All Things News

Straight from Slashdot: “Hardcoreware.net has posted a look at the manufacturing process of a motherboard at a new ECS factory in Shen Zhen. Unlike most factories, they build boards from the ground up at one location, starting with the PCB all the way to a finished product. They also talk a little bit about the working conditions they witnessed in China.”

Straight from Slashdot: “As reported by KATU in Portland, Oregon, a man was arrested for parking outside a coffee shop in nearby Vancouver, Washington, and using their open wireless AP — for three straight months. ‘”He doesn’t buy anything,” Manager Emily Pranger says about the man she ended up calling 911 about. “It’s not right for him to come and use it.”‘ Turns out the guy was a registered sex-offender as well.”

Straight from Engadget: “We’re rather impressed with the US Air Force and their Starfire project. It’s not every day you get to build a death ray on a desert hill in New Mexico and write it off as a scientific endeavor. The premise is that since the atmosphere diffracts light, messing up the view of ground-based optical telescopes, the Starfire shoots a laser 56 miles into the mesosphere and measures the distortion to adjust the telescope optics. Images from the Starfire are 40 times more accurate than regular, but the laser technology is coincidentally multi-purpose: “We don’t hide the fact that it could help build an anti-satellite weapon,” says the installation’s chief, “if you choose to do it.” Our thoughts exactly.”

Straight from Space.com: “VAIL, Colorado – NASA has begun a fact-finding appraisal of how best to detect, track, catalogue and characterize near-Earth asteroids and comets—and what can be done to deflect an object found on course to strike our planet.”

Digg Comments

Straight from Slashdot: “Some Apple MacBook owners are plagued with what seems to be a defective trackpad button. The button, when pushed, seems “squishy” and sometimes even unresponsive. While these MacBook owners are getting turned away at the Apple Genius Bars, they have come up with a custom and unique solution to the problem. A piece of paper, placed strategically under the battery pack where the trackpad is located, seems to fix this problem for most users.”

Straight from Slashdot: “An article over at Space.com mentions two new tools that Space Shuttle Discovery will have aboard during its upcoming flight, designated STS-121, scheduled to lift off on July 1, 2006. One tool is for tile repair. The other tool is a 28-foot-long cable that would be used to connect an avionics bay located on the mid-deck with the flight-deck controls. The cable enables flight controllers on the ground to land the Shuttle completely by remote control, including the ability to lower the landing gear. The remote control landing would be used in the case where the Shuttle was damaged to the point that it would be too risky to land it with humans aboard, but could be landed without humans aboard in an attempt to save the vehicle. The astronauts would take refuge on the ISS while mission control in Houston attempt to land a damaged Shuttle.”

Straight from Ars Technica: “Talk about getting your wires crossed. In the same week that Microsoft sounded the trumpets for the arrival of their online preview for Office 2007, they’re now announcing a shipping delay for the office suite.”Based on internal testing and the beta 2 feedback around product performance, we are revising our development schedule to deliver the 2007 system release by the end of year 2006, with broad general availability in early 2007,” a Microsoft spokesperson told Ars Technica.

The company had previously planned an October release, although speculation that Office 2007 would be delayed began shortly after Windows Vista’s own ship date slipped from the fourth quarter of 2006 into early 2007. Pragmatically speaking, this means that the company will launch its mainstream promotions for Office 2007 almost simultaneously with Windows Vista.”

Straight from Ars Technica: “In the good old days of 2001, Microsoft started an aggressive anti-piracy initiative that is still alive today. Called “Windows Product Activation,” Microsoft’s early iterations attempted to verify copies of Windows online, going so far as to scan system components in an effort to individually identify machines. Some five years later Microsoft is still trying to keep an eye on piracy online, but they’re going about it in a way that angers many.Los Angeles resident Brian Johnson has field suit against Microsoft in the U.S. District Court in Seattle, charging the company with failing to disclose the true nature of a similar anti-piracy tool that Microsoft has distributed. The tool in question is the now-notorious “Windows Genuine Advantage”—an descendant of sorts from the old WPA approach. Johnson’s complaint centers around the fact that previous versions of WGA constantly “called home” to Microsoft, which in his view constitutes a a violation of anti-spyware laws in both California and Washington State. Johnson’s suit seeks class-action status for the complaint, and it is being fronted by Scott Kamber of Kamber & Associates LLC in New York. Kamber recently served as plaintiff’s counsel in the rootkit fiasco centering on Sony.”

