TechReflex - Technology News

China Scraps Plans for Extension of Magnetic Levitation Railway

2004-01-19T22:19:00.000-05:00

China has scrapped plans for a high-speed magnetic levitation railway between Shanghai and Beijing, just two weeks after inaugurating a similar system within the city of Shanghai.

The announcement of the cancellation appeared Friday in state-run newspapers. The reports quoted Chinese transportation officials as saying the government would instead seek to modernize China's overextended rail system using more conventional, less-expensive, high speed wheel-track technology, such as that currently used in Japan and France.

The news came as the busy Lunar New Year holiday travel season is approaching. Officials estimate 800 million people will travel to their home provinces in China over the next few days, most of them by train.

At Beijing's main railway station, hundreds lined up Friday in freezing temperatures, hoping to secure tickets for home. With the New Year festival less than a week away, most of the cheaper class fares are already sold out.

Chu Yanyan, a Beijing resident in her 30's, says she is trying to book a seat to Nanjing, but doubts she will find anything she can afford. Everyone, she says, wants the cheaper seats. She says China's decision to abandon plans for the mag-lev railway to Shanghai was not necessarily bad news.

She says, people who travel by train are workers who usually do not have much money, so they would not be able to afford anything like mag-lev tickets. Ms. Chu, says the high speed train might be good for some, but most people fight to get the cheapest tickets.

It was estimated that the Shanghai-to-Beijing railway would have cost China $14 billion to build.

Some people say the government was jumping ahead of itself by proposing such an expensive system at a time when China is still a developing country, with a per capita income of around $1,000.

German companies have spent billions to develop the mag-lev technology, but have had difficulty selling it due - in large part - to its set-up cost.

Two weeks ago, China became the first nation to operate a mag-lev railway commercially, when officials inaugurated a 30-kilometer-long line between downtown Shanghai and the city's airport.

SGI announces low-cost Linux supercluster machine

2004-01-12T11:44:00.000-05:00

SGI today announced a new, low-cost Itanium 2-based Linux server, the Altix 350. The new $12,199 machine will dramatically reduce the cost and complexity of shared-memory superclusters -- supercomputers that run a single Linux system image spanning many processors.

An advantage of the Altix architecture is the single Linux system image -- typically a stock 2.4.x kernel with open source high-performance computing patches applied. Applications can be installed and run as if on an ordinary Linux workstation.

SGI is targeting what it says is a $2.6 billion market for midrange servers for scientists, design engineers, researchers, and other technical computing users, a segment that is currently dominated by mid-range machines from Sun, IBM, and HP running proprietary versions of Unix.

The Altix 350 borrows its design from SGI's high-end Altix 3000 series, a high performance computing architecture used for tasks like planetary weather modelling. Since its January 2003 introduction, SGI says it has shipped 10,000 processors to 150 Altix 3000 customers, including a 512-processor machine used by NASA Ames Research Center.

Space station leak located in lab

2004-01-12T11:41:00.000-05:00

A leaky hose in a window of the laboratory module Destiny has been blamed for the International Space Station's three-week drop in air pressure.

The hose, used to equalise pressure and eliminate fog between two of the window's six clear panes, has been capped according to NASA. The hose has yet to be unequivocally confirmed as the source of the leak, but the station's air pressure does seem to have now stabilised.

US astronaut Michael Foale and Russian cosmonaut Alexander Kaleri have been searching for the leak since they were told about it on 5 January. On 9 January they ruled out a Russian air purifier, and over the weekend they checked airlocks on the US and Russian station segments, as well as the docked Russian Soyuz lifeboat - all of which appeared airtight.

Toshiba Readies Truly Tiny Hard Drive

2004-01-08T14:37:00.000-05:00

Toshiba has unveiled a prototype hard drive that's smaller than any currently on the market. The drive could start appearing in devices such as cellular telephones and digital music players before the end of this year.

The drive is the same length and width as an SD memory card and is 1 millimeter thicker, says Maciek Brzeski, vice president of marketing at Toshiba's U.S. storage media division.

A prototype on display at the Consumer Electronics Show here this week has a data storage capacity of 2GB. Toshiba is also planning to produce a sample drive with 4GB capacity around the middle of this year, Brzeski says.

The device itself is a miniaturized version of the kind of drive found inside a personal computer. It features a recording platter, the media part of the hard drive on which data is stored, that measures 0.85 inches in diameter.

Most current desktop computers use drives with a 3.5-inch-diameter platter, while notebook computers usually use 2.5-inch drives. Even smaller drives are used in digital music players--Apple Computer's IPod and IPod mini use 1.8-inch and 1.0-inch drives, respectively--but until now no company has unveiled a smaller device.

In search of a slice of life

2004-01-03T00:14:00.000-05:00

While U.S. astronomers anxiously await tomorrow's scheduled arrival of their latest probe to search for life on Mars, a study by Australian scientists is casting new light on where to look for advanced life elsewhere in our galaxy.

Their analysis argues that a slice of the Milky Way, including the region around Earth, is a "Goldilocks zone" for life to evolve. "That is, it is not too hot and not too cold; it is just right," jokes Charles Lineweaver, lead author of the study, which appears today in the journal Science.

If the analysis is correct, life in many places could have been evolving for a billion years longer than on Earth.

What the Australian astronomers and physicists did is to look for four physical features they believe are necessary for advanced life to evolve:

There must be enough heavy elements -- notably carbon, oxygen and nitrogen -- to build Earth-like life forms.

Conversely, there cannot be too much of these heavy elements, because they would produce a large number of Jupiter-sized planets. Recent analysis of extraterrestrial planetary systems suggests that the movements of these giant bodies toward their suns would obliterate all Earth-type planets in their path.

Apple-Watchers Mull Reports of Low-Cost iPods

2004-01-02T23:44:00.000-05:00

Continuing a Macworld Expo tradition, speculation grew this week in the Mac community about Apple Computer Inc.'s forthcoming announcements at next week's show in San Francisco. While Apple-centric IT professionals hope for news of an updated Xserve platform, consumers and resellers expect a low-cost iPod media player is in the works.

On the consumer front, industry insiders wondered what the introduction of a smaller, less-expensive iPod line would mean for the marketplace, consumers and Apple's bottom line. Although Apple declined to confirm the rumors, some Apple watchers predicted another success for the Cupertino, Calif., company, as others feared that a less-expensive music player could take sales away from Apple's current offerings, which range in price from $300 to $500.

Apple users threaten to sue over iBook, iPod

2003-12-31T21:22:00.000-05:00

Can a few bad apples -- like product quality complaints and potential lawsuits -- spoil the bunch for loyal fans of Apple Computer Inc. ahead of their biggest party of the year?

