Chad's News

If you blinked, you may have missed it, but the first Blu-ray movies were released last week, with the first Blu-ray player released a few days later. Initial impressions of the Samsung player were underwhelming, as was the review of one of the few available movies. Expect players to get better and cheaper, and ditto with the movies. We’re in the midst of a format war between Toshiba’s HD-DVD and Sony’s Blu-ray, but as far as I can tell, the general level of apathy over this subject is pretty high.

What a month for the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. First, Bill Gates announces he will step down from day-to-day operations at Microsoft in order to spend more time on foundation-related work. Then, out of the blue, Warren Buffet announces he will donate $31 billion (yes, billion with a ‘b’) to the foundation, doubling its assets. Let’s hope all this money does some real good in the world.

Here’s an interesting take on stereograms—this one’s animated. If you can see it, there’s a shark bending from left to right as if swimming through water. If you have problems seeing the image, this link has instructions. Also, I found it much easier when my glasses were off.

http://en.wikipedia.org/…
(via Digg)

This technology has the potential to radically change how we produce meat, but only if they manage to bring down the price. And it currently only works for ground meat. (I suppose they could make “steaks,” but they would be quite different from the steaks to which we’re accustomed.) While I’m not a hard-core animal rights activist, one neat side-effect of this process becoming ubiquitous would be the reduction in cruelty to animals.

http://www.wired.com/…
(via Digg)

In an update to this post, the professional video gaming association, Major League Gaming, has signed a Halo 2 team for $1 million and a top gaming individual for $250,000. Obviously, getting a computer degree was a bad move on my part—I should’ve been playing games all those years.

http://news.teamxbox.com/…
(via Digg)

This article immediately brought back memories of the book with the same title. While the book doesn’t actually answer the question, Scientific American tells all. Most interesting: for a butterfly, getting hit by a large raindrop would be like a human getting hit by a bowling ball (but at twice the weight). So where do they go when it rains? They run and hide, that’s where they go.

http://www.sciam.com/…

I’ve never really had problems with buggy hardware drivers, but this program sounds like a good thing. Even though it only applies to premium editions of Windows Vista, I would expect the quality to trickle down to non-premium users.

http://arstechnica.com/…

Remember this post, made only 10 days ago, where I predicted that Washington state’s online gambling law would be misused in ways the legislature didn’t intend? Well the first person charged under the law was not actually caught gambling; rather, he runs a web site that has information about online gambling. This constitutes transmitting “gambling information,” which is illegal under the new law. It will be interesting to see if he gets convicted.

http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/…

I’ve written about this before, but I want to emphasize it one last time. Last Tuesday (6/13/2006) Microsoft released its monthly security updates. And exploits were available within a day. This is happening on a consistent basis, and it’s no longer safe to wait before updating Windows. That automatic update feature is looking better and better.

http://www.techworld.com/…

He tracked down the scammer and called his (the scammer’s) mother.

http://wuvt.blogspot.com/…
(via The Consumerist)

The picture says it all.

http://kutv.com/…
(via Digg)

This is not completely unexpected. Tivo rocked the television world when it introduced the DVR.

http://arstechnica.com/…