CrunchGear

---

• Man faces 5 years in prison after stealing 3,000 Netflix DVDs
• Japanese company sells solar-powered apartments
• Video: Panasonic commercial shows new “Avatar” footage (kind of)
• Freaky, stylish ceramic speakers now available for pre-order
• Bug Labs gets wifi and Bluetooth
• I agree. Team Fortress 2 needs a guard dog class
• Sony outs the chic MDR-770LP headphones
• KAUST: Visualization beyond the CAVE
• Microsoft Courier: the Apple tablet just got bumped into second place
• Audio researcher’s “Fidelity Potential Index” pits mp3 against vinyl; science or pseudoscience?
• Pro Thumb Wrestling toy
• Fallout Holocaust: Experiments in ultra-violence
• AT&T linked to GOP senators who have proposed anti-Net Neutrality bill in Congress. Pretend to be shocked, please.
• Extraordinary rendition is still happening to Speak&Spells right now, write your Congressman
• Video: DirecTV’s App Store leaves a lot to be desired
• Apple’s Resource Center for iPhone developers: an empty gesture?
• James May’s Lego House has been demolished, try not to cry
• Europe to get more colour options for the DSi soon
• Unorthodox stop-motion music video uses Canon 1D and 16,000 flashes
• SGI releases first new product since bankruptcy, Octane III

Man faces 5 years in prison after stealing 3,000 Netflix DVDs Posted: 23 Sep 2009 05:20 AM PDT Some Netflix news for you this morning. It looks like a 49-year-old post office worker is facing a maximum of five years in federal prison after having plead guilty to federal theft charges. What was he stealing? Oh, you know, some 3,000 Netflix DVDs over the years. The man, one Myles Weathers, was nabbed after surveillance footage found him taking DVDs from the little sleeves. Netflix itself had become suspicious when it received an unusually high number of complaints saying, "Hey, we never got our DVD~! What’s up?" Yup, that’s because Mr. Weathers was stealing them all at a Massachusetts distribution facility. In the chat room, Scott came up with an idea, if you were to do such a scam: instead of stealing the DVDs and never returning them, why not steal ‘em, rip ‘em, then send them on their way? What are the odds that someone is going to notice an extra day in mail delivery time? One more notch in Netflix streaming’s belt, though. $1 if you can figure out what DVD that is in the logo. (Note: Offer not valid on Planet Earth.)

Japanese company sells solar-powered apartments Posted: 23 Sep 2009 04:00 AM PDT Japan has all kinds of solar-powered stuff: cell phones, cars, ships, and even carports and satellites. And now Tokyo-based Sekisui House plans to sell apartments fitted with sophisticated solar energy generation and control systems, which will not only power rooms but also allow residents to sell surplus electricity directly to utilities. The electricity will be generated via solar panels on the buildings’ roofs, with each apartment having a meter to measure how much energy has been used and sold. Sekisui House claims the sun will provide enough energy for the solar buildings as a whole, but utilities will deliver conventional power in case of emergencies. One solar power generation system installed in a four-apartment building costs a whopping $60,000 (but there are generous subsidies provided by the Japanese government for solar equipment). Sekisui House expects to sell around 300 of these systems by the end of January 2010 and sees about 30% of all apartments that it builds equipped with them in the future. Via Nikkei [registration required, paid subscription]

Video: Panasonic commercial shows new “Avatar” footage (kind of) Posted: 23 Sep 2009 02:20 AM PDT The official trailer for Avatar, James Cameron’s new (and supposedly groundbreaking) Sci-Fi movie, came out just last month, and now Panasonic is showing a TV spot promoting their Viera TVs and the movie on Japanese television. The commercial, which is currently in heavy rotation on TV over here, shows some very brief new scenes from Avatar (which is due out in both the US and Japan on December 18). In case you wonder, the girl you see in the commercial is Japanese actress Koyuki who played Tom Cruise’s love interest in Last Samurai and who I regularly see grocery shopping in the supermarket in my neighborhood. She doesn’t have a role in Avatar though. Here’s the TV spot (30 seconds):

Freaky, stylish ceramic speakers now available for pre-order Posted: 23 Sep 2009 02:00 AM PDT Remember those cool-looking ceramic speakers I posted a little while back? Actual pre-orders are now up, and as expected, they’re expensive as hell. $495 will get you a great-looking set of limited edition, high-quality speakers (the first run will be around 200 sets) — but don’t throw away your hi-fi just yet. The frequency response only goes down to 70Hz and while the speakers have 15 watts per channel, they won’t be shaking your paintings off the walls. However, the ceramic, wood, and cork makeup, combined with an amp based on the famous TA2024 suggest that the sound will be very good indeed. I love the cabling. They’ll be available in November.

