When Pioneer first introduced its unicorn-like 16-layer 400GB Blu-ray Disc, we weren't sure if the thing would make it beyond the drawing board, let alone be compatible with existing BD decks. Over at the IT Month Fair in Taipei, Pioneer showed up to showcase the capacious disc, and better still, a DigiTimes report asserts that these are indeed compatible with Blu-ray readers already on the market. Currently, the 400GB disc is slated to hit mass production sometime between now and 2010, while rewritable versions won't hit until 2010 to 2012. Not like it really matters though -- a 1TB disc is on track for 2013, and you know you'll be waiting for the latest and greatest.

Filed under: HDTV, Home Entertainment, Storage

Pioneer shows off 16-layer 400GB Blu-ray Disc, affirms compatibility with current players originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 02 Dec 2008 07:35:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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France's former world champion athlete Eunice Barber is fined for resisting arrest and biting a policeman.

pa href="http://www.clickz.com/showPage.html?page=news/ukandeu"img alt="clickz_ukandeu.gif" src="http://blog.clickz.com/clickz_ukandeu.gif" width="150" height="83" align="left" hspace="10" border="0"/aU.K. mobile network operator Virgin Mobile has partnered with Yahoo to power search functions on its re-launched mobile portal. As of December 8, the portal will take on the branding of its parent company, Virgin Media, and will integrate Yahoo's oneSearch technology./p pYahoo also said today that it plans to deliver mobile sponsored search results and contextually served sponsored listings via the portal early next year, and that it is focusing on, "creating the monetization engine for the mobile Internet."/p pDespite its troubles, the Internet giant appears to be making decent progress in the mobile search sector, having a href=" http://www.clickz.com/3628418"secured an exclusive deal/a with T-Mobile in February, representing 11 European Markets. At the time, a Yahoo spokesperson described mobile search as a "key area in the future of Yahoo."/p pSearch results via the Virgin portal will now include photos from Flickr, financial data, integrated information from Wikipedia and Yahoo Answers, and downloadable content such as ringtones and mobile games.br / /pimg src="http://feeds.clickz.com/~r/clickzblog/~4/472411574" height="1" width="1"/

psmallEgan Orion a href="http://www.theinquirer.net/"the Inquirer/a, Tuesday 2 December 2008. 12:07:00/small/ppi Be careful out there /i/ppJUST IN TIME for holiday shopping, the FBI reminded the US population to beware of the various types of online frauds that tend to ramp up around this time of year. It warned wibblers against spam emails that might contain malware or attempt to lure them into phishing traps..../pimg width='1' height='1' src='http://feeds.theinquirer.net/c/554/f/7127/s/27b6764/mf.gif' border='0'/div class='mf-viral'table border='0'trtd valign='middle'a href="http://res.feedsportal.com/viral/sendemail2.html?title=FBI reminds shoppers of holiday scamslink=http://www.theinquirer.net/gb/inquirer/news/2008/12/02/fbi-reminds-shoppers-holiday" target="_blank"img src="http://rss.feedsportal.com/images/emailthis2.gif" border="0" //a/tdtd valign='middle'a href="http://res.feedsportal.com/viral/bookmark.cfm?title=FBI reminds shoppers of holiday scamslink=http://www.theinquirer.net/gb/inquirer/news/2008/12/02/fbi-reminds-shoppers-holiday" target="_blank"img src="http://rss.feedsportal.com/images/bookmark.gif" border="0" //a/td/tr/table/divbr/br/a href="http://da.feedsportal.com/r/24193229038/u/89/f/7127/c/554/s/41641828/a2.htm"img src="http://da.feedsportal.com/r/24193229038/u/89/f/7127/c/554/s/41641828/a2.img" border="0"//a

If you're like us, you haven't seen nearly enough of the N97 yet... right? Well fear not, faithful reader, as our intrepid comrade from Engadget Spanish, Drita, has nabbed a tasty hands-on with the phone in question. As you can tell from the pics, it's not quite as thin as its nearest competitors, but fairly sleek and stylish all the same (metal bezel and all), and that QWERTY keyboard looks practically edible. We're salivating at the thought of getting one to thoroughly put through its paces, but until then, let's all just sit back and soak in the handsome gallery below.

Gallery: Nokia N97 hands-on

Filed under: Cellphones

Nokia N97 hands-on originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 02 Dec 2008 07:15:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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When I profiled the Metropolitan Life Tower (and an unusual postscript) a couple of months ago, I mentioned that Daniel Libeskind was working on an addition to the building that would dwarf the iconic clock tower. New York magazine has a rendering of what the building might look like, taken from the architect's new book.

