold@cmef.eu to discuss investing.

Support a better future

You can help yourself, your country and future generations by supporting us (CMEF). You can assist us by sending a monetary donation. Any assistance you are able to provide will be appreciated. For more information click here

I'd be willing to wager that they don't have the $10m, and might not even have the $600k yet. In fact, their whole website is about how wonderful Focus Fusion and Lerner's work is. So, I mean, acting like you got a grant as though it's some sort of vindication of your technology when it's from what's virtually a fansite isn't exactly fair. It's just some Focus Fusion fans trying to raise money to fund it.

I'll just make a quick observation that the "Tree Power" guy managed to get funding, too.

It is your lucky day!