[H]ard|OCP

Twitter Turns 4 Today

While it's hard to believe that Twitter has been around for longer than 2 years with it exploding recently, here is Jack Dorsey (Co-Founder of Twitter) first Tweet..

And I still don't get the phenomenon...

Comments

A Positive Use Of Chat Roulette

With all the negative press Chat Roulette gets, this is quite the Gem.

Sadly I think he is using his piano as a tool to lure in unsuspecting teenagers. Wait isn't that what all bands do?

Comments

Solar Roadways Provide A Glimpse Of The Future

Imagine a future in which all the roads are made from "electric glass" and would have the ability to improve road vision at night, power to homes and business in the day, and melt snow and ice during inclement weather,

Each Solar Road Panel features a weatherproof, translucent road surface layer, an electronics layer containing LEDs and solar cells, and a base plate layer that distributes power to homes and businesses connected to the roadway. In addition to generating power, the road panels have one big advantage over traditional asphalt: they are self-heating, which means snow and ice don't accumulate on top of the road.

While this probably won't be a future we see for quite sometime, for those of us who live in colder climates the self-heating part is pretty sweet, I'm curious how traction with traditional tires would be in wet conditions..

Comments

Students At Indiana University Going On Raids For Grades

In a plea to make students more interested in learning an Indiana University Professor has taken grades to a new 'level',

Students at several of Indiana University's game design courses begin their class with zero "experience points," which corresponds to an F grade. Instead of completing presentations, they'll perform "quests;" sitting exams becomes "fighting monsters;" and handing in assignments becomes "crafting." Students even team up into "guilds" to tackle group projects.

Next the car industry will be referring to their products as "Epic Mounts"...

Comments

DLM: The Wave Of The Past

Gizmodo has a cool article up that talks about a predecessor to Random Access Memory (RAM), Delay Line Memory (DLM). Here is a simplified analogy of how it worked,

If you had a hard time remembering things for very long, and happened to live in a cave, you could just shout out what you didn't want to forget, and a few seconds later you would hear an echo to remind you. Of course, the problem with this is that an echo doesn't stick around for long, so you would have to shout again every time that you heard the echo, so that you could remember again in a few seconds. Assuming you could keep this up, you would never forget your idea.

looks more like something that should go boom.

Comments

Viacom Uploaded Some Of The Videos They're Suing Over

As some of you may have heard, Youtube is in a huge billion dollar lawsuit battle with media giant Viacom over their copyrighted content being uploaded to youtube without permission. Well YouTube(Google) decided to throw a huge wrench into Viacoms lawsuit and accused them of doing some of the uploading.

Viacom continuously and secretly uploaded its content to YouTube, even while publicly complaining about its presence there. It hired no fewer than 18 different marketing agencies to upload its content to the site. It deliberately "roughed up" the videos to make them look stolen or leaked. It opened YouTube accounts using phony email addresses. It even sent employees to Kinko's to upload clips from computers that couldn't be traced to Viacom. And in an effort to promote its own shows, as a matter of company policy Viacom routinely left up clips from shows that had been uploaded to YouTube by ordinary users... In fact, some of the very clips that Viacom is suing us over were actually uploaded by Viacom itself.

These are some pretty hefty accusations, is this just conspiracy theory rhetoric or is there something to these claims? Neither would surprise me at this point.

Comments

N.C. Tech Firm Feeds Hoops Fans' Insatiable Appetite for Stats

You ever wonder how those personal stats are put on the screen almost immediately after a play? You can thank your friendly neighborhood SportsMedia nerd and geek at the scene.

SportsMedia's software creates the raft of stats that is key to analyzing and appreciating the 64 tournament games. Its software has the intelligence to keep running totals of, say, shots attempted and made, as well as the ability to mine historical data to highlight trends, records and milestones.But it all starts with a spotter at center court and a technician in a van outside the arena _ both of whom are SportsMedia employees.

Comments

Facebook 'Agrees' To Include Panic Button On Its Site

Facebook has agreed in principle to install a direct link to Ceop to enhance the protection of children against predators in the UK. Talks are also scheduled in the US for next month.

It will now allow users to report suspicious behaviour to the Child and Online Protection Agency (Ceop), including the grooming of children. However, Facebook says it won't be adding the button to users' profile pages.

Comments

Apple Sets March 27 Deadline for First iPad Apps

Apple has set a target date for iPad apps to be submitted by developers. This indicates that the iPad App Store is on track to be opening soon in conjunction with the release of the iPad.

