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Monthly Archives: August 2007

Aussie Scams Bank Out of $9M

Friday, August 31, 2007

After a computer glitch allowed him to overdraft almost $9m from his bank account, an Australian man has refused to return the pilfered funds, arguing that he will soon be dead. Between June 2005 and January 2006, Victor Ollis wrote check after check for money he didn’t really have, scamming the Westpac bank out of [...]

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Leadtek PX8800 Ultra Leviathan – Too Much of a Good Thing?

Friday, August 31, 2007

While the card’s integrated water cooling block looks slim and stylish, with a greenish metal cover, it’s just not slim enough to have a true 1 slot profile – another 2 millimetres less would have solved that. In that case, Leadtek could also have to cut the slot cover to 1 slot width, rather than [...]

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The Father of All Viruses

Friday, August 31, 2007

What began as a ninth-grade prank, a way to trick already-suspicious friends who had fallen for his earlier practical jokes, has earned Rich Skrenta notoriety as the first person ever to let loose a personal computer virus. Although over the next 25 years, Skrenta started the online news business Topix, helped launch a collaborative Web [...]

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Million Dollar Luggage Lost in Brazil

Friday, August 31, 2007

Four Brazilians flying from Miami to Argentina decided to take too many electronic gadgets with them on their holiday. Okay, maybe that’s a little PC. They tried to smuggle between $800,000 and $1 million worth of CPUs, memory, thumb drives and other electronic components into Argentina, all inside their very heavy luggage. But what really [...]

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Xtreme Mac HDMI Switch for Apple

Friday, August 31, 2007

For being just $99, the same price as many competing cable-only solutions, one might worry that XtremeMac’s switch takes too many shortcuts. However, the fit and finish of the unit is solid, sharp, and attractive, mirroring the Apple TV with a rubberized bottom, a glossy plastic top, and a metallic finish on the sides (though [...]

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Next Gen Nano – Oh No!

Friday, August 31, 2007

It isn’t even available yet, but Apple’s likely successor to the iPod nano has been dubbed the red-headed (and overweight) stepchild of the lineup by the online media. A recently leaked image on the web suggests that the as yet unnamed sequel to Apple’s mid-range iPod nano would resemble a stubby blend between today’s model [...]

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Kanguru Solutions FireWire Flash Drive

Friday, August 31, 2007

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Dam! That Hit Me!

Friday, August 31, 2007

Dams formed of metal tripods and self-filling water bladders could be air-dropped to rapidly repair levees breached by storm damage, say US government researchers. When Hurricane Katrina struck New Orleans in August 2005, the levees created to protect the city from flooding were breached and the resulting deluge left 80% of the city underwater. More [...]

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QuickerTek nQuicky 802.11n (Draft) Adapter for Macs

Friday, August 31, 2007

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Vladmir in the Moon

Friday, August 31, 2007

The head of the Russian Federal Space Agency announced plans to launch a manned mission to the moon by 2025 and a permanent lunar base by 2032. “According to our estimates, we will be ready for a manned flight to the moon in 2025,” said Anatoly Perminov. He further believes an “inhabited station” could be [...]

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Swoosh, Kerblooie!

Friday, August 31, 2007

The Airborne Laser has taken another step forward in its long slog off the drawing board and into the Pentagon’s arsenal. The first-of-its-kind 747-400F this month completed a series of low-power test flights, using onboard infrared sensors to locate “an instrumented target board” on an Air Force NC-135E aircraft. Once the Airborne Laser(ABL) found the [...]

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Dell Turns Dull

Friday, August 31, 2007

Dell Inc.’s laptop sales to the consumer market sank nearly 20% in the second quarter because of problems finishing units and shipping them to customers, analysts said today. The computer maker, which released financial figures yesterday, sold 887,000 notebooks to the consumer market during the second quarter, according to Gartner Inc.’s numbers, said analyst Mikako [...]

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Why NBC Left iTunes?

Friday, August 31, 2007

In a press release issued this afternoon, Apple reported that NBC Universal called for an increase in price for its TV shows to $4.99 per episode — the current price is $1.99 per episode. This was especially disconcerting to Apple considering that ABC, CBS and FOX all signed on for next TV season at the [...]

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Fact or Fiction?

Friday, August 31, 2007

Viacom isn’t the only organization involved in sending out “bass-ackwards” DMCA takedown notices; the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America (SFWA) is in on the fun as well. The group has issued DMCA takedown notices for sci-fi reading lists drawn up to aid teen literacy, freely-distributed webzines, and Creative Commons-licensed material. More

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The Mini Maxi-Computer

Friday, August 31, 2007

When Tim Brom 07’ set out to build a budget supercomputer with Calvin computer science professor Joel Adams, he didn’t know the product of his efforts might end up in his checked baggage headed for England. Brom, now a graduate student at the University of Kentucky continuing his studies in computer science, worked with Adams [...]

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