From firstshowing.net
Archive for February, 2007
International DIE HARD 4 Poster
Wednesday, February 28th, 2007Google Doubts Hard Drives Fail Because of Excessive Temperature or Usage
Wednesday, February 28th, 2007
In general, Google’s hard drive population saw a failure rate that was increasing with the age of the drive. Within the group of hard drives up to one year old, 1.7% of the devices had to be replaced due to failure. The rate jumps to 8% in year 2 and 8.6% in year 3. The failure rate levels out thereafter, but Google believes that the reliability of drives older than 4 years is influenced more by “the particular models in that vintage than by disk drive aging effects”.
Breaking out different levels of utilization, the Google study shows an interesting result. Only drives with an age of six months or younger show a decidedly higher probability of failure when put into a high activity environment. Once the drive survives its first months, the probability of failure due to high usage decreases in year 1, 2, 3 and 4 – and increases significantly in year 5. Google’s temperature research found an equally surprising result: “Failures do not increase when the average temperature increases. In fact, there is a clear trend showing that lower temperatures are associated with higher failure rates. Only at very high temperatures is there a slight reversal of this trend,” the authors of the study found.
Expert Interview: 720p vs 1080p
Wednesday, February 28th, 2007From www.electronichouse.com
Is 1080p resolution better than 720p? Industry expert Greg Nicoloso examines the formats.
“I think that there is a good deal of confusion that arises in comparisons between DLP 720p and 1080p solutions. First, the current assumption that 1080p is always the “better” choice relies completely on the assumption that resolution is the most important indicator of overall performance—an assumption that really does not hold up in many situations.
In fact, a recent SMPTE (Society of Motion Pictures and Television Engineers) study found that the four aspects of a picture that the human eye “sees”—in order of importance – are:
1. Contrast Ratio/Dynamic Range
2. Color Saturation
3. Colorimetry/Color Temperature or Grayscale
4. Resolution
So, all else being equal, resolution is actually the last item on the list in terms of picture quality and evaluation. High contrast ratio and accurate, deep color reproduction are generally greater contributors to overall perceived quality.
Now, this is not to say that increased resolution is not a substantial improvement in many situations. Particularly in theaters where viewing distance is relatively close—within 1.8 screen widths, say— the increase of resolution to 1,080 lines (1080p) makes the picture noticeably sharper and more detailed.
In the end, you can’t really lose, as both 1080p and 720p products are capable of delivering outstanding picture quality for home theaters, and manufacturers will continue to provide a wide array of models and configurations to meet these demands.”
Sony Announces Cheaper Blu-ray Player
Tuesday, February 27th, 2007Sony Corp. said Monday it is bringing out a cheaper player for Blu-ray discs early this summer, a crucial step in its battle to make the high-definition format the replacement for DVDs.
The BDP-S300 will cost $599, yet will have the same capabilities as the $999 BDP-S1 Sony is currently selling, said Randy Waynick, senior vice president of the home products division of Sony Electronics.
The Fastest, Most Powerful Digital SLR in the World
Tuesday, February 27th, 2007
Happy Birthday
Tuesday, February 27th, 2007
1902 – John Steinbeck, U.S. author (The Grapes of Wrath) (Nobel 1962)
300 Brings History to Bloody Life
Monday, February 26th, 2007
By Jason Silverman – wired.com
Warner Bros. is so excited about 300, Snyder’s adaptation of Frank Miller’s Greek-history-as-superhero tale, that they handed him the keys to Alan Moore’s Watchmen, another sacred text for comics fans.
Snyder, a commercial director whose debut feature Dawn of the Dead was a surprise hit in 2004, filmed the ultraviolent 300 on a Montreal sound stage. After recording real actors doing fake battle, he added heavily manipulated digital backdrops. Like Robert Rodriguez with Sin City, Snyder went to enormous lengths to precisely match Miller’s eerie landscapes.
300 re-imagines the true story of a small band of Spartan soldiers led by King Leonidas (played by Gerard Butler). The Spartans held off an enormous army of Persians that was commanded by Xerxes (Rodrigo Santoro) and bent on conquering Greece.
It’s Confirmed: J.J. Abrams Directing Star Trek XI
Monday, February 26th, 2007 
It’s currently set to open on July 2nd, 2008.
Windows XP On 7-MHz Pentium With 20 MB RAM
Sunday, February 25th, 2007The target of this project was to find the weakest system where you can run Windows XP. Keep in mind, that Microsoft official requirements are a CPU with 233 MHz an 64 MB of RAM.
But that had to be beaten! Full story complete with pictures here.
