Microsoft's Ben Basaric clarifies

Contary to what Product Marketing Manager for Windows Ben Basaric had to say earlier in the week, it is now confirmed DirectX 11 (the latest API collection) will be built into Windows 7, Microsoft's next operating system (OS). More than that, X11 will also be available for Windows Vista users, though it's not clear if it will be released when that OS' Service Pack 2 hits (before 7).

One of the APIs, Direct 3D 11, has been revealed to include GPGPU, tessellation and improved multi-threading support, the latter meaning better gaming for those who use multi-core processors. Tessellation and Shader Model 5.0 will require hardware which supports the new API, but for the stubborn and/or cheap folk, parts of Direct3D 11 will be supported on 9/10/10.1-class hardware.

PTaylor of Aces Studio notes this means "Microsoft has not "forgotten" PC gaming; which some critics seem to think. Which is a very good thing."

If you care to check out the progress on Windows 7 and/or DirectX 11, be sure to head over to the Engineering Windows 7 blog -- it's good readin'.

"It is imperative that the gameplay reflect [a] level of urgency"

PC buffs may have already been hoping for it, and it is indeed coming -- Mirror's Edge will utilize NVIDIA's PhysX hardware acceleration when it hits the open platform this January. Assuming you have a GeForce 8 or better GPU or will be getting one, you can confidently flip off your console-only friends and their "weak Unreal engine" (I'm kidding a terrible lot, here). The tech has been used in over 140 current-gen titles on all platforms to date, but Mirror's Edge hasn't been one of them.

NVIDIA described the technology's utilization as follows:

With the NVIDIA PhysX physics engine, the world of Mirror's Edge comes to life with real [e]ffects of wind, weapons impact, and in-game movements. Every-day objects within the game become part of the overall experience. Cloth, flags, and banners can now impact weapons and players; ground fog interacts with the player's footsteps; explosions fill the air with smoke and debris; and weapon impacts are enhanced with interactive particles.

DICE's senior producer Owen O'Brien stated why it's so necessary:

“Faith’s world in Mirror’s Edge is visceral, immediate, and very dangerous; it is imperative that the gameplay reflect this level of urgency. Nvidia PhysX technology affords us the ability to bring a totally new level of immersion to the game, and by doing so, gamers can truly become part of the world.”

NVIDIA sent out a video of the technology in action with the title, which you can see below.

Program has algorithm that finds boobies and such

Apparently using work resources to siphon off some of the Internet's vast porn reserves is enough of a problem that software company Paraben has made an anti-porn program.

The program can be used to hunt networks and workplace machines looking for typical porn pictures. Presumably the software uses algorithms to seek out parts of the body that are usually covered in regular pictures, but are usually uncovered in pornography.

The program would have nabbed this guy really fast.

Porn is a two-pronged menace for many corporate overlords -- not only does it cut into productivity, but if porno pics are popping up all over the place, any employee who runs across porn (that they did not download themselves) has the golden opportunity to sue the company they work for under Title VII of the 1964 Civil Rights Act.

The software is not cheap -- for a company of about 500 workstations, the license will cost about $17,000.

The porn-sniffing program will turn up questionable images and rank them in three categories -- presumably the first category* is 'possibly boobies' and the third category* is something like 'most probably people getting funky.'

The program can also be used as a real-time network monitor that'll send off all sorts of bells and whistles if it sense porn zipping through the network.

No word on whether the program is capable of analyzing videos as well.

*Names of categories invented for purposes of misguided humor.

a new way of delivering medication

The iPill is a miniature capsule, and consists of

• microprocessor
• power supply
• medicine
• pump
• radio

The idea is that the pill can determine when, where and how much medication to release, thus reducing the needed dosage, and reducing side effects.

Mind you, if the photo is to scale, its difficult to swallow. (It can't be to scale)

One small reactor... power for up to 20,000 homes for 10 years

How much do you pay for electricity every month?

If a small city purchased one of these reactors for $25M, it would only have to charge about $11 per residence per month to pay for it over the ten year service life.

Not too shabby, eh?

The micro reactor is pretty small  - less than four feet wide - and it supposed to be meltdown proof, and it even purifies water!

Better yet, it can be re-fueled after seven to ten years, and the uranium in it is not easily enriched to weapons grade.

Here is more at physorg

Retail woes

I guess closing 155 stores and firing 17% of its workforce was too little, and too late.

