Jump to content

i l l m a t i c

Premium Members
 View Profile  See their activity

  • Posts

    805

  • Joined

  • Last visited

 Content Type 

Posts posted by i l l m a t i c

    XBOX 2 will be quite powerful...

    in Gossip Café [/offtopic]

    Posted · Edited by Xx1LLMAT1CxX

    Another Xbox 2 Patent?

     

    Today, we bring you a new patent application that was filed in July, 2004 and published last week, in which Microsoft is patenting a “system, method, and data storage medium for sharing data between video games”

     

    This basically means that what Microsoft is trying to address with this new invention is a way to share data between different games within a franchise. So, when playing a game’s sequel you could be asked to play a previous title in the series in order to unlock hidden items such as levels, weapons or characters.

    But the invention is not just intended to go backwards, playing old games in a franchise. The patent also covers the possible scenario in which a first game will use the info of a second game in a series.

    hal.dll

    in Nerd's Chatter [/nerds]

    Posted

    have u tried manually replacing the file? or you can prolly fix it by using the windows xp cd and check if it asks "repair the following OS" or something like that....it should be right b4 u do a clean install..

    AMD's Centrino challenger: Turion

    in Gossip Café [/offtopic]

    Posted

    Turion is the brand name of a new line of energy-efficient notebook processors Advanced Micro Devices will come out with in the first half of 2005. It is chipmaker's response to Intel's Centrino notebook technology, company executives said at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas this week.

     

    While the company did not reveal any technical specifications on the chip, AMD said Turion will fit into thin and light notebooks and be optimized for extending battery power. Currently, AMD mostly sells notebook chips for "performance" notebooks, which provide desktoplike computing power but can sap batteries and generate heat.

     

    The company's Athlon 64 notebook chips come with thermal ceilings ranging from 25 watts to 62 watts. By contrast, the Pentium M, the processor at the heart of the Centrino chip bundle, has a thermal ceiling of about 20 watts. The thermal ceiling gauges how much heat the processor can produce without endangering the performance of the notebook.

     

    The chip will essentially allow AMD to compete more effectively in the lucrative notebook market. In recent years, Intel has enjoyed a wider market share in notebooks than in desktops, in part because of the Centrino chip bundle.

     

    http://news.com.com/AMDs+Centrino+challeng...ml?tag=nefd.top

    Knowing AMD, the Turion will prolly top the Centrino... :D

    Man Burns Down Home Over No Gifts

    in Gossip Café [/offtopic]

    Posted

    FEASTERVILLE, Pa. (AP) - A man angry that he got no presents for Christmas burned down his parents' house early the next morning, police said.

     

    Steven Murray, 21, was charged with arson and risking a catastrophe in the blaze that broke out early Sunday. No one was injured.

     

    Police said Murray had himself committed to a hospital on Christmas Day, but then signed himself out and walked eight miles home. Later he told police he saw the flames in the distance.

     

    But officers said his jacket smelled of smoke and they found a lighter in his pocket and a gas can near the front door.

     

    "He was irritated that his family gave him no presents for Christmas," Lower Southampton police officer Peter Liese said.

     

    Murray was jailed on $1 million bail. It was not immediately known whether he had a lawyer.

    Doctor mistakenly amputated the wrong...

    in Gossip Café [/offtopic]

    Posted

    AP - A doctor at a public hospital in southern Mexico mistakenly amputated the right leg of an elderly patient who had sought treatment for an infection in his left foot, the patient's family announced on Sunday.

     

    Seeking treatment for a foot wound aggravated by diabetes, Alberto Lopez, 74, was admitted to a Social Security Institute hospital in Tuxtla Gutierrez, 630 kms south of Mexico City, and underwent surgery on Friday.

     

    But the patient emerged from surgery without a right leg - and still suffering from the original infection - according to family members who filed a complaint Sunday with the state attorney general's office and a national medical arbitration commission.

     

    As of Sunday, Lopez had not yet been notified that the wrong limb was amputated unnecessarily, according to his daughter, Esperanza Lopez.

     

    "He could die on us just from the impact," she said. "What we are demanding of the authorities is that the person responsible be punished."

     

    Hospital director Jesus Siman acknowledged that a mistake was made and said the responsible doctor had been removed from the hospital while authorities investigate the incident. The doctor under investigation could not be reached for comment.

    $60m lottery winner delays claiming prize

    in Gossip Café [/offtopic]

    Posted

    Before Robert G. Swofford Jr. could come forward and claim his $60 million Lotto prize, he had to take care of some unfinished business: his divorce.

     

    The 53-year-old Seminole County postal worker is expected to claim a $34.7.million lump-sum payout today in Tallahassee, ending weeks of mystery about who had the winning numbers - 7, 8, 28, 29, 31, 33 - in the Nov. 24 drawing.

     

     

    Swofford and his wife separated three years ago. But two weeks after the winning numbers were announced, Ann Swofford served him with divorce papers and claimed a share of the prize.

     

    Just before Christmas, the Swoffords and their lawyers hammered out an agreement. According to court documents, Swofford will pay the taxes, his wife will get $5.25 million and $1 million will be set aside to support their 11-year-old son. In return, she agreed not to seek any more of Swofford's winnings.

     

     

    Most men wouldn't come out of divorce court smiling if they had to pay their ex-wife $5.25 million.

     

    "I'm getting divorced, gladly," Swofford said Monday.

     

    He said he might have been able to hold out for a better deal, but he was anxious to get the divorce over.

     

    His estranged wife drove to his home when she saw that the winning ticket had been sold at a nearby store. He didn't try to hide if from her, he said, because he remembered a California case in which a lottery winner kept it a secret and then was penalized in court.

     

    Lawyers for both sides say they expect the divorce to be finalized within the next week or two.

