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Pretty soon, advertisers be hawking wares at your doctor’s office.

Original post by Benjamin Gauthey

The Consumerist site is featuring a follow-up to their Geek Squad porn collectors story, a feature we discussed back in July. According to Consumerist, Best Buy set up their own rigorous internal investigation to catch the culprits soon after these revelations became public. At that point, of course, employee morale went out the window. Draconian interrogation methods were apparently used, and innocent employees lost their jobs. “There were three Geek Squad members fired from my store including myself. The first two were fired for burning a non-copyrighted CD for another employee on a non company issued blank CD-R. I admitted in my interrogation that I was aware of this, and that I stopped these events after that occurrence. I was fired for being aware of this non copyrighted CD being copied. To quote, I did not provide the proper example of leadership. Keep in my mind I removed over 100 illegal tools and pirated discs upon my arrival as supervisor, as well as some remnants of an internal porn scandal.”

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Original post by Zonk

Filed under: Features, Gaming

There’s only a select few titles that are really worth obsessing over for nearly half a year, but apparently, Rock Band is indeed a member of that upper echelon. After months of drooling over images of the game’s accompanying hardware assortment, the star-studded title has finally landed on store shelves, and according to Electronic Arts, copies haven’t been hanging around for long. In a report posted yesterday, EA noted that it moved “hundreds of thousands” of boxes over the Thanksgiving weekend, and judging by most every review we’ve seen, the response has been overwhelmingly positive. ‘Course, with so much critical hardware packed in, it’s not terribly surprising to hear that some early adopters found a few flaws, but it seems that EA has fessed up to the issues and is offering VIP treatment (read: immediate replacements) to those with jacked up axes.

Now that you’ve had some time to work out those vocal cords, brush up on your drum rolls and mosh in your own living room, inquiring minds are dying to know how you would have done things differently. We’ve already given you a shot to vouch for your rhythm game of choice, but haters and posse members alike can feel free to step up to the proverbial microphone and voice your wishes. Would you have thrown in a Telecaster rather than a Strat? How about embedding an accelerometer in the microphone in order to accumulate kudos for mindless twirling? Totally bummed by the omission of a wildly flamboyant mic stand a la Steven Tyler? Whatever your beef, don’t hold back on this one — your All Access pass to remixing Rock Band has (un)officially been granted.

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Office Depot Featured Gadget: Xbox 360 Platinum System Packs the power to bring games to life!

Original post by Darren Murph

jcasman writes “Wired’s got a piece on building a better robotic hand at Stanford. The new robot is called Stair 1.0, and scientists are hoping to take a cue from human children for how to teach a robot to learn. ‘When a computer fails at a task, it spouts an error message. Babies, on the other hand, just try again a different way, exploring the world by grabbing new objects — shoving them into their mouths if possible — to acquire additional data. This built-in drive to explore teaches us how to use our brains and bodies. Now a number of hand-focused roboticists are building machines with the same childlike motivation to explore, fail, and learn through their hands.’”

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Original post by Zonk

Filed under: Digital Cameras

It looks like those looking to put together a quick and easy surveillance system for spying on their employees could soon find their solution courtesy of NEC, which is set to debut a new security cam that draws all its power from a standard fluorescent light. But that’s not all, the camera also boasts some built-in 802.11b WiFi capabilities to stream all that video (or, more specifically, an image every ten seconds) back to a PC, which can presumably be used to monitor dozens of these little all-seeing wonders. No word on a price or release date, but NEC will apparently have more to say about it at the iExpo2007 conference that gets underway in Tokyo on December 5th.

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Office Depot Featured Gadget: Xbox 360 Platinum System Packs the power to bring games to life!

