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HD DVD: Just another brick in the wall of defunct formats

They're all born with the best of intentions, but only the strong survive.

Formats come and go. Some are barely noticed, and some die a slow, painful death. So now we can all breathe a sigh of relief that the format war between Blu-ray and HD DVD was comparatively brief--unless you're on the losing side, stuck with a slowpoke player and a collection of HD DVD discs. I've already heard from some angry HD DVD supporters. War is tough.

If you're over 35, you probably remember the Betamax vs. VHS wars, which raged from 1975 to … Read more

Intelligent Design vs Science, analog vs digital, CD vs LP--and the winner is?

Natural sound as we hear it in "real life" is pure analog, but recorded sound is, with few exceptions, chopped up into digital bits. So other than live music concerts pretty much every note you hear is digital. Whether you're listening to an iPod, the internet, TV, CDs, DVDs, or the radio, they're all digital in one way or another. We have as a species evolved over the eons to hear analog sound, and it's only over the past 25 years that digital has taken over. And it hasn't been very pretty. The only … Read more

AMD's SSE5 ends the old RISC vs. CISC debate

Remember how I said that Moore's Law is "the full-employment act for computer pundits"?

In the smaller niche of microprocessor journalism, there used to be another topic that was always good for a column: RISC vs. CISC.

In the early days of computing, a CPU (central processing unit) was a series of refrigerator-size cabinets in the computer room. Memory capacity was very limited. Computer scientists would analyze how programs executed on these machines and look for ways to shorten and speed up their programs by defining… Read more

If Captain Jack Sparrow had a toaster

I'm not really sure what this gadget's product page is saying, because it's all in German. But regardless, I want this toaster. It's sleek, black, and printed with a skull-and-crossbones as well as a bizarre Guns & Roses reference ("Sweet Toast of Mine") and get this--it'll brand your toast with a skull-and-crossbones as well.

Then your toast can have a pirates-vs.-ninjas battle with your Wee Ninja. Arrrrr!

(Via Notcot.org.)

The PC fights back

Score one for boring!

One of the side-effects of Apple's popular Mac vs. PC television commercials is that there is now a cottage industry of fakes.

It's time to put aside your personal OS preference (AmigaOS, baby!) and have a good laugh at director Laurie McGuinness's mock PC-vs.-Mac clips. And if you can't...well, you're taking things far too seriously for your own good.

Nevertheless, we've balanced out the bashing with some links to pro-Apple clips below the embedded videos. Enjoy, and ponder whether the video-editing was done on a PC or a … Read more

Mothra's got nothing on this flying bug

The people at WowWee don't waste any time. Just a couple of weeks ago, Crave wrote of an FCC application filed by the toymaker for a remote-controlled "FlyTech Dragonfly."

Now, T3 reports that it has gotten exclusive access to the robotic insect, with photos and YouTube video to prove it. Unlike lesser beings that rely on propellers and such for flight, according to the U.K. magazine, the Dragonfly is "the world's first robot to use brute flapping-power to remain airborne."

So the next time a co-worker buzzes you with one of those RC … Read more