Bug Labs gets wifi and Bluetooth Posted: 22 Sep 2009 09:10 PM PDT Hacker enablers Bug Labs have been making customizable doodads for a long time, but wifi and Bluetooth support have been lacking, though we heard they were incoming back in January. The new Bugbase WiFi is pretty much what it sounds like: a new base module for your Bug creations, but with wireless capability baked right in. The upcoming 3G radio module should add even more to its connectivity, but for now I’m sure there are plenty of tinkerers who’ll be happy with a little local wireless. The base will now support 802.11b/g as well as Bluetooth 2.0+ EDR. Of course, there are plenty of you out there with the vanilla Bugbase (after all, they sold out of that one a while back), and Bug has you covered there. There’s a new wifi module in the works, though you’ll have to wait a couple weeks. Until recently, Peter was on Bug Labs duty, but now that I’m taking a closer look at it, this stuff looks pretty damn cool. I may have to give it a shot.

I agree. Team Fortress 2 needs a guard dog class Posted: 22 Sep 2009 08:52 PM PDT Right off the bat, I feel the need to stress that this is a fan-made concept and really isn’t coming to TF2 – at least not anytime soon. But Valve liked the idea so much that it sent a nice letter showing appeciation at the work that went into it. Still, I want me a guard dog class in TF2. Woof! [via kotaku]

Sony outs the chic MDR-770LP headphones Posted: 22 Sep 2009 08:00 PM PDT Normally we don’t spend valuable Internet real estate on ordinary headphones, but this new pair from Sony is just so damn sexy. At ¥5,900 ($65 USD) I’m sure the MDR-770LP headphones sound good enough, but that’s not why I dig ‘em. Sony has always made good looking headphones and these are no different. A lot of people have moved past over-the-ear type headphones and onto earbuds, but some still prefer this type; I’m one of them. It’s just that most of the current crop look like poo, but these look great and are probably comfy too as the ear pieces slide up and down for a better fit. But it’s the side arms that do it for me. They look different and are far from the norm, but at $65, aren’t priced out of this world. Well done, Sony. Well done.

KAUST: Visualization beyond the CAVE Posted: 22 Sep 2009 07:49 PM PDT Yesterday I introduced CORNEA, the CAVE system at KAUST. CAVEs are great, but they require a huge investment: you need to build a facility around it, or renovate a space to accommodate it. Then you need to spend enormous amounts of money to buy and install the gear. Wouldn’t it be great if you could have an immersive 3D environment without all that effort? Researchers at KAUST, in conjunction with folks from U.C. San Diego, are doing just that with NexCAVE, a scalable, modular immersion system. In addition to NexCAVE, there’s several other great visualization projects underway at KAUST. The NexCAVE is constructed from pillars of displays, arranged to overlap one another in a concave form using custom mounting brackets. Each pillar costs about $10K USD, and the system can be built from as few or as many pillars as you need (or can afford). What might you use a system like this for? Here’s a video demonstrating an immersive 3D examination of a desalinization plant: This technology can also be used for some interesting less scientific applications. The Hajj occurred recently, where Muslims go to Mecca to pray. Only Muslims are allowed inside the Holy Mosque there. Wouldn’t it be neat to get a glimpse inside without having to convert? Check this demonstration out: And just like it’s big brother, CORNEA, the NexCAVE includes robust audio features, which can be used to augment the perception of data: In addition to the NexCAVE, KAUST’s visualization laboratory includes a couple of other fancy things. There’s “REVE” (the French word for “dream”, I’m told), which stands for “Rapidly Expandable Virtual Environment”. It uses passive 3D technology — very similar to the kind of thing I saw last year at IFA — to present limited stereoscopic display to a viewer without the use of special glasses. This is a pretty fussy bit of technology, as there’s only so much depth that can be simulated right now, and there’s definitely a “sweet spot” for viewing distance and angle. The demonstration I saw was a little rough around the edges, but is a good portent of things to come. As usual, my little recording won’t do this justice, but here you go anyway! It’s no small feat to take basically consumer signage grade displays and get them to work in a synchronized tiled fashion like this. The folks I talked to said that the goal was to keep the visualization showcase constantly updated. Researchers won’t want to always come to the showcase room to do their work, so they’ll eventually purchase some of these systems for their own research labs, allowing the showcase to refresh with newer technology. There’s also some interesting ideas about displaying “digital artifacts” in the KAUST library using these technologies. Special thanks to Tom DeFanti, research scientist at UCSD, for the NexCAVE videos!

