Warner Bros. Licenses Content for Distribution on DivX Certified(R) Consumer Electronics Devices

Agreement Enables Retailers to Offer Premium Content in DivX(R) Format for Playback on Variety of Devices

SAN DIEGO & LOS ANGELES —(Business Wire)— Oct 14, 2008 DivX, Inc. (NASDAQ:DIVX) and Warner Bros. Entertainment today announced an agreement that will enable online retailers to offer Warner Bros. titles in the high-quality DivX® standard definition format in October 2008 and high definition format in September 2009 for playback on DivX Certified® consumer electronics devices.

The wide-ranging agreement covers all titles available for digital distribution in the Warner Bros. catalogue including current and back-catalogue major motion pictures and television programs. All titles offered in the DivX format are compatible with a variety of DivX Certified devices from major consumer electronics brands, including DVD players, Blu-ray devices, gaming consoles and more. The agreement allows retailers who sign additional agreements with DivX and Warner Bros. to offer Warner titles in the DivX digital media format.

“Using the DivX secure format is in keeping with our overall digital distribution strategy,” said Jim Wuthrich, Senior Vice President, Warner Bros. Digital Distribution. “The visual quality, security and widespread interoperability of the DivX format offers an excellent means for consumers to enjoy Warner Bros.’ content whenever and wherever they desire.”

“Warner Bros. offers an extremely compelling catalogue of premium, high-quality content enjoyed by consumers all over the world,” said Kevin Hell, CEO of DivX, Inc. “We’re very excited to work together to offer consumers premium content on any DivX device, from the PC to the living room and on the go.”

For more information about DivX, visit www.divx.com. To learn more about Warner Bros. Entertainment visit www.warnerbros.com.

Two bits on the Pro side: There isn't a new 17-inch model. Whether it'll show up later (like the original 17-inch MacBook Pro) or will fade into history is unknown, but the current one will hang around for a bit. The biggie, though, is that the Pro has TWO graphics cards—a GeForce 9400M and a 9600M GT. It'll use the 9400M when it needs to conserve battery juice, and kick on the 9600M when it needs raw power. CPU is going to be about the same. Oh, and it's go glossy or go home, there is no matte option.

For the new MacBooks, they'll look just like 13-inch Pros, but they'll cost ya on that level too: The cheapest aluminum MacBook will be $1299, come with a 2GHz processor, 2GB RAM and 160GB HDD. Yeah, that CPU is a bit slower than the old one, but supposedly the GeForce 9400M inside will make up for it. The white MacBook will stick around, and drop to $999 for the base model.

And for the Airs, more storage, 120GB HDD and 128GB SSD. Woohoo. Of course, we'll find out soon, as we bring to you live. [Daring Fireball]

Elmo has four touch-sensitive spots—his foot, stomach, back and nose—and he does different things depending on where you press. Here's some of the funny things he does when you touch his nose, such as sneezing and playing the "got your nose" game:

The little red monster is at his animatronic best when he is telling a story: He sits, stands, opens his mouth and flails his arms all around. It's a shame he only has two stories to tell.

It's good to see that Elmo still raps, and his instant classic "Elmo's Gotta Get On Up" is as head-bobbing as ever—especially when he's wearing some bling from our personal collection. When you touch his back, he says all kinds of creepy lovable things like asking for hugs or to scratch his itch. In fact, Elmo can get downright clingy.

So is he worth the $60 list price—or more realistically, the hundreds of dollars you'll spend buying him on eBay when supplies run out? He's not as cuddly and interactive as previous Elmos; you mostly have to sit back after touching him and let him do his thing. Despite all that you see here, I actually grew bored of him fairly fast. Worst of all, as you can hear, his motors are as loud as his voice, which detracts from the fun in a big way.

