Psystar is still beset on all sides by the inequities of the selfish and the tyranny of evil men aka Apple but now they’re shipping “OS X-compatible” machines with Blu-ray installed. Sadly, there is no built-in Blu-Ray support which means you’re stuck using Toast 9 to do anything at all.

In our experience, Psystar is basically selling bare bones PCs with a little tweaking – nothing you or I couldn’t do at home. The sheer fact that a small IT company is getting this much press out of doing something anyone with an Internet connection can do is disheartening, but it will be fascinating once these kids get hosed by Apple legal.

via Ars

User reviews of Guitar Hero World Tour aren’t so hot—it’s averaging a 5.8 on Metacritic (but nets an 87 based on “professional” reviews). One reason for the low score is this weird drum kit sensitivity issue that a bunch of people are reporting. Activision, the game’s publisher, says the problem only affects an early run of drums.

Be that as it may, Activision says it will offer a drum tuning kit to help you out if yours is malfunctioning. You’ll need to head to activision.com/support to get the “fix my game, please” process started.

Meanwhile, Rock Band 2 is doing a little better on Metacritic.

Today, the HT-S9100THX system was announced and it has its sights set on HD theater buffs across the country. The 7.1-channel system (130W/channel) includes THX’s Loudnes Plus technology and comes with four HDMI v1.3a ports. The more HDMI ports, the better, I say.

Audyssey and Faroudja handle onboard audio and video processing. Faroudja’s DCDi Edge technology bumps all component, composite, and S-video sources up to 1080i while Audyssey’s 2EQ automatically calibrates acoustical output for maximum eardrum popping. Moreover, Audyssey’s Dynamic EQ “algorithm adds moment-by-moment refinement of the receiver’s frequency response and surround levels in order to compensate for volume-dependent deteriorations in the listening experience, particularly at low volume levels.” Can anyone translate this into layman’s terms?

Additional info on the system can be found after the jump. The HT-S9100THX is available now for $1,099. Read More

In case any of my friends and family are reading this post then you should know that I’m in desperate need of an extra wireless 360 controller. The one you see above is exclusive to Wal*Mart and is covered with a dragon and what appears to be a female. It’s only $49.74. Again, I am in desperate need of an extra 360 controller, family and friends. Thank you.

Product Page

It’s been a ridiculously long time since Fallout 2 hit the scene (10 years ago) and available today is Bethesda’s much hyped and highly anticipated RPG Fallout 3. Thousands of retailers stayed open into the early morning last night to quench gamers thirsts for destruction and gore. Some folks in DC didn’t take too kindly to the ads because they depicted our nation’s capital in a decrepit and post-apocalyptic nature. To them I say, “get over it.” The game takes place in 2277 and it’s just, you know, a game! NYC keeps getting bombed and terrorized in movies, but you don’t see the residents of this fine city bitching and moaning about it.

On a related note, game trailers have been pulled from multiple sites for not complying with ESRB guidelines. Read More

Ever use the Myvu Crystal? It’s a pair of glasses that has a built-in VGA-quality display. The idea here is that you connect the Crystal to your portable media player or cellphone and you can take immersive audio/video with you wherever you go. That’s the idea, but like I said I haven’t used them so I can’t speak to how well they work. Doug seemed to like it, though.

In any event (which is my latest crutch of a phrase, you may have noticed) the Crystal is now fully compatible with the iPhone 3G. You need to buy a separate $25 cable to get your Crystal and iPhone to play nice.

Photo from Flickr

You guys like computers, do ya? Me too. I spent a fair amount of time with the good people at VIA today and got some info about various upcoming products – some that have just been announced and some that haven’t yet.

For starters, here’s the VIA VB8001 CPU and motherboard combo that was recently announced. It uses VIA’s new “64-bit, superscalar, 1.6GHz VIA Nano processor” – basically VIA’s answer to Intel’s Atom. The barebones kit will be available in two weeks and is comprised of a Mini-ITX board with support for 4GB of RAM, two SATA ports, gigabit LAN, mini-PC slot for optional add-on cards (like Wi-Fi), and a PCI Express slot.

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The majority (51 percent) of wireless access points in New York City are completely insecure, either using no security whatsoever or relying on WEP, which is all but useless. That number excludes publicly accessible hotspots you’d find at a café or park, meaning that a majority of those blue little routers sitting in the corner of every New York City apartment can be broken into with little to no effort. The above video shows how easily it is to crack WEP.

Note that WPA can also be cracked, but that requires a little more effort (though just barely—this stuff moves fast, as you can imagine.)

Those are some of the findings of the most recent Wireless Security Survey, which is conducted by RSA. Other tidbits of information—that London has the most wireless access points of any city on Earth (12,276 of them, which is some 3,000 more than New York has); Paris has seen 543 percent jump in the number of wireless access points—pepper the report but aren’t nearly as interesting.

Again, I feel like I say this every other day, but you really ought to secure your Wi-Fi router, especially if you live in a densely populated area, like, say, an apartment building. That means WPA or greater, because all it takes is one kid with a few minutes of free time and the will to do some damage to get you into hot water.

via Slashdot

I’ll keep this review short and sweet.

The Good
Super strong magnets keep this case in place and actually manage to keep your fat nano from falling out. It freaks people out, too, which I like. Read More

Dear school administrators,

What’s the best way to ensure that your computer network remains riddled with security vulnerabilities that leave you, your personnel and [someone think of the] schoolchildren in danger? Why, to demonize the student who discovered the vulnerability and alerted you to it, of course. Have him charged with a felony while you’re at it.

A student in a Saratoga County (New York) school alerted his principal to a computer security vulnerability that could expose the names, social security numbers and addresses of school employees. While the student tried to do it anonymously, he was eventually tracked down. Then the school threw the book at him.