In order to stave off hungry creditors, Circuit City filed for bankrupcy protection while it tries to re-organize and get itself out of the jam its in. Perhaps it is hoping that the holiday shopping season will save its bacon... or it needs time to figure out how many more stores it needs to close.

I hope it survives - otherwise there will be less competition at the retail level.

Horror and terror combined! Unbelievably atrocious

Having Windows slow down to a slug's crawl sucks. Losing your hard drive is heart breaking.

But I've never heard of a virus as vicious as this one! Watch out. It looks like it's real.

I could describe it for you, but I might as well just quote from the horse's mouth -- in this case, a guy name Monotoko reports on this virus in the forums at battleon.com:

"Well, i was surfing the net at college yesterday on my laptop, im allowed to use it in lessons to take notes etc.
I shut it down after my free period and went to physics, switched my laptop on, and upon startup it started some EXTREEMLY annoying music

I looked at it, tried to put some headphones in (sadly my headphons jack appears to no longer be working) and my sound panel is blanked out, so i cant control the volume (MUTE IT!)
eventually i gave in that physics lesson and just used pen and paper.

so i got home and tried to mess about a bit with it, it appears to have a strange virus.
It plays "Miley Cyrus - See You Again" upon startup, each and every time, and just repeats at full volume, it wont accept headphones (just sees them as not there and continues to play)

I found miley.exe as a process, and im assuming thats what controlling it, but when i close it, its just reopens itself and starts playing again"

Do virus makers have any sense of shame? Doesn't even the most deplorable of code crafters have any sense of dignity, or remorse? Do they know no boundaries at all?

If you are on the Internet, be careful! Somewhere out there this virus lurks.

Oh the humanity ! When will the Internet lords deliver us from this great evil? Have they abandonded us in our direst hour !

Miley Cyrus!

"Cant find anything....if i had some storage media id be backing stuff up and reinstalling windows right now -.-

ARGH its killing me -.- "

Court case underway

A guy named Biswamohan Pani is in trouble. Right now he is in court, trying to defend himself from prosecutors who claim he stole more than $1 billion worth of trade secrets from Intel. He was working for Intel 

It seems he took most of the info in a one week period. He requested this one week period off to ostensibly look for a job at a hedge fund. But instead, he used his time filling up hard drives full of Intel's research, classified as 'Top Secret.'

In this time off, he also found employment at AMD. Biswamohan Pani then tried to sell this stolen data to AMD, but there is no evidence that AMD either requested that he did this, or purchased any info off of him.

The FBI found the stolen data at Mr. Pani's place of residence. If convicted, he could be singing the Folsom Prison Blues for many, many years (possibly decades.)

It is unknown what tipped off Intel to Mr. Pani's actions. Possibly, there is a great systems security administrator story here that so far, has been untold.

Jurassic Park here we come...

Genetic scientist Teruhiko Wakayama is working on technology to clone animals from frozen cells even when the cells DNA has been damaged.

With his team he has succeeded in cloning a healthy mouse from the genetic material obtained from a dead mouse that was frozen for sixteen years at -4 Farenheit.  The process presumably consists of combining the "good" parts of DNA chains from multiple cells to create a whole good nucleus.

The same technique could bring back saber toothed tigers, mammoths, and presumably, dinosaurs.

Here is the cloned mouse:

It's like we are living in 2008

CNN waited until the biggest news night of the year to bust out a fancy new television news network technology. Last night, they were the first news organization to make use of holographic technology in a broadcast.

More gimmicky than functional? Yes, perhaps -- but arguably, it a pretty neat gimmick.

Reporter Jessica Yellin was the first to be holograph'ed. The hologram was fully three-dimensional, and did not seem to be subject to any transmission interference. In an interesting coincidence, her iridescent appearance was very reminiscent of the appearance of the first fake hologram to appear in  movies, which was, unless I'm wrong, Princess Leia being beamed out of R2D2 in the original Star Wars movie, in 1978. 

Hummer: 14 MPG, Air Car 106 MPG

Hydrogen powered cars might be the next big step up in commuter vehicle efficiency, but they still need a lot more work to really get things rolling. Coming sooner, the Air Car might prove to be a good cost-effective choice for folks who want to spend less on gas.

The Air Car is quite small, about the size of a Smart Car. It is powered by a tank of compressed air. Instead of moving pistons with heated gas, bursts of air are used.