On the flipside, most of the kids on Good Morning America went nuts for the furball. I'm no Dr. Spock, but my theory is, if you love your kids and don't want them reliving their failed childhood in psychotherapy forty years from now, you really ought to buy this thing. [Fisher-Price Elmo Live]

Most Apple buyers are fully aware that they could purchase a cheaper computers from another manufacturer — after all, Apple's hardware specifications aren't exactly closely guarded secrets. Telling them this again and again won't win any converts, but it will, in a way, "rally the base" of fervent Apple critics online and elsewhere. If you also take into consideration that fact that Microsoft isn't promoting a specific new competitor to the new MacBook or even saying many positive things about any of their products, it is pretty clear what this is: an old-fashioned attack ad.

Unfortunately for Microsoft, it's doubtful that it will change anything. With or without these ads, new MacBooks will inspire a hoard of people — most of whom would have never purchased one anyway — to write about how overpriced the hardware is. Shouting "COMMODITIZED PCS ARE CHEAPER" over and over again and throwing around phrases like "Apple Tax" isn't a marketing strategy — it's political entrenchment. For computers. Partial text of the email below.

The economy is impacting consumer choices, but Macs, due to their high upfront, won’t sell in a more conservative market. On Sept. 29th, Morgan Stanley noted: “PC unit growth is decelerating and the remaining source of growth is increasingly the sub-$1,000 market where Apple does not play.” Even if Apple were to drop pricing, the Apple Tax still prices Macs well outside of the sub-$1000 range.

You can get a PC laptop with a bigger hard drive, more RAM, a media-card reader, more USB ports, and a bigger screen, for much less than a Mac. See the comparison chart below for just a few examples of what you can get today…we’ll send out an updated comparison chart after Apple’s announcement tomorrow.
You can upgrade just about any Windows desktop PC, but the only significantly upgradeable Mac is the Mac Pro listed at $2799.00.

Repurchasing software to make your Mac do all the things your PC does will cost you hundreds of dollars. Buying a Mac means scrapping your software and buying new applications (for up to $1,100) that run on Mac, just to do what you can still easily do on a new PC with the applications you already have. We’ve listed a set of common applications below.

HDMI, Blu-Ray, eSATA, MediaCard Readers, built-in 3G, Fingerprint readers, TV Tuners, all have been shipping as built-in features on PCs for years, but none are available on a Mac. Not only does this mean you get to use the latest and greatest now, but since it’s so easy to upgrade PCs, it also means that your computer is more future-ready…you can get today’s technology now, and tomorrow’s technology the minute its available.

He'll also be carrying out some scientific duties, photographing the earth's surface to compare to pictures taken nearly 40 years ago by his father. Whether they'll be able to fix their most pressing problem — a broken toilet — will be apparent in a few days. Garriott's crew will be installing a second facility and repairing the first, which has performed sporadically over the last few months. It remains to be seen whether or not game design skills transfer to zero-gravity toilet repair, but if not the results could be spectacular. [BBC]

The chips—a 2.4 Ghz band, a 5 Ghz band, and a dual-band—can be plugged into walls and use MIMO technology to amplify signals from an existing network. Quantenna is hoping to sell the single-band chips for $20 and the dual-band chip for $40. Chances are, if you live in a big house like my parents', that's not too high a price to pay for all over coverage. [GigaOm]

Here's a crystal clear image of the new MacBook Pro 2008. At least, if you trust yesterday's alleged spy shot. I created it using that image as a guide for those of you too impatient to wait until tomorrow's Apple event, like myself. Just like it happened with the iPod nano mockups, let's hope this one is also right on the money. Why? Because 1) I love the design and 2) I'm in the market to buy a replacement for my aging PowerBook 17. I can't wait to get this 15-inch beauty.

• Print out the bingo card.
• Follow our MacBook 2008 liveblog event and take note of the timestamp as the event in the bingo card happens.
• You can shout bingo if you fill out one line or, alternatively, one of the 2 x 2 brick groups.
• When you get a bingo, quickly send us an email including the events and their timestamps to tips@gizmodo.com.

