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.
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 .
Interesting video showing a man manipulating digital traffic signs with his laptop. Laughing the whole time, the man drives down the highway changing speed-limits on the fly. He even put his own picture up onto an informational traffic sign. We can't figure out if this is cracking or an inside operation due to our language barrier, but it would appear as though the techie is using some sort of proprietary software logged into the traffic network. Check it out here.
As far as cooling is concerned, many fans moving air will keep the ambient temperature lower inside the case. It looks like the owner of this computer took it to the point of diminishing returns. Here is a case that is made entirely from case fans. 66 of them, to be exact. What this sounds like in person is sure to be exhilarating and loud. It raises the question, "how much power is needed for the system to post?". The peak draw of the fans is probably around 200 watts. It is good to see there are still people coming up with crazy custom cases. Here is another picture that shows a hard-drive encased in ice, although the probability of that working is slim. Check it out!
The thought of what our lives would be like without the technology we have today is a common thought for us. The nostalgia of the 90s is hard not to laugh at and enjoy. Someone took this one step further and made a parody of the show 24. It portrays what the "high-end" technology would consist of back in 1994. Definitely worth a few laughs. They use landlines, dial up modems, pagers, payphones, dot matrix printers, and hourly Internet rates to name a few. How did anyone accomplish anything?
Keeping step with many firsts, JAXA (once again) has never before seen footage of the moon in HD. This time around, they have published a video with a Earth Rise and an Earth Set. This is well worth watching, and it offers a great perspective on how large our galaxy really is. Information on the video can be found here
Amazon, the world's largest online retailer of books, is now entering the E-Book market with its very own branded E-Book Reader, The Kindle. Apart from the fact that the E-Book format has never really gone anywhere, along with the fact that the print business is experiencing a moderate surge in this day of supposed paperless (yeah right) lifestyles, we have to wonder exactly who Amazon expects to pony up for this $399 device.
Coming in a roughly 5x7.5 inch form factor with a 6-inch 600x800 display, and sporting a massive (this is blatant sarcasm) 256MB of internal storage, It raises the question, who in their right mind would pay the estimated $399 Amazon expects? Rounding out the specs, it does posess a standard SD card slot for memory expansion and supports Wi-Fi and EVDO data services, though it lacks support for open document formats.
A $400 device I can use to read electronic books that usually cost as much as a paperback on sale? With a 6-inch E-Ink screen, and a form factor larger than your average PDA? No support for open document formats? Where do we sign up!
Amazon, drop us an email when your device has a better screen and costs at least a little less than 50 paperbacks. We'd suggest something like an Archos 605 Wi-Fi instead. Their 160GB model (apart from having over 600 times the storage capacity of The Kindle) features a touch screen with nearly the same resolution (800x480..and it's color), support not only for open documents formats and web browsing (at an additional cost) but video and audio as well.
For the same price, we'd rather carry around 159GB of video and audio and a few E-Books too. Or purchase a laptop.
This is hubris on steroids.
{correction: What seems to be incorrect from the initial
reports of the device is third-party format support. The Kindle is
compatible Microsoft Word, HTML, TXT, JPEG, GIF, PNG, and BMP files,
however not the popular PDF format out of the box. Amazon will convert
PDF files to the Kindle format if they are sent to the company via
e-mail.....addendum courtesy of Betanews}
As proof positive of the relative disconnect mainstream media experiences on the Internet, multi-billion dollar news organization CNN is now outranked in sheer web traffic by...a torrent search engine. Mininova.org surpassed CNN in September. As can be seen from the accompanying Alexa graph, mininova traffic continues to skyrocket well above the worlds #1 news organization. It seems that people are more interested in the next episode of CSI than the 2008 Presidential Election. The Inquirer reports...
"The honor of beating one of world's leading news sites goes to staffers from Mininova.org, who overtook CNN.com back in mid-October, but now it seems that ThePirateBay.org is also on the move. Lads from TPB.org just overtook News.com, and are on a way to overtake CNN.com as well.
In order to get the traffic back, Foxnews.com could consider introducing torrent search on its site."
The Internet has vastly broadened the
level of discourse in the world. No one can deny this, however, much
of this discourse involves inane behavior, kindergarten level banter,
and a lot of," You suck troll!!". It is clear that since
the onslaught of Eternal
September back in 1993, Net content has become much
less intelligent. It is with this in mind that Gabriel
Ortiz and Paul
Starr started a new Open Source initiative,
StupidFilter. StupidFilter
promises to employ techniques, such as Bayesian filtering and rules
processing, to allow blogs and browsers to detect stupidity in
progress. We think it is very ironic (not to mention damned
hilarious) that a few lines of code could outthink your average
testosterone challenged, uncivil Netizen. Are computers smarter than
we thought, or are people just less intelligent than we ever
imagined?
"The concept behind the StupidFilter Project originated during a conversation between Gabriel Ortiz and Paul Starr. StupidFilter was conceived out of necessity. Too long have we suffered in silence under the tyranny of idiocy. In the beginning, the internet was a place where one could communicate intelligently with similarly erudite people. Then, Eternal September hit and we were lost in the noise. The advent of user-driven web content has compounded the matter yet further, straining our tolerance to the breaking point."
Earlier this week, the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency(JAXA), in cooperation with Japan Broadcasting Corporation (NHK), published some great footage of the Moon in HD. This video was taken by the Kaguya (Selene) mission, which was launched back in September. The site has some still shots, common mission pamphlets, and other information. It looks like the international scene is starting to shoot for the moon.
