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Sunday, October 29, 2006

Game On at the Science Museum

The Science Museum's Game On videogame exhibition opened last week in a blaze of national press publicity, proclaiming a new respect for the medium.

We reckon videogames have been pretty well accepted as part of mainstream adult culture since Sony bulldozed its way into the market with the first Playstation though.

What Game On does best is put the industry's first 20 years in the spotlight, providing the chance to recall more innocent days when men were spaceships and women were Ms Pacman.
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Upgrading to Ubuntu Edgy Eft a "Nightmare"

"It's only been two days since the announcement of the official release of Ubuntu 6.10 (Edgy Eft), and the fallout has been very interesting to watch. By and large, fresh installs of Edgy tend to go well. Many people report improved performance over Dapper, improved stability, better device support, etc. A good showing. But what I find really interesting is the debacle that it has been for people who wanted to do an 'upgrade' from Dapper (6.06). Installing OS upgrades has historically been fraught with problems, but previous Ubuntu releases, many other Linux distros, and MacOS X have done surprisingly well in the recent past. But not Edgy."
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New Solar Panel Technology Gaining Momentum

"Even though copper indium gallium selenide (CIGS), a newer type of solar panel, is less efficient than it's silicon counterpart, millions are being invested in manufacturing. From the article: 'CIGS panels use far less raw material than silicon solar panels and the factories themselves cost less to build,' $25 million compared to $230 million in one example. These types of panels could even be made into a t-shirt logo."
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IPod's click wheel: Has it been framed?

Bye-bye click wheel?

If a recent patent filing is any indication, Apple Computer may abandon the iconic wheel that has become virtually synonymous with its popular iPod music players.

The company had previously explored replacing the click wheel with a virtual one as part of a touch-sensitive display. But now Apple appears to be looking at a third option: a touch-sensitive frame surrounding the display. Rather than click a physical button or press a virtual one on the screen, users would touch an area on the frame to operate their iPod.
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