Lexicon Charges $3500 For a Repackaged $500 Oppo Blu-ray Player [Broken]

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This is a very, very bad thing Lexicon did. And thanks to the super sleuths at Audioholics, they got very, very caught.

The Lexicon BD-30 is a $3500 (!!!), THX-Certified Blu-ray player. Unfortunately, aside from some slight re-branding, it's also a $500 Oppo BDP-83, chassis and all. From the review:

"When we received the player the first thing we did was open it up to get a look at the inside. Imagine my surprise when I found that not only did the Lexicon share the same boards and transport as the Oppo - it was in fact AN OPPO BDP-83 PLAYER, CHASSIS AND ALL, SHOVED INSIDE AN ALUMINUM LEXICON WRAPPER. As far as we could determine, Lexicon didn't change a single thing in terms of the hardware. Heck, they didn't even lift the boards out of the chassis, opting instead to cut out the bottom of their own chassis to accommodate the venting locations, and putting a darker blue filter over the Oppo's VFD display to give it a slightly deeper hue."

The entire thing is so galling that it's actually kind of hilarious... unless you're someone who just found out you paid a 700% premium on a Blu-ray player. Then again, why on earth were you shelling out that kind of money in the first place? [Audioholics via Consumerist]



Slow Cranking Flathead

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While crsnking to start my 6 volt truck ( flat head six) with batter fully charged and truck always in heated garage on my third short crank to start the engine I heard a arc or short occur and lost everything, no lights, horn, absoutely nothing, check battery it good, still fully charged. I believe

Apple January 27th "Come See Our Latest Creation" Event Confirmed [Apple]

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As expected, Apple is holding a "special event" on Jan. 27 to "come see our latest creation," with invitations being sent out JUST SECONDS AGO. 10am PST, at the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts Theater in San Francisco.

Let's take a closer look at the invite, which is, again, to "come see our latest creation." Using the word "creation" is telling in both its vagueness and its specificity: It says it's something new. Apple likes playing with words, too—remember the "something's in the air" tagline for the event they introduced the MacBook Air, their latest truly new product?

At the same time, it's interestingly far less weighty than the tagline for the Macworld where Apple introduced the iPhone, which indicated that it would be the beginning of something huge: "The first 30 years were just the beginning." It's a light and fluffy blurb, not the one you might expect for something that some people think could be the beginning of a brand new kind kind of personal computing, previously only depicted in movies.

It's also splattered with paint. Maybe they're being playful. Maybe there's a (finger)painting application. Maybe we're reading too much into a jpeg. Either way, we'll be there, live.



New Verizon FiOS Bundles Offer More HD and 35Mbps Speeds [Verizon]

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Now we know why Verizon decided to double our FiOS cancellation fees. They have unveiled new bundle options that deliver up to 35Mbps upstream and downstream and 90 or more HD channels.

New Bundles Packed With Speed and HD

New double-, triple- and quad-play bundles are available with a 24-month service agreement that guarantees the customer's rate will not change for two years. FiOS bundles are also available in month-to-month plans that do not require a minimum term agreement. To explore Verizon's many bundle options and order service, visit http://www.verizon.com/bundles or call Verizon at 1-888-GET-FIOS.

New triple-play bundle options with a service agreement are:

•Ultimate: FiOS TV Ultimate HD includes 90 or more HD channels; premium content from EPIX, Showtime, TMC, Flix and the NFL RedZone; FiOS Internet service with an ultra-fast, symmetrical connection speed of up to 35/35 Mbps; and FiOS voice service – all available for $139.99 a month. In the New York City area this bundle also includes HBO/Cinemax and other premium channels, for a total of 125 or more HD channels, and is available for $149.99 a month.

•Extreme: FiOS TV Extreme HD includes 65 or more HD channels; FiOS Internet service with an ultra-fast, symmetrical connection speed of up to 25/25 Mbps; and FiOS voice service – available for $124.99 a month. In the New York City area this bundle also includes Showtime, TMC and Flix, for a total of 80 or more HD channels, and is available for $119.99 a month.

•Prime: FiOS TV Prime HD includes 40 or more HD channels; FiOS Internet service with a connection speed of up to 15/5 Mbps; and FiOS voice service – available for $109.99 a month. In the New York City area this bundle includes all of the TV content offered with FiOS TV Extreme HD, for a total of more than 65 HD channels.