The first person who sends us a bingo wins the prize, which—in case you are a girl—it will be a dinner for two with me at Good Enough to Eat or—if you are a boy—a dinner for two with Jason at his lair. OK, I just made that up. But you will get our respect and love. Tons of it.

And one free pizza (if there's pizza internet ordering where you are located, that is). Nothing like an edible prize to warm up my heart and my stomach. In fact, we should make this a tradition for each event: The Giz's Liveblog Pizza Bingo. I like how it sounds.

That's a good thing should this plan, which would offer downstream speeds of 768kbps for free to half the U.S. within the first four years, and 95% in the next six, actually come to fruition. T-Mobile and its ilk have threatened to sue if the FCC's action impairs their ability to use the spectrums they purchased in any way.

Will it ever be though? I mean, who does the FCC think is going to buy something with this many expensive restrictions on it in the first place? [Mobile Tech Today]

The Hathi Trust—named in the spirit of wisdom, memory and strength after the Hindu word for "elephant"—will be an amazing repository of data. Currently its bibliography, containing the physical equivalent of 1,703 tons of literature, is only partially searchable by University of Michigan and University of Chicago library sites, but "there is currently no single global interface to the body of content in HathiTrust repository."

This highlights the real strains of safely storing the world's intellectual property—while being able to serve it up for public consumption. The Hathi website laments that it's still working on "a way that takes into account the large number of different sources of metadata and the different strategies each of the partners has for managing that information." It's the reason that library science can be as complex as rocket science. To put it another way, "Growing the world's largest library won’t happen overnight." [Hathi Trust via Wired]

*Here's the whole list, in case you want to see if your uni is part of the elephantine operation:
Indiana University
Michigan State University
Northwestern University
The Ohio State University
Penn State University
Purdue University
University of California Berkeley
University of California Davis
University of California Irvine
University of California Los Angeles
University of California Merced
University of California Riverside
University of California San Diego
University of California San Francisco
University of California Santa Barbara
University of California Santa Cruz
The University of Chicago
University of Illinois
University of Illinois at Chicago
The University of Iowa
University of Michigan
University of Minnesota
University of Wisconsin-Madison
University of Virginia

In addition to photographing each event, they have time lapse footage of the process, which is pretty neat to watch. Not So Noisy has done this three times—once with cars and trucks, once with RetroBuses and once with people. I love each one equally. [Not So Noisy]

When the USPS and local police tracked him down and raided his place, they found they found 66 cameras, 31 laptops, jewelry, camera lenses, GPS devices and more. So yeah, how does a TSA screener systematically walk out of the airport with more gadgets than Best Buy—hell, with some gear you can't even buy there—without a single agent ever noticing? I guess if you ever check anything actually valuable, you might want avoid Newark (not that there aren't a million more reasons to avoid Newark). [Gadling via BoingBoing Photo: Flickr/Joel Franusic ]

The gloves themselves—the $300 Mountain Hardwear Red Savina and the $260 Outdoor Research PrimoVolta—get charged by being plugged into the wall, and are activated by pressing large obvious buttons on the exterior near the wrist.

Inside, the fabric itself is a layering of power, comfort and thermostatic-control panels:

One layer reads the temperature of every part of your hand like a tightly knit grid, and allocates heat where it's coldest. When the finger gets warm, the heater eases off.

Aevex says it'll have the jacket dilemma solved by 2009, and ditto for boots (or at least socks of some kind. Now, if we can all just try and forget about that whole "exploding lithium-ion battery" thing, I think we've got something. [Aevex via CNet]

The P244W monitor is also well-equipped, with 1920x1080 resolution (16:9) and 20000:1 contrast ratio. It has 75 Hz refresh rate, 2 ms response time, has two HDMI ports and one VGA input. The AX3200 is now available at Fry's for $680, while the P244W monitor is available at major electronics retailers for $340. [Acer]

ACER'S NEW PHENOM X3 DESKTOP AND 24-INCH LCD – ELEGANT IN FORM AND FUNCTION

AX3200 desktop packs big performance in a small box; Stunning 24-inch widescreen LCD features one-touch convenience

SAN JOSE, CALIF., Oct. 13, 2008 – Acer, the third largest vendor in the PC market,(1) today announced the new Acer® AX3200 desktop PC and Acer P244W 24-inch widescreen LCD display for customers in the United States. Feature-rich, stylish and space-saving, the new desktop and display are ideal for enjoying entertainment from any room in the home.

