By Chris Scott Barr

I’m one of those strange people that will generally do their best to avoid dealing with people when I’m shopping. At the grocery store I always use the self-checkout, since it’s usually much faster. Unfortunately most other stores have cashiers to ring up your purchases, the same goes for restaurants. Thankfully Jack In The Box is doing their part to cut out the middle-man.

Seen to the right is an awesome little kiosk that lets you order your food without the need to deal with some teenager that really doesn’t want to be there in the first place. Sure, eventually these might start taking the jobs of a couple workers, but I doubt they’ll ever really do away with the cashiers altogether. It is, however, nice to see more places offering their customers a choice on how to order their food.

VIA [ Consumerist ]

By Chris Scott Barr

I’ve built quite a few computers with eSATA ports on them, as they have become fairly common on most motherboards. However, I can’t recall ever actually using a device that utilized one of these ports. Sure, there are external drives out there that ship with an eSATA connector, but I rarely have a need for one. Flash drives are getting large enough and cheap enough that I can generally use one to carry almost anything I need. So why not use a flash drive with an eSATA connector? Because you can’t, not without a power source like, say a USB connection.

eSATA has a much higher data transfer speed, but lacks the power of USB, so what’s the solution? For the sake of this article, I’m going to pretend that you didn’t say USB 3.0. (though that would have been my answer too). If you ask MSI, their solution is to combine the two ports into what they call Power eSATA. Essentially this is an eSATA port that can also provide 500mA current from USB. It’s actually a pretty neat idea, but I’ll be the first to say that it probably won’t ever take off. So far OCZ is the only manufacturer with a product that uses the connection, and we’ve got USB 3.0 sneaking up on us. Sorry MSI, I don’t care how many motherboards and notebooks you put this in, I just don’t see this one working out.

[ MSI ] VIA [ EverythingUSB ]

By Chris Scott Barr

I’d hoped that I was done writing about Time Warner Cable for a little while. Unfortunately it seems that they are already back up to their same old antics, only this time they’re being a little more sneaky about it. At least before they were up-front and honest about their decision to screw their customers. When too many people raised a stink about it, they backed off, or at least they pretended to.

One TWC customer in Austin hopped on his computer to do a little surfing only to find that his internet connection was down. A quick call to the ISP revealed that his service had been intentionally disconnected due to excessive bandwidth use. Apparently this guy had the audacity to use 44GB in a week’s time on his unlimited internet plan. What a jerk.

The next logical step was for the guy to ask just how much bandwidth was “acceptable” so that he didn’t get his service shut off again. The lovely rep at Time Warner couldn’t give him any exact numbers, but said that it would be somewhere between a quarter and half of the bandwidth he was currently using.

11 to 22GB per week is acceptable on an “unlimited” plan? In this day and age, that’s just bat-shit retarded. I downloaded GTA IV from Steam the other day, which was a whopping 15GB, which would put me in the red with TWC. God forbid that I’d want to stream a couple of Netflix movies or watch something on Hulu. If I were a Time Warner Cable customer, I can guarantee my service would be shut off pretty quick.

I really feel bad for this guy, and the countless others that have no other option but to use Time Warner Cable as their ISP. Instead of their tiered plans, they’re just going to keep disconnecting users until they start begging to pay more for extra bandwidth. Thankfully customers can use the very same internet provided by TWC to spread the word of these underhanded practices. Comcast finally came around and set a (comparatively) decent bandwidth cap, hopefully it’s only a matter of time before Time Warner does the same.

VIA [ StopTheCap ]

By Chris Scott Barr

Last week I brought you the news of Time Warner’s outrageous price gouging with metered bandwidth. Well it seems that there has been a bit of an update to the situation. No, they haven’t backed down, but rather given us some details on precisely how they are planning to screw their customers out of money.

Apparently the COO over at Time Warner has been listening to the outcry from the vast internet community, and decided to respond to our concerns. First, they know that some users out there spend only a few measly minutes a day checking their email, so there is now a plan for such people. They’ve also decided that they will be kindly putting a cap on overage charges. If you’re really worried about that bill at the end of the month, rest easy that you won’t see more than $75 in overage fees. Hit the jump for the full breakdown from COO Landel Hobbs.

• To accommodate lighter Internet users and those who need a lower priced option, we are introducing a 1 GB per month tier offering speeds of 768 KB/128 KB for $15 per month. Overage charges will be $2 per GB per month. Our usage data show that about 30% of our customers use less than 1 GB per month.