The Ultimate and Extreme triple-play bundles – as well as the Prime triple-play bundle in the New York City market area – include free access to thousands of Wi-Fi hot spots across the U.S. Customers also have access to Verizon's leading FiOS TV video-on-demand service, with more than 18,000 monthly titles – including 2,800 in HD – and FiOS TV's advanced interactive media guide, with access to social-networking, news and entertainment widgets and more.

Verizon is also offering a limited time promotion that gives you 12-months of Prime, Extreme and Ultimate for $90, $115 and $130 respectively ($90, $100 and $130 in the NYC area). Of course, with cancellations fees that high, you had better think long and hard about it. [PR Newswire]



30 Photographers Make a High Speed Getaway [Shooting Challenge]

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Some people really hate being photographed, so much, in fact, that they'll run, jump, tight rope walk or even teleport away. Seriously! Here are 30 such getaway shots from this week's Shooting Challenge, including the winners:

Second Runner Up: 'Don't Fall!'

Technique: Pre-Step 1: Walk to beach. Step 1: Set camera on railing Step 2: Set 2 second timer to take 2 pictures Step 3: Press shutter Step 4: DON'T FALL! Equipment: Nikon D5000 with a 35mm f1.8 lens. Picture Details: 1/250 sec. at f/8. Nerd Details: Camera set to program auto (lazymode), ISO 200, custom picture style, auto white balance, no flash. Confession 1: Picture was actually taken 4 seconds after the shutter was pressed because the timer was set to take 2 pictures, each after 2 seconds. 2 seconds was nowhere near enough time to get into the frame, so the second picture was chosen. I'm not a tightrope walker, I can't move THAT fast on that rail! Picture was taken in Emerald Isle NC. And yeah, it really was foggy. Like could not see more than 100 yards foggy. Like everything was moist foggy. Oh and sorry if you don't like the word moist.
-Cory Efland

Runner Up - 'Tight Rope Walker'

I shot this image tonight on a roof top in Chicago. I setup a single strobe (Calumet 7B) synced to my 5D Mark II on a tripod, set the timer and leaped from one roof top to the other! 5D Mark II with a Canon 17-40 f/4; Exposed for 8 seconds at f/5.6; Strobe at half-power; ISO 200; Mirror locked up. It was a fun shoot, little did I know, the rooftop that I was jumping onto was someone's apartment. After about 5 test jumps I heard some screaming and ignored it, after getting this final image the neighbors were throwing eggs up on to the roof at me.
-Josh Billions

Winner - 'Teleport'

For this shot, I used my Canon XSi on the 2sec timer with a Canon 50mm at f/1.4, ISO 100, and 15sec. I set the camera to shutter speed priority at 15s. I then ran from my camera holding a flashlight for about 10 seconds, then light painted my body for the rest of the exposure.
-Kinta Maeda

I absolutely love that we started with such a simple idea—running from your camera—and ended up with so many entries I could have never anticipated. Even more worthwhile shots in the full gallery:

Thanks again for your participation!



Nvidia GF100 512-Core Monster Graphics Card Previewed: Goodbye, Eyeballs [Graphics Cards]

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The curtain's been dropped on much of Nvidia's upcoming Fermi-based graphics cards, and the five-hundred-and-twelve-core GF100 looks like a behemoth, indeed. A completely overhauled architecture is all about three things: scalability, parallelism, and geometry. Oh, and ripping your eyeballs out.

Tom's Hardware, Anandtech, HotHardware and others go pretty deep on the new architecture, which is now eminently scalable. Here's the overall structure of the GF100, which should give you an idea of the scalability—the GF100 is made up of four graphics processing clusters (GPC), themselves composed of four streaming multiprocessors (which are made up of 32 CUDA cores and texture units) and a raster engine:

To go deeper on architecture, you're better off reading the 10-page reports from any of the sites linked above, but bottom line, Tom's Hardware is predicting something like double the performance of Nvidia's current GTX 285. Anandtech also points out that Nvidia's geometry performance only went 3x between the NV30 engine in the ancient GeForce FX 5800 and current GT200 in the GTX 280, but the Fermi-based GF100 has 8x the geometry performance of the GT200. The endgame being that " it allows them to take the same assets from the same games as AMD and generate something that will look better. With more geometry power, NVIDIA can use tessellation and displacement mapping to generate more complex characters, objects, and scenery than AMD can at the same level of performance."

There is a cost. Even though it's at the 40nm process, those 3 billion transistors are going to run hot, and the GF100 maybe the hottest single-card GPU ever. It's also not going to be cheap. At all. [Tom's Hardware, Anandtech]



Signal Flow Architecture

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Hey guys, I was looking for a Monitor to motherboard signal flow architecture. For example hoe the SVGA port is attached with the motherboard and how the signal passed in the motherboard to generte the exact image on a computer monitor. Can anybody please help?

