One of the most striking images from The Terminator was the weapon he carried and used in his first attempt on Sarah Connor’s life: the .45 Longslide, with laser sighting. Who can forget the scene in the gun shop? The gun was likewise such a striking presence on screen it was used on the film’s poster. There are T-shirts dedicated to the gun.
Terminator was released in 1984, and while laser sights on weapons are common now, when the film was first shown the red laser was able to communicate something subtle and powerful to the audience: this is a machine, deadly accurate and futuristic. It made the Terminator seem other-worldly and terrifying. At a party during CES, Deputy Editor Jon Stokes and I bumped into some representatives from SureFire, a company that specializes in tactical flashlights. We talked about some of our favorite moments with technology in cinema, and The Terminator came up.
“We created that laser!” I was told. They told me the gentleman who built the prop was named Ed Reynolds, and he was still with the company. More than a little jazzed about bumping into a fun part of film history, we knew we had to get the full story behind the Terminator’s gun.
People of the world who hate hate HATE going to the dentist, rejoice: DentalVibe is a new device that completely eliminates the pain when they are sticking a stainless steel needle into your gums. All by cleverly fooling your brain.
Developed by Dr. Steven G. Goldberg DDS and Bresslergroup, DentalVibe vibrates at irregular intervals. While the brain ignores rapid rhythmical vibration, it notices pulses that are not regular. These vibrations are transmitted by A-beta nerve fibers, which are faster than the slower C fibers that transmit the sensation of pain caused by the needle penetrating your gums.
The result is that your brain will only notice the percussive vibration, but not the pain of the needle tearing apart the flesh of your gums until it hits the bone. Clever. Now they only have to solve the problem of the drilling, the tubes stretching your mouth, and the muzzak making you brain melt. [Bresslergroup]
You may not need a briefcase to carry your laptop in the near feature. Just roll the computer and wear it like a shoulder handbag.
Orkin Design, a design firm in Germany, has created a amazing concept computer that can be used both as a laptop and a tablet (slate). It features a large multitouch screen, USB ports, webcam, stylus and everything that you probably look for in a computer.
[Video] The Future “All-in-One” Computer
The sad part, you can only experience this flexible laptop in a video and we don’t know if any of the hardware companies are actually working on such a design. As one commenter points out:
Its an interesting concept, but It is probably a long ways from any sort of actual prototype. Forget DVD drives, what about Circuit boards! They would need to find a new material instead of the current silicon, as circuit boards today cant withstand much flexibility.
I know simple circuit boards are flexible (hence rollup keyboards), but I have yet to see a flexible motherboard that supports the required watts/current of a modern chipset and processor.
Thanks Joe Hicks from Tokyo for sharing this video.
a href=”http://arstechnica.com/business/it-town-hall/2010/02/optimizing-windows-7-for-battery-performance-on-the-netbook.ars?utm_source=rssamp;utm_medium=rssamp;utm_campaign=rss”
img vspace=”4″ hspace=”4″ border=”0″ align=”right” src=”http://static.arstechnica.com/assets/2009/10/acer_aspire_one_netbooks-thumb-230×130-9153-f.jpg” /
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!–body–
pMore than fifty million netbooks have been sold since the phenomenon’s beginnings in late 2007, and of those, only a small fraction run Windows 7. With cheap licenses available in family packs and academic discounts, and XP installs increasingly decrepit, ugly, and vulnerable to malware, lots of Windows 7 upgrades are going to happen. However, a quick install from a USB DVD-ROM or thumb drive won’t let users get the most out of a netbook. As with the Hindu a href=”http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saptapadi”Saptapadi/a wedding vows, there are seven steps to optimizing your netbook for maximum Windows 7 performance./p
a href=”http://arstechnica.com/business/it-town-hall/2010/02/optimizing-windows-7-for-battery-performance-on-the-netbook.ars?utm_source=rssamp;utm_medium=rssamp;utm_campaign=rss” title=”Click here to continue reading this article”img src=”http://static.arstechnica.com/mt-static/plugins/ArsTheme/images/read-more.jpg” alt=”Read the rest of this article…”/abr /br /
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More than fifty million netbooks have been sold since the phenomenon’s beginnings in late 2007, and of those, only a small fraction run Windows 7. With cheap licenses available in family packs and academic discounts, and XP installs increasingly decrepit, ugly, and vulnerable to malware, lots of Windows 7 upgrades are going to happen. However, a quick install from a USB DVD-ROM or thumb drive won’t let users get the most out of a netbook. As with the Hindu Saptapadi wedding vows, there are seven steps to optimizing your netbook for maximum Windows 7 performance.
Want your stolen gear back? Don’t call some gung-ho superhero who’s as likely to blow up your small grocery store as he is to catch those perps, call GadgetTrak instead. The little startup company has grown since we last heard of it back in 2007, and is now operating a $25 per year tracking service that has delivered a statistically significant 95 percent success rate on reuniting gadgets with their owners. Available for Mac OS and Windows laptops, as well as mobile phones (BlackBerrys, WinMo, and iPhone) and even removable USB storage, the software’s intelligent enough to remotely activate your webcam and ping the incriminating info back directly to you — no data is sent to GadgetTrak. Check out some recent news coverage of the software and its implementation in local schools after the break.