     

    Judges usually look out for the welfare of any children before approving a divorce settlement, said Stann W. Givens, a Tampa attorney representing Ann Swofford.

     

    "The child is well cared for," he said.

     

    Swofford's attorney, William A. Greenberg of Altamonte Springs, said his client is hard-working and down-to-earth. "He won't be buying a million-dollar mansion or a fleet of Mercedes," he said.

     

    Swofford is on leave from the U.S. Postal Service, where he is a forklift operator known to co-workers as "Bigfoot." He worked another three weeks - including overtime - after he knew he had the winning ticket. Swofford said he needed the money because he hadn't claimed the jackpot yet. His base salary is $41,000 a year, though he earned $65,000 in 2004, according to his divorce file.

     

    Life hasn't been easy for Swofford.

     

    In 1979, he was a Special Forces member when, he said, he was injured during parachute training at Eglin Air Force Base in northwest Florida. He was about 400 feet above the ground before his parachute finally opened and he hit the ground hard, severely injuring his arm, he said.

     

    He has been with the postal service for 16 years. In the late 1990s, depressed and taking pain pills, he said he missed work and his mortgage company foreclosed on his home in northwest Seminole County.

     

    In 1999, during the foreclosure process, Swofford filed for bankruptcy-court protection, staving off the sale of his home for about a year.

     

    Despite the financial problems, Swofford has been a regular Lotto player, spending about $80 a week - $40 on each drawing. He has hit five numbers a couple of times, but about $1,800 was the most he had ever won.

     

    Swofford normally picks 15 sets of numbers and buys 25 quick-picks, in which the lottery's computer randomly selects the numbers. For the Nov..24 drawing, he spent more than usual - $60, buying 20 extra quick-picks.

     

    The next day, Thanksgiving, his landlady pointed out the winning ticket had been sold at a Cumberland Farms in Altamonte Springs. Swofford was pretty sure the one on State Road.436, where he usually buys his tickets, was the only Cumberland Farms in Altamonte Springs.

     

    The landlady went out to get the newspaper, and he got his tickets, he said.

     

    "It was the first time she had been interested in the lottery other than telling me I was wasting my money," he said.

     

    When she pointed out that the winning ticket was a quick-pick, he put aside his regular tickets and placed his nine quick-pick tickets - each with five sets of numbers - face down, and began looking at them one at a time.

     

    He was on the last line of the last ticket when he saw the winning numbers.

     

    Florida Lottery spokesman Alfred Bea said his office is expecting the jackpot to be claimed at about 9.a.m. today, but he said he had no idea who the winner is.

     

    "No one's a winner until they turn the ticket over to us and we verify it," he said.

     

    Swofford said he plans to be generous with family and is already making plans to look for a house.

     

    "I'm going to be able to help family and extended family," Swofford said, "and be able to get a house."

     

    One thing will be different this time: There won't be any mortgage payments.

    Boffin writes world's smallest P2P application

    in Gossip Café [/offtopic]

    Posted

    A professor of computer science at Princeton University has written the world's smallest peer-to-peer file sharing system to demonstrate the futility of trying to ban the technology.

     

    The application, written by Edward Felten in just 15 lines of code in the Python programming language, will not work on a large scale like Kazaa, but can form small P2P networks which can then be interlinked. The code can be seen here.

     

    "My goal in creating this program is not to facilitate copyright infringement," said Felten. "The program is useful mainly as a proof of concept. P2P apps can be very simple, and any moderately skilled programmer can write one, so attempts to ban their creation would be fruitless."

     

    In 2001 Felten hit the headlines when he was threatened with legal action by the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA).

     

    The RIAA had designed new watermarking technologies under its Secure Digital Music Initiative (SDMI) and invited hackers to try and break it. Felten proved that the technologies were fundamentally flawed.

     

    However, before Felten could present the research he was forced to withdraw after threats were made against him and his employers. SDMI was withdrawn shortly afterwards.

    A new hope for BitTorrent?

    in Gossip Café [/offtopic]

    Posted

    Dubbed Exeem, the software has already been distributed in a closed beta, or early test format, by the creators of the suprnova Web site, which was until late last month the most popular hub for the BitTorrent file-swapping community.

     

    Last week, the head of that now-defunct site, a man known as "Sloncek," officially announced the Exeem project in an interview on the NovaStream Webcasting network. He said that it would be a modified version of the popular BitTorrent technology, but transformed into a decentralized, searchable network similar to Kazaa or eDonkey.

     

    Reports from some beta testers are now beginning to come in, as the private testing nears its end.

     

    http://news.zdnet.com/2100-9588_22-5512230.html

     

    Prolly old news, but great news for p2p... ;):D

    Man Registers Deadly Blood-Alcohol Level

    in Gossip Café [/offtopic]

    Posted

    SOFIA, Bulgaria - Incredulous doctors made five blood tests on a drunken man to confirm he had a blood-alcohol content of 0.914, far above the usual life-threatening range, police and doctors said Tuesday.

     

     

     

    The 67-year-old man, whose name was not released, was hospitalized Dec. 20, when a car knocked him down on a street in the southern Bulgarian city of Plovdiv.

     

    A breath test showed high blood alcohol level, but police officers thought the result was inaccurate, because the man was conscious and talked with them, said Col. Angel Rangelov, head of police in Plovdiv.

     

    Laboratory analysis of five subsequent blood samples taken the same day confirmed that the man had had a 0.914 blood alcohol content, Rangelov said. An 0.55 blood-alcohol level is usually considered as life-threatening.

     

    Dr. Svetlan Dermendzhiev of Plovdiv's University hospital told state news agency BTA he had not seen such a high level.

     

    The man was reported in stable condition after treatment for head injuries.

×
×
  • Create New...