Outfitted with AMD Phenom(TM) X3 processing power, Blu-ray Disc(TM) technology, NVIDIA® GeForce® graphics and Dolby Home Theater® sound, the AX3200 is a multimedia powerhouse. The Acer P244W display is simple to use and brilliantly showcases high-definition video, games and multimedia with 1080p HD support and 1920x1080 resolution.

"Offering 64-bit Windows, a Blu-ray drive and significant memory, the Acer AX3200 packs plenty of power for tackling the demands of multitasking and the latest digital entertainment,” said Stephanie Eggert, Senior Manager, Retail Desktop Product Planning for Acer America. "The P244W display's stunning picture quality and user-friendly design make it a must-have for the home. Users choosing to combine the 24-inch display with the compact desktop, will have an excellent system for enjoying productivity, movies, music and games without taking up a lot of space.”

Compact Entertainment Hub
Smaller than standard systems, the handsome black tower measures just 10.4-inches (H) x 4-inches (W) x 14.4-inches (L). For easy access, the chassis was designed with the card reader, audio jacks and ports conveniently on the front of the PC.

Boasting outstanding performance, the AX3200 features an AMD Phenom(TM) X3 8450 Processor with triple-core power, so users can enjoy crystal-clear digital media, create advanced graphics, and handle critical productivity tasks with ease. The 4GB DDR2 memory provides ultra-fast system response, critical for multitasking and power hungry applications.

An integrated Blu-Ray Disc(TM) optical drive takes high-definition entertainment to the max with full support for realistic and dynamic high-definition viewing. Integrated NVIDIA® GeForce® graphics enhance multimedia performance with support for the latest DirectX games.

Dolby Home Theater® provides theater-like surround sound with up to 5.1 separate channels of crystal-clear digital audio. An HDMI port delivers crisp high-quality visuals and high-fidelity audio using only one cable.

With nine USB 2.0 ports, an IEEE 1394 port, eSATA port and a Multi-in-One card reader, users can easily bring multimedia devices together (used this phase in processor graph). The huge 640GB SATA II hard drive (2) provides enough room to store a vast library of music, movies and games.

Intuitive 24-inch High-Definition LCD
The new Acer P244W 24-inch widescreen high-definition LCD display combines superior usability with sleek styling. It boasts a polished black bezel and base with silver accents for an elegant design that will enhance any home or office. The large 24-inch screen size is perfect for evaluating multiple documents at one time.

The Acer P244W also features SensorTouch technology, a touch-sensing solution with effortless settings for one-touch convenience. The LED illuminated controls replace the buttons that are standard on many displays. These intuitive controls maintain the product's streamlined look, while automatically sensing contact with the lightest touch.

Featuring excellent resolution, a high contrast ratio and fast response time, the display emits superb visual quality. It delivers 1080p HD support and a 1920x1080 resolution, including full HD support for the hottest HD-DVD or Blu-ray Disc movies and console games.

To further improve the picture quality, this new display offers a 20,000:1 contrast ratio and 300 cd/m2 brightness. The new Acer P244W features a 2ms response time, reducing the deviations in transition time. The Acer Overdrive (OD) technology enables the display to improve the gray-to-gray level in images and amplify the moving picture viewing experience. Additionally, 170-degree horizontal and 160-degree vertical viewing angles offer extended viewing of entertainment and productivity applications.

Acer's unique software solutions boost usability. The eColor Management on-screen interface allows users to tailor the performance characteristics of the display, such as brightness, saturation and contrast. The Empowering Key enables users to switch between viewing scenarios and create their own to compensate for application and environmental constraints.