Straight from Tampabays10.com: “Inverness, Florida – There’s a major new development in the John Couey murder trial. When he was arrested in Georgia last spring, Couey confessed to investigators that he kidnapped and murdered 9-year-old Jessica Lunsford. This morning, a judge threw out Couey’s confession because after his 2005 arrest, Couey asked to speak to a lawyer and his request was denied. It was shortly after that he confessed the details of the crime. This is a victory for John Couey’s defense team, simply because prosecutors cannot play an audiotape of John Couey’s voice admitting to the crime.

Straight from Slashdot: “The New York Times is running an article today entitled Apple’s Got a Secret. They discuss the cost behind making the ever-popular iPod … a secret the company is keeping close to its chest. As a result of the company’s signature secrecy and antiquated way of tracking profits, analysts are beginning to question the ‘trust me’ nature of buying Apple stock.”

From the article: “Geographic disclosure was adequate when pretty much all Apple sold were computers, Mr. Renck said. But the iPod has changed everything. Sales of Macintosh computers now trail those of iPod, which last year made up 46 percent of revenue. ‘Apple clearly has its feet in two separate and distinct business models, namely computer manufacturing and software creation, and the consumer electronics industry,’ Mr. Renck said.”

Straight from Ars Technica: “Sony completely dominated the console market in the last generation with the PlayStation 2. After driving rival Sega out of the hardware business, the console went on to ship 100 million units worldwide, leaving remaining rivals Microsoft and Nintendo in the dust with roughly 20 million units shipped by the second and third place finishers. Still, the history of the console market shows that leaders in one generation can often fall behind in the next. Microsoft’s launch of the Xbox 360 last November, combined with Sony’s delay for the PS3, and a lukewarm reaction to the PS3’s announced price, all put the pressure on Sony to stay on top. One thing the company can count on, however, is wholehearted support from the Japanese market. Or can they?”

Straight from Slashdot: “KinderStart, whose page hits and AdSense revenue dropped sharply after changes by Google demoted its appearance in search results, brought suit claiming the search engine effectively suppressed its first amendment rights by lowering the site’s visibility. While the Court rejected that argument out-of-hand, it appeared more amenable to KinderStart’s argument that since it was a search page, Google’s suppression of a rival search engine is prohibited by antitrust laws. The suit may go forward with the judge’s commentary.”

Straight from Gizmodo: “This in-dash entertainment center from Hong Kong has a 6.5-inch screen and 800×480 resolution. Front-and-center on its feature list is a GPS navigator and the ability to connect to the Internet via GPRS networks. And you know what that means—you can also use it as a GSM cellphone. It’s an actual PC, too, with a 20GB hard disk and 128MB of RAM, presided over by a 400MHz AMD AU1200 chip. Not sure how all that would react to the 150° temperature inside a hot car on the Fourth of July.It has everything else you might need in a car radio, too, such as AM/FM radio along with CD, DVD, and MP3 players, and there’s even a USB and headset port in front. Unfortunately, it’s probably just as clumsy to control as its UMPC cousins, because you navigate around its Windows CE 5.0 interface with a stylus pen.

For the benefit of the rest of us, just don’t be watching that Mad Max DVD while you’re barreling down the highway, please.”

Straight from Gizmodo: “It appears that reports of Redmond including an internal HD DVD drive in the Xbox 360 console (as opposed to the external drive which they announced earlier this year) were wildly off base. A representative from the company said, “What we showcased at E3 was an external HD DVD drive, and we’re sticking with that…So: no plans for an internal HD DVD.””