If I only had a nickel for every time I’ve face-palmed myself in this situation.

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After a stagnant rest in the hardware pool, Apple Computers has finally upgraded their almost antiquated iMac line with a plethora of fancy additions and just plain smart changes. Most notably is the amazing 27-inch model you see below:

27 inches of beautiful Mac goodness.

As with any Apple update, the hardware has been improved significantly. The extra case space brought by the new, bigger screen, will allow for hardware to be spread out in a more heat-efficient manner. This means less hardware failure for iMac users.iMac users who upgrade will also take advantage of the newest in video, processor and motherboard hardware that Apple has to offer.

Also shipping with the new iMac is the new and improved MagicMouse (formerly, the Might Mouse). Taking a page out of the new Apple Slim-Keyboard design, they have squashed the aspect ratio on the mouse and turned it into somewhat of an external trackpad. All of the cool finger gestures that you can do with your MacBook, you can now do with your desktop mouse. Swipes, scrolling, pinch, zoom, and more are now at your fingertips, literally.

The New Apple iMac Magic Mouse and Slim Keyboard

Among the smaller updates to the iMac are a new set of speakers that are tuned to have much better bass response with less acoustic distortion. On my 24″ iMac, I always needed to use headphones to escape the ‘tiny, thin sound’ of the iMac speakers. You may also notice that just about every screw, tab and piece of hardware holding this baby together is completely self-contained. This means no getting inside your machine (without a fight!). Hopefully this will encourage Mac users to stay the hell out of their machines and leave the fixing to the professionals. This will surely prolong the desk-life of these computers. (I know, it’s tempting to want to upgrade your hard drive/ram/video card, but these machines were not designed for upgrading, they were designed for simplicity)

This concludes my review of the new iMac hardware. If I have missed anything terribly important, feel free to comment below using your Facebook, Twitter, OpenID or Disquis login.

21.5inch, 27inch, Apple, iMac, MagicMouse, slim keyboard Hide

I’ve been playing this free game called Project Torque. It’s gotten me into drifting and the finer mechanics of weight transfer and RPM control. I was blow away when I saw what I had learned from the game applied to a real course. Brilliant execution and timing make this look way too easy.

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A sea change may be coming to cyberspace with Web addresses ending in anything from .a to .z. That has businesses increasingly worried they will have to spend millions to guard their brand names. The familiar .com, .net, .org and 18 other suffixes — officially “generic top-level domains” — could be joined by a seemingly endless stream of new ones next year under a landmark change approved last summer by the Internet Corp. for Assigned Names and Numbers, the entity that oversees the Web’s address system. Tourists might find information about the Liberty Bell, for example, at a site ending in .philly. A rapper might apply for a Web address ending in .hiphop. “Whatever is open to the imagination can be applied for,” says Paul Levins, ICANN’s vice president of corporate affairs. “It could translate into one of the largest marketing and branding opportunities in history.” [jump]

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Even though 3.5 has yet to be released, developers are already mapping out features for 3.6 to be released sometime next year. The rumor mill says it will support no restart extension installation. Party on Wayne!

https://wiki.mozilla.org/Firefox/Namoroka

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It seems as if the powers at be have realized they are fighting an uphill battle. After a laborious trial in Sweden, Time Warner has decided that they can’t beat The Pirate Bay, so they’ll join them.

After years of hostility, lawsuits, police raids and heated invective between the two groups, the Pirate Bay has today announced they have settled their differences with US media conglomerate Warner Bros. The largest BitTorrent tracker has sold out to Hollywood and the two have agreed a deal. - TorrentFreak

Honestly, I feel that this was the right move from the start. The Pirate Bay is no more responsible for pirating software than Google. Technology and the Internet have always been about innovation and moving forward. The Pirate Bay took the existing technology of BitTorrent and simply capitalized on it before anyone else thought to. Now that the major industries are taking a page from TPB, you can expect to see a number of changes in the way we view and purchase media online.

What does it all mean?

Well, personally I feel that this will have a major impact on the distribution of online media. If the major powers of distribution and production cannot adopt this new market of media sharing they will fall victim to the next TPB. Warner Bros. should not revamp or close down TPB, instead they should embrace its tech-savvy, intelligent user base and find a way to grow the community as well as make their fair share.

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So after about 6 years on the same cheap keyboard (that sucker lasted!) I think its time to compliment my new i7 920 build with a new one. I chose the ABS M-1 Mechanical Keyboard. My faithful Razer Diamondback has begun to shit the bed as well, so I’ll be replacing it with the classic Logitech MX518.

