$4,250 iPod Amplifier And Speakers

It should smear a smirk on the face on the snobbiest puss. By Gizmodo

Simpl A1 iPod amplifier

Sharp SM-SX300-H Amplifier

I could tell you all about this new Sharp SM-SX300-H amplifier's delta sigma chips and 256-bit oversampling, or maybe regale you with stories about its copper chassis, gold-plated connectors, and it's Ohms -- oh lord, does it have Ohms -- but what you really are interested in is the fact that it looks very shi shi and costs about $17,000. Why? Because the inside is filled with solid gold pudding, and developing non-conductive golden pudding is the sort of science that doesn't come cheap.

Read - Product Page (Japanese) [Sharp via Akiba.SorobanGeeks]

Man Shoots Himself in Rear End (AP)

Deliveries in the Rear

Bringing Up the Rear

JVC Big Screen EXE Rear Projection TVs

JVC will introduce a few new rear projection TVs for the Japanese market, under the "Big Screen EXE" brand. The 61" "HD-61MD60" will cost 787,500 yen, and the 51" 682,500 yen. They do appear to have some nice specs, such as a 700cd/m² brightness on the 52 inch. But they're being marketed based on a low power consumption: 198W, not that we Americans really care. Speaking of Americans, JVC plans to introduce these two sets here in July, as well as add a 70" model.

Press Release [JVC]

Gateway's new rear-projection TV

GSM/GPRS/EDGE Power Amplifier Module

The browser war in the rear-view mirror

It's undeniable that, today, if you want to protect your computing life and you run Windows, you're insane to continue running basic Microsoft applications like Internet Explorer and Outlook. (Firefox and Thunderbird are great alternatives in the open source world. I'm still wedded to Opera and Eudora out of years-long habits. Opera does a great job of saving multiple open windows with multiple open tabs from session to session, even when you suffer a system freeze.) These programs function together in a variety of ways that Microsoft presented as good ideas at the time they were written. Hey, integration means everything works seamlessly, and everyone knows how highly the business world prizes the word "seamless."

Today it is precisely the same integration -- the way, for instance, that ActiveX controls and other code pass freely across the borders of these applications, allowing them to work together in potentially useful but hugely insecure ways -- that make IE and Outlook such free-fire zones for viruses and other mischief. (It's certainly true that the Microsoft universe is targeted by virus authors because it's where the most users are; but it's also true that Microsoft's products are sitting ducks in a way that its competitors in the Apple and open source worlds simply are not.) If you're willing to turn on Microsoft's auto-update to keep up with the operating system patches, and to abandon Outlook and IE for your day-to-day work, you can rest relatively easy. But you never know when some other application is calling on that "embedded browser functionality," when you're using that Outlook code without even realizing it.

Stross is strangely mum on the antitrust background of these matters. It's the ultimate, though not entirely unforeseen, irony of the Microsoft saga that the very integration-with-the-operating-system that enabled Microsoft to "cut off the air supply" of its Netscape competition is now looking more and more like the franchise's Achilles heel. Microsoft fought a tedious, embarrassing and costly legal war with the government to defend its right to embed Web browser functionality in the heart of the operating system. "Our operating system is whatever we say it is! How dare government bureaucrats meddle with our technology!" was the company's war cry.

Now it turns out that if Gates and company had paid a little more heed to the government they might have done their users, and their business, a favor. Microsoft's tight browser/operating system integration helped spell Netscape's corporate doom; today it is one of the biggest gaping holes in Windows security, and a legion of hostile viruses swarms through it.

Stross writes, "Stuck with code from a bygone era when the need for protection against bad guys was little considered, Microsoft cannot do much. It does not offer a new stand-alone version of Internet Explorer. Instead, the loyal customer must download and install the newest version of Service Pack 2. That, in turn, requires Windows XP. Those who have an earlier version of Windows are out of luck if they wish to stick with Internet Explorer."

But it's not quite that simple. Microsoft's reluctance to invest in browser development has stemmed only partly from the kind of inertia that comes from having won a war in a previous generation ("The browser? We own that space, we don't have to keep improving it"). Even more deeply, Microsoft has been reluctant to make the browser better -- more reliable, more secure, more flexible as an interface for more kinds of applications -- because its leaders understood very well what that would mean: The better the browser is, the less dependent people are on the operating system's features -- as today's users of well-designed Web applications like Gmail, Flickr and Basecamp demonstrate every day. This is not where Microsoft wants to see the computing world go, so why, once it gained a stranglehold on the browser market, would it help the process along?

In other words, what happened once Microsoft left the courtroom was precisely and exactly what the government's antitrust lawyers said would happen: Microsoft's goal in integrating the browser was not to serve the public and the users, but to shut down further innovation and development. Netscape argued that Microsoft wanted to control browsers because it wanted to make sure they did not emerge as a platform for applications that would undermine Windows' importance. Netscape, the record now shows, was right.

We lost three or four years of Internet time (from the collapse of the bubble to this year's Renaissance of Web applications) thanks to Microsoft's stonewalling and the Bush administration's unwillingness to represent the public interest in this matter. The next time a worm comes crawling through your Windows, curse the Justice Department's settlement -- and go download Firefox.

MTV to Cut Shot of Eminem Exposing Rear
(AP)

MTV to cut shot of Eminem exposing rear

Consumers Want Rear-Projection TV's, and
Now

Mechanical Force Amplifier Leverages
Pounds Into Tons

New 2.0 MHz Power Amplifier Expands
Signal Generation Limits

MTV to Edit Shot of Eminem Exposing Rear
(AP)

Minor Injuries as Train Is Rear-ended

Thomson's new ultrathin rear projection
HDTVs

Canon to Start Making Rear Projection
TVs in 2005

Radio Shack's Wireless Rear-Channel Amplifier