If you were wowed by the 150-inch plasma screen that debuted at the recent Consumer Electronics Show, that's nothing. Japanese research laboratory NHK -- working on Ultra-High Definition TV that has a screen resolution of 7,680 x 4,320 pixels, 16 times the current HD standard -- have built themselves a 500-inch screen.

Naturally you need some good speakers, so they've added "the world's only 22.2 multi-channel surround sound system, which the format also supports."

The BBC report continues:


They hope to make it a standard by 2015 though NHK doesn't expect the first "Super Hi-Vision" broadcast till around 2025.

And if you're wondering how we're going to handle all that data, this fascinating backgrounder details how recent developements in special circuit coatings may see Moore's Law extended for at least another 15 years!

Posted by Geoff Palmer at 10:43 AM | Permalink | Comments ( 0 )

Pavs, at the always-interesting Linux hacking portal Linuxhaxor.net, has compiled a comprehensive list of 68 Linux-related Free E-books. Unfortunately the list isn't in any particular order, so here -- with full credit to pavs for the original work -- is a more ordered list...

(Note: Duplicate entries lead to different editions or alternate sites.)



 

Posted by Geoff Palmer at 10:23 PM | Permalink | Comments ( 1 )

If you purchased a high-definition HD-DVD player... bummer. I did try to warn you last year, and Warner Brother's recent announcement that they'll only release movies in the competing Blu-ray format seems to be another nail in the HD-DVD coffin. But that's no reason for Blu-rayers to feel smug.

If you recently purchased a Blu-ray player, you may have also been screwed. That's because Blu-ray players come in what are known as "profiles". All players released before November 2007 were profile 1.0 machines, those since are profile 1.1. The kicker is that 1.0's aren't upgradeable to 1.1, so while they'll still play hi-def, "owners may find themselves frozen out of future developments in the technology".

If you managed to get a 1.1 profile, you're still screwed. Later this year profile 2.0 -- also known as "BD Live" -- will be out, and guess what? 1.1's aren't upgradeable either! (Profile 2.0 -- which allows players to connect to the internet and download all sorts of related content -- will presumably be upgradeable, but don't quote me on that.)

And just to add to the confusion, there's an exception to all of the above: Blu-ray players in the PlayStation 3 can be upgraded because they have the right hardware and online access.

It's not called the "bleeding edge" for nothing!

Posted by Geoff Palmer at 4:17 PM | Permalink | Comments ( 17 )

Yeah, yeah, I know I shouldn't be encouraging this sort of thing, but this is just too cool and clever. According the UK's Telegraph newspaper, a 14 year-old Polish kid has been caught hacking trams in the city of Lodz -- using what was basically a TV remote control!

Miroslaw Micor, a spokesman for Lodz police, said... "He had converted the television control into a device capable of controlling all the junctions on the line and wrote in the pages of a school exercise book where the best junctions were to move trams around and what signals to change.

"He treated it like any other schoolboy might a giant train set, but it was lucky nobody was killed. Four trams were derailed, and others had to make emergency stops that left passengers hurt. He clearly did not think about the consequences of his actions."

Unfortunately, twelve people were injured in one derailment.

According to SMBlog:

PS: If you're wondering about the odd icon that accompanies this item, it's one of a bunch or free icons from www.icondrawer.com. I found it by entering "hack icon" in Google Image Search. Since "hack" sounds a little like "quack", I'm wondering if Google have started onomatopoeic searching...

Posted by Geoff Palmer at 8:36 PM | Permalink | Comments ( 0 )

Last September Microsoft were fined €500,000,000 by the European Union for anti-competitive practices. And now they're heading for court again. This time the EU are looking at (1) whether Microsoft unfairly ties Internet Explorer into Windows, and (2) issues concerning the interoperability of Microsoft software with rival products. That last one's a biggie because it looks like including Microsoft Office's supposedly 'open' XML format. According to a spokesman for Microsoft's opponents -- which include Nokia, Sun, Adobe and Real Networks -- “It’s a case which might transform the whole software industry.”

After nine years in litigation, a Microsoft spokesman responded that, “We’d rather just focus on making good software.” But they can't even seem to do that. Still, maybe it explains why Vista's soooo bad. It was cobbled together by a bunch of lawyers during court case recesses...

If you're hanging out for Vista Service Pack 1 to fix your woes, you may still be hanging out after it's released. According to an exo.blog posting titled Vista SP1 a Performance Dud:

Unfortunately, this is simply not the case. Extensive testing by the exo.performance.network research staff shows that SP1 provides no measurable relief to users saddled with sub-par performance under Vista.

Ooops.

Oh by the way, Microsofties. If your bank account's looking a bit more depleted than you expected after Christmas, you might have been the victim of yet another killer virus. This one's called Mebroot and specialises in stealing internet banking logins. According to the BBC, "few commercial anti-virus packages currently detect its presence".

Posted by Geoff Palmer at 6:55 PM | Permalink | Comments ( 2 )

Here's a gem for comics lovers: dailystrips. It's a Perl script that downloads your favourite comics from the net and displays them on a single, custom-built web page.

Installation's easy. It's one of the gazillion applications in Ubuntu's Package Manager so I'm guessing it's available in most distros.

To use it, simply type dailystrips -list in a console for a list of all available comics -- there's around 650 in total. To build your very own web page, type dailystrips -l followed by the abbreviated names of your favourites (shown on the left after the -list command). For example,
dailystrips -l dilbert wizardofid andycapp calvinandhobbes

To display the page type firefox index.html and viola!

(Ideally of course you'll want to set up a cron job to run this once a day and a toolbar bookmark button to take you straight to index.html, but I'll leave those details up to you...)


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Posted by Geoff Palmer at 1:05 PM | Permalink | Comments ( 0 )

Imagine a piece of software that;

• Monitors and transmits a copy of all internet traffic going from and coming to the compromised system.

• Monitors secure sessions (websites beginning with ‘https'), which may include shopping or banking sites.

• Records and transmits "the pace and style with which you enter information online..."

• Parses the header section of personal emails.

So is this the first malware bogey of 2008? Nope. It's what Sears -- one of the largest retailers in the US -- is giving its customers when they join the Sears "My SHC Community".

The CA Security Advisor Research Blog has all the details -- including a disturbing in-depth analysis of where the data's going -- and evidence of what appears to be deliberate obfuscation of the Privacy Policy. It's disturbing stuff -- more so because it comes from a Fortune 500 company.

Posted by Geoff Palmer at 7:09 PM | Permalink | Comments ( 1 )