As enthusiasts devoted to Apple (nasdaq: AAPL - news - people) prepare to descend on San Francisco next week for the annual Macworld conference, at least two online petitions have collected hundreds of signatures from potential plaintiffs seeking to file lawsuits over claims of defects in the iBook laptop.

Another growing source of complaints surrounds Apple's wildly-popular iPod line of digital music players, which many enthusiasts believe will get an upgrade at Macworld with the introduction of smaller, less-expensive models and a range of case colors.

Queen to knight early Web innovator

2003-12-31T21:19:00.000-05:00

Does this mean the Web is his castle? Tim Berners-Lee, the technologist who added hyperlinking capabilities to the Internet to create the World Wide Web in 1990, is being knighted by Britain's Queen Elizabeth.

Buckingham Palace said this week that Berners-Lee, 48, a British citizen who lives in the United States, got the honor because of his "services to the global development of the Internet."

In a statement released by the World Wide Web Consortium, an Internet group he directs, Berners-Lee said he considered knighthood an honor that "applies to the whole Web development community."

Online Sales Reach Record High

2003-12-30T21:37:00.000-05:00

Consumers pumped the Internet during the holiday season, pushing online sales to record highs.

From November 1 to December 12, online shoppers forked over more than $13 billion, excluding travel sales. This is a 46 percent jump over last year's total, and the revenue sum is sure to surge even higher after the last two weeks of December are counted. Some of the top sellers on the Web are clothing, videos/DVDs, consumer electronics, toys/video games and books, according to an "eSpending" survey from Goldman, Sachs & Co., Harris Interactive, and Nielsen/NetRatings. (You would think three analyst firms could pool their talents and come up with a better survey name but no such luck.)

While the music industry appears intent on shutting down online sales, its movie industry cohorts should be cheering on the Web. Video and DVD sales surged 89 percent year-on-year to account for $1.2 billion. Clothing makes up the bulk of Internet sales with $2.5 billion in revenue this year - a 35 percent jump from 2002. Toys and video games pulled in $1.6 billion, consumer electronics accounted for $1.4 billion and books brought in an even $1 billion. All categories enjoyed a healthy increase in sales this year.

The future is now

2003-12-30T21:35:00.000-05:00

The ubiquity of the iPod, the return of the Mac, and the simplicity of the portable memory stick are just some of the developments that could change our lives in 2004. Charles Arthur offers his predictions for a year of innovation

There's a gleam in technology enthusiasts' eyes when they look forward to 2004. Since the computer industry started plummeting, around the beginning of 2001, there has been much innovation yet nobody has been able to persuade consumers or business to buy anything in large enough volumes to turn things around.

That's ready to change. The pace of innovation is still dramatic; but now people and companies are ready to take it on board. So here's your look forward to what's going to happen, and not happen, in 2004 - followed by my advice on what to do and what not to do.

Microsoft aims to make spammers pay

2003-12-26T23:04:00.000-05:00

Despite efforts to stem the billions of spam e-mails flooding inboxes, unwanted messages are still turning e-mail into a quagmire of misery.

Spammers send out tens of millions of e-mails to unsuspecting computer users every day, employing a myriad of methods to ensure their pills, loans and "requests for our lord" pleas fox e-mail filters.

Some are even turning to prose and poetry to fool the technological safeguards people put in place.

But a group of researchers at Microsoft think they may have come up with a solution that could, at least, slow down and deter the spammers.

The development has been called the Penny Black project, because it works on the idea that revolutionised the British postage system in the 1830s - that senders of mail should have to pay for it, not whoever is on the receiving end.

Toshiba begins shipping XDR DRAM sample chips

2003-12-26T23:02:00.000-05:00

Toshiba Corp. began producing sample memory chips based on Rambus Inc.'s next-generation XDR (extreme data rate) memory technology on Thursday, the Japanese company said the same day.

XDR, which was formerly known by its Yellowstone development code-name, is targeted at high-performance applications such as digital consumer electronics, network systems, game consoles and graphics applications. It runs at a speed of 3.2GHz, which is significantly faster than any memory technology in use today.

Toshiba's first samples are 512M bit DRAM (dynamic RAM) chips and come slightly ahead of schedule. When Rambus announced XDR in July this year it said it expected sample chips to begin rolling off fabrication lines at Toshiba during 2004.

2004 shaping into a very Martian new year

2003-12-26T22:57:00.000-05:00

With the arrival of Europe's first interplanetary probe at Mars and two more U.S. spacecraft on the way, the red planet will be under intense scrutiny for months as scientists attempt to figure out why a world flecked with evidence of an Earth-like past appears dead and dry.

An even more compelling question is whether indigenous life ever took root on Mars, as many suspect but cannot prove.

"If you look at the surface of Mars today, it's a desolate place. It's dry. It's cold. It's barren," said Cornell University astronomer Steven Squyres, who heads the science teams for two NASA rovers scheduled to land on Mars beginning next month. "It's not an inviting environment for life, and yet we see these tantalizing clues," he said.

The unprecedented barrage of spacecraft is due partly to the relatively close distance between Earth and Mars, an alignment that occurs every two years. This year's lineup is particularly favorable, with Earth and Mars about 35 million miles apart -- as close as they have been in more than 60,000 years. At that distance, spacecraft can be dispatched from Earth using less powerful and less expensive boosters.

No one expects everything to go perfectly, however.

"Mars has been a most daunting destination," said NASA's associate administrator for space science Ed Weiler. "Some -- including me -- have called it 'The Death Planet.'"

Four Spacecraft to Reach Mars Over Next Month

2003-12-20T14:04:00.000-05:00

The prospect of life on Mars has charged the public imagination for more than a century, ever since astronomers first spied what they thought were canals dug to irrigate the planet's ruddy surface.

But after spacecraft and Earth-based telescopes began taking a closer look at the planet, evidence of the canals — and the Martians who presumably created them — quickly vanished.

Instead, the scrutiny showed Mars to be a dusty, frigid world, shrouded by an atmosphere too thin to breathe, bombarded with radiation and largely dry beyond the ice that caps its poles. It seemed altogether hostile to life as we know it.

But ongoing scientific spadework continues to turn up evidence that suggests that long ago Mars was a wetter, if not warmer, world where rivers large enough to carve canyons the size of the United States flowed across its surface. Life, even if just tiny microbes, could have thrived in such a place.

Science's Breakthrough Of The Year: Illumination Of The Dark, Expanding Universe

2003-12-19T22:01:00.000-05:00

In 2003, new evidence cemented the bizarre idea that the universe is made mostly of mysterious "dark matter," being stretched apart by an unknown force called "dark energy." This set of discoveries claims top honors as the Breakthrough of the Year, named by Science and its publisher, AAAS, the nonprofit science society.