Developers have struggled with writing software for a device they haven't seen other than in videos and pictures, leading some to wonder if iPad-specific apps would be available when the tablet shipped. At least Apple has finally provided an answer to that question, even if it's not exactly the ideal solution developers might have hoped for.

Comments

YouTube Launches Partner Program for Indie Bands

YouTube is looking for a few good musicians, no not the Ravi Shankar sitar type band, but independent bands and labels looking to make the big breakout from being a garage band and paying money to boot.

"Whether you make hip-hop, folk, noise-rock, jazz or a genre of your own invention, we are looking for all types of original music video content," wrote YouTube music manager Michele Flannery in a note to be posted at midnight PT on YouTube’s blog. At the witching hour, any and all comers are invited to submit their videos to the new section of the Musicians Wanted site.

Comments

The Weird Week in Review

Thought you might like to share a few of the weird happenings in the past week from various sources. Steve caught one earlier this week, but it seems there is no shortage of idiocy, both on and off the Net.

Comments

Eight Very Rare (and very expensive) Video Games

If you are one of those people with a hoarding disorder, you may be sitting on a gold mine of valuable (and ancient) video games. Start looking through your stash (no not that stash) for the most wanted titles.

It\\\'s that last, hard-to-find, incredibly rare, usually expensive piece that you have to have before you can officially say your collection is complete. If you\\\'re a collector of vintage home video game cartridges (or \\\"carts\\\"), sometimes that can mean paying a pretty penny for the pièce de résistance.

Comments

Games Awards Announced at Bafta

Batman: Arkham Asylum has been chosen as the best game of 2010 beating the pre-award favorite Uncharted 2: Among Thieves at the presentation ceremony shown live last night on BBC1.

The British Academy of Film and Television Arts (Bafta) awards recognise "artistic, creative and technical innovation in video games". Bafta has been giving out awards to the games industry since 1998, although it only became a separate event in 2004.

Comments

World’s biggest Atom Smasher Hits a New High

The European Nuclear Organization know as CERN has hit another high in reaching it's goal of exploring the 'Big Bang Theory" in it's entirety. Let's all hope that they only study the phenomenon, not recreate it.

The extra energy in Geneva is expected to reveal even more about the unanswered questions of particle physics, such as the existence of dark energy and matter. Scientists hope also to approach on a tiny scale what happened in the first split seconds after the big bang, which they theorize was the creation of the universe some 14 billion years ago.

Comments

Cops Blame Computer Glitch for 50 Raids on Elderly Couple

"After news broke that Walter Martin, an 83-year-old war vet, and his 82-year-old wife continued to endure raids after pleading their case years ago in a letter to authorities, Police Commissioner Ray Kelly told detectives to fix the problem.The dozens of raids, which the Martins faced up to three times a week over a period of eight years, stem from a fundamental technology mix-up that started when the couple's Marine Park address was used to test an NYPD computer system in 2002, police said yesterday." I would have to call the police on that as being a tad slow on the uptake.

Comments

Russia Cracks Down on .ru Domain

Russia has finally realized that they may have a problem with it's .ru domain registration process. They are tightening the restrictions and increasing the difficulty in obtaining a domain name. In Mother Russia domain cracks down on you.

Starting April 1, anyone who registers a .ru domain will need to provide a copy of their passport or, for businesses, legal registration papers. Right now, domains can be set up with no verification -- a practice that has allowed scammers to quickly set up .ru domains under bogus names.

Comments

Get Your PC DIY Fix In Tonight!

Long time [H]'er "im_electronic" is getting his build on tonight and letting us all watch. As I am typing this he is getting all his parts laid out and ready for installation. Here is a forum thread that will give you a link to his build list. Here is the UStream link to watch him go. If he pulls it out and starts jerkin' it, don't hold me responsible.

Microsoft Pulls Bing App From Non-U.S. Stores

Not wanting to be left out of all the app controversy on the internet today, Microsoft pulled it’s Bing app from all international app stores. When asked for a comment, a Microsoft executive said "it’s because those other app stores smell funny." Okay…I made that last part up.

The good folks in Redmond are quoted as saying that the app was never intended for international markets, and was instead supposed to be destined for the United States alone. The company claims that it is working on international versions of Bing for iPhone, but it remained mum on when these would be made available.