Apple Patent Applications Show Energy Efficient Devices [Apple]

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Greenpeace awarded Apple as being the "most green" tech company the other week, so it's not surprising two patent applications have been dug up from last May showing they aim to be even more energy-efficient.

Both patents, discovered by Patently Apple, show devices which save energy when charging from the socket. It's not the usual Apple discovery—hardly a touch-sensitive iPhone—but it'll be an ongoing issue for tech companies to face, so it's not surprising they want in on it early.

While the above figures look a bit confusing, Apple's basically saying:

"Some personal computers sometimes are being left on simply to serve as power supplies for the charging of the aforementioned portable devices via connections, such as Universal Serial Bus ("USB") connections, that provide power in addition to data (rather than charging those devices from the household electric service using their dedicated chargers), even though the power supply of a personal computer is much larger than is needed for such a function, and as such draws much more power than such a function would otherwise demand. As the price of electricity increases, such uses of power can cost users more."

Using an "Intelligent Power Monitoring" system, you could choose to charge your gadgets during off-peak hours to save money, or charge just a gadget attached to a laptop via USB, not the laptop itself.

The second, slightly-similar idea from Apple is called the "Intelligent Power-enabled Communications Port," which involves a system that routes different amounts of power to various electronics being charged:

"Rather than continually upgrade standards such as the USB or FireWire standards, a variable power supply may be provided for the power conductor of a port."

As with most patent applications, it's all a bit vague thanks to a lack of detail, photos and motive—for example, it's not known whether Apple would want to incorporate this technology into existing product lines, or launch a stand-alone energy monitoring device. The latter would hardly be in keeping with what they're known for, but it's not like we can ever truly be sure of what Apple's going to do next. [Patently Apple via CNET]



Choosing a Career

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Dear friends,

I am in a big trouble regarding my career. I am totally unable to decide what I should do for my career in future. I have just completed my B.E in electrical and working in a cement industry (Attock Cement Pakistan Limited) as an engineer for last 9 months in electrical a

Secular help for Haiti | Bad Astronomy

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The James Randi Educational Foundation has teamed up with the Richard Dawkins Foundation for Reason and Science and a dozen other secular groups to set up a way to donate money to help out the people of Haiti after the huge earthquake last week.

As Randi says,

We at the JREF are very proud to be part of the concerted effort to aid Haiti to recover from this catastrophic event. To my mind, there is nothing more disturbing than hearing the distressed cries of children who are subjected to grief and/or injury, and my personal contribution has already been added to the encouraging total that mounts hour by hour. Please be generous and help us to reach out to Haitians of all ages, of any and all philosophical orientations.

Richard Dawkins will cover $10,000 of PayPal fees, so if you use that method 100% of your donation will go to help.

You can donate here. Please help.


The First Motorcycle Ever Built

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We car guys can easily pinpoint the first automobile ever built, right? How about the first motorcycle? Bonhams will be auctioning what they describe as the first motorcycle built – an 1895 Hildebrand and Wolfmuller at the International Classic MotorCycle Show in Staffordshire in April. Int

Avatar: A Stunning New World That NASA Continues to Ignore

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Keith's note: James Cameron's "Avatar" has continued to break box office records, has won the Golden Globe Awards for "best picture" and "best director", and is now headed for the Oscars. There is clearly something that the public enjoys about "Avatar". At a time when NASA needs to re-exert its relevance to decision makers and the public, you'd think that there would be some effort to tap this interest in a movie about the wonders of extrasolar planets, astrobiology, and what may lay out there as we explore space - rendered in unparalleled detail and believability. So, how did NASA capitalize on this phenomenon? Answer: It didn't.

All I could find online at NASA.gov is this short summary of an article that was written by someone at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics and this link to an interview with someone from MIT that aired on CNN. That's it.

Charlie Bolden did make reference to the movie (without using its name) in his 5 January 2010 speech to the AAS (page 3): "But what of the discoveries we cannot predict as this New Year begins? Thus far, more than 400 extra-solar planets have been discovered orbiting other stars. Last month, a super-Earth was discovered that might be an all-water world. When will someone in this audience discover a Pandora? A real Pandora like the one in James Cameron's fabulous new movie? And will such a discovery open a positive Pandora's box - forever changing the way citizens of Earth view ourselves, and our place in the cosmos? Only time - and the best science - will tell."

