An anonymous reader writes “Thirty minutes of footage from Frank Miller’s forthcoming The Spirit were shown to journalists in London yesterday. The description paints a picture of a highly stylized movie, somewhere between Sin City and Crimewave….”
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licorna writes “The 3.0 version of Python (also known as Python3k and Python3000) just got released few hours ago. It’s the first ever intentionally backwards-incompatible Python release.”
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Lumenary7204 writes “According to the Register, Apple recently received US Patent Application No. 20080291629 for a “liquid-cooled portable computer.” The filing describes a system where a “pump … coupled to the heat pipe is configured to circulate the liquid coolant through the heat pipe.” All claims of obviousness aside (after all, PC enthusiasts have been using liquid and phase-change cooling for years), the existence of the patent application seems to indicate that laptop manufacturers are in agreement with physicists and engineers who say we are running up against the practical limits of air-cooling such compact pieces of equipment.”
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Livestation, a product originally from Microsoft research has announced plans to bring free live streaming of TV to the iPhone. In a video posted on the Livestation website, CEO Matteo Berlucchi demonstrates a preview of the software. Currently the application will only work on Wi-Fi as operators “would not be happy” with the bandwidth consumption. The app is designed for iPod Touch and iPhone devices of all generations. Channels take approximately 10 seconds to buffer during which time Livestation may include adverts whilst the user waits. Currently Livestation is working on the quality of the release and their focus is on the technology rather than a release date.
After going widescreen last month, YouTube has now updated its UI and added a rather large search bar to every embedded video. As you can see from the embedded video below, there is now a big search bar across the top section of the video. The whole site has had a UI overhaul to refine the look of YouTube. There is no mention of the changes, which will likely be criticised, on the YouTube blog. Yesterday YouTube announced stricter standards for mature content. In a blog posting, the company announced plans to age-restrict “sexually suggestive” content.
Repton writes “Thanks to the Second Amendment, even the elderly have the right to keep and bear arms. The problem is that many of the guns out there are a bit unwieldy for an older person to handle. However, the inventors of the Palm Pistol are planning to change all that with a weapon that is ideal for both the elderly and the physically disabled. In a statement submitted to Medgadget, the manufacturer, Constitution Arms, has revealed the following: ‘We thought you might be interested to learn that the FDA has completed its “Device/Not a Device” determination and concluded the handgun will be listed as a Class I Medical Device.’ Physicians will be able to prescribe the Palm Pistol for qualified patients who may seek reimbursement through Medicare or private health insurance companies.”
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At an event in the Netherlands yesterday, Darren Huston, Corporate Vice President of COI at Microsoft, revealed that the updated Windows Live Wave 3 RC applications will be released next week. LiveSide bloggers were on hand to get the scoop that the applications will be released next week at download.live.com. Final versions of Hotmail, Calendar and People are expected in February 2009 too. The Messenger Wave 3 RC will include the new UI we revealed at PDC and Messenger icon, shown below.
IEEE Spectrum is running a feature about the progress of game AI, and how it’s helping to drive AI development in general. They explore several of the current avenues of research and look at potential solutions to some of the common problems. “The trade-off between blind searching and employing specialized knowledge is a central topic in AI research. In video games, searching can be problematic because there are often vast sets of possible game states to consider and not much time and memory available to make the required calculations. One way to get around these hurdles is to work not on the actual game at hand but on a much-simplified version. Abstractions of this kind often make it practical to search far ahead through the many possible game states while assessing each of them according to some straightforward formula. If that can be done, a computer-operated character will appear as intelligent as a chess-playing program–although the bot’s seemingly deft actions will, in fact, be guided by simple brute-force calculations.”
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Flying in the face of those that thought Microsoft would be charging for any and all upgrades to the NXE clothing range comes the news that the range has just been updated. For the low price of “absolutely nothing”, you can now kit out your Avatar in stylish new winter gear, including a snowboarding jacket. Admittedly, the update is a very small one, but the fact that Microsoft haven't dragged their heels over updating the virtual wardrobe so close to the initial release of the NXE can only be seen as a good sign. What new clothing would Neowinians like to see?
Chris Holmes, Windows Enthusiast and blogger, has posted a short and somewhat blurry video of the new Windows 7 boot screen in action. The latest sign of changes for Windows 7 signals a departure from the Vista boot up screen. Microsoft kept the boot screen simple with Vista after asking BIOS makers, PC makers, and video card makers to remove product advertisement screens at system boot. Microsoft created a simple boot method which it claimed took 6 seconds off initial boot compared to the more graphical boot that it had originally planned with the Longhorn betas.