Specifications, Pricing and Availability
The Aspire AX3200-U3630A desktop PC is available at Fry's with a manufacturer's suggested retail price (MSRP) of $679.99. The Acer P244W 24-inch LCD display is available at technology and electronics retailers with a manufacturer's suggested retail price of $339.

Acer® AX3200-U3630A: Available now for a MSRP of $679.99
• AMD Phenom(TM) X3 Triple-Core 8450 Processor (2.1GHz, 512KB X 3 L2 Cache)
• 4096MB DDR2 Memory, Dual Channel
• NVIDIA® GeForce® 8200 Chipset
• Integrated NVIDIA® GeForce® 8200 Graphics Solution
• 640GB SATA II (7200RPM, 8MB Cache) (2)
• Blu-ray Disc(TM)/DVD-Super Multi Double-Layer Drive
• Multi-in-One Digital Media Card Reader
• 56K ITU v.92 Ready Fax/Modem (RJ-11 Port)
• Optimized Dolby Home Theater®
• Windows Vista® Home Premium 64-Bit with SP1
• 9 USB 2.0 Ports (5 Front, 4 Rear)
• IEEE 1394 Port
• HDMI Port
• eSATA Port
• Amplified Stereo Speakers (USB Powered)
• Acer USB Keyboard
• USB Optical Mouse

Acer® P244W 24-inch LCD display: Available now for a MSRP of $339
• 24-inch Widescreen
• 0.276mm Pixel Pitch
• 1920x1080 (native and maximum) Resolution
• 1080p High-Def Support
• 75Hz (Maximum) Refresh Rate
• 2ms (Gray to Gray) Response Time
• 20000:1 (ACM) Contrast Ratio
• 300cd/m2 Brightness
• 170° (H)/160° (V) Viewing Angles
• 16.7 Million Colors
• 6 + Hi-FRC Bits
• 2x HDMI, 1x VGA Inputs
• Vesa 100MM Wall Mount
• Internal Power Supply
• Energy Star Compliant

Practical Software
The Acer AX3200 desktop comes with Genuine Windows Vista® Home Premium 64-Bit with Service Pack 1, which provides performance for video, large database searches, or games and other programs that require complex calculations and a lot of memory.

The new AMD LIVE!(TM) Explorer, available for download, offers an immersive way to manage and interact with the user's entertainment library. It provides the ability to explore complete digital collections of music, photos, and videos in a single window, in full 3D.

In addition, the system comes with Adobe® Reader®, McAfee® Internet Security Suite 2008, eSobi(TM) online search efficiency software, NTI Media Maker(TM) for multimedia fun and back-up as well as Acer Arcade(TM) Live, a powerful software package for editing, viewing, burning and managing media content.

The Price: $300

The Verdict: So far, man is it awesome... for a printer/scanner/copier/fax machine, that is.

I know printers. Like intimately. For a few years, I'd get the newest ones and run a double-blind print quality test. I got bored because Epson would always win. HP accused me of letting personal taste get in the way of objectivity, to which I replied, "Call me back when you get the color blue figured out." (My phone has yet to ring.)

Anyway, when I heard about Epson's total revamp of its all-in-one, I was happy and scared. Epson might have been the champ at photo quality, but its printers weren't always the easiest to use. Besides, they were often slower than Canons or HPs. But the Artisan could have traded in print quality to improve speed (an old HP trick). And besides, the Artisan has Wi-Fi, a sure sign of future tech-support calls.

Happily, my fears turned out to be nonsense: Setting up the printer was easy (though I did follow directions carefully, which is not my standard MO). The wizard worked great on the Mac, and I easily added the printer's wireless profile and drivers to another Mac and a Vista PC afterward with the same install disc, all printing without a hiccup. You might say "Big whup!" but trust me, wireless networking set-ups often don't work as billed, especially across both Macs and PCs.

