Archive for April, 2009

Time Warner To Spin Off AOL

Hugh Pickens writes “Time Warner is inching closer to untangling one of the worst mergers in American corporate history that began with the merger of Time Warner with America Online, a deal that has resulted in the evaporation of more than $100 billion of shareholder value. “Although the company’s board of directors has not made […]

Russian Manned Space Vehicle May Land With Rockets

The Narrative Fallacy writes “Russia’s next-generation manned space vehicle may be equipped with thrusters to perform a precision landing on its return to Earth. Previous manned missions have landed on Earth using a parachute or, in the case of space shuttles, a pair of wings. Combined with retractable landing legs and a re-usable thermal protection […]

Bluetooth Versus Wireless Mice

Meneguzzi writes “Having stuck with wired mice for years, I have recently been impressed by a couple of cordless mice I’ve used on other people’s computers so much that I now want to buy one to use with my Mac Book Pro. However, while shopping around for the perfect cordless laptop mouse I was stuck […]

Microsoft To Disable Autorun

jchrisos writes “Microsoft is planning to disable autorun in the next Release Candidate of Windows 7 and future updates to Windows XP and Vista. In order to maintain a ‘balance between security and usability’, non-writable media will maintain its current behavior however. In any case, if it means no more autorun on flash drives, removable […]

Viability of Mobile Broadband For Home Use?

mighty7sd writes “I am about to be released from my contract with Time Warner for my home internet service, and I am evaluating alternatives to my current cable modem setup. I would love to use AT&T U-Verse or Verizon Fios, but they are not available in my area. I have a good idea of what […]

Town Fights Cricket Plague With Led Zeppelin

The residents of Tuscarora, Nevada are getting ready to fight the annual invasion of mormon crickets with the power of Rock-N-Roll. Trial and error has shown that the crickets don’t think much of Led Zeppelin or the Rolling Stones. The residents circle the town with boomboxes at regular intervals to drive off the millions of […]

Miro Asks Users To “Adopt” Lines of Source

soDean writes “The FOSS video player / downloader Miro is asking its users to support development by ‘adopting’ a line of source code for $4 a month. Each adopted line of code comes personalized with a little avatar character that will grow older over the year. PCF, which makes Miro, says they think the project […]

A $99 Graphics Card Might Be All You Need

Vigile writes “With the release of AMD’s latest budget graphics card, the Radeon HD 4770, the GPU giant is bringing a lot of technology to the table. The card sports the world’s first 40nm GPU (beating out CPUs to a new process technology for the first time), GDDR5 memory, and 640 stream processors, all for […]

IE8 Released As Critical Update For XP

Binestar was one of several readers writing in to note that Microsoft is listing IE8 as a critical update to Windows XP. CNet reported a couple of weeks back that Microsoft would be rolling our IE8 to users in a gradual fashion, and requiring an opt-in before installing it. Opinion has been split as to […]

Google To Remove “Inappropriate” Books From Digital Library

Miracle Jones writes “In an interview with Professor (and former Microsoft employee) James Grimmelmann at the New York Law School, who is both setting up an online clearinghouse to discuss the Google book settlement and drafting an amicus brief to inform the court about the antitrust factors surrounding “orphan books,” he revealed that Google will […]