Microsoft Courier: the Apple tablet just got bumped into second place Posted: 22 Sep 2009 07:25 PM PDT Well, that’s it, I guess. The CrunchPad and Apple Tablet had a good run (in their mysterious ways), but Microsoft has come out of left field to deliver what appears to be the coolest tablet-like computer we’ve ever seen. Those lucky ducks over at Gizmodo appear to have a pretty solid exclusive on it, though, but I’m burning through my little black book of Microsoft guys to get more info. What they’ve got in place looks fun, practical, and damned good-looking. Although currently in “late prototype” phase, and only available in renders at the moment, it is a real thing and it will come out. It’s probably best for you to just head over there and watch the video (the curs have made it un-embeddable). Scat!

Audio researcher’s “Fidelity Potential Index” pits mp3 against vinyl; science or pseudoscience? Posted: 22 Sep 2009 06:45 PM PDT There really isn’t much debate to be had regarding sound quality: a poorly-encoded MP3 sounds the worst, and an audiophile system playing something on the medium for which it was mastered sounds the best. However, there is a whole continuum between those poles, and some people (audiophiles particularly) can’t resist using arbitrary numbers and unintelligible descriptors to differentiate those different levels of quality. In this case, John Meyer of Newform Research (opting for arbitrary numbers) has computed the effective bitrates of all the major audio media, from wax cylinder to MP3. You can see the partial results above, but I had to compress and crop them; the full table is at the link above or in PNG form there to the right. His methods are scientific in a way, but also questionable. The effective bitrate of a record can sort of be calculated, since it does indeed rely on a sampling rate and frequency range among other things, but that’s not really the end of the story. Between your amp, speakers (or headphones), and other acoustic conditions, the end result is going to be so hopelessly complicated by extra variables that at times, sometimes it hardly matters whether the source is a 33RPM record being read by a thousand-dollar cartridge or an MP3 you bought on iTunes. Lossless codecs and high-quality digital audio systems are complicating this even further. The idea of a reproduction being true to the original has more to do with the process than the medium. Would the Crystal Method sound better on vinyl? Much of their music is recorded and produced digitally, and is intended to be distributed via a digital medium. However, The Beatles’ Sgt. Pepper was recorded in analog and mixed with the intention that it would sound best on single-channel record players. So it’s no surprise that digital copies of Ratatat are true replicas and sound great, while digital copies of Sgt. Pepper (until lately, ripped from re-mastered stereo CDs with added loudness to compensate for different playback equipment) not only sound worse than the original, but are less of a true reproduction. It’s not about analog vs. digital; those categories are too broad to allow meaningful judgments to be made. Even choosing simply between one format and another can be too coarse of a distinction. Meyer’s little study notes this at the bottom, but when you give a sort of “quality ceiling” number to every audio format, it suggests that there is some judgment involved. He does, however, say (and truly): The ongoing debate over the past 25 years as to which format – analog or digital – “vinyl or CD” — sounds better has been conducted in the fog of ignorance and marketing hype. How true that is of nearly every tech rivalry. What will the historians make of Blu-ray and HD-DVD? But I digress. Meyer cautions that there are “a huge number of caveats and remarks” to be observed, but that I fear I’ll be seeing this chart and others like it referred to in the unending audiophile debates on this internet of ours. I would simply suggest the following. The true audiophile creates something of a zoo for his music: songs must be kept in as close to their original habitat as possible. That’s the true test of fidelity. What the table above may prove is that formats like DVD-audio and other high-bitrate digital copies have the potential to deliver more precise audio information than did 45s or cassettes (hence the title of the table). Whether that will ever sound better (what with the way music is produced today) is an unanswered question. Bands like the Flaming Lips, in putting out 5.1 versions of their albums, or classical SACDs with ultra-stringent recording standards are pushing the limits, but for now there is no reason to assert the absolute superiority of one audio format over another. [via Metafilter, where they are having, as always, a lively discussion]

Pro Thumb Wrestling toy Posted: 22 Sep 2009 06:42 PM PDT I don’t have much to do here but say the pic is self-explanatory and ask why any company would actually produce these things. But this Pro Thumb Wrestling (why “Pro”?) toy can be yours for $10 plus shipping over at Rinkya.

