Apple TV connects your computer to your TV

url : http://news3.xinhuanet.com/english/2007-03/22/content_5881199.htm

Hyeon Chung

Apple TV is a box that can connect computers and TVs without wires. After many delays, Apple TV finally went on sale Wednesday for 300 U.S. dollars.
Apple does have competition in Microsoft's Xbox 360 (400 dollars), which also acts as a bridge between PC and TV, and Netgear's week-old EVA8000 (350 dollars). Xbox 360 also has its own online movie store, and Netgear features an Internet connection for viewing YouTube videos and listening to Internet radio.
A good feature of Apple TV is it's small and quiet compared to the Xbox, but a drawback is it requires a widescreen TV -- preferably an HDTV. It doesn't work with the traditional TVs many people still have.
Apple defends its audience-limiting decision by saying the future is HDTV; Apple is just "skating to where the puck is going to be," as a product manager put it.
Apple TV doesn't come with any cables. You're supposed to supply the one your TV requires (HDMI, component video or HDMI-to-DVI adapter).
Basically, Apple TV is an iPod for your TV. It copies the iTunes library (music, podcasts, TV shows, movies) from one Mac or Windows PC on your wired or wireless home network to its 40-gigabyte hard drive and keeps the copy updated.
The drive holds about 50 hours of video or 9,000 songs; if your iTunes library is bigger than that, you can specify what subset you want copied -- only unwatched TV episodes, for example.
You can play back videos, music and photos even if the original computer is turned off or (if it's a laptop) carried away. (Photo playback requires iPhoto on the Mac, or Photoshop Album or Photoshop Elements on Windows.)
A tiny white remote control operates Apple TV's stunning high-definition white-on-black menus, which are enlivened by high-resolution album covers and photos. You can see the effect at apple.com/appletv.
The integration of iPod, iTunes and Apple TV offers frequent payoffs. For example, if you paused your iPod partway through a movie, TV show or song, Apple TV remembers your place when you resume playing it on your TV.
Although only one computer's files are actually copied to Apple TV, you can still play back the iTunes libraries of five other computers by streaming -- playing them through Apple TV without copying them. Starting playback, rewinding and fast-forwarding isn't as smooth this way, and photo playback isn't available. But it's a handy option when, say, you want to watch a movie on your TV from a visitor’s laptop.
All of this works elegantly and effortlessly. But there are lots of unanswered questions that make onlookers wonder if Apple has bigger plans for the humble Apple TV.
For example, it has an Internet connection and a hard drive; so why can't it record TV shows like a TiVo?
Furthermore, it's a little weird that menus and photos appear in spectacular high-definition, but not TV shows and movies. All iTunes videos are in standard definition, and don't look so hot on an HDTV.
And then there's the mysterious unused U.S.B. port.
Still, if you stay within the Apple ecosystem -- use its online store, its jukebox software and so on -- you get a seamless, trouble-free experience, with a greater selection of TV shows and movies than you can find from any other online store.

The dinosaurs that burrowed to safety

David Hyun
URL:http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,20867,21420880-30417,00.html

A NEW kind of dinosaur that burrowed into the ground to build a protective den has been discovered in the US.
The fossil remains of an adult and two young have provided the first evidence of burrowing behaviour among dinosaurs. The discovery in Montana raises the prospect that some dinosaurs may have initially survived the catastrophic event - widely thought to have been an asteroid impact - that led to the group’s extinction 65 million years ago. Small mammals are thought to have sheltered from the “nuclear winter” that would have come after an asteroid impact by burrowing underground. The burrowing dinosaurs have been dated to 95 million years ago, in the Cretaceous period, not long before the catastrophe in evolutionary terms. Though no examples have been found that date from nearer the time of the impact, it is conceivable that some may have survived it in their dens. “Burrowing behaviour allows vertebrates to escape harsh environmental conditions,” David Varricchio, of Montana State University, who led the research, said.
“Small dinosaurs could potentially have withstood severe conditions, such as drought or daily or seasonal temperature extremes. Such behaviour would have allowed dinosaurs to occupy high mountains, desert environments and polar regions. “Survival of terrestrial vertebrates at the end-Cretaceous event has been attributed to sheltering behaviour, with the extinction of nonavian dinosaurs resulting from their inability to find an appropriate cover. Burrowing dinosaurs would challenge this argument, but these are yet to be found in the latest Cretaceous formations.” The new species, which is described in the journal Proceedings of the Royal Society B, has been named Oryctodromeus cubicularis, which means “digging runner of the lair”. The adult found by Dr Varricchio’s team measured 2.1m and weighed 22-32kg. It and the two juveniles were at the end of a sloping tunnel more than 2m long and 70cm wide, which would have ended in a larger chamber. Several pieces of evidence indicate that the structure was a burrow built by the creatures. Its dimensions are a good fit for Oryctodromeus’s body, and the close proximity of an adult and young hints at parental care. The tunnel is similar to those made by modern burrowing animals, and there are no bite marks on the remains, making it unlikely that they were carried into the den by predators. Oryctodromeus also shows several anatomical adaptations for digging. “For a digging animal to apply a force to the ground effectively, it must counteract the equal opposing force generated,” Dr Varricchio said. “For example, mammals that dig with their forelimbs brace themselves with their hindlimbs and tail. Oryctodromeus exhibits skeletal features that among extant vertebrates are associated with such behaviour.”