Original post by Donald Melanson

Josh Fink writes “Space.com is reporting that the International Space Station has a minor atmosphere leak. ‘An inspection of a vestibule bridging the station’s new Harmony connecting module and NASA’s Destiny laboratory indicated a slight air leak of about three pounds (1.3 kilograms) per day ..A close-up inspection of the vestibule seal by the station’s three-astronaut Expedition 16 crew using an ultrasonic leak detector found no trace of a leak on Wednesday, [NASA spokesperson Lynette Madison] said. Studies of the station’s overall internal pressure also found no signs of decay, she added.’ While this is yet another technical issue with the ISS, when will this end? I am all for the space program, but there have been some major issues lately.”

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Original post by Zonk

Filed under: Laptops

It’s not like ThinkPads have been immune to the notorious overheating battery issue, but a fiery incident in Ohio may not be IBM’s fault. In a somewhat bizarre tale, it’s reported that an Ohioan purchased a replacement battery from Shentech for his ThinkPad, only to later have it overheat, catch on fire and damage his machine. After discovering that the faulty cell was actually a counterfeit, IBM took the liberty of ordering a dozen batteries from the Flushing, New York-based company, and it soon discovered that all twelve received were indeed fakes. As you can probably guess, IBM has filed suit against the outfit and has asked the court to require Shentech to hand over all of its batteries for destruction, profits it made from selling the fakes and a million dollars “per counterfeit mark per type of item sold.” That’ll teach ‘em to mess with Big Blue.

[Via TGDaily]

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Office Depot Featured Gadget: Xbox 360 Platinum System Packs the power to bring games to life!

Original post by Darren Murph

This question from reader Murray came to Joel Santo Domingo, PC Magazine Labs lead analyst for desktop PCs:

I am a long-time subscriber to PC Magazine, and read every issue cover-to-cover. Because I have always wanted to record HD TV programs over my Comcast cable to my PC, I saved this March 10, 2007 review by Joel Santo Domingo: “Dell XPS 410 with ATI TV Wonder Digital Cable Tuner.” In this same time frame, Microsoft released the following “CableCARD and Digital Cable FAQ” at its Web site.

Well, it turns out that this technology has gone through some major hiccups during the past 10 months, as everyone has discovered that the problem is related to Digital Rights Management and is tightly controlled by Microsoft and Cable Labs, who license only certain manufacturers to use the CableCARD. It seems that these computer makers don’t all have their acts together. There are several TV tuners on the market that allow reception of HDTV, but these are only for Over-The-Air broadcasting, not cable.

In anticipation of throwing out my hated Comcast set-top DVR and its horrible Guide, last month I bought a Dell XPS 410 with an ATI TV Wonder Digital Cable Tuner…

I called Comcast, who came to my house to install the CableCARD. Two technicians were at my house for over 6 hours, trying to make Media Center connect to the HD channels. The analog channels worked fine! I got Dell Tech Support on the phone, and [the rep] connected to my computer to watch the process. After trying 6 Motorola CableCARDS, it was finally decided that there must be a problem with the ATI tuner, so Dell shipped me another one. In the meantime, both the Comcast and Dell techs were going to research the problem.

After the new tuner arrived, the same two Comcast techs came out again, and we hooked up with the same Dell technician so he could watch the process. After 7 more hours, 13 Motorola CableCARDS, and still no success; everyone decided that it must somehow be a problem with the Dell computer. The Dell tech reluctantly arranged for a return, and I sent the XPS 410 back last week. Now I see that Dell has replaced the XPS 410 with the XPS 420, which does not even offer a HDTV Cable Tuner. In fact, Dell now offers none of these tuners, anywhere on its Web site!

Sony still advertises the VAIO XL3, which supports the CableCARD. The only problem is that the Web site now states in red letters, “This product is no longer available for purchase.”

Even though HP, Velocity Micro, and Niveus Media still seem to be offering computers with the above technology, I am afraid to invest in this type of system right now. I’ll bet I am not the only one in the dark here. What is going on? What have you heard?

Joel’s answer:

CableCARD on PCs is a bleeding edge “version 1.0″ technology, and in my experience, it’s totally a “your mileage may vary” event. I had the benefit of having a Velocity Micro technician and Verizon FIOS techs on hand for my review, and even then it took the better part of two days for them to get it working right. Ultimately, I downgraded the system’s overall score because of the hassle.