• We are increasing the bandwidth tier sizes included in all existing packages in the trial markets to 10, 20, 40 and 60 GB for Road Runner Lite, Basic, Standard and Turbo packages, respectively. Package prices will remain the same. Overage charges will be $1 per GB per month.

• We will introduce a 100 GB Road Runner Turbo package for $75 per month (offering speeds of 10 MB/1 MB). Overage charges will be $1 per GB per month.

• Overage charges will be capped at $75 per month. That means that for $150 per month customers could have virtually unlimited usage at Turbo speeds.

• Once we implement this trial, we will not immediately start billing customers for overage. Rather, we will first provide two months of usage data. Then we will provide a one-month grace period in which overages will be noted on customers’ bills, but they will not be charged. So, customers will have an opportunity to assess their usage and right-size their service packages before usage charges are applied.

So for $15 (the same price as AT&T’s cheapest unlimited DSL plan) you can download up to 1GB of data at really crappy speeds. Awesome. You’ll also have a high-end 10MB down/1MB up plan for $75 and an overage cap of $75. Seems to me like that’s slower than my Comcast connection, and I get 250GB of bandwidth. Lets see, $35 a month with Comcast, or $150 with Time Warner? I think I speak for almost everyone when I say you can take your metered bandwidth and shove it.

[ Longreply ] VIA [ MTV Multiplayer ]

By Chris Scott Barr

I get my lifeline to the interwebs through Comcast, which isn’t something I’m always happy with. The first year that I had them was filled with random 8-10 hour periods of downtime that they would try to tell me was “scheduled maintenance”. This was something that occurred once every week or two for several months, and despite the fact that it was scheduled, they didn’t ever actually bother to inform me, despite me updating my contact info every single time I called in. Oh, and I still can’t access my account online. They have to send me a PIN, which despite requesting it on no less than seven occasions, I still have not received. Are you ready for the shocker? Today I’m glad to have Comcast as my ISP.

Last year Comcast instituted a 250GB per month bandwidth cap. Believe me, that was not something that made me happy at the time. I watch most of my TV and movies online these days, and I figure that one of these days I’ll end up hitting that limit. Hopefully it will be a while before that happens. However, the reason I’m happy to be with Comcast is that Time Warner Cable has decided to infect several cities with their 40GB per month cap. Yes, that’s a whopping 40GB maximum usage per month.

Their service will have different tiers which are based on your usage, not speed. You can pay as little as $29.95 for a paltry 5GB, all the way up to $54.90 for 40GB. If you go over your limit, you’ll be asked to fork over  a buck for every GB you go over. I’m sorry people, but that’s just ridiculous. I can get a webhosting package with 40GB of bandwidth per month for like $15. Sure, that’s sitting in a data center that’s got fiber connections running to it, but you still get my point.

This program has already been going in Beaumont, Texas for a little while, and the people there hate it. I can’t blame them either, since that’s enough bandwidth for around 2HD movies per week. They’ve even got a petition going around to try and stop metered bandwidth. Other cities which are slated to get this wonderful service include Greensboro NC, Rochester NY, Austin and San Antonio TX.

[ BusinessWeek ] VIA [ Dvice ]

Make way for USB 3.0. While USB 2.0 (released 7 years ago) has improved performance tenfold, it hasn’t been close to the speed demon many had hoped. Tweaks to chipset and controller helped boost the effective transfer rate closer to 40MB/s… yet this is still a far cry from 3Gb/s eSATA and FireWire 800. So Intel saw the need for an overhaul of the serial bus standard, and has re-written the aging interface specs to match or surpass the aforementioned competitors. In 2008, the chipzilla went where no USB has gone before: commonly known as SuperSpeed USB, the latest USB 3.0 specs offers 4.8Gb/s theoretical maximum bandwidth; full-duplex data interface; 50% more bus power over the same cable; highly efficient power management for idle devices; better bulk transfer performance; and most importantly, backward compatibility with legacy devices.

Clearly, a lot has changed, and this brings confusion and questions. A new USB 3.0 FAQ posted by Everything USB now attempts to address the most common questions about the more significant upgrades in the entire history of the USB connectivity standard. It discusses how USB 3.0 is able to achieve the things that are listed above. The 2700-word FAQ is written mostly in plain English so you won’t be bombarded by jargon and acronyms.

