Nothing’s sure yet, but a recent Apple patent application details an in-OS advertising system that could conceivably “disable some aspect of [the OS'] operation to prompt the operator to pay attention to the advertisement.” Eeek!
European Parliament says: feel to cut off persistent file-sharers from the Internet, member states!
Good advice: if you no longer need a SIM, destroy it by breaking it in half. Not if you want to “protect” your hot girlfriend from potential suitors.
If you’ve never bothered researching the history of the Internet, this easy-to-digest slide show should help.
I’m a Nokia fan, but I still scratch my head over …read more

Today marks the start of a week-long promo from HP. The company has slashed prices of two desktops and two laptops apparently in an effort to move stock, through discounts that last until the 24th of this month:

HP Desktop Deals

Save up to $515 instantly on the NEW HP Pavilion Elite e9280t Series Customizable Desktop PC! – Savings Include: $300 instant rebate, FREE 750GB hard drive upgrade (-$50), FREE 15-month Norton Internet Security subscription (-$49), 35% off a 21.5-inch diagonal widescreen monitor (-$90), and get FREE shipping (-$29).
Save up to $415 instantly on the NEW HP Pavilion Slimline s5280t Series Customizable …read more

Yes, the FBI director has his own commander. Not the president of the US or some senate committee, but his wife who banned him from doing online banking after he nearly fell for a phishing scam.
Iceland is all about being (literally) cool, which is why they want to become the server capital of the world. They offer natural cooling crucial to cutting down data center costs and energy consumption.
Adaptive roof-tiling technology that absorbs heat during the winter and reflects it during the summer. How? Simply by switching between black and white.
A summary of Leo Laporte’s career. For some reason, I …read more

Over the last two-and-a-half years, search engine giant Google analyzed the performance of the thousands of computers it uses for its own data centers. The surprising trend? Based on real-world data, Google concluded that the error rates of memory chips are higher than previously believed. Much much higher:
How many errors? On average, about one in three Google servers experienced a correctable memory error each year and one in a hundred an uncorrectable error, an event that typically causes a crash.
Older research showed that, for every 1 billion hours, a memory chip would fail on average around 200 to 5,000 times. …read more

Seems that, according to a picture posted on MADATOMS, internet cults are US-centric by nature. Mac Zealots, Whedonites, Wikipedia Editors, and Second Life Residents all patronize services and products invented in the US. Another sign that America is still king of geekiness—or at least enjoy the most attention from geeky media.

My personal favorite? The “How to Infuriate Other Members” of the Mac Zealots Cult: “Write an honest, negative tech review about an Apple product [or service, for that matter].”

According to Gordon Bell, a researcher from Microsoft, the average human’s life requires approximately 350GB worth of data storage. This estimate was made during a Q&A as part of an article featuring his work, which basically involves storing every waking moment for digital posterity.
Personally, that seemed like a really low figure to me. “Only” 350GB to encompass the entire sum of our life experiences? Then again, if 3G users only consume around 211MB a month, and the average daily traffic of the internet is “mere” terrabytes (or thousands of gigabyes), then the figure makes sense. The amount of information we …read more

So a big typhoon named Ketsana has hit the northern part of the Philippines, stranding thousands within the capital Metro Manila, and forcing the government to declare a “state of calamity” for at least 26 different areas.

And while families are forced to retreat to the roof to avoid the rising water, and while power and infrastructure failure accompany the typhoon’s destruction, at least one Filipino has found the time and resources to capture the flooding up-close—and share it with the rest of the world online.
Here are those snapshots below, with the low quality of the cell phone camera made obvious …read more

According to Arbor Networks, an internet security firm based in Chelmsford, Massachusetts, internet traffic in the US peaks around 11PM eastern time. Or for those who live on the west coast, 8PM. Arbor looked at weekdays during last July, gathering traffic data from internet service providers that account for half of internet activity in the US.
What does this mean exactly? Either most Americans like to surf more at home, like to download more away from the office, or leisurely activities simply require more bandwidth. Think about it: how large are office documents compared to say, movies and music?
Speaking of media, …read more

AMD Eyefinity: powering six 30″ displays at a time—with a single GPU.
Shock and awe: disgruntled Apple laptop users!
Futurism fail: “I don’t see many sales in the future of iPod“.
Catching up with the rest of the world: AT&T now rolling out MMS for the iPhone.
Yes, I already know construction cranes go up this way.
“If extraterrestrial civilizations are monitoring our TV broadcasts, then this is what they are currently watching”
So, publishing a Blu-Ray requires committing to DRM. Here’s why.
So, there’s a space treadmill named after Stephen Colbert.
If I live in the US, and you know my zip code, gender, and birthday, then …read more

Ladies and gentlemen, Intel’s SSD killer
Amazon seeking to make amends for book-deletion fiasco
AM radio poses multiple threat, says terrorist group responsible for destroying AM towers
Punctuality was long dead before the Internet supposedly killed it
New drag-and-drop spec for web developers not really well implemented
The UK government wants to punish those accused (not guilty) of illegal downloading by cutting off their net access
I wait for your opinions on Snow Leopard
Symantec’s attempt to tap crowdsourcing to catch hackers
Goodbye obsolete books, says Boston school
Someone hates Philippine President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo, enough to create a flash game that lets players punch her