Other than Bolden and his speech writers, you have to wonder who at NASA is paying attention to what is going on in society - and who is supposed to be thinking about making sure that the NASA is relevant and responsive to what is happening outside the agency. People from all walks of life flock to see a movie about space exploration - a movie directed by a former member of the NASA Advisory Council - and NASA for the most part is either oblivious - or ambivalent to this immense public interest. Yet the same people at NASA get upset when the public doesn't support the agency or show interest in what it does. Go figure.

A recent poll claims to show that "50% of Americans now say the United States should cut back on space exploration given the current state of the economy". Yet Americans are flocking in droves to see this movie - about space exploration. In an overly simplistic comparison, it would seem to me that people are voting with their discretionary funds to experience space exploration that they do not think NASA is - or should be - doing with their non-discretionary tax dollars.

If NASA took the time to understand this situation they might just learn what it is they should be doing such that the public will start to support NASA the way that they support Avatar. Oh well. The President and his family saw "Avatar". He is expected to announce what he wants NASA to be doing on/around 7/8 February. Will his new "vision" for NASA pull people in to participate as has Avatar or leave them outside without a ticket?

Avatar: A Stunning New World That NASA Is Ignoring, earlier post
How Will We Travel to Avatar's Pandora?, earlier post
Pandora Could Exist, earlier post
Video: Avatar, Augmented Reality, and NASA, earlier post

The New NASA Advisory Council Meets - At Last. But Something Is Missing (2005)

"The previous NAC counted among its members James Cameron. While Cameron happens to be a rather skilled engineer in his own right, he is, foremost, an artist - and a communicator. When he spoke at NAC meetings - and other NASA events - he often sought to infuse his advice with input from the real world outside of NASA. Much of what he had to say would not be expected to come out of the mouth of a professional committee member."

The Subscription War: You’re Bleeding to Death [Subscription War]

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You know what's great? My smartphone puts the world in my pocket. Broadband puts 2,454,399 channels on my HDTV. I can access the internet from a freaking airplane! You know what's unsustainable? Paying for it all.

Here's why: a well-equipped geek will, in our research, have a subscription and service bill total of between 200 and 750 dollars a month.

Let me break it down. You've got your smartphone bill, your cable bill, your home broadband bill. Those are unavoidable expenses—there's not much you can do about them.

Then think about the must-have gadgets on the horizon: a smartbook that requires a data plan. A tablet that'll require Wi-Fi HotSpot access or a 3G dongle. The same for a thin-and-light notebook. And those are just your 1:1 service fees for devices.

Now throw in all of the wonderful content and service subscriptions you either already have or will soon. You've got TiVo, which is better and cheaper than most cable-provided DVRs but still about $11 a month. Netflix, to rent or stream unlimited movies. Hulu's free for now, but we know they're going to start charging any week. If you've got an Xbox 360, you've got an Xbox Live Gold membership. I'm a city slicker with no car, but if I had one I'd need a navigation app that's good enough for everyday use. A free Flickr membership is fine today, but once HD camcorders gain prominence, you're going to want a Flickr Pro membership for high-def playback. And so on.

If that doesn't sound so bad, see how it looks when you add it all up:

That's right: if you want to stay even close to fully connected, you're expected to cough up nearly $1,000 a month. Not for hardware. For fees. And that doesn't even include niche services like Vimeo and Zune Pass, or one-off purchases like eBooks or iTunes downloads. Or, god forbid, food and shelter.

A couple of years ago, we talked about the Infinite Video Format War, and the dozen-plus disc-free video formats that each come with their own subscription models, fees, and offerings. There's still no resolution there. Think of the Subscription War like that, only extrapolated across all of your devices, content, and services.

The problem isn't subscriptions themselves. Content subscriptions reward risk-taking, which is great! How many movies have you discovered because of a Netflix recommendation? How many shows have you watched on Hulu that you never would have found on your TV's channel guide? And individually, they seem cost effective.

The problem is fragmentation. The problem is that each service provider thinks within a bubble, without recognizing the larger ecosystem of payments we live in. It's like those nights in high school when each teacher would assign you two hours of homework. There weren't enough hours in the day then, and there's not enough money in a paycheck now. And there shouldn't have to be.

There are some ways out: you don't actually need cable or satellite TV to enjoy your favorite shows. If you've got a smartphone, you really don't need a land line, and you can probably get away with the minimum 450 minutes if you lean on messaging and Skype. There are also free navigation apps that'll work in a pinch. But at the end of the day, you're still looking at hundreds of dollars a month for services you don't need constant access to.