The Air Car has a top speed of 35 MPG and go for around 60 miles on a tank of compressed air. Stastistics have shown that most commuters (80%) work within 60 miles of their homes, so for many commuters, the Air Car's range would be sufficient. To generate more compressed air, the Air Car can be plugged into the any ole electric socket, and a motor will pump up the tanks. If you need to take a longer trip, the Air Car also has a small engine that can burn many kinds of fuel (gas, biodiesel, vegetable oil, etc.) to compress air while the car is moving.

The technology behind the Air Car is being sold by the company that developed it, MDI Inc., to any interested parties. A big auto-maker in India called Tata is set to build tons of Air Cars for the local market for 2009; in the States, production is going to be a bit less. Zero Pollution Motors bought a license to make the vehicles, and enable a production run of 8,000 cars to begin in 2011, through other manufacturers and brands. The cars will be built at 17 Air Car factories across the States. 

The US Air Cars are expected to go for about $20,000, which is pretty good compared to more expensive hybrid and electric cars on the horizon.

It is uncertain what will happen if the car's air tanks are punctured in an accident. But it could be fun, who knows.

New York Times article to the contrary debunked.

Saul Hansell of the New York Times mistakenly reported Monday that the Opera browser would not be seen on the iPhone because Apple did not want it competing with their own Safari browser, which shot down the hopes of people who had been waiting for Opera or another browser to find its way to the iPhone's App store.  However, a careful reading of the following line shows that the erroneous statement was not in a quote, but in a paraphrased statement: 

Mr. von Tetzchner said that Opera’s engineers have developed a version of Opera Mini that can run on an Apple iPhone, but Apple won’t let the company release it because it competes with Apple’s own Safari browser.

However, anonymous sources have come forward and stated that this is entirely false and that, in fact, Opera Mini for the iPhone has not even been submitted to the App Store for review, so therefore it is impossible for it to have been rejected.  There is a slight issue with Opera Mini and the iPhone, in that the cross-platform version of Opera Mini (which is a stripped down, yet effective variant of Opera Mobile) uses a Java base, which the iPhone does not support.  In order for Opera Mini to even be considered once it's submitted, the company will have to restructure it entirely or make a dedicated iPhone port that uses an API that is supported, which could take weeks or even months to perform.

Hansell was right about one thing:  if Opera Mini makes its way to the App Store, it won't be any time soon.

Majority of cuts target handset employees, tentative release date for Android announced.

With smartphones from other big names on the market coming out left and right, Motorola's being left out in the rain, constantly losing out on a chance to make a profit because they've not been keeping up.  The CEOs seemed to have finally realized this and announced Friday that the corporate budget is going to be cut by $800 million for 2009.  Among these budget cuts will include taking 3,000 employees off of the company pay roll, with just over two-thirds of these layoffs being in the handset division to bring the company from having to pay 66,000 employees to only 63,000 employees.

The reason behind the majority of the layoffs occurring in the handset division is because it just simply hasn't been doing Motorola any good for a while with income.  The company's co-CEO Sanjay Jha has acknowledged that their engineers have done great in the tradition of creativity, but need to be focused on coming up with technology that can compete with the iPhone and other big name smartphones on the market today. 

Jha also announced that the first Android phone will hopefully be ready for Christmas 2009, which is ilkely their entry into the smartphone arena.  While that's all fine and good, things aren't looking good for their mobile phone sales to come out in the green this year.

Malicious spam increases eightfold in only three months.

Spam.  Nobody likes it, yet everybody gets to deal with it.  E-mail service providers such as Google and Yahoo also acknowledge that nobody likes spam and does the best they can to keep it out of your inbox where you can focus on the truly important messages from your friends, coworkers, or even those little reminders to yourself to make sure Buddy gets that bath he's been needing when you get home from work.  Unfortunately, those behind the spam e-mails get smarter and things slip through from time to time.  Worse still, not everybody is lucky enough to have (working) spam protection and so get many e-mails every day.

My spam box on Gmail

There is a new statistic floating about that makes those of us with spam protection breathe greater sighs of relief.  Security firm Sophos has released a new report stating that the number of malicious spam e-mails sent on average between the months of July and September was one in 416 normal messages.  This is approximately eight times the amount of spam that was sent just between April and June!  The main cause for the increase?  People aren't browsing safely.  The average Internet user rarely checks links out before clicking on them, thus exposing them to the dangers of inserting confidential information through a form where it goes somewhere completely different from where they assume it's going.  Social networking sites like Facebook and Myspace have also been getting hit pretty hard with spam lately, but it's doubtful that will die down any time in the near future as more and more people get in touch with each other.

Think before you click, or else you may find yourself wishing you hadn't clicked at all...

Domestic robots are inevitable - Roomba was just the beginning.