These insights into our "dark" universe plus nine other research advances make up Science's top ten scientific developments in 2003, chosen for their profound implications for society and the advancement of science. The Top Ten list appears in the journal's 19 December issue.

This year, information from the Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe (WMAP) satellite and the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS) telescopes confirmed some of cosmologists' strangest proposals about the fate of the universe.

"The implications of these discoveries about the universe are truly stunning. Cosmologists have been trying for years to confirm the hypothesis of a dark universe. Science is glad to recognize their success in this effort as the Breakthrough of the Year for 2003," said Don Kennedy, Editor-in-Chief of Science.

Swedish firm to offer 100Mbit/s broadband

2003-12-19T13:32:00.000-05:00

A SWEDISH SUPPLIER will introduce an amazing 100Mbit/sec broadband connection for 895 kroner in April next year.

That's about £70 a month, and that speed is in both directions.

Bredbandsbolaget will cap downloads to 300GB as part of the service it's offering.

Right now, Bredbandsbolaget is offering bi-directional 10MB connections for 330 kroner a month without limits on the download

Nanotubes break semiconducting record

2003-12-19T13:29:00.000-05:00

Semiconducting carbon nanotubes are significantly better at conducting electricity at room temperature than any other known material, according to recent tests at the University of Maryland.

The findings are the latest evidence that nanotubes could form the basis for future generations of powerful electronics.

The electrical conductivity properties of nanotubes--a synthetic material with the potential to revolutionize industries from plastics to computer chips--have been well known for some time. But the results from the university's Center for Superconductivity Research indicate that carbon nanotubes may make even better semiconductors than previously thought.

A team of researchers, led by Michael Fuhrer, head of the university's Nanoelectronics Research Group, were able to fabricate a semiconducting nanotube transistor with mobility almost 25 percent higher than any previous semiconducting material, and more than 70 times higher than the mobility of computer chip silicon, the university said. Mobility is a measurement of how well a semiconductor conducts electricity.

AMD introduces budget Athlon 64

2003-12-18T17:40:00.000-05:00

Advanced Micro Devices has quietly trotted out a version of its Athlon 64 chip that provides a little less performance than earlier models but only costs about half as much.

The new Athlon 64 3000+ runs at 2GHz, the same as the existing Athlon 64 3200+, but it only comes with a 512KB secondary cache, according to an AMD spokesman. The 3200+ features a 1MB cache. A cache is a pool of memory integrated into the processor for rapid data access. In general, large caches lead to better performance.

AMD, however, prices the Athlon 64 3000+ at $218 in quantities of 1,000 while the 3200+ sells for $418. At AMD, the new chip is known as the "A-Rod," a reference to baseball player Alex Rodriguez. The chip was released earlier this week.

'Running' Robot Gets Off Ground

2003-12-18T17:36:00.000-05:00

Sony's walking robot already knows a few hip dance steps and can kick a miniature soccer ball. Now, it can jog -- a new trick that developers say is ingenious because it requires the machine to jump off the ground, if only for a fraction of a second.

The new skills of the humanoid, developed by the Japanese electronics and entertainment giant's robot unit that makes the dog-like Aibo, were demonstrated to reporters at a Tokyo hall Thursday.

When an upgrade of the 23-inch-tall, 15-pound robot was introduced last year, Sony executive Toshitada Doi said it might go on sale for the price of an expensive car. But now Sony has no plans to sell Qrio, which is short for "quest for curiosity."

Intel gets into digital TV market

2003-12-17T17:16:00.000-05:00

JOHN MARKOFF at the New York Times is predicting that when Paul Otellini, Intel's president, takes the floor at the forthcoming Consumer Electronics Show, he will stagger the world by announcing its first digital TV chip.

According to Markoff, Otellini will show off a chip marrying liquid crystal to silicon. Intel is going head to head against the US titan Texas Instruments.

He writes that the Chipzilla approach is to make "vast arrays of tiny electronic shutters" which change the characteristics of reflected light. The chips will be used to make huge TVs using back end technology much cheaper than plasma or ordinary LCD screens, Markoff writes,

Silicon based fuel cell

2003-12-17T17:14:00.000-05:00

A UNIVERSITY in Tokyo is claiming that it has made a fuel cell based on silicon, according to the Nikkei Business Daily.

The newspaper reports that the invention, from the Tokyo Institute of Technology, uses very thin silicon layers interleaved with an electrolye film, with a unit measuring a quarter of a millimetre.

Each sheet of silicon has, according to the report, trenches which act as conduits for oxygen, methanol and hydrogen, and plated by platinum and ruthenium, which act as catalytic agents.

The cell can generate 50mw, which ain't going to power your notebook for long, but the paper said the units can be stacked to throw out more juice.

Shell Shows Web-Controlled Home

2003-12-17T17:11:00.000-05:00

Shell Oil wants to help control your home's heating--and not by lowering the price of oil. The company will be at next month's Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas to demonstrate its upcoming Web-based home automation system, hoping to carve out a business with a type of service that has so far been slow to catch on.

Called Shell HomeGenie, the service will let customers adjust their central heating, switch small appliances on and off, and monitor their homes with a wireless security camera, all while on the road. Customers control the home equipment through a PC browser or a cell phone with Internet access.

A residential gateway acts as a central control for the system and hooks up to the Internet through a home PC broadband connection. The system includes a programmable thermostat that Shell says works with most heating systems and power switches that connect to home appliances, and can be turned on and off wirelessly. The thermostat, power switches, and security cameras hook up to the gateway using a radio frequency wireless module.

Sun fuels cosmic research

2003-12-17T17:09:00.000-05:00

Sun Microsystems has agreed to fund the next generation of SETI@Home, the University of California's distributed computing project that lets computer users donate unused processor cycles to aid the search for extraterrestrial intelligence.

Since 1999, SETI@Home has allowed computer users to download a screensaver that can automatically download, analyze and resend data units collected from the Arecibo radio telescope in Puerto Rico.

The SETI@Home project has so far cost $500,000, but on a daily basis it provides the equivalent of 15 teraflops--more raw computing power than the $110 million IBM ASCI White system, rated at 12 teraflops. A teraflop is a measure of a computer's speed, which can be expressed as1 trillion floating point operations per second.

Open Source Is Not Limited to Software

2003-12-17T17:05:00.000-05:00

Speaking before a group of 30 representatives from the hardware industry Monday night at the Freedom Technology Center in Mountain View, California, Lampret unveiled the organization's most recent development: a functional system-on-chip microprocessor, developed entirely from freely available open-source blueprints.

