Computing & IT

Microsoft hopes to lure bargain hunters with new subscription model, perhaps hints at changing business plan

Study shows many users wouldn't upgrade even if given the option

More chemo replacements may soon be on their way, thanks to one researcher's discovery of a unique chemical drug class

The 4th of July holiday is upon us once again, a day when most of folks in the U.S. celebrate Independence Day with backyard BBQs, friends, family and fireworks. All of us at [H]ardOCP would like to wish all of you a happy 4th and ask that you all take a moment to remember the true meaning of Independence Day. Please stay safe, read the firework safety tips we listed below and have fun! With any luck, we’ll see you all back here tomorrow with all your fingers and toes intact!

On June 11, 1776, the colonies' Second Continental Congress meeting in Philadelphia formed a committee with the express purpose of drafting a document that would formally sever their ties with Great Britain. The committee included Thomas Jefferson, Benjamin Franklin, John Adams, Roger Sherman and Robert R. Livingston. The document was crafted by Jefferson, who was considered the strongest and most eloquent writer. (Nevertheless, a total of 86 changes were made to his draft.) The final version was officially adopted by the Continental Congress on July 4. The following day, copies of the Declaration of Independence were distributed and, on July 6, The Pennsylvania Evening Post became the first newspaper to print the extraordinary document.

If you are staging a home fireworks display this year, you might want to give this checklist of safety tips the once over. If you are planning on drinking today, it is best to let the sober folks handle anything on fire...or the thing “on fire” might end up being your drunk ass.

Fireworks are an American tradition. They can provide hours of wholesome, family entertainment, but must be used by adults carefully and safely. To insure the safety of both the audience and those lighting the fireworks, we recommend that you obey the following fireworks safety measures during your fireworks display.

As cool as this video is, it is best not to have roman candle fights with your friends.

If you want to know how fireworks actually work, I recommend this link as well as this one. Between the two sites you’ll get a good idea how fireworks are made and how they get their color, incandescence and luminescence. There is also some really, really nice high-res pictures of fireworks here.

Every year, on the 4th of July, I like to post this link to the U.S. archives that hosts high resolution copies of the Declaration of Independence, high resolution scans of the Constitution, the Bill of Rights and other documents as well. These images will print at up to approximately 24" wide by 29" high at 150dpi.

Cooling
ASUS Triton 85 CPU Cooler @ Overclockers Club

ETC.
ECS Factory Tour @ OCC
Getway G200 CarBook For The Deaf @ VIAArena
MSI European Overclocking Challenge 2008 @ OC3D

Video
PALiT GeForce 9800 GTX @ CPU3D
Sapphire HD 3870 Ultimate Video Card @ Pro-Clockers
Sapphire Radeon HD 4850 Video Card @ BmR

Researchers at IBM's India Research Laboratory have developed advanced data masking technology that helps call centers protect critical data without disrupting customer service or business operations. As IBM (NYSE: IBM) continuously seeks new methods to ensure privacy and security, the company intends to utilize this capability in its own call center operations to further protect information for its services clients around the world.

Music industry and ISP at odds over what to do with known P2P users

Citibank ATMs in 7-Eleven stores across America were compromised by hackers

You and I both know that running old browsers puts you (and others) at risk. The problem is, the majority of the computer using world is clueless about updates and doesn’t care about running the most current version of their browser.

Using data collected from Google web searches and security firm Secunia, the researchers analyzed the browsers used in a report. The researchers aimed to understand why so many recent attacks by criminal hackers have been aimed at the browser, and why those attacks have been so successful.

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DailyTech's roundup of hardware reviews from around the web for Thursday

Apple cuts the price on the 64GB SSD and 1.8GHz processor upgrades

I know I shouldn’t laugh but damn, how embarrassing would this be? Thankfully they are taking “new” measures to prevent anything like this from happening in the future.

The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers, or ICANN, said it happened when an Internet registration company it oversees got fooled into transferring the domain names to someone else.

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Some lady, taking part in a experiment sponsored by McAfee, answered all her spam to see what would happen. The female participants received an average of 70 spam messages a day, men received 15 more a day than that. Only 70 spam a day? Ha! That would be a dream come true for someone with a high profile e-mail address. People wonder why we rage against spammers here, try getting 6000 spam a day…no kidding:



The idea of the Spammed Persistently All Month (S.P.A.M.) experiment — which fittingly started on April Fool's Day — was to have 50 volunteers from around the world answer every spam message and pop-up ad on their PC. What would be the experience in 10 countries when everyday people, armed with a PC and e-mail account McAfee provided for the Global S.P.A.M. Diaries project, clicked through the spam and chronicled the results?

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Stan Glasgow is either the most down to earth PR person Sony has or the company is taking a new direction with its marketing. This interview has some really interesting nuggets in it for Blu-ray fans and, as mentioned above, it is a surprisingly realistic assessment of where Blu-ray is at today:

The pricing is already coming down more quickly than DVD came down. I don't think it will take as long as 10 years, but I don't think it will penetrate to the same percentage because there's a couple of conflicting forces. Certainly, people that want the best picture are going to want it, without a doubt. People that are OK with upconverting DVD players, which is somewhere close to 600, 650, maybe 700 (lines of resolution)--that's not a bad picture either. So a lot of people may be happy with an upconverting DVD player. And (Blu-ray) may not turn over, it may not penetrate to the same extent, because (DVD) was such a big medium change from tape.

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Competition begins today for 370 students from 61 countries and regions competing for $240,000 in prize money at the Imagine Cup 2008, an annual competition that gives students around the world the chance to unlock their creative genius and create technology solutions that can help address some of the world’s toughest social challenges. The focus for Imagine Cup 2008 is on building technology solutions that help address challenging environmental sustainability issues. From a pool of over 200,000 participants, 124 teams have been selected to represent their countries in Paris for a week of competition around their innovative technology solutions.

Apple’s recent patent application for gesture learning has so many combinations that you may be violating their patent if you; wave “hi,” give the thumbs up, get a hand cramp, use the shocker or flip off your MacBook Pro (flipping off your Windows PC is still okay).



The new patent application from Cupertino, called “Gesture learning” gives a whole new meaning to gesture expansion. It describes how Apple may go about teaching you a whole new multi-touch gesture language, consisting of hundreds of words. Something like American Sign Language for touchscreens.

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