Portable IMAX Theater
Friday, February 23rd, 2007
This six-pound helmet monitor is a real prototype, built to demonstrate next-generation television-watching technology. Modeled here by one of its developers (the regular TV is shown only for comparison), the device was built by Toshiba and unveiled in September at an academic conference in Osaka, Japan. Equipped with a built-in projector and a dome screen, the monitor plugs directly into a DVD player or computer and provides an immersive experience that surrounds the wearer with the action of the program—think of it as a portable IMAX theater. Although the invention was popular among testers, who reported that it rests easily on the shoulders and is comfortable enough for a two-hour movie, Toshiba has no solid plans for commercialization.
HD Video Editing With Sony VGC-RM1
Friday, February 23rd, 2007
The new Vaio VGC-RM1 comes with a Core 2 Duo processor, 2GB of RAM, 1TB of storage, Nvidia GeForce 7600GT graphics, Bluetooth, loads of media slots (and a few inputs too), and, of course a 50GB Blu-ray writer — it’s also got a USB Jog Dial video shuttle.
It’s up for preorder now for a princely sum of $3500.
New Software Stops Mars Rover Confusion
Friday, February 23rd, 2007 
From slashdot.org
The Mars rover Spirit used to get quite confused when it came upon a rock. Because it could only plan routes of a metre or two it couldn’t understand how to navigate around large objects, and frequently used to rock back and forth for hours trying to figure it out.
NASA have written new software called D* for the rover Opportunity, which should allow it to autonomously plan routes up to 50 metres long. The new software still won’t be able to avoid sand-traps, though.
NASA’s New Mission To The Moon
Thursday, February 22nd, 2007
From popularmechanics.com:
They will go back and stay this time.
With the iconic Space Shuttle nearing retirement, the pressure is on NASA to design a new manned vehicle — one that will deliver us safely to the lunar surface by 2020 before building a lasting lunar base. From ensuring a safe launch to getting the vehicle back on the ground, here’s an inside look at some of the toughest challenges Orion’s engineers are now confronting.
SETI@Home Finds Something
Thursday, February 22nd, 2007
From slashdot.org
SETI@home is a distributed processing client from UC Berkeley that installs on the vounteers’ home computers and harnesses their processing power in the search for extraterrestrial intelligence. So far nothing noteworthy has comeout of this massive project… that is until today!
One of the voluteers was able to track down his wife’s stolen laptop using the IP address that SETI@home client reports back to the server.
Scientist Make Quantum Encryption Breakthrough
Thursday, February 22nd, 2007From slashdot.org
Scientists working in Cambridge have managed to make quantum encryption completely secure (registration required) by putting decoy pulses in the key transmission stream. According to the story this paves the way for safe, encrypted high-speed data links.
Could this allow completely private transmission of data away from snooping eyes and ears? Or will it mean film studios can stop movies from being copied when traveling on the internet?
The Hobbit Confirmed – Arriving in 2009
Wednesday, February 21st, 2007From FS.net
The Hobbit movie will see the light of day (or rather darkened theaters) in just over 2 years time! As of current the debacle between Peter Jackson and New Line Cinema is still up in the air. Nothing has come of the situation between the two yet; ever since Jackson sued New Line regarding The Fellowship of the Ring’s payment inaccuracies and the Lord of the Rings series went on to rule the world.
Frank Miller Movie Adaptation Round Up
Wednesday, February 21st, 2007by FS.net
The legendary comic book writer Frank Miller has got a lot going on in Hollywood at the moment. In addition to the feature film based on his Spartan epic graphic novel 300 opening in just a few weeks, he’s previously had the immensely successful Sin City and a possible Sin City 2 in the works, and most recently announced is an adaptation of his graphic novel Ronin. Beyond being one of the most successful comic book writers, he’s become a well known celebrity in Hollywood as well.
Recording Your Entire Life
Wednesday, February 21st, 2007From slashdot.org:
Scientific American has an article on Gordon Bell’s 9-year-long experiment of recording great swaths of his life on digital media. The idea harks back to an article by Vannevar Bush in the 1940s, which arguably presaged hypertext and the Web as well. Bell, the father of the VAX computer and now with Microsoft Research, first published a paper on his experiment in CACM in 2001.
The goal is to record “all of Bell’s communications with other people and machines, as well as the images he sees, the sounds he hears and the Web sites he visits.” Storage requirements are estimated at a modest 18 GB a year, 1.1 TB over a 60-year span. Not a lot if the article’s projection comes to pass — that we will all be walking around with 1 TB of storage in our portable devices by 2015.
The article is co-authored by Jim Gemmell, who wrote the software for the MyLifeBits project.
Happy Birthday
Wednesday, February 21st, 2007
Sharp Anounces New R-series LCD
Tuesday, February 20th, 2007
Sharp just unveiled their new flagship R-series of LCD panels for Japan. The new line-up ranges in size from 42- to 65-inches with each packing a 120Hz ASV LCD panel, 3x 1080p HDMI inputs, 1x DVI, and 2x Firewire and one of Sharp’s line-up of hi-def recorders including their new BD-HP1 Blu-ray recorder.