I’m glad you were able to return the XPS 410, since it gave you so much trouble. The XPS 410 I previewed in the article you quoted below was tested on Time Warner Cable in NYC. I’ve heard reports of it working on cable systems like Cox, and I’ve heard horror stories like yours.

Unfortunately, those horror stories usually involve multi-day install headaches, since CableCARD on MCE PC training is spotty at best in the Cable TV industry. I know that ATI has updated the firmware on the Digital Cable tuners several times over the past year.

The Sony XL3 has reached the end of its life, and I’m still waiting for the replacement. The Sony Vaio LT19U all-in-one PC has a CableCARD reader, but it’s still the external ATI reader that has given some people so much trouble. Niveus has a “special relationship” with ATI and Microsoft, but I have yet to receive an updated CableCARD system from them.

I’ve since popped my CableCARDs into a TiVo HD, since I knew from talking to the Verizon FIOS Techs that they’ve never had a problem with TiVo Series 3 HD DVRs, or HDTVs with integrated CableCARD readers. For the record, I did my review with a review unit, but I liked it so much that I bought my own unit.

TiVo recently enabled TiVo to Go on the TiVo HD, so I can save recorded programs to my Windows desktop and Mac laptop with no degradation in quality. I highly recommend TiVo HD for people that are dissatisfied with both CableCARD on MCE PCs and their cable company’s DVR.

I’m planning on revisiting CableCARDs on PCs in the new year, once ATI and Microsoft updates their hardware and software. –Joel Santo Domingo

Original post by Carol Mangis

Filed under: Gaming

Details are unsurprisingly light on this one, but DigiTimes has it that NVIDIA is gearing up to launch its next-generation GPU just after the Lunar New Year in February 2008. Reportedly, “sources at graphics card makers” have revealed that the GeForce 9 series will include the D9E — a “high-end product that adopts 65-nanometer manufacturing,” supports DirectX 10.1 and Shader Model 4.1 — and the mid-range D9P, which will supposedly adopt 55-nanometer processing. Apparently, the former will be the first product in the new family, while the latter won’t see light until June, but of course, we’d take every ounce of this with a healthy serving of salt for the time being.

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Office Depot Featured Gadget: Xbox 360 Platinum System Packs the power to bring games to life!

Original post by Darren Murph

An anonymous reader writes “In 2006, heads rolled at AOL after the company released anonymized logs of user searches. With last week’s announcement that researchers had been able to learn the identities of users in the scrubbed Netflix dataset, could the days of companies sharing data with academic researchers be numbered? Shortly after the AOL incident, Google’s Eric Schmidt called the data release ‘a terrible thing,’ and assured the public that ‘this kind of thing could not happen at Google.’ Will any high tech company ever take this kind of chance again? If not, how will this impact research and and the development of future technologies that could have come from the study of real data?”

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Original post by Zonk

Ok, show of hands - who hasn’t been on a conference call or talking with a spouse, family or friends, and they heard you pecking away at the keyboard? [crickets in background…] Ok, even if they didn’t say anything, I’m sure there have been occasions where you are on the phone and you were also checking email, surfing the web, etc. and the other party knew you weren’t giving your undivided attention. This can be dangerous from a personal perspective (See: Wife’s dog house) but also a business one. You don’t want to appear you aren’t paying attention to the business client.

So I was intrigued to learn about SoliCall’s PBXMate, "an innovative and breakthrough technology that will reduce background noise in VoIP networks supporting SIP." PBXMate will help you cut down on having that extra noise transmitted during your business calls. SoliCall claims it can reduce background noise (including keystrokes) and improves voice clarity. Of course, this is VoIP only, regular analog phones need not apply.

SoliCall explained, "When was the last time you were able to conduct a conference call without suffering from the annoying street noises, generated by at least one of the participants in that call? Or those low-quality incoming calls from cell phones?"