Comments

Food Fight: Greenpeace Invades Nestle’s Facebook Page

Environmental activist group Greenpeace, hot off of last week’s protest of Facebook, is now using Facebook to protest Nestle (the candy bar people). Apparently one of Nestle’s reps got pissy with the protesters over altered company logos and then all hell broke loose from there.

Putting aside all judgment on who's right and who's wrong in this situation, we are seeing the dark side of the Facebook fan page: when what was intended to be an open way for fans to show their support was turned into a billboard of outrage on behalf of critics, and with a company representative in obvious panic over how to tame the mob. It's rare that public opposition will reach a truly uncontrollable level, but when it does, it's ugly.

Comments

[H]ardware Round-Up II

Cases & Modding

Aerocool PGS Qx-2000 Cube Case @ ThinkComputers

ETC.

MSI Wind12 U230 Netbook @ TestFreaks

Trust SoundForce USB Powered Portable Speakers @ DSM

Video

HIS Radeon HD 5670 Video Card @ Tweaknews

Apple Bans Game After Dev Disses App Store

Last week a developer talked trash on Apple’s app store but the company took the criticism in stride and implemented changes to its store to better serve developers. Just kidding, Apple banned his game from the app store.

Last week, game developer Tommy Refenes publicly called Apple's app store "awful" and "horrible." This week, Apple yanked his game from their store. There are a couple of reasons that may have compelled Apple to remove Zits & Giggles, a pimple-popping game for the iPhone and iPod Touch, from the App store.

Comments

My Mom's on Facebook

Do you have a Facebook page? Yes? Well, your worst nightmare is about to come true…your mom is on Facebook.

Comments

Modern Warfare 2 In Real Life

Not only did this guy build a real-world replica of "The Pit" level in CoD: Modern Warfare 2, he actually challenged a real Special Forces soldier to a race…video game versus reality. The video isn’t available in the U.S. but you can see a bit of the level this guy built in this video. Thanks to Al for the link.

Comments

Judge Orders Website To Delay Copying of Broker Reports

A U.S. District Judge ordered a web site to stop disseminating the stock recommendations of financial services firms until its clients can be notified first.

"Fly's core business is its free-riding off the sustained, costly efforts by the firms and other investment institutions to generate equity research that is highly valued by investors," the judge said. She said the company did no equity research of its own.

Comments

Gaming [H]eadlines

Dissecting the Splinter Cell: Conviction Demo @ Joystiq

Jamie Foxx Joins Kane & Lynch Flick @ Kotaku

MAG Getting Free 'Trooper Gear Pack' DLC @ Shacknews

Paradox Sues SouthPeak @ Blue’s News

AMD's ATI Catalyst 10.3a Driver Performance

Our evaluation of AMD's ATI Catalyst 10.3a driver performance is now online. If you want to know what this new non-WHQL "performance" driver has to offer, hit the link above, we have all the information you need in one easy location.

Quite simply, we are going to compare the latest officially released driver, Catalyst 10.2 WHQL to the newly released ATI Catalyst 10.3a Preview driver. We will be running five games in an apples-to-apples scenario, meaning all in-game settings, resolution, AA and AF are set at the exact same settings.

Comments

Multitasking Criminal of the Day

It would seem that the path to becoming a successful thief isn't possessing the ability to multitask. Seriously, after breaking into a store, the guy starts surfing porn on the store computer before logging on to MySpace and then trying to sell stolen goods online. This guy wasn’t arrested to protect the public, he was probably arrested for being a threat to himself. What an idiot.

A burglar who spent about five hours on a store's computer after breaking into the business gave police all the clues they needed to track him down. Investigators said the 17-year-old logged into his MySpace account while at Bella Office Furniture and that made it easy for them to find him. He also spent time looking at pornography and trying to sell stolen items, all while using the business' computer.

Comments

Disgusting Computer Award

And the award for the most disgusting computer of the week goes to this guy. I wouldn’t recommend viewing these picture if you just ate. You’ve been warned. Blame Izzy R. for this one.

Comments

[H]ardware Round-Up

Cases & Modding

Level 10 Super Gaming Case by Thermaltake @ Legit Reviews

NZXT Tempest Evo Crafted Series Case @ Pro-Clockers

ETC.

NVIDIA ION vs. Radeon HD 4330 Graphics @ Phoronix

Memory/ Storage

OCZ Agility Series 60 GB SSD @ LanOC

Motherboards

4-Way Intel H55 Motherboard Shootout @ TechSpot