The new touchscreen interface is great, giving you plenty of soft options in plain English, rather than a few choices in terse one-word buttons. As you can see in the shots below, there are fixed contextual touch buttons in addition to the LCD, making the interface even more flexible. I especially like that the fax dial-pad is hidden away, so that if you use it, great, but if you don't, you won't feel like you're wasting part of your purchase. Speaking of fax, the 800 has a document sheet feeder built right in, crucial for multi-page faxes and useful for copying and scanning too.The print quality was amazing, as I anticipated. What surprised me was how damn fast this bugger is. I could get a gorgeous borderless 4x6 in under 18 seconds, and of course it could manage larger sizes fairly speedily too, including the elusive 8x10. (HP once told me that 8x10, which it didn't support, wasn't in demand by photographers; Epson has always had an 8x10 option.)

The one thing you're still gonna hate about the printer is that each ink cartridge is still the size of a matchbook and damn if you won't burn through them all too fast. You get a second (BONUS!) black cartridge in the box, but all that tells me is that Epson is embarrassed about its ink addiction. Other printer makers will try harder to solve the ink-deficit problem—Kodak sells printers for more money and ink for less—but inevitably that solution comes at the cost of good hardware and high-quality prints. Go with Epson if you want the best pictures and, in this case, the best all around use, but remember that you will pay for that satisfaction in ink. [Epson]

The decision to use the name Windows 7 is about simplicity. Over the years, we have taken different approaches to naming Windows. We've used version numbers like Windows 3.11, or dates like Windows 98, or "aspirational" monikers like Windows XP or Windows Vista. And since we do not ship new versions of Windows every year, using a date did not make sense. Likewise, coming up with an all-new "aspirational" name does not do justice to what we are trying to achieve, which is to stay firmly rooted in our aspirations for Windows Vista, while evolving and refining the substantial investments in platform technology in Windows Vista into the next generation of Windows.

In the end, though, names are just names. Remember the outrage over Wii? Now who even gives that a second thought? I've also thought the cat-based naming of OS X was always a little hoaky; I still like the Secret Service-inspired code names better. What would you have called the next Windows? [Windows Developer Blog]

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[Image via Sickpuppy's Flickr]

Well, at least according to British genetics expert Steve Jones. "In a modern world of central heating and plenty of food, the same mutation is far less likely to give a child any advantage. A baby born today can expect to live a long and healthy life, which in turn works against the evolutionary tool of natural selection."

Basically, living in this technologically-advanced era "greatly reduces the influence of mutation, random change and natural selection, the three major forces of evolution." That means it's no longer survivor of the fittest, instead just survival of everyone. Which means we won't be seeing as many changes in the species as we've seen in the last few millennia. Instead we may have hit a plateau, a plateau where everyone gets to add their seeds to the gene pool no matter how dumb and slow they are.

Dammit, and I was hoping my grandkids would have super hearing and be 8 feet tall. [Times of India via PSFK]

Tomorrow we'll see the first fresh MacBooks in almost a year, and likely the first all-new case designs since the arrival of the MacBooks—or before that if you're a stickler, since the MacBook Pro is basically the same as the PowerBook G4, and the MacBook ain't so different from the iBook G4. Check out our timeline of every MacBook update since the lines were introduced to see just how much (or little) has changed since the beginning.

Some notes—these are all stock configurations with prices at the time of release, and specs are only noted when they change. For instance, if the MacBook kept a 60GB hard drive standard for two revisions, you won't see it on the second update on the chart. Click on the image to see the massive full-size chart.[MacBooks on Giz]

The PRIMA system consists of many small mirrors that are moved by pistons at levels that are smaller than an atom. The light from each telescope is reflected into underground tunnels in a way that cancels out the light waves from a star. What remains is the faint light of an orbiting planet—hopefully a planet capable of harboring life. Apparently, PRIMA will start hunting down E.T. in about six months time—and according to Fred Kamphues, developer of a major component of PRIMA called a Star Separator, we stand a good chance of finding them inside the next 100 years. Meanwhile, a high-level government official who has had E.T. on ice for the last 60 years is laughing his ass off. [Wired Science]

