IT News HeadLines (HardOCP) 28/07/2010

Should Facebook Add a Dislike Button?
And the hard hitting CNN headline of the dayÂ…should Facebook add a dislike button? "We listen to all the user suggestions and it's something that we've thought about. You know, people like the Like button so much ... I dunno, it's something that we would definitely think about. People definitely seem to want it."
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Invisibility Cloak Made of Glass
Sweet! An invisibility cloak made of glass. Wait, isn't glass see through? I gotta see this (pun intended)! That's exactly what Elena Semouchkina, an associate professor of electrical and computer engineering at Michigan Tech, is doing. She has found ways to use magnetic resonance to capture rays of visible light and route them around objects, rendering those objects invisible to the human eye.
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Why the iPad Hasn't Killed Kindle
Why the iPad hasn't killed the Kindle? Who knows, if you ask me, I think it is only a matter of time. Yes, it's true that the iPad has been a smash hit, selling 3.3 million units in just a few months. But Amazon claims its plucky little Kindle is doing pretty well, too. Amazon won't give out sales figures, but Forrester Research, a market-analysis firm, reckons Amazon will sell 3.5 million Kindles in the United States this year. Why buy a Kindle when the iPad is not only a book reader but it also does music, video and more. The iPad is to e-readers what the PS3 is to Blu-ray players.
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Highest Paid CEOs of the Decade
Who are the highest paid CEOs of the past decade? Well, Steve Jobs and Larry Ellison are in the top five and there are a lot of Wall Street types on the list too. The Journal analysis includes salaries, bonuses, perks and realized gains on both restricted stock and stock options; it excludes new grants of restricted stock and stock options. The analysis didn't track whether executives sold shares they acquired after they exercised stock options or after previously restricted stock vested.
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Arthur C. Clark Predicted GPS and Satellite TV
Not only did Arthur C. Clark predict GPS and satellite television over 50 years ago, he did so with remarkable accuracy. Thanks to Trent L. for the link.
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NVIDIA Loses To Rambus, Pays Fees While Appealing
NVIDIA says it will file an appeal after losing a patent infringement case to Rambus. The company says there will be no disruption to the supply of their products due to the ruling. The U.S. International Trade Commission in Washington yesterday said Nvidia chips infringed three Rambus patents, and issued an order that would ban imports of certain products containing the chips. Nvidia said it can continue sales by taking advantage of a licensing arrangement Rambus reached with European regulators as part of an unrelated antitrust case.
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Firefox 'CPU Resources' Issue Better But Not Gone
Although CPU utilization is noticeably better on newer versions of Firefox, it seems there are still a handful of people out there with issues. What about you? I wrote about this last November after I had been grappling with this issue for more than a year. First, on an Hewlett-Packard business ultraportable and then on the Apple MacBook Air. As I stated at the time, my theory is that many users don't notice Firefox CPU utilization on large, well-ventilated mainstream laptops. But it can be an issue on ultraportables, which are more sensitive to heat because of the obvious design constraints (typically under an inch thick).
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AMD Leads the Way at SIGGRAPH 2010
AMD announced that its latest generation of ATI FirePro™ professional graphics cards have received 47 application certifications from leading ISVs. In addition, a soon to be released beta driver is expected to deliver considerable performance gains on popular computer aided design (CAD) and digital content creation (DCC) applications over the previous generation. End-users will have the opportunity to experience the latest ATI FirePro professional graphics solutions at the show. Demonstrations will showcase an extensive ecosystem of software partners and customers that bring to life superior realism, workflow productivity and application performance.
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Intel's Genevieve Bell: Top 25 Women in Tech
Intel Fellow Genevieve Bell has been named one of AlwaysOn's "Top 25 Women in Tech to Watch" for her overall innovation and ability to identify new market opportunities. This accolade will be celebrated on Wednesday at Stanford University's "Summit at Stanford." Also recently named one of Fast Company's "Top 100 Most Creative People in Business," Bell has been one of the leading user-centered design advocates at Intel for more than a decade. She was recently appointed to lead the new Interaction and Experience Research group, which is focused on defining new user experiences and computing platforms that ultimately will help re-imagine how we will experience computing.
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Study Says Zero People Would Pay For Twitter
The Center for the Digital Future at the USC Annenberg School have published the results of a new study that found no one (literally) would pay for a free service like Twitter. You can read the highlights of the report in PDF form here. "Such an extreme finding that produced a zero response underscores the difficulty of getting Internet users to pay for anything that they already receive for free," said Jeffrey I. Cole, director of the Center for the Digital Future at USC's Annenberg School for Communication & Journalism. "Twitter has no plans to charge its users, but this result illustrates, beyond any doubt, the tremendous problem of transforming free users into paying users." Comments
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Apple's Droid X 'Death Grip' Claim: Bogus
You know those Apple ads showing a Droid X "death grip?" Independent testing revealsÂ…*shakes the magic 8 ball* the claims are bogus. Most recently, Apple showed a death grip on the Motorola Droid X using one hand. We tried the very same experiment last week, and we disagree with Apple\'s methodology and conclusions in two important ways. Comments
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Amimon Demos Wireless Transmission of 3D HD Video
Remember that company that announced wireless 1080p video at CES earlier this year? Well, they have surfaced again, this time showing off wireless 3D HD video. Comments
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