So what's the answer? Well, ad-supported content generally comes free or highly discounted. But ad-supported solutions require people to purchase the things being advertised. Hulu's plans to start charging indicates that that model's not sustainable in the long run. One blanket subscription that lets you access several different sites or services works for the online porn industry, but those linked sites all operate under the same umbrella parent company. Not feasible when the participants are major competitors.

The honest answer is that there may not be one. Not yet, anyway. Eventually the monthly bills will stack up so high that people will have to start cutting ties with companies, who will in turn have to either lower prices or fade away. You've already started to see it with AT&T and Verizon cutting prices on unlimited plans last week. Until everyone gets on board, though? We're all just casualties.



Source: Windows Mobile 7 Handsets Coming Late 2010, Will Support 6.x Apps [Rumor]

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Another week, another treat from our mole: Windows Mobile 7, which we should see for the first time at Mobile World Congress next month, is intended for release before the holiday season of 2010—not 2011. And there's more.

For a release to follow a debut by six months or more isn't unprecedented for Microsoft, where long public beta testing periods have become the norm, if not the rule. And a late 2010 release is in line with older estimates, which have been recently derailed by claims that it would be pushed off until 2011. Even more interesting, though, is that the OS still seems to be in a state of flux. Here's what we've heard:

• It'll be shown at MWC, but don't expect Microsoft to give a firm release date estimate—they're not ready for that yet. LG slipped up and hinted at a September release for their first Windows Mobile 7 phones, but it sounds doubtful that anyone's release dates are set in stone—and they'll likely have to toe Microsoft's line, since with WinMo 6.5, Microsoft's been enforcing a hard, unified launch date for Windows Phones; something they never really did before.

• Contrary to Eldar Murtazin's report that Windows Mobile 6.x apps won't work on the OS, we hear that they will. Our info implies a promise of support though—not necessarily out-of-the-box, native compatibility—which could mean anything from an emulator (like webOS's Classic app) to a set of streamlined porting tools for devs. Regardless, this isn't really the kind of thing someone could deduce from playing with a device for a few minutes, which is what Eldar appears to have done.

• Speaking of apps, we should expect an SDK for the new OS to be available as early as June, giving devs a little lead time to have apps ready for the new OS. This implies that the platform will be markedly different than 6.x, which pretty much everyone has been assuming all along anyway.

• It doesn't look quite like any of the renders or mockups we've seen floating around. There are some aesthetic similarities to some of the early renders, but they're not pronounced enough to say that it looks like anything that's already been "leaked."

• The new input system, which we initially called "Natal-like," is more of a complex gesture system than a whole new way of interacting with the phone. There is a motion sensing element, but it's a close-quarters, proximity-sensing type thing, and only used for certain gestures: pinch zooming, rotation, twisting, etc. This was also described to us as resembling a tech demo, so it may not be a banner feature for the OS, but rather something that Microsoft is toying with behind the scenes.

• It's being kept secret in a way that's somewhat rare for Microsoft. It's only being shown to people immediately concerned with the project within the company, and evidently to a small group of journalists as well. It's Zune-HD-level secrecy, which is to say, pretty high.

That's all we've got for now, and with Mobile World Congress creeping closer by the minute, it'd be safe to assume we'll learn more before the big unveil. We'll keep digging, but as always, if you know anything, let us know.



Thermally Insulating Material

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Good morning all,

I am looking for a material that is about as rigid as aluminum, but has better thermal insulating properties. The part I'm designing is approximately 6" x 6" x .15" thick.

It should be easy to machine (or at least can be machined by a typical machine shop). I do n

MiFi Exploit Shows GPS Position and Security Settings for Your Mobile Hotspot [Security]

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We're fans of Novatel's MiFi hotspots, which allow a 3G connection to be converted into Wi-Fi. What we are not fans of is a new exploit that lets hackers reveal your location and all your security info.

The exploit, which affects the MiFi 2200s sold by Verizon and Sprint, kicks in when users visit a certain website.

"Among the information the MiFi 2200 will readily share is the WiFi security key – sent in clear text – and with some Javascript Baldwin showed it was possible to change the hotspot's settings to the point where a factory reset is required in order to restore functionality to the user. Even if GPS is turned off, a remote command can be used to switch it back on.

A further exploit can extract the entire configuration of the MiFi, again in clear text, including all of the security settings."

If you're a MiFi user, just be careful out there until Novatel issues a fix. [UMPC Portal via SlashGear]