The announcement, Lampret claims, marks the first time an organization has bypassed patented technology to manufacture a complete system-on-chip. Such microprocessors are desirable because they contain multiple control units and enable manufacturers to build computers with fewer separate components.

Lampret believes the open-source innovation could lead the hardware industry to develop cheaper and more cutting-edge devices in coming years.

Digital Rights Management (DRM) System

2003-12-16T22:46:00.000-05:00

Philips announced that they are six months away from a launching a system against illegal copying that will allow consumers to play digital video and music on any digital media player.

"Consumers want an open system, and the electronics industry wants it too," Ruud Peters, chief executive of Philips's intellectual property and standards unit, told Reuters.

SIS intros Athlon XP mobile chipset

2003-12-16T11:26:00.001-05:00

CHIP FIRM Silicon Integrated Systems (SIS) said that it has released the M741 chipset, which supports mobile Athlon XP-M CPUs.

The M741 includes support for DDR 400, a 333MHz system bus, AGP8X, and DX9 software support. It also supports DX7 in hardware.

The chipset works with SIS' 162 wireless networking chips and can be coupled with the 741 south bridge chipset, which supports Serial ATA and a number of other IO options.

Sun fined $291,000 for selling computers to China

2003-12-16T11:26:00.000-05:00

THE US COMMERCE DEPARTMENT has slapped a $291,000 fine on Sun Microsystems after the company was found to have exported its technology to China.

The allegation is that Sun Micro illegally exported computers which China then used for military purposes.

But Sun, while it's going to pay up, insists that it neither denies nor admits any wrongdoing.

The Commerce Department alleges that Sun sold an E5000 server to China without the proper licence back in 1997.

It was shipped to Hong Kong, but ended up in communist China, the Commerce Dept alleges.

There's other allegations that Sun sold other kit to countries without the correct licences.

According to reports, the Commerce Department is stepping up its investigations into violations of export licences.

Longhorn the focus of new Windows group

2003-12-16T11:25:00.000-05:00

MICROSOFT is throwing a heap more resources into a specialised group dedicated to delivering its next breakthrough operating system, codenamed Longhorn.

This OS, according to Microsoft chief architect Bill Gates, will cost more to develop than it did the US government to put a man on the moon.

There might be more men on the moon before it sees the light of day.

The firm today has started the Windows Core Operating Systems Division, with Brian Valentine headin gup the division, according to an internal memo.

The idea is to concentrate Microsoft developments more closely.

No one is completely sure when Longhorn is supposed to arrive – with estimates varying widely. Hardware manufacturers including Intel, Nvidia and a heap of others have already got their PCI Express together, and when they're given a chance have a good old grumble at Microsoft for slowing down the whole move to a better kind of PC.

But Microsoft is impervious to the slings and arrows of outraged Fortune 500 companies that also specialise in IT, it appears.

AMD lands Fujitsu-Siemens workstation win

2003-12-16T11:24:00.000-05:00

CHIP FIRM AMD said that Siemens-Fujitsu has started to sell a workstation using the Opteron 200 family of chips.

The Celsius V810 uses the AMD 8151, 8131, 811 chipsets, can support dual configuration, 16GB of DDR memory, and comes with an Adaptec 29320 SCSI controller, AGP8X Pro slots, PCI-X slots, and the other usual array of IO options.

The graphics subsystems are Nvidia options, including the GeForce4MX, the Quadro4 580XGL, and the Quadro FX2000.

Intel readies GFX3 integrated graphics

2003-12-16T11:22:00.000-05:00

CHIP GIANT INTEL is careful to position Grantsdale and Alderwood chipsets, due to appear in the second quarter of next year, as products which will also support "discrete" cards such as those made by ATI, Nvidia, and now XGI.

Of course they will! Intel's partners are important to it!

The Grantsdale G, intended for the Prescott, has integrated graphics and similar features to Grantsdale P.

Grantsdale P, aside from supporting wireless application capabilities (Caswell), DDR2 533/400 and "legacy" DDR, also comes with PCI Express X16, Azalia Audio and will support the Prescott LGA 755 microprocessor.

Later chipsets – slated for the third quarter and dubbed Grantsdale GV and Grantsdale GL – will include what Intel describes as the third generation graphics products it is readying.

As we've reported numerous times before, PCI Express heralds the end of the AGP era, and we know from Nvidia, ATI, Via and SIS roadmaps we've seen that everyone is working towards this goal, which obviously won't happen overnight.

Soon, Marketing Will Follow You

2003-12-16T11:20:00.000-05:00

To hear Paco Underhill tell it, the scene in Steven Spielberg's futuristic Minority Report, in which Tom Cruise's character is besieged by video advertising targeted directly at him as he walks down the street, is, even today, more than pure science fiction.

Already, thanks to cell-phone technology that can track subscribers' whereabouts, retailers have access to technology that can tell when a particular customer walks into a store. With that information in hand, stores could conceivably tailor marketing messages to people based on demographic data or on answers to questions they were asked when they signed up for cell-phone service.

And while consumers may wish for less-intrusive advertising, it appears, short of permanently shutting their wallets, they may not be able to fend off the coming wave of mobile-target marketing.

"It isn't futuristic, it's right now, it's real," says Underhill, author of the bestseller Why We Buy. "That technology's out there now. It's just a matter of finding people willing to pay for it."

Digital Cameras Take Off

2003-12-15T09:17:00.000-05:00

The popularity of digital cameras, one of the most requested gifts this holiday season, is paying off for online photo services.

Market leaders Ofoto, Shutterfly and Snapfish report big sales increases over last year. Research firm IDC estimates revenue for the sector will be up 50% over 2002.

Here's how photo Web sites work: Instead of printing digital photos at home, or bringing a memory card to a store to have it done, digital shutterbugs transfer pictures from PCs to these Web sites. The process can take minutes with high-speed Internet access, much longer with dial-up.

Then they order prints, delivered via mail in a few days.

One big change from last year: The cost of a 4x6 print has plummeted. Most charged 49 cents last Christmas. Ofoto now charges 29 cents, and Snapfish charges 25 cents. Prices are even lower if you agree to Snapfish's or Shutterfly's prepayment plan. Snapfish charges $76 for 400 4x6 prints, or 19 cents each.

Sony touts PSX as console, gadget hybrid

2003-12-12T23:31:00.000-05:00

TOKYO — Sony's PSX, touted as a crossover between a video game console and consumer electronics gadget, is trying to be too many things at once and falls far short of expectations, analysts say.

