Sony has managed a big step forward in projection technology with its new SXRD display device. Measuring just 0.78″ diagonally, the LCD panel boasts a resolution of 1920×1080 and an amazing contrast ratio of 3000:1.

The contrast ratio is the biggest leap, most current high-end LCD projection panels can only manage 1000:1. Sony has managed to create what it calls “Vertically Aligned Liquid Crystal” materials that perform far better than conventional liquid crystal technology. The enhanced contrast should make for far richer colours on screen. The higher the contrast ratio, the better the output, it is a measure of the difference between the brightest and darkest areas of the screen.

Sony also claims that the SXRD should improve picture quality. Many projectors suffer from blockiness where the gap between pixels causes a mosaic effect on the projection screen. Each pixel on the new panel is just 9?m across. The SXRD has a gap between pixels of only 0.35?m. According to Sony, that’s the world’s smallest inter-pixel spacing, a 10 fold improvement over competiting technology.

All this would be useless without a good refresh rate and the SXRD scores here too. The pixels have a 5 millisecond response time. There is no indication yet of how much the new panels will cost, though we would expect a high premium to start with.

If projectors made using this panel live up to the specifications they should knock everything else off the top end of the market. Here’s hoping that Sony can manage to make them cheaply enough to put them in the low end.

Thanks to the Inquirer

Interesting… Google keeps everything. By using an indefinite cookie, they track your IP address and all searches you’ve ever done. Thankfully I purge all cookies at the end of each session thanks to Opera (http://www.opera.com).

They also employ ex-NSA Spooks. Be a valuable source of information about individuals wouldn’t it?

Link: http://www.google-watch.org/bigbro.html

Ok, I’m not one who is normally amenable to paranoid conspiracy theories, however I do have to admit that the Columbia Accident has me wondering…

I kept hearing that at 200,000ft (~65km) and 20,000km/h, the Shuttle was too high and too fast for any kind of attack by anti-aircraft missile.

However, I have been reading about new technology the US Military has that uses laser. Now that would be a damn sight easier to use to destory a fast moving object… wouldn’t it?

And then I see this story…

Photos show odd images near shuttle
David Perlman, Chronicle Science Editor
Sunday, February 2, 2003

A San Francisco amateur astronomer who photographs the space shuttles whenever their orbits carry them over the Bay Area has captured five strange and provocative images of the shuttle Columbia just as it was re-entering the Earth’s atmosphere before dawn Saturday.

The pictures, taken with a Nikon 8 camera on a tripod, reveal what appear to be bright electrical phenomena flashing around the track of the shuttle’s passage, but the photographer, who asked not to be identified, will not make them public immediately.

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2003/02/02/MN221641.DTLM

But would the Military/NASA do this to themselves and their Astronauts?

Hmmm? Try this on for size.

Bush to Propose $500 Million Budget Increase for NASA
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A16155-2003Feb2.html

At any given time there are a dozen or so security holes in Internet Explorer. Right now there are 19 security holes in the latest version of Internet Explorer, with all patches and service packs applied.

Link: http://www.pivx.com/larholm/unpatched/

Did you know it’s now been seventeen years since the Challenger exploded?

Some argue that Open Source and Free Software are best left as a niche market, and that widespread acceptance of software without license fees will harm the economy. Certainly, widespread adoption of Linux, OpenOffice and other freely available software would be harmful to the bottom line of certain companies, but would it be harmful to the economy overall?

My guess is that it would be beneficial. Right now, many companies and organizations are facing budget cuts. They must choose between cutting manpower and not buying software that they need to run their businesses. While companies can put off some software purchases, they cannot avoid others. In the face-off between employees and license fees, employees are losing all too often.

It was reported recently that Microsoft (Nasdaq: MSFT) pockets 85 percent of the revenue from Windows sales. That kind of profit margin is unheard of in any other industry. There’s nothing wrong with turning a profit, of course, but the money isn’t just falling out of the sky and into Bill’s pockets. It’s coming out of your pocket and, more than likely, your employer’s.

Read the full story at NewsFactor

Toshiba’s new digital music player shows us more evidence that (consumer electronics) + (digital rights management) = ass. The DRM vendor’s mantra is, “DRM needs to be invisible, it needs to get out of the way of legitimate activity and only crop up when the user tries to infringe on copyright.” A good sentiment, but it’s more wishful thinking than design specification, as the new Tosh Mobilphone demonstrates.

The Mobilphone is an iPod clone with a 5GB drive and a USB 2.0 interface. The iPod, of course, rules for a number of reasons, but one of the biggies is that by using FireWire to synch MP3s with your computer, the iPod is capable of filling itself up with music in a matter of minutes. USB 2.0 leapfrogs FireWire and delivers even greater speed. So far, so good.

But for “security” reasons, the Mobilphone will only play music that has been encrypted with Toshiba’s proprietary cipher. The encryption happens when you use Toshiba’s software to synch your Mobilphone with your PC. Now, leave aside for the moment that this means that without (illegally, under the DMCA) reverse-engineering the crypto, no vendor except Toshiba and its licensees will ever be able to deliver a client for the Mobilphone (so forget about Linux, BSD, Mac or device-to-device apps), and that if Toshiba’s fly-sized attention-span wanders away from the device, you’ll be stuck holding a 5GB boat anchor.

Yes, leave that aside, because there’s an immediate, non-hypothetical reason that Toshiba’s brainless crypto-scheme is a stupid, anti-customer idea. The encryption of your music happens on the fly, as you synch your Mobilphone with your PC. That encryption process is CPU-intensive, so much so that it slows the USB 2.0 interface to USB 1.1 speeds. In other words, despite the presence of some truly azz- kicking, bleeding-edge interface technology, the Mobilphone synchs no faster than it would have if it had a poky old 1.1 bus.

Pracitically speaking this means that synching ten albums takes eight minutes instead of fifty seconds. I have an iTunes “Advanced Playlist” that grabs 5GB of random, high-rated music from my pool of 20GB of MP3s and synchs them every time I plug my iPod in — it takes a minute or two. With the Mobilphone, it’d take all afternoon. Rip. Mix. Wait.

Link

from boing boing

In 2000 the University of California, Berkeley published a study showing that printed content represents only 0.003% of the world’s total information — most of the remainder is stored digitally. If that figure is correct, almost our entire output as a society is entrusted to one of several Microsoft operating systems and disks with twelve-month limited warranties.

From shift.com