USB Disk Dock

This is new USB disk dock. This allows us to exploit the elegance and scalability of USB interface. Those old days where you meddle your CPU's cabinet and jerk in your hard drive are gone. This USB Dock can't be more simpler, you can just snap your SATA hard drive into this Disk Dock connect to computer with a USB cable.

This USB Dcok can support both 2.5-inch and 3.5-inch hard drives you simply plug it at top. With the upcoming USB 3.0 the transfer rate is even more faster and better. Usability of disks have become very simple such that you can just rack up hard disks at home and plug-in which you require. With all these convenience USB dock cost around $46.79 which is relatively cheap.

Disc Repair Gadgets!

A nasty scratch used to be a death sentence for CDs, DVDs and other discs. Now, gadgets like the VenMill Skip-Away(left) and the Disc-Go-Pod Plus(right) claim to save your media library from nicks and scars. Thus saving your valuable DVDs and CDs from getting ditched.

VenMill Skip-Away costs around $250and it uses heat and pressure to flatten nicks.Whereas Disc-Go-Pod Plus costs around $495 which drowns discs in a creamy crack-filling polish.

Both of them works well on light marks and medium scratches.

World's first Dual GPU graphics card ATi Radeon HD3870 x2

ATi Radeon HD 3870 x2 is the new year gift to gamers from ATi which is totally based on a new technology. Unlike utilizing the 2 seperate GPUs( as in nVidia's SLI and ATi crossfire ). This card takes a ground breaking leap by making out 2 GPUs in a single card. This technology has its advantages like

1. The card can sit in normal PCI 1.1 slot whereas in SLI and Crossfire you need to get a compatible motherboard for it.

2. The 2 GPUs in a single itself saves lot of power whereas 2 seperate cards will naturally require more power.

This card is also available as single GPU card HD3870 which has some difference as follows

1. The clock of GPU chip is less when compared to x2 card. HD 3870 x2 clocking @ 825MHz whereas in normal HD3870 clocking @ 775MHz

2. The HD3870 x2 has 1GB GDDR3 memory clocked at 1.8GHz which is slower than HD3870's GDDR4 memory clocked at 2.25GHz.

3. The HD3870 x2 's power is less than double the power of HD3870 due to the overhead involved in getting two GPUs to work in tandem.

This card cost sub $300.

USB 3.0 is here!

The Universal Serial Bus (USB) as found in most of the peripherals around has the biggest success stories never before, replacing the slow serial and parallel yores. Its easy plug in enables to access the device without rebooting.

Then came USB 2.0 which has better performance than 1.0 and with high bit rate of 480 Mbps, whereas the former version had maximum speed of 12.1 Mbps. It's not hyperbole to say that USB, despite its humble status as a mere connector, is one of the most important computer technologies to ever be invented.

The icing on the cake this year is USB 3.0 with staggering speed of 4.80 Gbps which is 10 times the speed of existing system that quenches the thirst for transfer of huge chunk data which includes the High Definition videos. With the forecoming devices like USB 3.0 disk dock, you can transfer data in hyper-speeds.

The demonstration of the USB 3.0 shows a optical cable with same connector is backward compatible allowing to use the former versions of the USB. It also promises better power efficiency, which allows better charging of the peripherals.

It is planned to be released next year.

Gamers Beware of Starforce copy protection!

I love playing games, moreover i'm very fond of playing third person games like Legacy of kain series, Max Payne, Devil may cry etc and one ultimate game Prince of persia from ubisoft was jaw dropping game with real time moves and fighting skills.

The last of the trilogy was The Two thrones and i was craving to play it, i got the DVD it from my friend and since he was beckoning me to return it, i made a image of the DVD and tried installing it, it was a clean install but it doesn't work and it says to insert the correct Disc.

So i got a solution to this problem where i need to disconnect my physical drives and play from the image, i thought to myself "why these goddamn protection softwares keep evolving?". I did as per the solution and it worked with my DVD drive unplugged. I didnt actually know how risky was it to override a Starforce protection.

But then i read in internet the actual working of starforce protection

1. While the game installs it also stealthily installs drivers(why drivers for a game?), which is done without the knowledge of the user and it asks for restart(which is unavoidable).
Actually drivers are hardware specific and it is the only set of programs that enables the hardware to work properly, this is very dangerous territory indeed.

2. Starforce drivers are not hardware specific and hence it makes the hardware to work beyond the safety margins.

3. This could lead to irrepairable damage to the device such as DVD writer has problem in writing.

There are many case where there are issues of destruction of SATA hard disks while attempting to remove Starforce drivers from the computer using some removal tools (In no other ways this can be removed exception to formatting of the PC)

These issues happened even to legitimate users where the same procedure is done irrespective of the legit copy or copy of the original.

So guys beware of the games you are installing and also the protection system it has!

Play Safe!

Robot Created To Treat Ailing Hearts

U.S. scientists have created a robotic device that can be inserted onto a heart using minimally invasive surgery to deliver medical treatment.

Resembling a robotic caterpillar, the device developed by Cameron Riviere and colleagues at Carnegie Mellon University can crawl across the surface of a beating heart, delivering drugs or attaching medical devices.

The 20-millimeter-long robot -- called HeartLander -- has two suckers for feet, each pierced with 20 holes connected to a vacuum line, which holds it onto the outside of the heart. By moving its body segments it can crawl across the heart at up to seven inches per minute. Surgeons keep track of the device using X-ray video or a magnetic tracker, controlling the movements via a joystick.

"HeartLander can reach all parts of the heart's surface," Riviere said. And because it's stationary relative to the heart's surface, there is no need to interfere with the organ's movement.

The researchers are now working on adding a radio-frequency probe to treat arrhythmias by selectively killing malfunctioning heart tissue. They also plan to add a camera.

The research is described in New Scientist magazine.

Japanese robot 'wired to monkey's brain'

Click on image to enlarge

Wow this looks cool...

Japanese and US researchers have created a humanoid that responds to a brain of a monkey!
They have created in such a way that the prosthetic hand and legs cold be controlled by signals from brain. Here they have used a monkey's brain to control the movement of the limbs.

The researchers expressed that humanoid responded to the activity of cortex of monkey's brain when the humanoid was made to walk over a treadmill with support from chords attached to treadmill. This humanoid showed movements which resembled a monkey movement.

Thus this experiment will be a giant leap for helping people who are disabled. The prosthetic limbs which is mentally controlled will enable the patient to walk.