[ USB 3.0 FAQ @ Everything USB ]

By Luke Anderson

I always love a good conspiracy theory. There’s nothing quite like diving into the complex possibilities of what our government or some large company might be cooking up. Well the best one that I’ve heard recently is concerning those fancy little DTV converter boxes that the government is handing out coupons for. Why do you think that they are trying so hard to get those into our houses? It’s because they’re trying to spy on us!

While I’m sure at least a few people out there gave some thought to that last line, it isn’t actually true. A YouTube clip that surface recently showed someone taking apart such a device and discovering a small camera and microphone stashed away inside. While there were some who inevitably fell for the hoax, it was just that. Someone merely cracked open the case, carefully added the components to the board and made it look believable.

When you think about it, there’s no way that the government would plant such devices. Could you imagine the number of people that would have to sit around all day watching people who are watching TV? Now that would be a crappy job.

[ YouTube ] VIA [ Wired ]

By Luke Anderson

The other day I was pretty harsh on the Senate’s decision to delay the transition from analog to digital TV. I still stand firmly by my opinion, and am happy to report that the United States House of Representatives shares my stance. The bill failed to gain the two-thirds majority of votes that it needed to pass.

This isn’t the final nail in the coffin, as it is still possible for the bill to be brought back to the floor under the rules of a simple majority vote. What I find interesting is that the other day we were talking about 20 million people being unprepared, and now we’re hearing a 6.5 million figure. Honestly, if that’s all we’re talking, I don’t think it will take long for the 6.5 million people to get things sorted out once their TV stops working.

VIA [ AFP ]

It’s that time of year when everyone is compiling their ‘Top Blankety Blanks of Blank’ lists, and if you’re a fan of movie special/visual effects, you’ll want to check out Den of Geek’s list of the Top 50 Movie Special Effects Shots. To keep the fighting in the comments to a minimum, Den of Geek laid down some ground rules for the list which only includes individual effects shots that have to be “exceptionally convincing”, “ground-breaking” or “an exemplary execution of an oft-used technique.”

Overall it’s a pretty solid list, though there are some odd exemptions. I’m no fan of The Lord of the Rings trilogy, but there were a handful of shots created with Weta’s Massive software that were pretty impressive. And Davy Jones from Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man’s Chest was the first time I was ever actually fooled by CGI, since I assumed at least part of his face was prosthetic makeup. But I do agree with their #1 choice, which is a shot from the T-Rex attack on the tour vehicles in Jurassic Park. For a film that’s over 15 years old and featured some of the first living, breathing CGI creatures, it’s amazing that the visual effects are still better than what’s seen in many summer blockbusters today.

[ Den of Geek - Top 50 movie special effects shots ]

By Evan Ackerman

Oh Microsoft Surface, why do you have to be so sexy, and yet so unattainable? If you’ve ever played with a Surface table (at an AT&T retail store, maybe) you know exactly what I’m talking about, and if you’ve never seen one, just watch the demo and you’ll get the idea. No matter how sexy it is, though, the price tag of $10k+ is a bit of a turn-off.

A recent Microsoft market research survey asked participants what they’d think about the following device, called “Oahu:”

Oahu is a flat screen that sits horizontally like a table top. You can interact with Oahu by touching the screen, instead of using a mouse, and more than one person can interact with Oahu at the same time. You and others can move objects on the screen with your hands and touch icons to open up programs, games, or music. People using the device can also use their fingertips to expand and shrink objects on the screen. The screen recognizes people’s hand movements and touches and reacts accordingly. You can bring up an on-screen keyboard to input information.

More info, including a price that’s borderline affordable, after the jump.

Oahu also works with other devices (such as digital cameras, cell phones, and MP3 players) by getting information from or sending information to them. Oahu is on with no waiting time to start up. Oahu can come as a freestanding table, placed into a piece of furniture, or built into a countertop. The type of Oahu devices we are asking about today are not portable but if they are furniture or tables, they can be placed anywhere in your home.

Remind you of anything? It’s just market research, of course, and not an an announcement or a even really a suggestion. It does, however, totally suggest that Microsoft is seriously considering a version of Surface for the home. Also included in the survey was a price: $1,499.

Sold. I’ll take two.

[ istartedsomething ] VIA [ Engadget ]