IT News HeadLines (HardOCP) 04/07/2010

Water Droplets Create Multilayered Display
Using synchronized water droplets to create a 3D screen? Wow. Tetris anyone? Comments
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Packaging FAIL
Buying a replacement remote? Shop Best Buy, they offer an abundance of free jumbo boxes with the purchase of every 6" remote. Comments
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Musician Uses iPad to Track Down Thief
Thanks to Will.i.am's iPad, it looks like the musician got the last laugh on some scumbags that stole $10k worth of stuff from his car. Black Eyed Peas member Will.i.am has been doing some detective work of his own after someone broke into his Bentley last week and stole $10,000 worth of belongings, including jewelry and an iPad. Comments
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Laptops as Home Theater PCs?
Ryan and the crew at PC Perspective have written an article today suggesting that laptops are a suitable replacement for a home theater PC. My friend's laptop, however, had HDMI, and was able to play back streaming 1080P HD video without a single issue. It could do everything that my dedicated HTPC could do but it was portable, made less noise, and took up less space. And yet it was nothing special - just a Core 2 Duo laptop with Nvidia mobile graphics." Comments
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WD® Completes Acquisition of Hoya's Magnetic Media Operations
Western Digital Corp. announced today that it has completed the previously announced acquisition of the magnetic media sputtering operations of Hoya Corporation and Hoya Magnetics Singapore Pte. Ltd. for approximately $233 million. The acquisition will support anticipated growth in hard drive demand. WD® has acquired the facilities, equipment, intellectual property and working capital of Hoya's media sputtering operations, based in Tuas, Singapore, as well as certain related equipment at Hoya's Nagasaka, Japan, research and development facilities. A multi-year commitment of Hoya glass substrate supply related to these operations was included in the agreement. Comments
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Groups Push Feds for Video Game Age Restrictions
UghÂ…not this crap again. Video game aficionados might have to enter a credit card or find another way to verify their age before playing a networked game, thanks to a new push from advocacy groups who say they want to protect minors from in-game advertising messages. Comments
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Reasons the Feds & Hollywood Shouldn't Fight Piracy Together
Here are four compelling reasons that the government and Hollywood shouldn't fight piracy together: Copyright infringement is mostly a civil issue, between two private parties... However, the entertainment industry has been working hard to convince the government to act as its own private police force... The whole thing appears to be a gross misuse of government resources to protect a few movie studios, which are unwilling to adapt to a changing market place. People should be outraged over such a misuse of government powers, but because these are 'pirate' sites, everyone will look the other way. Comments
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[H]ot Deals
For those of you in need of some serious hard drive storage space, there are a handful of [H]otdeals going on in the forums that are just what you are looking for. Currently there is a $20 off coupon for a 2TB Seagate Barracuda hard drive. If that is too much drive space for you, there is a $10 off coupon for the Seagate Momentus 500GB solid state hybrid drive and a $10 MIR on a 60GB OCZ Vertex 2 SSD. All the drives above come with FREE shipping too! You'd better hurry though, this deal ends on Monday.
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Facebook's New Face Detection Feature
For all you Facebook users too lazy to select and tag the people in your photos, Facebook just made it easier for you to do. With this new feature, tagging is faster since you don't need to select a face. It's already selected for you, just like those rectangles you see around your friends' faces when you take a photo with a modern digital camera. All that's left for you to do is type a name and hit enter. Cool, huh? Comments
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