Fallout Holocaust: Experiments in ultra-violence Posted: 22 Sep 2009 06:20 PM PDT Sandbox games are nothing new, but in general, most players try to play the game in the way the designers intended: be good, complete quests, and reach the eventual end of the game in an orderly fashion. Sometimes though, you just have that urge to be bad. Gamer and writer Alexander Gambotto-Burke has written about his descent into madness, and how purely visceral and difficult it is to play a psychopath. He talks about wandering the streets of Megaton using a sledgehammer like a slaughterhouse worker, killing the residents in their sleep. The interesting part is that he starts to really feel bad about it. If you do decide the read the article, be aware that there are some spoilers for Fallout 3 inside (a few major plot points in fact) and it’s a bit graphic about the killing. This is of course in the spirit of the game (exploding heads and the like) but just consider this a warning. He’s on part two of his article; part one is still available here. They definitely make for a good read as you go through what is essentially a walkthrough into ultra-violence.

AT&T linked to GOP senators who have proposed anti-Net Neutrality bill in Congress. Pretend to be shocked, please. Posted: 22 Sep 2009 06:00 PM PDT Nicholas "Net Neutrality" Deleon here with truly shocking news: six Republican senators have tacked on an amendment to an appropriations bill that would block the FCC’s attempt to make Net Neutrality a reality. So remember, kids: when you think of a free and open Internet, don’t think of the GOP. It’s not your friend here. The Senators involved are: Senator Kay Bailey Hutchison of Texas; Sen. Sam Brownback of Kansas; Sen. Sen. Jim DeMint of South Carolina; Sen. John Ensign of Nevada; Sen. John Thune of South Dakota; and Sen. David Vitter of Louisiana. It literally took two seconds to look up these guys’ top contributors, and you’ll be absolutely shocked at the findings. Guess who is Sen Brownback’s top donor this cycle? AT&T at a cool $11,000 so far! Sen. Brownback? Oh my, looks like AT&T has given him some $35,000 thus far! And what about that Vitter gentleman? Yeah, AT&T has given him $19,500 this cycle. So that’s three out of the six senators who have a huge financial incentive to see to it that AT&T doesn’t have to play nice by the Net Neutrality rules. You folks are free to draw your own conclusions, but if I were you I’d make a cool Twitter hashtag like "#ATTSENATORS." I’m sure I’m not the only person who finds it a little bit suspicious that three of the senators who have attached their name to the amendment are sucking at the teat of AT&T. But whatever. It’s just the Internet. Who cares about that?

Extraordinary rendition is still happening to Speak&Spells right now, write your Congressman Posted: 22 Sep 2009 05:30 PM PDT What you are about to see will shock you. Our allies overseas are being given broken Speak&Spells for full interrogation and their techniques are as far from the Geneva Convention laws as you can imagine. After stripping out most of the lower part of the device, these interrogators are forcing the Speak&Spells to perform unnatural acts, some that turn the stomach. Touching the word “Speak” turns the unit on. “Spell” triggers a random letter. “&” triggers a random glitch sound. The touch pads to the right trigger a really crazy hold/distortion effect. This is one of the most interesting effects I’ve found in a Speak&Spell in years. The strip below changes the pitch. This doesn’t actually utilize a transistor. I simply wired the pad to the pitch base on the circuit. The interrogator notes that connecting high-power lines to your Speak&Spell could result in horrible disfigurement or death.

Video: DirecTV’s App Store leaves a lot to be desired Posted: 22 Sep 2009 05:00 PM PDT I know the DirectTV app store has been out for a bit, but I watched this video and was shocked. It seems that DirecTV added these apps or widgets just to be cool and hip like everyone else. They seem like an afterthought and not a well-developed platform. Now, like Dave Zatz points out, it could be that the system has so much lag because of the crappy DirecTV house brand DVR, but don’t you think the developers would code for their hardware? Any DirecTV users care to chime in about the TV Apps? Are they really this bad?

Apple’s Resource Center for iPhone developers: an empty gesture? Posted: 22 Sep 2009 04:30 PM PDT App developers have been struggling for a while now, and Apple’s abusive nature is pretty well known when it comes to the App store. Apple is making what looks to be an essentially hollow attempt to help developers get through their approval process and get published. So what did they do? Apple compiled a series of documents into a library they are calling the App Store Resource Center. This compendium is intended to help developers with the submission and approval process, and also make it easier for them to update their product after it’s been approved and published. At least, that’s what Apple wants you to think. In truth, it’s not really anything new. App developers are saying that the Resource Center is nothing more then all the old information Apple had given them, however it’s been compiled into one location. In fact, after some developers have gone so far as to call the new resource totally useless. It’s unfortunate that Apple is being so tight about this process. Is there a need for control on the applications available? Absolutely. Is abusing the people that make your device compelling a good idea? Absolutely not.