The PSX, seen by The Associated Press ahead of its launch Saturday in Japan, sounds like a good deal. It combines a DVD recorder, analog TV tuner, CD player with music file and digital photo album, and the PlayStation 2 game console in one sleek box.

The machine, planned for overseas sale next year, costs 99,800 yen ($920) for the 250-gigabyte hard disk version, which can record about 25 movies. The 160-gigabyte version costs 79,800 yen ($740).

But the deal begins to sounds less attractive if you are one of the nearly 63 million people in the world who already own a PlayStation 2.

If you've already bought PS2 — or have never wanted to own one — then a regular DVD recorder could be a better option. Standard DVD players tend to have better features than the PSX, but can be bought for around the same price. And there's plenty of competition — including from Sony itself.

Biometric Passports Take a Test Flight

2003-12-12T23:29:00.000-05:00

Could that passport photo be a thing of the past? The UK Passport Service in January will launch a six-month trial of biometric technology. The trial, which will involve 10,000 volunteers, is billed by the UK government as the first step in its compulsory ID card plan.

The UKPS will test facial, iris, and fingerprint recording and recognition in an attempt to determine which process is the least invasive for passport holders, a spokesperson for the Home Office says. The trial will also help determine how the technology works on a broad scale, what the costs will be, and how well people will accept the technology, she says.

The UK government contends that biometrics in passports and then in ID cards will strengthen identity authentication and reduce identity fraud and related crimes. Secretary of State for the Home Department David Blunkett last month outlined the Identity Cards Bill that calls for a system of ID cards, to be created by 2010, that will carry biometric identifiers in an embedded chip, all linked to a "secure national database."

How to Hold Moonbeam in Your Hand

2003-12-12T23:26:00.000-05:00

Physicists say they have brought light to a complete halt for a fraction of a second and then sent it on its way, an achievement that could someday help scientists develop powerful new computers.

The research differs from work published in 2001 that was hailed at the time as having brought light to standstill. In that work, light pulses were technically "stored" briefly when individual particles of light, or photons, were taken up by atoms in a gas.

Harvard University researchers have now topped that feat by truly holding light and its energy in its tracks -- if only for a few hundred-thousandths of a second. "We have succeeded in holding a light pulse still without taking all the energy away from it," said Mikhail D. Lukin, a Harvard physicist.

Harnessing light particles to store and process data could aid the still distant goal of so-called quantum computers, as well as methods for communicating information over long distances without risk of eavesdropping.

The research may also have applications for improving conventional fiber-optic communications and data-processing techniques that use light as an information carrier. Lukin said the present research is just another step toward efforts to control light, but said additional work is needed to determine if it can aid these applications.

Tough times hit motherboard makers

2003-12-12T12:33:00.000-05:00

AVERAGE SELLING prices of motherboards are dropping through the floor, a report said, confirming reports from distributors and other companies here that times are tougher than ever before.

According to Digitimes, selling prices slumped by 18% in November, with Asustek reporting a $65 ASP for its boards in Q3, compared to $90 in Q1 of this year.

Indeed, said Digitimes, the slump in prices has forced 80 per cent of the second tier makers to start using Elitegroup to supply their needs.

Our sources here in the UK tell us that while the chip vendors are reporting record sales, pushing motherboards into the market is an increasingly thankless task in terms of profit and revenue.

These products have turned into commodities – a trend that's been on the cards for two to three years now. One distributor told the INQUIRER earlier this week that firms which haven't diversified their product lines sufficiently face being murdered in 2004.

Big Blue tackles new grid-computing services

2003-12-12T12:10:00.000-05:00

IBM has unveiled services for grid and autonomic computing that will, ideally, let large institutions run their most complex applications more efficiently.

The services are designed to let corporations or research labs better harness servers, employees and other information technology resources for big tasks. Wall Street companies, for instance, run elaborate financial simulations to gauge the impact of certain investment patterns or economic changes. These simulations can take several hours, if confined to a few servers. By putting these applications on a grid that harvests idle processor cycles and memory across a corporation, the simulation can be completed in a few minutes.

"There are a lot of underutilized resources they can tap into," said Dan Powers, vice president of grid strategy and business development at IBM. “People have got applications that in many cases they want to run in more locations or quicker."

AMD moves deeper into China

2003-12-11T00:22:00.001-05:00

Advanced Micro Devices is looking outside the PC to foster more growth in the technology market in China.

The chipmaker on Wednesday made public plans to establish a product development lab in China that will seek to create new kinds of home electronic devices for the Chinese consumer market. AMD plans to partner with Founder Group, a Chinese technology conglomerate, and to locate the new Platform Development Lab in Beijing.

Many technology companies see China as a major potential market. AMD has forged several partnerships to sell its chips inside China, for markets ranging from supercomputers to schools.

AMD, which has also been selling its PC processors in China, plans to establish the lab as part of an effort to help its customers develop and launch new products based on its AMD Alchemy and AMD Geode processors. While based on two different processor architectures, MIPS and x86, respectively, the two chips could be used in a range of handhelds, set-top boxes and other electronic devices.

Wi-Fi start-ups look to combo chips

2003-12-11T00:22:00.000-05:00

Sychip and other Wi-Fi semiconductor manufacturers are trying to woo customers by integrating radio functions into a single chip or package, company executives said at the Micro Ventures conference taking place here this week.

While many venture capitalists and analysts have largely soured on the idea of putting money into emerging Wi-Fi companies, executives of start-ups say the opportunities aren't gone yet.

Plano, Texas-based Sychip, for instance, is producing samples of a product that combines a Wi-Fi module with Bluetooth, the short-range wireless networking technology.

Early next year, the company will show off a Secure Digital (SD) card that contains a Wi-Fi module and flash-memory chips. Sychip already produces a Wi-Fi card for SD slots, but if consumers want to take pictures, they have to swap in a memory card. Put another way, the Wi-Fi memory card does the same thing as two traditional cards.

Sharp puts Word files on phones

2003-12-11T00:13:00.000-05:00

Sharp said it has developed a way for cell phones to display business documents and graphics. The technology enables users to view Adobe Acrobat files and Microsoft Word, Excel and PowerPoint files on the tiny liquid crystal display screens cell phones use, according to Sharp, which worked with Canadian company BitFlash to develop the Electronic Document Display System.

The technology enables the user to zoom in to the files in order to read the text. The ability to zoom in and out of documents is based on an international Extensible Markup Language standard called Scalable Vector Graphics-Tiny. The rendering software will be embedded in the new Vodafone V601SH Mobile Phone by Sharp, sold in Japan.

Stackable Open Source BIOS could cut proprietary stuff dead

2003-12-09T00:26:00.000-05:00

JUST IN CASE you missed it – as we did - there's a paper that was filed as part of the Usenix 2003, Freenix track, which talks about the design of an Open Source BIOS to displace the proprietary software that's in there.