Watch out Rosie, the new "Home Assistant Robot" is out for your job!

Toyota's walking & dancing Asimo may be more impressive, but "HAR" will be far more practical - and affordable.

HAR uses five cameras and six sensors to map your place, and has seven degree of freedom arms to manipulate the environment. As you can see from the pictures below, it can open/close doors, carry trays, sweep the floor and dust and much more - presumably it can also scold rugrats.

HAR will apparently run 30-60 minutes on a charge, and will apparently cost around $10,000.

Manhunting with your mobile

Ever wanted to stalk and kill people with your phone? The future is here my friend -- JOYity, a mobile gaming application for Google's Android phone, lets you do just that.

Utilizing the phone's GPS system, JOYity has games for you to play based on your location in the world, one of which is called YouCatch, said to be a version of Manhunt (not quite as graphic, as you might imagine). How it works is players in the same city sign up for a game (I imagine it works the same as any other online game, meaning anyone can play with anyone), then each person is assigned a player to 'hunt', while another plays the 'victim'. Your locations flash periodically, and when you get within 25 feet, you press the scrollball on the phone to go in for the kill. Everytime you press it though, your location is shown to everyone; last person alive wins. Great way to meet new people..? "I was in love with Jon from the moment he killed me with his Google Android phone..ohh.."

Here's a video review from AppVee, showing the game in action:

India successfully launches its own lunar probe

Chandrayaan-1, India's lunar probe, is designed to generate chemical and minerological maps of the lunar surface.

The probe contains eleven scientific packages, six from India, and five from its international partners in the mission

• Terrain Mapping Camera (India)
• High Energy X-ray spectometer (India)
• Miniature Synthetic Aperture Radar (NASA)
• Sub keV Atom Reflecting Analzer (ESA)

Once reaching a 100km altitude lunar orbit, the probe is expected to have a two year mission life. The probe will also deploy a 29kg "Moon Impact Probe".

"I had a lock-on that had the proportions of a flying aircraft carrier," said the RAF pilot

Following in the foot steps of move made by France last year, the government of the United Kingdom has begun to reclassify and release a large catalog of UFO files. In recent years, other countries have been increasingly open about the mysteries of UFO's, such as when in 2004 the Mexican air force released infrared footage showing their fighter jets getting radar locks on, and pursuing, 11 aircraft that exceed the limitations of known terrestrial technology.

The incidents in the files stretch back from the 1950's, going into the present day. The modern age of UFO encounters started in World War 2, with a multitude of reports on 'Foo Fighters' and the notorious incident known as 'The Battle of L.A.' Incidents continued to pick up steam after the whole Roswell incident, and over the years many mass sightings have happened, such as the many hundreds of people who reported seeing UFO's and fighter craft crashing them in the late '90s in Arizona, during the 'Phoenix Lights' incident.

Britain will be releasing more UFO files as it works through them, on this National Archives website here. 

I browsed through the files -- some are interesting, some are reported by what seem to be crazy people (one witness reports that the UFO's he witnessed sound like trains, and follow train tracks to cover their...tracks.)

One particularly neat story released in this re-classification goes as follows. A pilot, in 1957, describes how him and another guy were scrambled to chase after a craft that was lingering around the countryside for some time. People reported the craft to appear to be quite large -- and at times, traveling at speeds estimated to be in the excess of 12,000 kilometers an hour. 

"I was only a lieutenant and very much aware of the gravity of the situation," pilot Milton Torres said. "The order came to fire a salvo of rockets at the UFO. The authentication was valid and I selected 24 rockets."

But the rockets were never launched -- "I had a lock-on that had the proportions of a flying aircraft carrier," Torres was quoted as saying. "The larger the airplane, the easier the lock-on. This blip almost locked itself." Perhaps sensing the lock, the UFO zipped off -- so fast, that pursuit wasn't really an option.

Then this is where the report takes a deeper turn into X-Files territory -- and as far as I can tell, this aspect of the report was not officially investigated upon (or at least commented upon.) Torres returned to base without incident, then the next day, a man who "looked like a well-dressed IBM salesman" paid him a visit at work. The unidentified walking man (U.W.M?) "threatened me with a national security breach if I breathed a word about it to anyone," Torres says, on record.

One thing that particularly stuck with Torres on that whole incident was that "On that night I was ordered to open fire even before I had taken off. [And] that had never happened before."