Initial designs show a glass-curtained tube with cutaways spiraling up and around the facade to reveal segments of terraced verdure, like cultivated patches on the side of a steep alpine slope. "We didn't just fill up the tower," the architect says. "We've taken space away [from the apartments] to create the gardens," which are actually balconies tucked within the envelope. "It's as if nature has come back into the city," he says.

(link)

Emotiv's "mind-reading" controller is a press darling, mainly because it's really cool. Apparently, though, Emotiv won't have the headset ready to go for the planned December release, because it...

pimg src="http://cache.gawker.com/assets/images/gizmodo/2008/12/emotiv.jpg" width="550" height="358" /Emotiv's a href="http://gizmodo.com/gadgets/gadgets/project-epoc-lets-you-control-video-games-with-your-noggin-240760.php""mind-reading" controller/a is a press darling, mainly because it's emreally/em cool. Apparently, though, Emotiv won't have the headset ready to go for the planned December release, because it doesn't, strictly speaking, well, emwork/em./p pBased on electroencephalography technology (or EEG to the interested layman), a properly functioning Epoc isn't out of the realm of possibility. But after a series of failed press appearances, starting just after the announcement and culminating in an glitchy gaming failure which I witnessed firsthand at the a href="http://gizmodo.com/tag/idf"Intel Developer Forum/a, the product just doesn't look like it's ready. /p pBigDownload spoke to a PR rep for the company, who said that the product is being held back until it "work[s] as planned", which translates to a release "sometime in 2009". Stuff like this is fascinatingmdash;I mean, who can honestly say they don't want to control a game with their brainwaves?mdash;but little startups like this can only hold on for so long without bringing a product to market. The price, as far as we know, is still set at $299. [a href="http://news.bigdownload.com/2008/12/01/emotiv-epoc-brain-wave-pc-controller-delayed-until-2009/"BigDownload/aemmdash;Thanks, John/em]/p br style="clear: both;"/ a href="http://www.pheedo.com/click.phdo?s=905c391ba266b257bb38f848602e7292p=1"img alt="" style="border: 0;" border="0" src="http://www.pheedo.com/img.phdo?s=905c391ba266b257bb38f848602e7292p=1"//a img src="http://www.pheedo.com/feeds/tracker.php?i=905c391ba266b257bb38f848602e7292" style="display: none;" border="0" height="1" width="1" alt=""/div class="feedflare" a href="http://feeds.gawker.com/~f/gizmodo/full?a=mCQaXemm"img src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/gizmodo/full?d=120" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feeds.gawker.com/~f/gizmodo/full?a=1Q5mYKd6"img src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/gizmodo/full?d=41" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feeds.gawker.com/~f/gizmodo/full?a=aJf8zZ4c"img src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/gizmodo/full?i=aJf8zZ4c" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feeds.gawker.com/~f/gizmodo/full?a=QCS72t6W"img src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/gizmodo/full?i=QCS72t6W" border="0"/img/a /divimg src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/gizmodo/full/~4/jou55zGf-mE" height="1" width="1"/

A cruise ship carrying 650 passengers has been targeted by Somali pirates, officials say.

Reggie Supildo announced today something that we’ve been talking about for a while now - ITt will be coming under the maemo.org umbrella. Internet Tablet Talk, for those who don’t know, is a community-run forum where members have always been unfettered in their praise and criticism of Maemo, and of Nokia’s running of the project. And they will continue to be unfettered - as part of maemo.org.

This is very exciting - the ITt forums have always been a kind of world apart, and to be honest it’s been hard to follow what’s been going on there. There are hundreds of contributors, and dozens of new posts every day, on all matters related to Maemo and Nokia’s internet tablets.

We’ve been getting progressively closer for the past few months - ITt news items are syndicated in the Maemo news feed, and we have a recently added Karma plug-in for ITt posts. This is a logical next step. Of course, ITt will continue to be run by Reggie and Roger, and aside from retheming the site to match maemo.org, users will hopefully notice little in the operation of the site. But my hope is that ITt users will feel a little more like part of the Maemo community, once the forum is on maemo.org. This is one more piece in Maemo’s journey from a Nokia-run project to a Nokia-sponsored, community-run project.

