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If you're one of the 600,000 people who bought a Samsung Intensity (SCH U-490) or Samsung Trance (SCH U-450): good news! You've got an over-the-air update coming your way. One of our sources just came through with the patch notes for both handset's respective updates, which are scheduled to begin as early as tomorrow.
There are a few areas of concern to point out about this $24 “USB Paw Heating Slipper” from Brando. For starters, you’re sticking both your feet into one giant slipper. What happens if you get an e-mail saying that there’s free bagels in the break room? In your haste to save $2, you could very easily trip and fall down. And since this giant slipper is USB-powered, you run the risk of seriously damaging your computer’s USB Port when the cord gets yanked out after you fall down while trying to beat the rest of the free bagel stampede to the break room. Finally, this thing heats up to 122 degrees! Is that even safe? Are human feet built to withstand prolonged temperatures of that intensity? I don’t know, I’m not a podiatrist… yet. USB Paw Heating Slipper [Brando]
The idea is that by taking out as many layers of the display as possible, you reduce light interference (increasing brightness), power draw (better battery life) and component number (allowing for more pixels per square unit). But what to strip out? Uni-Pixel, the people behind TMOS note that instead of having three dots per pixel (red, green, blue in varying intensity), you could just have one, but with the dot changing color so rapidly that your eye only perceives the aggregate color. I’m not going to get all neuroscience on you here, but allow me to just say that there are biological reasons both for and against this technology, which I’m sure Uni-Pixel is aware of. Micro-mirrors would direct light from side-mounted LEDs, which sounds clumsy to me, but they say it’ll result in refresh rates far above current displays’. They would also be simpler to manufacture, more durable, and more flexible. Anyhow, the engineering challenges are serious, but they say they should be able to put one in a product in 2010. Guess we’ll just have to wait!
It’s expected that the European Commission will pass legislation that will require manufacturers to include a noise limiter on portable media players. This is being done, of course, because listening to said devices at extraordinarily loud volume levels is quite dangerous; up to 10 percent of users are in danger totally destroying their hearing by keeping the players on too loud. The limit—and all of this is set to go down next week, so get your complaining in now if you’re against the idea—will be set to 80 decibels. Some players, says the Daily Mail, can output sound up to 120 decibels, which is about the same intensity as the sound of a jet engine taking off. You don’t want to be exposed to that for any length of time. Of course, there will always be the “I don’t want Brussels telling me what to do” crowd, but look at it like this: yes, I’m sure that within 8.2 seconds of the limiter being put into place someone will come out with a hack or software override. The point is, how many people are going to go out of their way to implement the work-around? I find it hard to believe that 80 decibels isn’t loud enough for the average person. Maybe some higher end headphones would do the trick, that way you don’t have to blast your music just to be able to hear it on the subway?
The Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter also has more instruments aboard and one of them, the Diviner Lunar Radiometer developed and operated by the California Institute of Technology Jet Propulsion Laboratory, is sending back some wild info about the Moon’s surface temperature. The contraption works by measuring the infrared radiation’s intensity that’s emitted by the lunar surface. The hotter the surface, the great the emitted infrared radiation’s intensity. The map generated by Diviner will likely be used to help plan future manned Moon missions – whenever the hell that might be. But even still some of the info sent back is still of scientific value. Apparently some spots on the lunar surface are always in a shadow and can nearly reach absolute zero. It’s thought that these spots can hold frozen water and might be some of the coldest spots in the galaxy including Pluto. These cold traps as they are called have been theorized about for nearly 50 years so you can imagine geek-types getting excited about the possible confirmation. The unit will take about six months to complete its survey. The instrument was first turned activated on July 5 though, so it’s about 50% done.
The rest is pretty detailed and a good read if you’re into Snow Leopard. If you’re not, just pick up a Henry Miller book. Same length and intensity but with more sex.
Attacks exploiting the latest Microsoft vulnerability are quickly growing in quantity and intensity, several security companies warned today as they rang...
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