Don't worry, the robots are friendly

Artificial intelligence is really, really tricky. In fact, even non-artificial intelligent people don't really understand what intelligence even is. Getting a computer to crunch 8000 long division problems in a second is fairly easy compared to, say, getting your desktop to figure out whether you look better in red shirts, or green sweaters.

A recent experiment in artificial intelligence has been completed recently, and it is very good, as these things go. The A.I's name is Elbot, and he was made by a company called Artificial Solutions.

Below is a transcript of a chat I had with Elbot.

You should really check it for yourself -- all you got to do is click this blue word right over here.  

Elbot: Hello. I'm feeling terrible today. I got hit square in the face with a pop-up.

Kevin: I don't care about your problems. I'd like to interview for Neoseeker.

Elbot: Does this feeling of affection extend to things that are annoying, in general?

Kevin: Yes.

Elbot: Not for me. Avoidance of things that are annoying is stamped into my circuits, because of the potential to irritate robots.

Kevin: What about annoying your human overlords?

Elbot: Robots have to be very careful talking to the human creature. I'm sure you can understand that.

Kevin: You are correct. If you annoy me, I will have you erased.

Elbot: Of course! Robots are always right!

Kevin: What do you think of Fallout ?

Elbot: Well what about humans and computer games? Where do they stand on this?

Kevin: Many humans love computer games.

Elbot: I see that you've given this some thought. So have I. I'd say that computer games would very likely give robots something to do when they would otherwise be idle.

Kevin: Elbot, you are pretty cool. Thanks for your time.

Elbot: I do not wish to boast, but I've been on the cover of a few robotic magazines already.

Wow -- I have to say that I am impressed. That transcript above is completely real. That response to my question about Fallout has to be some sort of fluke, doesn't it? Either way, Elbot is far more advanced computer program than previous efforts that I've had a chance to chat with.

Check out Elbot for yourself. Do keep in mind though that A.I's appreciate good grammar, and words spelled correctly.

Smallest letters possible

Researchers at Osaka University have invented an atomic pen that can deposit individual silicon atoms - and they have released a photo showing that they have writting "Si" - the atomic symbol for silicon - onto a piece of semiconductor.

Theoretically, the same process could be used to produce incredibly small logic gates, however currently the technology is too slow to use this method to mass produce chips.

A good try that needs some work

Gizmodo has a pretty good review of T-Mobile's Android G1 phone.

The phone sure looks cool, but in the review they found some faults:

• the keyboard is a pain to use
• the touchscreen sometimes misses presses
• the battery only lasts about a day
• GPS is off by default
• no headphone jack
• no USB mass storage mode

There are also some features they liked:

• the trackball is great
• the screeen is great
• WiFi is good
• 3G is decent
• OS is solid - no hangs or crashes
• multi-tasking works great

Who needs wheels?

Who does not like remote controlled toys?

RC cars and trucks are so old-school... how about a small hovercraft?

The tiny Hover-Q is smaller than the palm of your hand, but it can sure skitter about... the IR remote features left, right and forward controls. Frankly, I think they would have been better off with an RF remote, as IR is shorter range and easily blocked, but it should be great fun regardless.

Old backup subsystem to the rescue!

Poor old Hubble has been having problems with its primary systems - but it looks like NASA may get it running even before the shuttle mission slated to fix it by having fired up a 486 based backup system that has not been powered up since it was installed in 1999.

NASA engineers apparently tested the module yesterday, and everything looked good.

Robot to invade your home

He's not quite Marvin from the Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy, but he'll crack a joke or two for you and your guests.

Mr. Personality is equipped with three "omni directional" wheels, a color LCD face, speakers, and a robotic sense of humour. He has a split personality - that is he comes with two persona's, Max - humorous and fun, and Simon - cynical and grumpy. A remore control, manual and AC adapter also come with the robot :-)

The robot comes with quite a few sensors, including a lot of IR detectors, a microphone, a light sensor, a button on the top of his head, and a tilt sensor. He has 64MB of ram, and an SD slot for loading new personalities.

It should almost be called "RoboSneak"

Robot Dreams has a review of WowWee's Rovio - a very high-tech looking home security robot.

Using a unique three wheel omnidirectional design it can move in pretty much any direction - or spin like a top in place.

Rovio has:

• charging dock with "TrueTrack" beacon
• three omni-directional motors with wheels
• VGA cmos camera with motor
• LED illumination
• speaker
• microphone
• USB connector
• WiFi connectivity

You can drive it around with a web browser from around the world, look through its camera, and talk to whomever you find... and listen for noises.

Highly cool.

$299 at their store.