Cody Taylor

MojoKid writes “The Japanese electronics manufacturer has just agreed to pay a staggering million fine for its role in a conspiracy to fix prices in the sale of TFT-LCD panels sold to Dell, Inc. The United States Department of Justice made the proclamation, and details show that Hitachi has plead guilty to a one-count felony. The charge, which was filed in the U.S. District Court in San Francisco, blames Hitachi Displays Ltd., a subsidiary of Hitachi Ltd., with ‘participating in a conspiracy to fix the prices of TFT-LCD sold to Dell for use in desktop monitors and notebook computers from April 1, 2001 through March 31, 2004.'”

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Al writes “A new lithium-ion electrode allows batteries to be charged and discharged in 10 seconds flat. Developed by Gerbrand Ceder, a professor of materials science at MIT, it could be particularly useful where rapid power bursts are needed, such as for hybrid cars, but also for portable electronic devices. In testing, batteries incorporating the electrodes discharged in just 10 seconds. In comparison, the best high-power lithium-ion batteries today discharge in a minute and a half, and conventional lithium-ion batteries, such as those found in laptops, can take hours to discharge. The new high rate electrode, the researchers calculate, would allow a one-liter battery based on the material to deliver 25,000 watts, or enough power for about 20 vacuum cleaners.”

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At the Hotel Kabuki in San Francisco on April 8-10, 2009, a meeting of the great OS minds will take place. There, sponsored by Intel, will be assembled together the Linux Foundation, Sun Microsystems and Microsoft representatives. But apparently, NO SIGN of APPLE!

You are standing in a store looking for a new DVD to buy. Rather than buying it, you photograph the barcode with your phone and press a couple of buttons. By the time you make it home, the movie is waiting for you in your torrent client. You can with Torrent Droid.

Adding fuel to rumors of a so-called “netbook” under development inside Apple, Reuters is now citing its own sources in saying the touchscreens ordered by the company measure 10 inches diagonally.

We’re going to SXSW Interactive this year and we know alot of you are too. In order to help newbies and veterans alike manage the wealth of information that’s already pouring in, PeopleBrowsr, an online visual dashboard that combines your Web profiles and connections, has created a centralized dashboard for SXSW and all the happenings at the event.

Whether you’ve just installed Photoshop for the first time or know your away around a the Tools toolbar, we put together a few of the most essential Photoshop skills to get you started on your photo editing endeavors. Soon you’ll be fixing up your grandmother’s torn-up black and white wedding photos and airbrushing the heck out of your Facebook pic

Harry writes “I was amused, appalled, and angry — yes, all three — when I spotted signs above every register at my local Office Depot with handy scripts for clerks to use in ‘recommending’ that customers buy extra-cost, extremely profitable protection plans. And now Laptop Magazine has posted an eye-opening investigative report that charges local Office Depot stores with instructing staffers to lie and tell people who want to buy laptops without service plans that they’re out of stock.”

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An anonymous reader writes with an excerpt from Tech Fragments that says “NASA has yet again postponed the launch of Space Shuttle Discovery, which was due to launch today, because of a hydrogen leak in the vent line between the external fuel tank and main engines. The vent line is at the intertank region of the external tank and is the overboard vent to the pad and the flare stack where the vented hydrogen is burned off. … The NASA launch team is resetting to preserve the option of attempting a Thursday night liftoff at 8:54 p.m. EDT depending on what repairs are needed and what managers decide. The Mission Management Team is meeting at 5 p.m. today to discuss the issue.” You can watch for updates on NASA’s Space Shuttle page, too.

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cooper writes “Heise Open posted news about a bug report for the upcoming Ubuntu 9.04 (Jaunty Jackalope) which describes a massive data loss problem when using Ext4 (German version): A crash occurring shortly after the KDE 4 desktop files had been loaded results in the loss of all of the data that had been created, including many KDE configuration files.” The article mentions that similar losses can come from some other modern filesystems, too. Update: 03/11 21:30 GMT by T : Headline clarified to dispel the impression that this was a fault in Ext4.

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