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Slashdot: Hardware

Microsoft Lifts XP Mode Hardware Requirement


An anonymous reader writes "This week, Microsoft published a patch that allows Windows XP Mode to run on PCs without hardware-assisted virtualization. Which begs the question: Why the bizarro requirement in the first place? Was it an honest attempt to deliver an 'optimal' user experience? Or simply a concession to the company's jilted lover, Intel Corporation — 'a kind of apology for royally screwing up with the whole Windows Vista “too fat to fit” debacle,' as the blog post puts it."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.



http://rss.slashdot.org/~r/Slashdot/slashdotHardware/~3/5CwlTyywuZE/Microsoft-Lifts-XP-Mode-Hardware-Requirement


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Microsoft Docs Indicate Future Xbox 360 Support For USB Storage


Internal Microsoft documents obtained by Joystiq indicate that its Xbox 360 console will gain support for USB storage devices some time this Spring. "According to the document, the USB mass storage device must be at least 1GB and the system will do a compatibility check. 'The system partition occupies 512 MB of space, and by default the consumer partition occupies the remainder of the device capacity, or 16 GB, whichever is smaller.' Upon inserting a blank USB storage device, 'consumers are offered two choices: "Configure now" or "Customize."' The 'Configure now' option will use 'the entire device capacity, up to the maximum of 512 MB plus 16 GB,' meaning, regardless of the overall size of the device you're using, the Xbox will only enable 16 GB of usable, non-system storage. The 'Customize' option will allow you to 'preserve some pre-existing, non-console data on the device' such as music." There have also been rumors of a new, smaller form factor for the 360, and hacker Ben Heck has given his thoughts on some leaked motherboard pictures.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.



http://rss.slashdot.org/~r/Slashdot/slashdotHardware/~3/93atdVJKmt4/Microsoft-Docs-Indicate-Future-Xbox-360-Support-For-USB-Storage


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Piezo Crystals Harness Sound To Generate Hydrogen


MikeChino writes "Scientists at the University of Wisconsin-Madison have discovered that a mix of zinc oxide crystals, water, and noise pollution can efficiently produce hydrogen without the need for a dirty catalyst like oil. To generate the clean hydrogen, researchers produced a new type of zinc oxide crystals that absorb vibrations when placed in water. The vibrations cause the crystals to develop areas with strong positive and negative charges — a reaction that rips the surrounding water molecules and releases hydrogen and oxygen. The mechanism, dubbed the piezoelectrochemical effect, converts 18% of energy from vibrations into hydrogen gas (compared to 10% from conventional piezoelectric materials), and since any vibration can produce the effect, the system could one day be used to generate power from anything that produces noise — cars whizzing by on the highway, crashing waves in the ocean, or planes landing at an airport."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.



http://rss.slashdot.org/~r/Slashdot/slashdotHardware/~3/Cg_d1jw8Mhs/Piezo-Crystals-Harness-Sound-To-Generate-Hydrogen


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High-Tech Research Moving From US To China


Hugh Pickens writes "The NY Times reports that American companies like Applied Materials are moving their research facilities and engineers to China as the country develops a high-tech economy that increasingly competes directly with the United States. Applied Materials set up its latest solar research labs in China after estimating that China would be producing two-thirds of the world's solar panels by the end of this year and their chief technology officer, Mark R. Pinto, is the first CTO of a major American tech company to move to China. 'We're obviously not giving up on the US,' says Pinto. 'China needs more electricity. It's as simple as that.' Western companies are also attracted to China's huge reservoirs of cheap, highly skilled engineers and the subsidies offered by many Chinese cities and regions, particularly for green energy companies. Applied Materials decided to build their new $250 million research facility in Xi'an after the city government sold them a 75-year land lease at a deep discount and is reimbursing the company for roughly a quarter of the lab complex's operating costs for five years."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.



http://rss.slashdot.org/~r/Slashdot/slashdotHardware/~3/D5svQD-4juM/High-Tech-Research-Moving-From-US-To-China


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Coming Soon, Smartphone-Based Banking