Yes indeedy, the makers of BIOSes are in league with the devil to scrape their earnings from one of the most important but oft-neglected elements of an IBM compatible personal computer.

The LinuxBIOS has trouble with Windows XP, for example, because such OSes depend on some services provided by the legacy BIOSes.

So the paper describes how open source firmware that combines elements of the LinuxBIOS, the Bochs PC emulator and other software to create what's claimed to be capable of booting most modern OSes.

As the paper points out, the BIOS is the last bastion of closed source software, with most hardware interfaces in PC chipsets smothered by non disclosure agreements.

The software designers say, in the paper they've made use of Bochs and LinuxBIOS to solve a good few of the technical details.

Microsoft-Lindows battle expands in Europe

2003-12-09T00:22:00.000-05:00

Microsoft has expanded its legal battle with Lindows to Europe, putting pressure on PC makers there and on the company to stop distributing Lindows software.

The dispute opens another front in Lindows' trademark spat with Microsoft, which has claimed that the company's name violates its Windows trademark in the United States. Microsoft's lawsuit over that issue is scheduled for trial next March.

The latest action involves Microsoft's European trademarks for the Windows name. Lawyers representing the software company in the Netherlands, Belgium and Luxembourg (the Benelux countries) and in Sweden sent letters to Lindows and several PC manufacturers in those countries, saying the use of the Lindows name infringes on Microsoft trademarks in those countries.

Managing Web services jargon

2003-12-09T00:21:00.000-05:00

With so many companies touting Web services management software, you get a sense that there's money to be made. In fact, Computer Associates just entered the fray with its own product. But when you sit down and speak to different companies in the market, the picture of what Web services management actually is gets fuzzy.

There's easily 15 or so companies, large and small, using the management label. Some companies promote features such as security--ensuring that users are authorized for Web services applications and that messages sent between application components are authenticated. Other outfits use the management label to describe typical network operations such as load balancing. Meanwhile, still other Web services management companies offer such functions as routing and transformation of XML documents.

Why use the same tag for such a broad range of capabilities? Because Web services management is what customers are asking for, says an executive at one start-up. If you want to get in on the bidding, make the label fit.

How much is digital music worth?

2003-12-08T00:14:00.000-05:00

As the early buzz over new music services such as Apple Computer’s iTunes fades, record labels and technology companies are struggling to turn the services into profitable businesses.

Speaking at the iHollywood Forum’s Music 2.0 conference in Los Angeles Monday, executives on both sides focused on the 99-cent price tag that has become the market’s standard for downloadable music. Critics say that that price needs to come down if mainstream consumers are to start buying in large numbers, making the Internet a serious factor in the record industry’s bottom line. Record labels say they can’t afford to go lower.

“There’s very little money in this to begin with,” said David Ring, vice president of Universal Music Group’s eLabs division. “A lot of people are already recognizing that we’re going to have to sell a lot more singles at 99 cents in order for us to make money, and for artists to be able to make a living.”

Chinese make spray on electronic ink for e-papers

2003-12-07T21:09:00.000-05:00

WHILE OTHER countries and several companies claim they're working on electronic paper and ink, Chinese boffins have claimed they've built a working prototype spray on version which will work on practically every surface.

The very ahead of its time Xerox Corporation first described this technology in the early 1970s, and a version of e-paper was brought to market in 2000 by E-Ink and MIT.

But not to be outdone, the Southwest China Normal University said it had built an ink prototype which uses organic transistors and which can be sprayed onto ordinary paper, metal, plastic or cloth.

E-Ink has demonstrated a newspaper and other techology using its techniques. The idea being that if, say, you had a paper version of the INQ using electronic INQ, its front page would update as the web site changed.

Yahoo proposes new Internet anti-spam structure

2003-12-06T19:29:00.000-05:00

Internet services company Yahoo Friday said it is working on technology to combat e-mail spam by changing the way the Internet works to require authentication of a message's sender.

Yahoo said its "Domain Keys" software, which it hopes to launch in 2004, will be made available freely to the developers of the Web's major open-source e-mail software and systems.

Spam — unwanted Internet e-mail, direct advertising, body part enlargement, and other commercial endeavors on the Web — has quickly become Web surfers' Public Enemy No. 1 as inboxes around the globe are clogged with hundreds of such messages daily.

Governments around the world are working on legislation to reduce spam, but in the interim a number of companies have stepped in with technology proposals designed to filter and block the electronic detritus.

Wi-Fi Improvements in the Works

2003-12-06T19:23:00.000-05:00

New wireless standards intended to enhance security and support high-bandwidth applications are in the works and will appear in products by the end of next year, say industry analysts at the Wi-Fi Planet Conference and Expo here this week.

The new 802.11e standard is designed to improve quality of service for voice calls, high-resolution video, and other demanding applications. The 802.11i security specification is based on the Advanced Encryption Standard. Both are scheduled to be finalized and published by next summer, say IEEE and Wi-Fi Alliance officials here.

The new protocols differ from existing wireless protocols, including the 802.11a, 11b, and 11g standards, because they enhance their predecessors rather than specify a transmission speed and radio frequency. The new specifications will be implemented in chip sets and could appear in products as soon as the 2004 holiday season, says Stuart Kerry, who chairs the IEEE 802.11 Working Group and who moderated a "State of the Standards" session at Wi-Fi Planet.

Flight Testing Begins on Boeing Canard Rotor/Wing Aircraft

2003-12-06T12:12:00.000-05:00

During the flight test, the CRW advanced technology demonstrator known as the X-50A Dragonfly flew for about 80 seconds at 8:10 a.m. MST. It lifted off vertically from the launch site to an altitude of 12 feet above the ground, hovered and then vertically landed, commencing the flight test program.

Under joint development by Boeing and DARPA (Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency), the CRW is a revolutionary aircraft that combines the speed and range of a fixed-wing aircraft with the flexibility of rotary-wing flight. This is because the CRW's rotor is designed not only to spin during vertical takeoffs and landings but also to stop turning during flight and convert to a fixed wing for high-speed cruise.

"Todays successful hover flight was an exciting first step toward meeting the goal of this flight test program, said Gary Gallagher, CRW Systems senior manager for the Boeing Phantom Works advanced research and development unit. The ultimate objective is demonstrating the Dragonflys ability to convert from rotary-wing to fixed-wing and back to rotary-wing flight."

Phones get smarter and smaller, but what do you need?