Google quashes mobile phone talk

url: http://www.smh.com.au/news/mobiles--handhelds/google-quashes-mobile-phone-talk/2007/03/21/1174153139660.html

Hyeon Chung

Google has poured cold water on claims it is developing a mobile phone.
The search giant said it was more logical to form partnerships with existing handset makers instead.
Google's South-East Asia managing director of sales and operations, Richard Kimber, yesterday echoed statements made by Google's chief internet evangelist, Vinton Cerf, that building hardware would be a dramatic shift in the company's business model.
"At this point in time, we are very focused on the software, not the phone," The Australian Financial Review today quoted Kimber as saying during his speech at the Search Engine Room conference in Sydney.
Kimber said Google was keen on porting its search and other technologies to mobile devices, but it was not interested in entering the crowded handset market, as Apple has recently done with its iPhone.
This is highlighted by recent deals Google has made with manufacturers such as Samsung, resulting in its search software coming preloaded on certain handsets.
Extending Google's search technology to mobile phones would allow it to serve advertising to a far wider audience - particularly those in developing countries who do not have access to a computer.
Kimber said mobile ads posed unique challenges but described them as being "extremely effective".
In a telephone interview earlier this month, Dr Cerf, who is credited with being one of the founders of the internet, said "becoming an equipment manufacturer is pretty far from our business model".
"On the other hand, we're very interested in the platforms that other people are building. We are quite eager to be part of the mobile revolution."
A Google Australia spokesman said the company was focused on developing partnerships with existing industry players but did not confirm or deny that Google was developing a handset.
"Mobile is an important area for Google and we remain focused on creating applications and establishing and growing partnerships with industry leaders to develop innovative services for users worldwide," he said.
Google's latest comments are at odds with the slew of recent reports that suggested it was shopping a phone design to potential mobile phone manufacturing partners in Asia.
In a note to clients, sighted by Reuters, London-based phone analyst Richard Windsor wrote: "Google has come out of the closet at the CeBIT trade fair admitting that it is working on a mobile phone of its own.
"This is not going to be a high-end device but a mass-market device aimed at bringing Google to users who don't have a PC."
A US venture capitalist, Simeon Simeonov, wrote in a blog post earlier this month that there was "a team of about 100 people at Google working on the Google Phone".
Simeonov said his "inside source close to the company" described the device as being a "BlackBerry-like, slick device". He added a number of recent mobile-related acquisitions made by Google backed up the rumours.
Samsung was widely rumoured to be Google's manufacturing partner; a photo published on the Engadget blog, which purported to be a prototype, showed a sparse touchscreen design similar to the iPhone.
But all of these rumours now appear to be quashed, bringing back memories from a year ago when Google was said to be building its own line of computers. Those reports were soon proved false, and the product Google was working on turned out to be a free software pack.