0 0

Press Gazette has teamed up with the National Union of Journalists (NUJ) to ask for equipment to be donated to journalists in Zimbabwe. Laptops and cameras are being asked for - to donate email campaigns@nuj.org.uk or call +44 (0)20 7843 6380.img width='1' height='1' src='http://rss.feedsportal.com/c/367/f/5716/s/27b63a9/mf.gif' border='0'/div class='mf-viral'table border='0'trtd valign='middle'a href="http://res.feedsportal.com/viral/sendemail2.html?title=Press Gazette: Appeal with NUJ for Zimbabwean journalistslink=http://blogs.journalism.co.uk/editors/2008/12/02/press-gazette-appeal-with-nuj-for-zimbabwean-journalists/" target="_blank"img src="http://rss.feedsportal.com/images/emailthis2.gif" border="0" //a/tdtd valign='middle'a href="http://res.feedsportal.com/viral/bookmark.cfm?title=Press Gazette: Appeal with NUJ for Zimbabwean journalistslink=http://blogs.journalism.co.uk/editors/2008/12/02/press-gazette-appeal-with-nuj-for-zimbabwean-journalists/" target="_blank"img src="http://rss.feedsportal.com/images/bookmark.gif" border="0" //a/td/tr/table/divbr/br/a href="http://da.feedsportal.com/r/24193228504/u/49/f/5716/c/367/s/41640873/a2.htm"img src="http://da.feedsportal.com/r/24193228504/u/49/f/5716/c/367/s/41640873/a2.img" border="0"//a

Here are the MAKE elves back from volume 04 by Robert Ullman - I put larger versions up on Flickr if you want to use them in a cool holiday project. If you do use them, put a photo in the MAKE Flickr photo pool - we just might send you something special from the Maker Shed!

a href="http://blog.makezine.com/archive/2008/12/say_hi_to_the_make_elves.html?CMP=OTC-0D6B48984890" /Read more/a | a href="http://blog.makezine.com/archive/2008/12/say_hi_to_the_make_elves.html?CMP=OTC-0D6B48984890" / Permalink/a | a href="http://blog.makezine.com/archive/2008/12/say_hi_to_the_make_elves.html?CMP=OTC-0D6B48984890#comments" /Comments/a | a href="http://blog.makezine.com/archive/holiday_projects/?CMP=OTC-0D6B48984890" /Read more articles in Holiday projects/a | a href="http://digg.com/submit?url=blog.makezine.com%2Farchive%2F2008%2F12%2Fsay_hi_to_the_make_elves.htmltitle=Say%20hi%20to%20the%20MAKE%20elvesbodytext=%20Here%20are%20the%20MAKE%20elves%20back%20from%20volume%2004%20by%20Robert%20Ullman%20-%20I%20put%20larger%20versions%20up%20on%20Flickr%20if%20you%20want%20to%20use%20them%20in%20a%20cool%20holiday%20project.%20If%20you%20do%20use%20them%2C%20put%20a%20photo...topic=tech_news" /Digg this!/a

Eric Holder, the deputy attorney general under President Clinton, has criticized the warrantless wiretapping program. But he wanted to limit encryption use, and his views on other online policies may not be that far from the Bush administrations.

William sent in this page detailing how to replace the bulbs of Christmas light strings with LEDs - I begin by cutting the light sockets off the string about three inches from the socket and I store them in a box. There is usually a wire that goes from one end of the string to the other (two such wires if you're lucky to have a string that has an electrical socket at the end of the string), which I wind onto a spool. Sometimes you can find wire the right shade of green wire at electronics stores. I find that 22AWG size stranded wire (make sure it is not solid) works the best. Though LED christmas lights can now be purchased relatively cheaply, this could make for a neat holiday project - LED Christmas lights

a href="http://blog.makezine.com/archive/2008/12/converting_to_holiday_lig.html?CMP=OTC-0D6B48984890" /Read more/a | a href="http://blog.makezine.com/archive/2008/12/converting_to_holiday_lig.html?CMP=OTC-0D6B48984890" / Permalink/a | a href="http://blog.makezine.com/archive/2008/12/converting_to_holiday_lig.html?CMP=OTC-0D6B48984890#comments" /Comments/a | a href="http://blog.makezine.com/archive/holiday_projects/?CMP=OTC-0D6B48984890" /Read more articles in Holiday projects/a | a href="http://digg.com/submit?url=blog.makezine.com%2Farchive%2F2008%2F12%2Fconverting_to_holiday_lig.htmltitle=Converting%20to%20holiday%20lights%20to%20LEDbodytext=%20William%20sent%20in%20this%20page%20detailing%20how%20to%20replace%20the%20bulbs%20of%20Christmas%20light%20strings%20with%20LEDs%20-%20I%20begin%20by%20cutting%20the%20light%20sockets%20off%20the%20string%20about%20three%20inches%20from%20the%20socket%20and%20I%20store%20them%20in...topic=tech_news" /Digg this!/a