An anonymous reader writes "Banks will be offering a new service at the end of the year that will let customers take a photo of a paper check and have it be deposited in their bank accounts, making the smartphone one step closer to an ATM."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.



http://rss.slashdot.org/~r/Slashdot/slashdotHardware/~3/HhRiB89t5aQ/Coming-Soon-Smartphone-Based-Banking


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Startup's Submerged Servers Could Cut Cooling Costs


1sockchuck writes "Are data center operators ready to abandon hot and cold aisles and submerge their servers? An Austin startup says its liquid cooling enclosure can cool high-density server installations for a fraction of the cost of air cooling in traditional data centers. Submersion cooling using mineral oil isn't new, dating back to the use of Fluorinert in the Cray 2. The new startup, Green Revolution Cooling, says its first installation will be at the Texas Advanced Computing Center (also home to the Ranger supercomputer). The company launched at SC09 along with a competing liquid cooling play, the Iceotope cooling bags."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.



http://rss.slashdot.org/~r/Slashdot/slashdotHardware/~3/2K0q6YP6Qwo/Startups-Submerged-Servers-Could-Cut-Cooling-Costs


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3-D Printer Creates Buildings From Dust and Glue


An anonymous reader writes "D-Shape, an innovative new 3-D printer, builds solid structures like sculptures, furniture, even buildings from the ground up. The device relies on sand and magnesium glue to actually build structures layer by layer from solid stone. The designer, Enrico Dini, is even talking with various organizations about making the printer compatible with moon dust, paying the way for an instant moonbase!"

Read more of this story at Slashdot.



http://rss.slashdot.org/~r/Slashdot/slashdotHardware/~3/3a9iHcwmaB8/3-D-Printer-Creates-Buildings-From-Dust-and-Glue


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GM Working On Interactive Windshields


this_boat_is_real writes "Rather than project info onto a portion of the windshield, GM's latest experiment uses the entire windshield as a display. Small ultraviolet lasers project data gleaned from sensors and cameras onto the glass. General Motors geeks are working alongside researchers from several universities to develop a system that integrates night vision, navigation and on-board cameras to improve our ability to see — and avoid — problems, particularly in adverse conditions like fog."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.



http://rss.slashdot.org/~r/Slashdot/slashdotHardware/~3/cEJgJB-8Bzw/GM-Working-On-Interactive-Windshields


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MIT Developing Self-Assembling Computer Chips


An anonymous reader writes "Researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology on have released research detailing how molecules in chips can self-assemble, potentially reducing manufacturing costs. The researchers have developed a technique in which polymers automatically fall into place to create an integrated circuit."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.



http://rss.slashdot.org/~r/Slashdot/slashdotHardware/~3/Rt2YzwrVYKw/MIT-Developing-Self-Assembling-Computer-Chips


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Japanese Researchers Develop World's Fastest Book Scanner


An anonymous reader writes "IEEE Spectrum reports that Tokyo University researchers have developed a superfast book scanner that uses lasers and a high-speed camera to achieve a capture rate of 200 pages per minute. You just quickly flip the book pages in front of the system and it digitizes the pages, building a 3D model of each and reconstructing it as a normal flat page. The prototype is large and bulky, but if this thing could be made smaller, one day we could scan a book or magazine in seconds using a smartphone." The article mentions Google's similar dewarping system; the difference here is speed.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.



http://rss.slashdot.org/~r/Slashdot/slashdotHardware/~3/GVc0-_pfycU/Japanese-Researchers-Develop-Worlds-Fastest-Book-Scanner


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Firmware Hack Allows Video Analysis On a Canon Camera


An anonymous reader writes "Researchers from the University of Liege in Belgium have been able to perform real-time video analysis on a regular Canon digicam (video link) without any hardware modification. The results are shown directly on the digicam's screen. They use a hacked version of a popular open-source alternative firmware for Canon cameras: CHDK. This is a proof-of-concept that computer vision algorithms can now be embedded on regular Canon digicams with little effort (CHDK is coded in C). What other popular vision algorithms could be implemented? For what purpose?" You can get some idea about ViBe from this abstract at IEEE; basically, it allows background extraction in moving images.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.