ABS M1 Heavy Duty Professional Gaming Mechanical Keyboard -

$69.99

• Highly durable professional gaming keyboard
• Extremely responsive and accurate for hours of comfortable gaming
• Gaming-grade lifetime: 20 million clicks
• Allows users to perform the most detailed and advanced key combinations to date
• Gold plated USB connector to ensure low latency
• High quality braided cable
• Dimension: 17.32″ x 5.43″ x 1.52″ (LxWxH)
• Weight: 3.53 lbs.
• Total Travel: 0.4±0.038 mm
• Key pitch: 19.05mm
• Key stroke: 4mm±0.5mm
• Operating Force:
• A:Linear Feel:2.0±0.7 oz.
• B:Tactile Feel:2.0±0.7 oz.
• Life Cycle:
• A:Linear Feel:5.0 x 10^6 Times
• B:Tactile Feel:2.0 x 10^6 Times

Logitech MX518 8 Buttons 1 x Wheel USB -

$39.99

• 1800-dpi MX Optical Engine: Experience ultra-high resolution and pixel-precise tracking.
• Adjustable Sensitivity: Shift from pixel-precise targeting to high-G maneuvers, without pausing the action.
• 8-Button Design: Don’t skip a beat. Your favorite controller functions map directly to your MX 518.
• Forward/Back Buttons: Accelerate your gaming intelligence.
• Super-slick Feet: Glide effortlessly across almost any surface.
• Right-Handed Comfort Grip: Fits your hand naturally, reduces fatigue.
• Superior Grasp: Enjoy long-lasting comfort—even during the longest gaming sessions.
• Mfr Part#: 931352-0403

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I have to admit this thing looks pretty cool. I still think there is a breaking point as to how thin you really want these things. I’m willing to take a little more weight in exchange for durability. I wonder what the battery life is like…

From Slashdot:

MojoKid writes “Adamo, pronounced ‘A-dahm-o,’ means ‘to fall in love with’ in Latin. Dell is certainly hoping you’ll fall in love with this notebook’s looks as well as its functionality. The Adamo’s chassis is milled from a single piece of aluminum and features precision detailing with a scalloped backlit keyboard. Even the fan holes, which are punched out squares, have an attractive modern design. The Adamo features a thin 0.65-inch profile and weighs four pounds. The new ultra-portable will also offer Intel Core 2 Duo processors and DDR3 memory (up to 4GB), a 13.4-inch 16:9 HD display and a 128GB SSD hard drive. Pricing starts at $1,999 with Vista Ultimate 64.” The Dell infomercial spokesmodel (video at the bottom of the link) concludes, “Adamo resulted from the union of technology with pleasure for the style-conscious individualist.” OK, so he’s no Steve Jobs. [from: Slashdot

]

adamo, air, Dell, Hard disk drive, Intel Core 2, Intel Core 2 Duo, Latin, Solid-state drive, Steve Jobs, Windows Vista Hide

One of the coolest D.I.Y. laptop projects I’ve ever seen.

Chris Fenton (ChrisFenton.com) took a PICAXE microcontroller and fabricated one of the sweetest laptop projects I’ve ever come across. Complete with a 4kb home-brew OS called LINAXE. This minimalistic throwback sports all the functions of a basic operating system including text editing, a custom compiler, and even plays PONG. You’d be surprised how much you can do with only 16kb of RAM and 256kb of storage. Here’s a few photos and the specs from the site:

Hardware specs:

• Storage: 256 kilobytes total, in a 4 x 64 kilobyte  configuration. It uses 4 24FC512 i2c EEPROM chips formatted with the ChrisFS file system.

• RAM: 16 kilobytes of i2c FRAM, in a 2 x 8 kilobyte configuration. Fully accessible from within programs through the use of pointers.

• CPU:  Picaxe 28X-1 Microcontrollers. The main CPU runs at a blistering 16 Mhz, and has a whopping 4 kilobytes of onboard storage for the processor’s firmware/OS.

• I/O Controller: Another Picaxe 28X-1 Microcontroller serves as an i2c slave and I/O controller for the main CPU. It primarily provides a keyboard FIFO interface to support asynchronous keypresses during programs (can you say PONG?!).

• Sound: Dual-mono sound is driven by the main  CPU and supports a wide range of tones, beeps, bops and bloops. It drives 2 x 1-inch, 8-ohm speakers mounted on either side of the display. Volume knob or headphone jack, you ask? I say, play it loud and play it proud!

• Display: A giant 24 x 8 serial character display provides a much-needed upgrade over the previous 20 x 4 display. It also takes in data at a blistering 19200 bits-per-second, drastically improving update speeds.

• Case: Beautiful, hand/laser crafted wooden case, with a touch of steampunk. My friend Pat showed me how to build a simple box, and I finally learned how to use the CNC laser! Tip: Never try to use real laptop hinges when working with wood. Way too much hassle!

• Battery pack: 4 x AAA batteries keep this humming for hours. Think your pathetic EEE will make it on that flight to Japan? Pack this bad boy and keep hacking while your neighbors are stuck watching the third showing of “You’ve Got Mail.”

  [source: ChrisFenton.com]

EDIT: Found some more cool wooden laptop pics.

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AAA battery, Central processing unit, CNC, diy, EEPROM, Hardware, laptop, Microcontroller, PICAXE, Random-access memory, slashdot, wooden Hide

Now, this is a really great idea. Samsung gave some geeks a bunch of SSDs and they built a 24 drive raid array with a capacity of 6tb, and over 2gb/sec transfer speeds. He’s shown ripping a dvd in .8 seconds, opening 53 apps in less than 19 seconds, and jumping on a trampoline with the array dangling by the power cables. Great marketing idea, props to Samsung.

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Array, Hardware, RAID, Ripping, Samsung Group, Solid-state drive, Storage, Subsystems Hide