In a move that shows the fluidity of the english language as well as the questionable ways in which we use it, Merriam-Websters has named "w00t" as the Word Of The Year. We wonder whether or not this is the first time a word has been adopted into Merriam-Websters dictionary that contains numbers and letters. The Sacremento Bee reports...
SPRINGFIELD, Mass. -- Expect cheers among hardcore online game enthusiasts when they learn Merriam-Webster's Word of the Year. Or, more accurately, expect them to "w00t."
"W00t," a hybrid of letters and numbers used by gamers as an exclamation of happiness or triumph, topped all other terms in the Springfield-based dictionary publisher's online poll for the word that best sums up 2007.
Merriam-Webster's president, John Morse, said "w00t" was an ideal choice because it blends whimsy and new technology.
Japanese firm Toshiba announced today it would launch a series of 1.8" and 2.5" NAND-type Solid State Drives and will begin mass production in May of 2008. Drives will appear ranging in sizes from 32GB to 128GB. As the worlds second largest manufacturer of NAND flash memory, Toshiba Joins it's rival Samsung in what appears to be a market with considerable growth potential. Micron Technologies is expected to join in the SSD market with mass production of units sometime during the next quarter.
The increased competition along with improvements in NAND flash memory cell design should make 2008 a developing year for NAND based storage.
Carlos Slim , Mexican Billionaire and the worlds richest man, has decided that sinking $2 Billion into the flailing retailer CompUSA is enough and will close all of the remaining stores in the United States. Not an earth shattering suprise after last years severe contraction of retail outlets, along with the heated competition from mass market retailers. Gordon Brother's Group, a retail liquidation company will oversee the divestiture of CompUSA inventory and assets.
Displayport , the new license and royalty free display standard courtesy of VESA designed to supplant DVI and HDMI on PC's, is seen in a first iteration on AMD RV635 cards outed by the guys over at Hothardware.
Since each DisplayPort cable can run multiple monitors in a daisy-chain configuration, imagine a four panel setup from a single graphics card and even possibly a single cable connection. We'll have more to come on the LCD side of the equation, soon.
To say that John C. Dvorak is soft spoken, unopinionated, and "PC" would be ridiculous right? Well we say that is ridiculous with a capital "R". Today at PCMag , John chimes in with a rather scathing rebuke of the One Laptop Per Child Project .
It appears we weren't the only people in the world
looking a bit askance at Microsoft's Security Strategy Director Jeff
Jones's claims of superiority on the security front with Internet
Explorer compared to other browsers. Technology Strategist for Mozilla,
Mike Shaver, had quite alot to say about the dodgy reasoning involved
in Mr. Jones's whitepaper.
If Mozilla wanted to do better than Microsoft on this report, we would
have an easy path: stop fixing and disclosing bugs that we find
in-house. It is well known that Microsoft redacts release notes for
service packs and bundles fixes, sometimes meaning that you get a
single vulnerability “counted” for, say, seven defects repaired. Or
maybe you don’t hear about it at all, because it was rolled into SP2
and they didn’t make any noise about it.
Pretty harsh words, but also quite accurate ones. It's a bit of a shame
to see Microsoft resorting to this level of spin and backward logic,
solely because Mozilla's whipping their butt on the browser front. Read
the entirety of Mike Shaver's blog here .
In what we feel is an egregious example of backward thinking, Microsoft's Security Strategy Director Jeff Jones claims in a rather controversial whitepaper that frequent security updates make Firefox more susceptible to exploits. From his Technet blog , Jeff writes... "Over the past few years, there has been much discussion of the need for improvements in browser security, but few hard data studies performed to support assertions concerning the security of available browsers."
In his white paper he examines exploit severity, version to version trends, and forms an overall analysis of how each browser is performing relative to existing exploits in a three year cycle.
Samsung has been tooting their horn lately with their TB
drives and SSDs. They are yet again claiming another crown with their new incarnation of GDDR5. Samsung states in a press release that
"...it has developed the world's fastest memory, a GDDR5 (series
five, graphics double-data-rate memory) chip that can transfer data at six
gigabits per second..."
Graphics memory is used in almost all computing platforms to move massive
amounts of data related to video and generated imagery.
Ever have a problem with multiple device chargers and cords
splayed across the floor? One company has finally shown some innovation in the
portable power market. WildCharge
inc. has the world's only wireless charging system. The technology has
garnered a spot on TIME Magazine's list of the best inventions of 2007. In
addition, the gadget has won the International Consumer
Electronics Show 2008 Best of Innovations Award in the portable
power category. The device is called the "Wildcharger" and is capable
of charging up to five devices simultaneously without any wired connections.