The cabinet position will give a single point of authority to a job now handled by a scattered handful of different agencies and committees. It also calls for increased strength to prosecute and punish IP offenders. A provision that hoisted the responsibility for civil (in addition to criminal) prosecutions for IP cases on the Justice Dept. had to be thrown out first, as it would have effectively gave the already over-burdened folks at the DoJ the added enjoyment of being the entertainment companies' civil trial lawyers. Also, interestingly, the Bush administration apparently forgot about their earlier weariness to politicize a position (by appointment) so closely related to dealings of the legislative branch and the judiciary—because avoiding that kind of thing has been this administration's hallmark, right?

What it will mean day-to-day for us modern web users remains to be seen, but creating a czar worked so well for the war on drugs, why not try it again? [CNET]

A switch to GPS could save carriers $10 billion a year in fuel and it would also increase efficiency—allowing more planes to fly on more routes at the same time. In other words, it could be a financial windfall that would help the airline industry get back on its feet. Yes, making the switch would be extremely complex, but this is really a question about priorities. We simply cannot continue to bail out the airlines every time things go south. Unfortunately, the government does not believe they can get planes flying in a straight line until at least 2020. [USA Today via Digg]

With new Macbooks seemingly imminent, I thought it'd be a good time to look back in time to the first Apple laptop that changed portable computing forever: the original PowerBook.

Back in 1991, Apple wasn't the company it is today. There was no iPod, no iTunes Music Store, no iPhone. At the time, laptops (or "portable computers," such as the Macintosh Portable) were niche devices, extremely expensive and not all that practical. But the PowerBook 100 made some huge steps forward for laptops.

While it wasn't the first portable computer to take what we see today as a laptop's form (that honor goes to the NEC UltraLite, above, released in 1989), it made some steps forward in the design. For example, the flat surface in front of the keyboard that you can rest your hands on? That first appeared with the first PowerBooks. It also integrated a trackball — though it's been replaced by other pointing devices, its spirit remains.. Due to these strong design elements, the PowerBook ended up selling very well, leading to high profits and a strong era for Apple (soon to be dashed by failures such as the Newton, Mac clones and the runaway overlapping product lines of the mid 1990s).

Watching this ad for the very first PowerBooks, it's funny to see Apple going hard after business users, the very same type mocked in today's Apple ads by John Hodgman. Sales reports! How very unhip. Before the MacBook became the laptop of choice of coffeshop-located freelance graphic designers, Apple wanted its laptops to be the choice of the suit set.

The PowerBook 100 was the cheapest of the three PowerBooks first introduced by Apple in 1991. Its price was $2,300, which is surprisingly close to how much MacBook Pros are today. Sure, the form factor has changed a lot, as has the hardware inside and the software loaded on it. But isn't it comforting to think that, nearly 20 years later, you're still gonna drop around $2,000 on a new Apple laptop? In an unstable time, it's nice to see some things stay the same.

For one, the guy who had it was able to simply pop one off and put another on without skipping a beat, with the new hand working almost instantly. He seemed able to control the fingers easily, and he had the added bonus of being able to rotate the hand 360 degrees, which is something those of us with fleshy, non-bionic hands are unable to do. In the future, bionic hands won't be replacements for real hands; they'll be upgrades.

The core of the system will involve tracking software that alerts a Autonomous Space Servicing Vehicle (ASSV) to a satellites location. Once found, it will draw the device into its bay where humans on the ground can conduct remote-controlled repairs. So far, the main obstacle to the development of the ASSV has been computer vision. Any robot attempting to grab a satellite must not only locate the device but determine and match its motion before making a move. To aid in that situation, the researchers will employ a form of light-based radar called LIDAR, "which provides a set of 3D points that accurately measure the surface geometry of the satellite." The video above illustrates this real-time tracking sequence. So far, there is no word on when such a system might be deployed. [Queens University via Science Daily]