James May’s Lego House has been demolished, try not to cry Posted: 22 Sep 2009 04:00 PM PDT What a shame. The LEGO house has been demolished just weeks after completion for James May’s other show, Toy Stories. (He’s known as Captain Slow on Top Gear, too) Legoland didn’t want it due to the high cost of transporting it and it was never intended to be permanent, so down she came. At least some good will come of it as the used LEGO blocks will be donated to charity. Hit up Telegraph for a photoset showing the completed inside and the demolition.

Europe to get more colour options for the DSi soon Posted: 22 Sep 2009 03:30 PM PDT Europe is finally set to get a few more color options for its DSi. While gamers in the glorious United States of America have enjoyed the freedom to choose between pink, white, turquoise and black, European gamers had to suffer with just white and black. Sad clowns. Soon that will change. On October 23rd Nintendo will release three new colors: red, blue and turquoise. The new kits will also come preloaded with the Facebook and FlipNote Studio apps and so far Nintendo hasn’t announced if the new red and blue models will make it State side.

Unorthodox stop-motion music video uses Canon 1D and 16,000 flashes Posted: 22 Sep 2009 03:00 PM PDT Normally stop motion is a laborious process of setting up the scene, adjusting the lighting and focus, taking the shot, and then starting all over again. But this method, where they’re essentially subtracting frames from a motion video, while not properly stop-motion, certainly creates that effect. Instead of lighting the guys and asking them to move into each next position before they take a shot, they’ve got an array of fast-recycle flashes synced to a 1D mk III shooting at 10FPS, which produces the frames used in the video. Check it out: It’s made possible by the ProFoto flash, which has an excellent 0.9-second refresh rate. Lash a few of these together (as well as a complicated sync setup, RedRock mount, and a grip of batteries) and it’s possible to essentially strobe all the lighting you need, which in this case they’ve set at 10 frames per second. Fill in the gaps with black frames or secondary video and you’ve got yourself a pretty neat stop-motion effect. In case you’re wondering, they couldn’t have done this with a 5D or other DSLR video mode, because the rolling shutter would have caused a really ugly effect with the flash — it would only cover part of the screen; you can see this in the behind the scenes video. The band is an Iranian one called Hypernova; the song is “Sinners” and the director is Richard Patterson.

SGI releases first new product since bankruptcy, Octane III Posted: 22 Sep 2009 02:30 PM PDT SGI has been quiet as of late, in fact we haven’t heard much since they declared bankruptcy and were bought by Rackable Systems back in April. Apparently since then they’ve been waiting for the dust to settle and release a new workstation, the Octane III supercomputer. It’s good to hear from SGI. Their new system looks pretty sweet too, with the potential of up to 80 cores, and 1 TB of memory. Of course, this is not meant for the casual user, but rather someone working on high end graphics or animation, just like the old SGI workstations. The bad news is, you’re going to pay for this power. The Octane III starts at the in yo’ face price of $7999, and goes up from there. Admittedly, the system has the computing power of something typically found on a rackmount system, but it’s still pretty impressive. from the press release: Supercomputing Gets Personal Octane III takes high performance computing out of the data center and puts it at the deskside. It combines the immense power and performance capabilities of a high-performance cluster with the portability and usability of a workstation to enable a new era of personal innovation in strategic science, research, development and visualization. In contrast with standard 2P workstations with only eight cores and moderate memory capacity, Octane III’s superior design permits up to 80 high-performance cores and nearly 1TB of memory. Octane III significantly accelerates time-to-results for over 50 HPC applications and supports the latest Intel® processors to capitalize on greater levels of performance, flexibility and scalability. Pre-configured with system software, cluster set up is a breeze. * Octane™ III Datasheet (PDF 203K) Plug It In and It Works Octane III is office ready with a pedestal, one foot by two foot form factor, whisper quiet operation, ease of use features, low maintenance requirements and support for standard office power outlets. A single, conveniently placed button turns it on and off. Octane III enjoys the same cost saving power efficiencies inherent in all SGI Eco-Logical™ compute designs. Easily Configurable for Deskside HPC Octane III is optimized for your specific, high performance computing requirements and ships as a factory-tested, pre-integrated platform with broad HPC application support and arrives ready for immediate integration for a smooth out-of-the-box experience.

You are subscribed to email updates from CrunchGear To stop receiving these emails, you may unsubscribe now.	Email delivery powered by Google
Google Inc., 20 West Kinzie, Chicago IL USA 60610