Wednesday 29 January 2003

The Mac v PC argument has been going on for ages. Now it seems detente is on the way: Mac vs. Windows: Who Cares?. The Macintosh and Windows camps appear to have reached a détente. While Apple stokes the fires with its 'Switch' advertising campaign, users have climbed out of their foxholes to shake hands. By Leander Kahney. [Wired News] 7:49:38 PM    comment []

X Prize adds four new teams. The X Prize, a suborbital space tourism competition, officially announced this week that four new teams have been accepted for the $10 million contest. The four new companies, all of which are small startups, include American Astronautics Corporation, Interorbital Systems, and Micro-Space, all of the US, as well as IL Aerospace Technologies of Israel. X Prize chairman Peter Diamandis said nearly two weeks ago at a Washington Space Business Roundtable luncheon that four teams would be added, but declined to identify them at the time. All four were added to the list of teams on the X Prize web site last week before the formal announcement this week. The X Prize offers a $10 million prize for the first privately-developed reusable vehicle capable of carrying three people to an altitude of 100 kilometers twice in a two-week period. No team has come close to claiming the prize since it was unveiled in 1996, although Diamandis said earlier this month that he believed one team would claim the prize within 18 months. The new entrants bring the number of official competitors to 24, representing seven countries. [spacetoday.net] 7:42:42 PM    comment []

I'm a big fan of Roger Gregg and his Crazy Dog Audio Theatre. One of the key pieces of sound equipment he uses is Theremin and this article in Linux Journal shows how to create one using a Wi-Fi network card. Geeks only. 7:37:38 PM    comment []

Apple has launched a new range of desktop models which finally break the 1GHz barrier. The entry level model is now 1GHz and costs E1499 plus VAT. However, in the US the same model is only E1385. It gets worse. The top of the line model with dual 1.42GHz G4s costs E3511 in the US but European users will pay a whopping E3879, a difference of almost E400. Apple says that this is due to the fact that the European market is made up of many different markets for which the machines have to be localised, while the US is one big market so there are economies of scale. Still, we should be grateful that Apple has speed bumped the PowerMac line. It was really overdue. And despite what Apple says about the myth of Megahertz, people are put off by what they see as a power difference between Apples running G4s at 1GHz and Wintel boxes running Pentium 4s at over 3Ghz. 11:27:50 AM    comment []

© Copyright 2003 David Stewart. Last update: 24/06/2003; 20:47:18.