The student is now being charged with three felonies for his unauthorized use of the computer network. The best is this quote from a state trooper:

The kid committed an intentional criminal act. He deceitfully used someone else’s name and password so he would not get caught and was looking to profit from his criminal act.

The only thing we can take away from this is, even if you discover a security vulnerability, it’s completely in your best interest to keep it to yourself, otherwise you’ll be branded a criminal terrorist when you were merely trying to do a good deed. Or, if you insist on doing the right then, use Wikileaks.

I can’t help but compare Kata’s ‘digital rucksack’ to the Lowepro Fastpack I reviewed earlier this year. Its looks, features, and price are similar, but it all boils down to personal preference and what you’re looking to do with it. My initial reaction when the Kata made it into the office was that it was a cheap knockoff of the aforementioned Lowepro, but after a few weeks I’ve changed my mind.

As I mentioned before the Kata and Lowepro are very similar. However, the Kata is roughly 0.5 pounds lighter and offers a few extra features that the Lowerpro does not. But the Kata has thin walls all around I worry that my cameras and laptop will get damaged easier than they would in the Lowepro. Of course, I won’t be testing that theory anytime soon. Read More

In what must be one of the signs of the apocalypse, MTV has posted hundreds – dare I say thousands – of music videos for your perusal. It’s all there – go ahead and dig through. I found Scarlett Johansson cavorting to the the sad-eyed crooning of Bob Dylan along with a video that essentially blew my mind in the 1988. Was the saint real? What was happening in the beginning? Do girls look like that?

Best of all, all of the videos are embeddable and shareable, ensuring plenty of memories will be flooding your browser in the next few hours. I’m honestly amazed by the service. It’s so rare to see a media company get something so right with so little fanfare that I almost want to writhe around on a church floor in faux ecclesiastical ecstasy.

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Kids, when your friend asks you to lower the volume of your computer while you’re playing World of Warcraft please do so as soon as possible. Because if you don’t you might end up getting stabbed. In the head. With a chef’s knife.

That’s exactly what happened in Australia. The victim is doing about as well as one could after being attacked with a knife; only one of his fingers was “nearly” severed.

As for the guy doin’ the stabbing, the Australian magistrate has refused him bail. He’ll be in custody till next month, meaning he may well miss the launch of Wrath of the Lich King.

If you have kids or roommates who are younger than three, you’ll quickly learn that toddlers can’t read clocks and, as a result, will wake your ass up at 5am. The Good Nite Lite is designed to keep the younguns asleep – or at least in bed – until you’re at least done listening to Morning Edition.

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A group of research scientists at the Carnegie Institution have devised a new method to grow diamonds. Keep in mind that there’s more to diamonds than the tragic trade surround them (explained in great detail in the book The Heartless Stone), as they’re used in things such as high-quality optics and quantum computers (when they’re not hoaxes).

Now, growing diamonds isn’t exactly a new thing, as you’ve been able to compress carbon into diamond for a while now, but you had to have like a zillion pounds of pressure to get it to work. And then those artificial diamonds—artificial in that they didn’t come from the earth even though it’s the same scientific process—can only be “grown” a finite amount before the method no longer works. This new method, which adds layer upon layer of diamond using a technique called chemical vapor deposition. These diamonds grow much quicker and with less defects than those high-pressure ones, and they don’t need anywhere near the pressure to be created.

Remember: diamonds are nothing more than shiny rocks.

via GIZMODO

Duracell wants some of the tasty flash memory pie and have a complete product line coming soon with help from Dane-Elec. The Duracell product line will include Secure Digital, CompactFlash and microSD Flash Memory cards; USB Flash Drives; Flash memory Card Readers; and other Flash Memory bundles, such as an Instant Power Charger and micro SD card bundle, USB Flash Drive 3-packs or SD Card 3- packs. These flash memory products should hit select grocery stores and pharmacies within the coming weeks. Yay, more flash memory. Exciting.

As if flying weren’t scary enough now we could have giant airplanes full of nuclear power plants that could transport “millions” across the stratosphere.

Actually, this does make a lot of sense. Air travel has been essentially unchanged since the 1950s and any improvement over the fossil fuels currently used is long due. As for safety, ships and submarines have been using nuclear power for years without issue – you so rarely hear about nuclear explosions on the high seas anymore.
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I’ve just attended the keynote address given by Dr. Martin Cooper. Never heard of him? You know him indirectly, as he’s the inventor of something most everyone uses every day: the mobile phone.

At the Embedded Systems Conference in Boston, Cooper presented an interesting look at the current state of the wireless industry, identifying a handful of problems and how he thinks they could be fixed.

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We tried to watch the Blu-ray version The Happening at the Deleon abode last night. That embarrassing admission aside, let me tell you what a complete pain in the neck it was to update the firmware on our player—which we needed to do to watch the movie—the Samsung P1400. It’s a good thing we don’t own any firearms here because I was fully prepared to go about back and give the player the Old Yeller treatment.

We first had to physically move the player so that we could connect it to our router. Silly us, thinking that using the player’s built-in network upgrade would work! After selecting “upgrade,” we’re waiting for, I don’t know, 20-25 minutes; nothing happens. Clearly this network upgrade wasn’t in the cards.

At this point, I decide to re-name the movie The What Isn’t Happening.
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Mitsubishi’s LaserVue HDTVs have been in the making for a while but the critically acclaimed high-def set is now available at select specialty retailers. You still might need a second mortgage – good luck getting approved – to foot the $6,999 MSRP, but the TV apparently produces a Pioneer Elite comparable picture at 1/3 the power consumption. Plus, you can tell your trendy poker buddies that you HDTV is powered by frickin laser beams. How sweet is that?