The "ROMP or Remotely Operated Mobile Platform is a remote controlled paintball cannon that allows anyone to control where and when the pellets are spewed forth. Just don't try to drive this through a crowded urban space or the Feds might be on your tail.

via DVICE

a href="http://blog.makezine.com/archive/2008/12/rf_controlled_paintball_m.html?CMP=OTC-0D6B48984890" /Read more/a | a href="http://blog.makezine.com/archive/2008/12/rf_controlled_paintball_m.html?CMP=OTC-0D6B48984890" / Permalink/a | a href="http://blog.makezine.com/archive/2008/12/rf_controlled_paintball_m.html?CMP=OTC-0D6B48984890#comments" /Comments/a | a href="http://blog.makezine.com/archive/arts/?CMP=OTC-0D6B48984890" /Read more articles in Arts/a | a href="http://digg.com/submit?url=blog.makezine.com%2Farchive%2F2008%2F12%2Frf_controlled_paintball_m.htmltitle=RF%20controlled%20paintball%20machinebodytext=%20The%20%26quot%3BROMP%20or%20Remotely%20Operated%20Mobile%20Platform%20is%20a%20remote%20controlled%20paintball%20cannon%20that%20allows%20anyone%20to%20control%20where%20and%20when%20the%20pellets%20are%20spewed%20forth.%20Just%20don%26apos%3Bt%20try%20to%20drive%20this%20through%20a%20crowded%20urban%20space%20or%20the...topic=tech_news" /Digg this!/a

Thai anti-government protesters agree to end their occupation of Bangkok's airports, letting thousands of stranded tourists leave.

The huge appetite for UK companies from foreign buyers slumped during July, August and September, according to official statistics, as the global financial crisis deterred companies from multi-million pound acquisitions.

Mark Pilgrim has a new This Week in HTML 5 that features a bit new proposal for integrating HTTP authentication with HTML forms.

A common use for forms is user authentication. To indicate that
an HTTP URL requires authentication through such a form
before use, the HTTP 401 response code with a WWW-Authenticate challenge “HTML” may be used.

For this authentication scheme, the framework defined in RFC2617
is used as follows. [RFC2617]

challenge = "HTML" [ form ] form = "form" "=" form-name form-name = quoted-string

The form parameter, if
present, indicates that the first form element in the
entity body whose name is the
specified string, in tree order, if any, is the login
form. If the parameter is omitted, then the first form
element in the entity body, in tree order, if any, is
the login form.

There is no credentials production for this
scheme because the login information is to be sent as a normal form
submission and not using the Authorization
HTTP header.

Mark then goes on to say:

This idea has been kicked around for more than a decade. Microsoft wrote User Agent Authentication Forms in 1999. Mark Nottingham asked the WHATWG to investigate the idea in 2004. Better late than never, Ian Hickson summarizes the feedback to date. No doubt this new proposal will generate further discussion. No browsers currently support this proposal.

The idea makes total sense to me. The old HTTP BASIC style of authentication is a dying bread due to the annoying popup style and implementation. It needs a shake up, don’t you think?

Net Applications qui fournit des statistiques, notamment sur les navigateurs web utilisés outre-atlantique, vient de publier les chiffres du mois de novembre 2008. Pour la première fois, Firefox, le navigateur de la fondation Mozilla dépasse le seuil des 20% de part d#8217;utilisation avec 20.78% contre 19.97% pour le mois d#8217;octobre. Conséquence directe, Internet Explorer voit sa [...]img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/LaptopSpirit/~4/472387796" height="1" width="1"/

Syntext Serna Free - WYSIWYG XML editor is a compact yet decent solution for XML authoring that is available free of charge. Indeed, Syntext Serna Free is the most powerful among free products of the kind. Syntext Serna Free is intended, first of all, for higher education students or for personal use at home. Most people will find Syntext Serna Free easy to use as it hides all the complexities of the underlying XML technology. Authors with virtually no XML experience can start working with st...

Thai anti-government protesters agree to end their occupation of Bangkok's airports, allowing thousands of stranded tourists to leave.

h4Franchise model results in lower prices/h4 pPlayStation 3 price cuts have appeared on SonyStyle’s UK website, but Sony Europe has denied that it’s not responsible for the move because the website is a franchise..../p