Problem Solved: Century-Old Math Mystery Deciphered

David Hyun
URL:http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601103&sid=abM.SNM8uq3c&refer=us
March 21 (Bloomberg) -- Researchers using supercomputers unraveled a 120-year-old mathematics mystery, a solution they said promises advances in their field much like the mapping of the humane genome is aiding developments in medicine.
The solution of the math structure E8, unveiled this week at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge, would cover an area the size of Manhattan if written on paper. E8, discovered in 1887, is a mathematical problem related to equations used to explain symmetry.
``It's a big step,'' said Jeffrey Adams, 50, a mathematics professor at the University of Maryland in College Park who led the project by 18 mathematicians and computer scientists from the U.S. and Europe. ``You never know where it's going to lead.''
The project will help math researchers find solutions to problems related to symmetry, string theory and geometry, Adams said. Understanding how E8 works also might help physicists develop a unified theory that takes in gravity and other fundamental forces, said Hermann Nicolai, a director at the Max Planck Institute for Gravitational Physics in Potsdam, Germany, in a report on the discovery.
The E8 solution might be the math field's equivalent to the basic knowledge produced by human-genome mapping in the 1990s and early 2000s, Adams said. That work spurred a wave of methods for analyzing genetic causes of disease and led to the discovery of genes that may predict a person's risk of disease or other biological clues that may help doctors in treatment decisions.
``I like to say that the human genome itself doesn't give you drugs and cures for cancer,'' Adams said.
Other Researchers
Besides researchers from MIT and Maryland, the project drew collaborators from France and from U.S. universities including Cornell, Harvard, Stanford, Michigan and Utah.
E8, discovered in 1887, is a mathematical problem from the Lie groups, which were developed by Norwegian Sophus Lie during his study of symmetry. Mathematicians explore symmetries in theoretical dimensions greater than the familiar three- dimensional objects such as balls and cylinders. E8 has 248 dimensions. The E8 calculation is part of a larger project on all the Lie groups.
It took researchers two years of ``pencil and paper'' work and one more for software writing before the solution could be tackled by computer, Adams said in a telephone interview. The single calculation required computer power and memory that wasn't available until recently, said the National Science Foundation, which provided funding along with the American Institute of Mathematics.
Underlying Math
``The literature on this subject is very dense and very difficult to understand,'' said team member David Vogan from MIT in the report on the project. ``Even after we understood the underlying mathematics, it still took more than two years to implement it on a computer.''
Researchers broke the puzzle into smaller parts, producing partial answers that were later assembled to find the eventual solution. The final calculation took about 77 hours on the Sage supercomputer, built by San Diego-based Western Scientific.
The calculation created a file 60 gigabytes in size, enough to store music that could play for 45 days in the MP3 format. Data on the human genome, which contains all of the genetic information of a cell, can be stored on less than a gigabyte.

PlayStation 3 launches at record price

url: http://www.news.com.au/story/0,23599,21426496-2,00.html
Hyeon Chung
Launch parties for Sony’s priciest-ever game console will begin across the country tonight but there is anger over the difference between the Australian and US versions.
PS3 systems available in Europe and Australia will not have the same capabilities of the US and Japanese models, despite costing around $300 more.
The 60GB PS3 was launched in the US last November with a price tag of $US599 ($770) and costs ¥60,000 ($640) in Japan. The model on sale in Australia will cost $999.95.
And if the price tag wasn’t enough to make gamers throw their controllers out of their prams, cost-cutting measures mean the Australian versions have limited “backwards compatibility” – meaning it will not be able to play all PS1 and PS2 games.
"About 50 to 60 per cent of (earlier) games are playable in some form, but some of the big-name games like Gran Turismo 4 and Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas don't play properly," said Peter Bayliss, a PhD student in Video Game Theory at RMIT.
"While it's generally good news, some of the games people actually want to hold on to might not work."
Australian PS3 owners will also need to install upgrades available through PlayStation online to play PS1 and PS2 games.
Sony Computer Entertainment Australia managing director Michael Ephraim said more titles would become compatible with the PS3 over time.
The PS3 was originally scheduled to launch in Europe and Australia in November last year and was expected to support all games released for earlier models.
Billed as a "home entertainment system", the PS3 includes a 60GB hard drive, Blu-ray Disc player, high-definition TV output and an internet browser.
Pioneered by Sony, Blu-ray discs can store up to 10 times more information than a DVD. Its main competitor is the HD DVD (high-definition DVD), backed by Microsoft, Intel and Toshiba.
There are currently fewer than 100 titles available on Blu-ray in Australia and Sony will be relying in part on the PS3 to boost demand for the format.
"Sony did a lot for popularising DVD with the PS2," which included a DVD player, said Mr Bayliss.
"Some people have said they'll buy a PS3 because it's a lot cheaper than buying a stand-alone Blu-ray player at the moment."
Blu-ray players currently sell for between $1500 and $2500.
The high price of the PS3 in Australia was not unexpected, said Mr Bayliss.
"It always has been (more costly) in Australia. Part of it is increased shipping costs, but... there's simply less consumers in Australia so all the fixed costs of distribution get shared over less people," he said.
US models of the PS3 are made with part of the PS2 chipset inside, allowing it to run older games. That hardware has been replaced in European and Australian models with a software emulator, at a rumoured saving of between $20 and $30 per system.
A list of PS1 and PS2 titles compatible with the Australian PS3 has been posted online. The games are classified as "should play with noticeable issues", "minor issues" and "no known issues".
Mr Ephraim said the list included almost 75 per cent of the PS2 game catalogue.