The iPad Pro is a more powerful version of the iPad with a true widescreen, built-in web camera and a full keyboard.
With iPad Pro, you can do heavy-duty tasks like editing videos, it has USB ports so you can directly attach Flash drives and digital cameras without any accessories, it supports the Adobe Flash Player so you can watch movies on Hulu and there’s a built-in DVD drive so burning data is possible.
The best part is that you can buy the iPad Pro right now from any Apple Store worldwide – it’s just a little more expensive than the iPad. Picture credit: Page71.
The last three years has seen an explosion in new smartphone operating systems. Apple’s iPhone OS, Google’s Android, Palm’s webOS, and Nokia’s Maemo all offer rich, touch-driven platforms for a new generation of fast, Internet-capable, high-end telephonic pocket-sized computers. The one company missing from that list is, of course, Microsoft. Though a long-time player in the smartphone OS market, Windows Mobile is outclassed by its competition. The recent 6.5 release has done little to redress the balance. Windows Mobile is slow, unstable, clunky, and fundamentally not designed for use with fingers. Today at Mobile World Congress, Microsoft showed off its new phone platform for the first time. Everything that we knew and loathed about Windows Mobile is gone. Even the name is different. It’s now “Windows Phone 7 Series.”
That Microsoft has been working on a successor to Windows Mobile 6, due for release some time this year, is no secret. That this successor was intended to be the platform that got Redmond back in the game was equally well-known. But beyond that, little more was known. There have been rumours—especially of a Zune Phone—but nothing concrete.
a href=”http://arstechnica.com/microsoft/news/2010/02/microsoft-unveils-windows-phone-7-series.ars?utm_source=rssamp;utm_medium=rssamp;utm_campaign=rss”
img vspace=”4″ hspace=”4″ border=”0″ align=”right” src=”http://static.arstechnica.com/assets/2010/02/windows_phone_7_listing_ars-thumb-230×130-12107-f.jpg” /
/a
!–body–
pThe last three years has seen an explosion in new smartphone operating systems. a href=”http://arstechnica.com/apple/reviews/2007/07/iphone-review.ars”Apple’s iPhone OS/a, a href=”http://arstechnica.com/hardware/reviews/2008/10/android-g1-review.ars”Google’s Android/a, a href=”http://arstechnica.com/gadgets/news/2009/06/ars-reviews-the-palm-pre-part-1-the-blackberry-killer.ars”Palm’s webOS/a, and a href=”http://arstechnica.com/gadgets/news/2009/10/nokias-n900-is-an-important-step-forward-for-mobile-linux.ars”Nokia’s Maemo/a all offer rich, touch-driven platforms for a new generation of fast, Internet-capable, high-end telephonic empocket-sized computers/em. The one company missing from that list is, of course, Microsoft. Though a long-time player in the smartphone OS market, Windows Mobile is outclassed by its competition. The recent a href=”http://arstechnica.com/microsoft/news/2009/02/ballmer-windows-mobile-65-phones-are-just-windows-phones.ars”6.5/a release has done little to redress the balance. Windows Mobile is slow, unstable, clunky, and fundamentally not designed for use with fingers. Today at Mobile World Congress, Microsoft showed off its new phone platform for the first time. Everything that we knew and loathed about Windows Mobile is gone. Even the name is different. It’s now “Windows Phone 7 Series.”/p
pThat Microsoft has been working on a successor to Windows Mobile 6, due for release some time this year, a href=”http://arstechnica.com/microsoft/news/2009/12/windows-mobile-7-in-late-2010-already-game-over.ars”is no secret/a. That this successor was intended to be the platform that got Redmond back in the game was equally well-known. But beyond that, little more was known. There have been rumours#8212;especially of a Zune Phone#8212;but nothing concrete.nbsp;/p
a href=”http://arstechnica.com/microsoft/news/2010/02/microsoft-unveils-windows-phone-7-series.ars?utm_source=rssamp;utm_medium=rssamp;utm_campaign=rss” title=”Click here to continue reading this article”img src=”http://static.arstechnica.com/mt-static/plugins/ArsTheme/images/read-more.jpg” alt=”Read the rest of this article…”/abr /br /
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If you happen to be in Times Square any time soon, you may notice this billboard for Best Buy’s electronics recycling program. Make sure you take a close look! It’s composed entirely of outmoded gear.
While part of me would hope some VHS players and bulky monitors would be allowed to fade away with dignity, at least these are ultimately being used in a clever way that promotes a good cause.
Besides, it looks cool! And it’s bonus fun hunting for bygone favorites. [Scouting NY]
If you happen to be in Times Square any time soon, you may notice this billboard for Best Buy’s electronics recycling program. Make sure you take a close look! It’s composed entirely of outmoded gear.
Besides, it looks cool! And it’s bonus fun hunting for bygone favorites. [