2003-12-06T10:12:00.000-05:00

As a publicity stunt, the launch of the Treo 600 cell phone-organizer was reminiscent of the silliest dot-com events: a swank Wall Street eatery staffed by "secret agents," dressed in all black with wool caps, dispensing multicolored martinis.

Not since Sony unveiled the Clie organizer with a troop of undulating interpretive dancers have I seen such an absurd display on behalf of a machine.

But compared with that unfortunate day, the theme of the Treo launch, "Mission Impossible," was somewhat apt to the monumental task that HandSpring, now part of PalmOne, tackled in engineering the latest all-in-one mobile phone.

These devices, likely to sit high on the holiday wish list for many gadget lovers, pack an ever-growing array of features into an ever-shrinking package: color touch screens, stylus, e-mail, Web access, games, digital cameras, USB and infrared ports, memory card slot to play music and store large files, and countless applications suited to individual needs and distractions.

On top of all that, some manage to squeeze in a full "QWERTY" keyboard for thumb-typing.

The Palm-powered Treo 600 — presumably not named for its $600 list price before discounts with two-year contracts from Sprint, Cingular and AT&T Wireless — sits squarely at the top of the heap, cramming every last one of those features into a device only a little bulkier than many cell phones.

Intel and AMD face nastiest competitor of all

2003-12-06T10:10:00.000-05:00

MAKE NO MISTAKE, the top brass at AMD and Intel are going to need to live by Andy Groves' famous "only the paranoid survive" counsel. The two firms, along with VIA and Transmeta, are facing the biggest threat to their processor businesses ever: Microsoft is moving in.

The announcement that Microsoft has chosen IBM to make a processor for Xbox 2 should be sending shivers down the spines of the execs of every x86 chip firm. Just about every newswire has concentrated on trying to figure out what type of chip is going to be used in the Xbox 2. Will it be a PowerPC derivative? A licensed version of AMD64? A modified Cell processor? It really only matters to gamers exactly which chip Microsoft has chosen, everyone is looking at the finger when it's pointing to the moon.

Judge orders SCO to show Linux infringement

2003-12-06T10:06:00.000-05:00

IBM won a tactical victory Friday in a legal battle with SCO Group when a judge ordered SCO to show within 30 days the Linux software to which it believes it has rights and to point out where it believes IBM is infringing.

But SCO also said it will open a new copyright infringement claim in its legal attack.

In a hearing in Salt Lake City, Federal Judge Dale A. Kimball required SCO to produce two key batches of information IBM had sought in the case.

In one batch, called Interrogatory No. 12, IBM sought "all source code and other material in Linux...to which plaintiff (SCO) has rights; and the nature of plaintiff's rights." In the second, Interrogatory No. 13.

Big Blue sought a detailed description of how SCO believes IBM has infringed SCO's rights and whether SCO ever distributed the source code described in Interrogatory No. 12.

The information IBM sought is at the heart of the case, a bold lawsuit SCO began in March that alleges IBM moved technology from Unix to Linux against the terms of its contract with SCO, violating trade secrets in the process. SCO is seeking $3 billion from Big Blue, and is also trying to compel Linux-using corporations to license SCO's Unix. The judge's decision is one of the first moves in a case that will affect not just IBM but also other computing giants including Oracle, Hewlett-Packard, SAP and Dell that have embraced Linux.

Mobile phone makers caught by surprise sales boom

2003-12-05T18:05:00.000-05:00

Mobile phones are flying off the shelves before Christmas and sales are heading for record highs this year as the global economy recovers and low-priced models go on the market.

The bad news? Handset makers cannot keep up with demand.

In their efforts to avoid the dreaded mistake of 2001, when they miscalculated demand to the tune of 100 million units, phone producers are cautious and have run short of components.

The result is that demand is outstripping supply in most regions of the world, from emerging markets in Russia and India to saturated markets of the United States, Europe and Japan where consumers are swapping old models for fancy new ones.

Dell switches to ATI for notebook graphics support

2003-12-05T18:00:00.000-05:00

PC GIANT Dell appears to have switched to ATI for notebook graphics support, according to a report on the Anandtech web site.

The boys there say that the Anandlabs have had a Dell Inspiron 8600 using the Mobility Radeon 9600 Pro 128MB, and that when they reviewed the first batch, they had reservations about this notebook because of its Nvidia graphics support with the FX Go5650.

But Anandtech appears to have changed its tune now there's ATI graphics on board.

The same piece says that Elpida has dumped GDDR2-M and that this piece of memory won't be used with the M10 chip any more.

NEC to invest $70m in Melbourne R&D centre

2003-12-05T17:59:00.000-05:00

NEC will invest another $70 million in research and development over the next five years to allow high speed data technology to be provided over the copper network.

The information technology and telecommunications company said today another 63 high-tech engineers would be hired for dedicated research into broadband, 3G and Voice over Internet Protocol networks.

The new research centre, to be set up in Melbourne, is expected to create another 270 jobs in the telecommunications industry and $17 million turnover a year in exports.

NEC is the third biggest global player in broadband digital subscriber line technology which allows data to run over the existing copper phone network.

The research is aimed at bringing cheaper high speed data to residential and small business users.

NEC will start supplying broadband products to Telstra next year under a deal signed in October but only some of the high speed data capability will be available in two years.

Shedding New Light on Fuel Cells

2003-12-05T17:57:00.000-05:00

Chemists at the University of Massachusetts at Boston say they have discovered a way to double the efficiency of a solar-powered process used to generate hydrogen fuel. The breakthrough could clear the air of concerns over the environmental record of the auto industry's much-anticipated fuel-cell vehicles.

Currently, the majority of hydrogen fuel is produced through steam reformation, a process that mixes steam with natural gas. Critics of fuel-cell technologies have argued that shifting from gasoline to a fuel created from natural gas will do little to help the environment, nor will it reduce U.S. dependence on fossil fuels.

Solar processes, on the other hand, use the energy contained in light from the sun to split water molecules into separate hydrogen and oxygen molecules. The method is safe for the environment but -- up until now -- has been too inefficient to consider seriously.

Spammers Tap Unwitting Users' PCs

2003-12-05T17:56:00.000-05:00

Security experts have identified what they suspect to be the biggest culprit behind that seemingly unceasing torrent of e-mail spam messages and computer virus outbreaks.

The unwitting culprit, they say, is the home user with a broadband connection. In fact, it could be you.

Viruses and related "worms" typically target computers that run on Microsoft Windows and have a high-speed, always-on connection. In the past six months, a new generation of bug has emerged that contains a so-called Trojan horse program which discreetly installs itself into the innards of the PC.

Fast, Cheap Ride to Earth Orbit

2003-12-05T17:55:00.000-05:00

Elon Musk has already launched two successful online startups. But it's on a rocket that his reputation may ultimately ride.