"This will mark the end of noisy business calls, and especially conference calls,"Ž says Shlomi Simhi, Director of Marketing for SoliCall (Ltd.). "Our customers report on a dramatic improvement in voice quality and on a whole new conversation experience."Ž

SoliCall’s PBXMate can work with any VoIP network that supports SIP and it runs on Linux & Windows.

How’s it work? Well, that’s a darned good question. SoliCall PBXMate sounds eerily similar to the ‘free’ SoliCall Softphone Add-On. I know SoliCall Softphone Add-On works with any VoIP softphones (Skype, Google Talk, Yahoo! Messenger, etc.) simply by changing your default sound settings so that the SoliCall sound driver is used instead, as seen here:

It sounds like SoliCall PBXMate might sit on the network itself, capture the SIP and RTP streams and then perform some audio optimizations. Considering the real-time nature of VoIP, I’m not sure that’s feasible. It would also have to intercept the packets ("man in the middle") before forwarding them on, which is a security no-no. Maybe it front-ends the outbound Internet gateway/router in which case it could inject its sound improving algorithms before passing the packets onto the Internet router?

Anyway, I’m pretty busy or I’d look into this further. If I find out more, I’ll update this post.

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Tags: background noise, Google Talk, PBXMate, Skype, SoliCall, VoIP, Yahoo Messenger
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Original post by Eric

Filed under: Transportation

This one’s been making the rounds lately, but we’d be remiss if we didn’t take a moment to acknowledge any invention that boasts to be the “Segway of the sky,” which is just what upstart Air Buoyant claims its so-called “Vertipod” could one day be. According to Danger Room, this flying machine employs a gasoline or ethanol powered 440-cubic-centimeter engine to propel one brave along individual at speeds up to 40 miles per hour while hovering 15 feet off the ground, with a propeller, naturally, spinning perilously close to your feet. What’s more, Air Buoyant’s Pete Bitar says the contraption could even have consumer appeal, with a $10,000 kit planned that “can be assembled in a weekend.”

[Via Tech Digest]

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Office Depot Featured Gadget: Xbox 360 Platinum System Packs the power to bring games to life!

Original post by Donald Melanson

NewYorkCountryLawyer writes “Turning the tables on the RIAA’s attempt to subpoena information from the University of Oregon, that state’s Attorney General has now filed additional papers to conduct immediate discovery into the RIAA’s ‘data mining’ techniques. These techniques include the use of unlicensed investigators, the turning over of subpoenaed information to collection agencies, and the obtaining of personal information from computers. The AG pointed out (pdf) that ‘Because Plaintiffs routinely obtain ex parte discovery in their John Doe infringement suits … their factual assertions supporting their good cause argument are never challenged by an adverse party and their investigative methods remain free of scrutiny. They often settle their cases quickly before defendants obtain legal representation and begin to conduct discovery.’”

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Original post by Zonk

Here’s a good idea for a gift for someone–or to put on your own wish list, if you own a BlackBerry 8800 series smartphone. Especially if your loved one (or you) tends to drop the BlackBerry a lot, or plans to take it into a war zone. These cases ($49.95 at the company’s site) are tough, tough, tough. They are made of “high-impact polycarbonate” and have a silicon skin as well as a clear film to guard your screen and keyboard. They may not be glamorous or artsy, but they will protect your pricy devices very well.

Otterbox also makes cases for many other BlackBerry models, including the Curve and Pearl; and for iPods, including the newest models, as well as for many other devices.

Original post by Carol Mangis

Filed under: Handhelds

What is it with this sick pleasure we derive from watching beloved devices torn to pieces by ruthless uber-nerds? Who knows, but it certainly isn’t getting old just yet. Amazon’s Kindle got just such treatment at the hands of RapidRepair, and if you’re one of those doubters that was never quite sold on the Kindle’s quirky 90’s aesthetic, maybe this will change your mind. Or not.

[Via The Raw Feed]

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Office Depot Featured Gadget: Xbox 360 Platinum System Packs the power to bring games to life!

Original post by Paul Miller