It is an irony that the light bulb, long-time symbol of great ideas, will not be such a great idea anymore, as lawmakers in different countries are planning to ban the century old creation of Thomas Edison, because of its contribution to global warming.
The successor? It is a big question, but at least for now, the only affirmative answer is CFL or Compact Fluorescent bulbs. However, experts predict that LED or Light Emitting Diodes could become a serious contender for the title of world’s champion of lighting, in the near future, or more specifically, in the next two years.
May 24th, 2007 Comments
Microsoft had earlier said in a controversial statement that open-source software violate 235 patents owned by Microsoft. In a bizarre turn of events, angry, protesting users of Linux and other open-source software have given out their names and are now challenging Microsoft to sue them.
The angry Linux supporters putting up names, the open-source OSes and software they use, along with frequently snarky comments on public wiki and forums. It has been a success, and the list is growing rapidly from 250 people on Tuesday.
May 23rd, 2007 Comments
Dell had declared that it would offer Ubuntu 7.04 alongside Windows XP and Vista, in its desktop computers.
Now, according to the Dell website, though Ubuntu is available as an option, it is severely limited.
For one thing, codecs, required to play back videos and audio in different formats like MPEG 4, WMA, WMV, Quicktime etc. are missing. Dell asserts that it is missing because of legal obligations. For any home user, life would be miserable without these, and they would almost certainly dowload and install it themselves.
May 22nd, 2007 Comments
IBM unvieled its Power6, part of the famed PowerPC range of processors. IBM’s claim includes that it is “green”, which in IBMspeak means it consumes only as much power as a normal processor. Also, they claim it is the fastest processor upto date, upto twice as much faster as its predecessor.
The Power6 has a speed of 4.7 GHz, which is considered a landmark by many. Sometime back, when gigahertz race was the in-thing, 4GHz was considered the holy grail. Now, PowerPC has crossed it comfortably, with a multi-core processor!
May 21st, 2007 Comments
Nintendo’s wildly popular, revolutionary Wii console leads the console sales again. Wii sold twice the number of Xbox 360 consoles, its nearest competitors, in April. Sony’s PlayStation 3 were outsold 3 to 1 by Wii.
Nintendo sold more than 350,000 Wii, priced lowest of all consoles at $250. In stark contrast, Sony shipped a measly 82,000 units of the PlayStation 3, whose basic model sports a price-tag of a whopping $500. Microsoft shipped 174,000 Xbox 360s at $300 for the basic model.
May 21st, 2007 Comments