On Thursday, Space Exploration Technologies, or SpaceX, unveiled its seven-story Falcon orbital launch vehicle in Washington, D.C., as part of the celebrations honoring the Wright brothers' flight 100 years ago this month.

While dignitaries may wax poetic about the breakthrough at Kitty Hawk, another historic memory gnaws at Musk, the restless founder of Zip2 and co-founder of PayPal. He looks beyond the dark skies to outer space, acutely aware that this month also marks 31 years -- nearly his entire lifetime -- since the last man walked on the moon. The hefty price tag on rocket launches has profoundly limited space efforts, sidelining earlier visions of space colonies and manned exploration.

DVDs, drives don't mix, says government study

2003-12-05T17:53:00.000-05:00

Recordable DVDs stand a substantial chance of being incompatible with DVD drives, but the situation is improving with new models, according to an ongoing government survey.

The National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), a division of the U.S. Commerce Department's Technology Administration, said its tests proved DVDs and DVD drives to be compatible only 85 percent of the time.

"This means that if a recording is made on 10 different brands of DVDs, the odds are that at least one will not work," the institute said in announcing the results Thursday. "The problematic results range from DVDs that do not work at all, suddenly freeze, or have video or audio 'drop out.'"

The study's results will come as no surprise to followers of the DVD format wars. One of the battles concerns competing formats for rewritable discs and another different formats for blue-laser technology, which promises to provide greater storage than current red lasers can.

NIST is conducting the tests in concert with two industry groups, the DVD Association and the Optical Storage Technology Association.

NIST said that although no one disc or drive was universally compatible, newer models of DVD drives did "significantly better" than the older ones.

NIST tested 14 DVD-ROM drive models, which represented about 60 percent of the installed base in America as of 2002, and more than 50 different kinds of recordable DVDs. In a second phase of the study, NIST and the trade groups will look at DVD drives new to the market.

Google wants ruling on search trademark law

2003-12-05T17:47:00.000-05:00

Aiming to pre-empt mounting complaints of trademark violations, search company Google has asked a court to rule on whether its keyword-advertising policy is legal.

The Mountain View, Calif.-based company filed a complaint in the U.S. District Court in San Jose, Calif., on Nov. 26. It centers on a dispute with American Blind & Wallpaper Factory, an interior decor specialist, over the sale of keyword-advertising within search results that appear on Google and across the Web. American Blind has insisted that Google stop selling keyword phrases that the company claims violate its trademarks.

Though Google had said it could block advertisers from buying keywords that directly infringe on its trademarks, including "American Blind Factory" and "DecorateToday," the company said it could not block other descriptive phrases that American Blind wished to protect. Those phrases included "American wallpaper" and "American blind," according to the filing.

The Digital Michelangelo Project

2003-10-27T22:13:00.000-05:00

In an effort to create and archive three dimensional computer representations of some of history's most important cultural artifacts, researchers from Stanford University and the University of Washington have employed laser rangefinder technologies to scan items and preserve them digitally.

The project has mainly focused on some of Michelangelo's sculptures, including the famous David statue, but has also "scanned 1,163 fragments of the Forma Urbis Romae, a giant marble map of ancient Rome." Visitors to the project's homepage can download the ScanView software, which lets users virtually fly around the models of the statues.

Intel Cuts Prices On Top; AMD Doesn't

2003-10-27T11:59:00.000-05:00

As fully expected, Intel cut prices on PIV yesterday. This could make the 2.4GHz C a little bit cheaper, and gets the 3.0C under $300 and the 2.8C a bit over $200.

The 2.6C might get more of a look as an overclocking chip, especially if it ends up being priced about the same as the 2.4.

There's nothing earthshattering in any of this.

AMD reduced prices on higher-end Athlons, but left prices alone on FX/Athlon64. This has come as something of a surprise/disappointment to many, and one even said that this means AMD can now "deftly avoiding the price hammer strike, and doing what it wants."

The comment is dubious when it comes to the FX, and downright silly when it comes to the Athlon 64.

Tech Addicts Need Textual Healing

2003-10-27T11:55:00.000-05:00

Dr. Mark Collins of The Priory clinic in London found himself catapulted into the world's press early this month when he was reported as saying that patients at the well-known addiction clinic were increasingly displaying compulsive behavior toward their mobile phones.

Collins, head of the addictions unit at the clinic, said that some patients spend up to seven hours a day sending text or SMS messages (as well as hanging out in Internet chat rooms), which in one case even resulted in repetitive strain injury.

Unfortunately, Collins was not available to provide further explanation. A spokeswoman at a leading substance abuse clinic in Southern California reported that no patient had yet been admitted for an addiction to mobile phones. She did note, however, that it was the clinic's policy to require patients to check their devices in upon admission. "People literally detox from their phones," she said. "Text messaging, games -- these are all sources of isolation, a way to zone out."

Cloning Remains a Meaty Issue

2003-10-27T11:45:00.000-05:00

The Food and Drug Administration soon will decide whether the meat in your Philly cheese steak or your barbecue spareribs could come from a cloned animal.

Because of safety concerns, the FDA has barred the handful of companies that clone farm animals from selling them for meat. But since early this year, those companies have been submitting data -- generated by independent research firms -- to the FDA.

The specifics of the data will remain confidential until Oct. 20 when the FDA plans to post the research online for public review. But the majority of companies say that, in general, the research shows no significant difference between regular and cloned animals, suggesting that cloned meat would be perfectly safe for human consumption. Consumer watchdog groups are skeptical, and say cloned meat should at least be labeled.

Waiting for DVDs, the Sequel

2003-10-27T03:07:00.000-05:00

Now that DVDs have become fully accepted by the masses, and even progressive-scan players can be found for under $70, what's a videophile got to do to stay ahead of the pack?

Or perhaps the better question is: Now that DVDs are almost 7 years old, which is an eternity in the consumer electronics world, what comes next?

The answer is high-definition DVD. These high-capacity DVDs can take advantage of the improved resolution of a high-definition television.

It's expected the next-generation DVD will use a blue laser, which has a shorter wavelength than the red lasers used in today's DVD players, meaning that more data can be packed into the same amount of space. Today's DVDs can hold about 4.7 GB of data, while a blue-laser HD-DVD could conceivably hold as much as 30 GB.

Unfortunately, the switch to high-definition DVD has hit a roadblock. The major consumer electronics companies are squabbling over what the standard should be for the new discs. Two camps, one led by Matsushita, Philips and Hitachi, and the other by Toshiba and NEC, are fighting over whose technology will be used and how much data the discs should hold.

Source: Wired News