http://rss.slashdot.org/~r/Slashdot/slashdotHardware/~3/TluBxMUVND0/Firmware-Hack-Allows-Video-Analysis-On-a-Canon-Camera


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The Movie Studios' Big 3D Scam


An anonymous reader writes "There's a lot of things wrong with 3D movies. Avatar's 3D was well executed, but Alice's 3D was really bad, like all 2D-to-3D conversions. And yet, studios are reconverting 2D movies—including classics—into 3D to milk this fad. On top of that, the theaters are not prepared for 3D, with bad eyeglass optics and dark projections. In this article, a top CG supervisor in a prominent visual effects studio in Los Angeles calls it as it is: it's all a big scam by the movie studios."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.



http://rss.slashdot.org/~r/Slashdot/slashdotHardware/~3/O_ShwcLuQNo/The-Movie-Studios-Big-3D-Scam


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ACLU Sues Over Legality of "Targeted Killing" By Drones


MacAndrew writes "The ACLU has sued the United States Government to enforce a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request for 'the release of records relating to the use of unmanned aerial vehicles — commonly known as 'drones' — for the purpose of targeting and killing individuals since September 11, 2001.' (Complaint.) The information sought includes the legal basis for use of the drones, how the program is managed, and the number of civilian deaths in areas of operation such as Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, and Yemen. The ACLU further claims that 'Recent reports, including public statements from the director of national intelligence, indicate that US citizens have been placed on the list of targets who can be hunted and killed with drones.' Aside from one's view of the wisdom, effectiveness, and morality of these military operations, the inclusion of US citizens suggests that summary remote-control executions are becoming routine. Especially given the difficulty in locating and targeting individuals from aircraft, risks of human and machine error are obvious, and these likely increase as the robots become increasingly autonomous (please no Skynet jokes). This must give pause to anyone who's ever spent time coding or debugging or even driving certain willful late model automobiles, and the US government evidently doesn't want to discuss it."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.



http://rss.slashdot.org/~r/Slashdot/slashdotHardware/~3/6F9AHpMtvTU/ACLU-Sues-Over-Legality-of-Targeted-Killing-By-Drones


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Toshiba Ends Incandescent Bulb Production After 120 Years


angry tapir writes "Toshiba has stopped production of mass-market incandescent light bulbs, putting an end to a 120-year manufacturing history of the products. The company, which is one of Japan's largest makers of lighting products, had planned to halt production next year but brought up the date by a year. It will now focus on more energy efficient products, including LED (light-emitting diode) lights, which contain a handful of white LEDs and draw a fraction of the power of incandescent bulbs."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.



http://rss.slashdot.org/~r/Slashdot/slashdotHardware/~3/BK0PlFvjD8s/Toshiba-Ends-Incandescent-Bulb-Production-After-120-Years


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The State of Robotic Surgery


kkleiner writes "Robotic surgery is experiencing explosive growth in America's operating rooms, and the unquestioned industry leader in this field is the DaVinci robot, made by Intuitive Surgical. Only 14% of prostate surgeries in the US last year took place not using the DaVinci. Installations have grown from 210 systems seven years ago to 1,395 today. Although typically used for smaller surgeries like prostate removal and hysterectomies, the system was recently used for a kidney transplant, and more complicated procedures are expected in the future. The DaVinci is really just the first wave of robotic surgery as technology continues to push clumsy human hands out of the operating room." The article mentions some of the downsides, or perhaps the growing pains, of DaVinci robotic surgery: "According to a large study of Medicare patients, robotic prostate surgery led to fewer in-hospital complications, but had worse results for impotence and incontinence ..." Another company makes a simulator to train surgeons on the DaVinci. Embedded in the article is a 2009 TED talk on DaVinci by a surgeon.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.



http://rss.slashdot.org/~r/Slashdot/slashdotHardware/~3/a8YgkZw5xVg/The-State-of-Robotic-Surgery


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