Folks who have to archive serious amounts of content pour a lot of money into hard drives—but in many cases it would be handy to be able to move some of that content to less-expensive media, like Blu-ray discs. One problem, of course, is that burning to Blu-ray is much slower than writing to hard drives…plus, in the case of video content, you can’t pop hard drives into many consumer disc players.
Looking to ease the pain, Pioneer has introduced its BDR-205 Blu-ray Writer, an SATA unit designed to pop into an optical drive bay on a compatible PC and enable users to burn Blu-ray media. But not at typical pokey Blu-ray burner speeds: the BDR-205 will handle single- and dual-layer BD media at up to 12× speeds. However, the 12× speeds were only achieved with particular media: Pioneer had good luck with single-layer media from Sony and Panasonic, but only Panasonic dual-layer media handled 12× writing speeds.
“The BDR-205 drive represents our ongoing efforts to combine Pioneer’s engineering expertise with advanced technologies, and our next generation Blu-ray Disc writer is a great example of our no-compromise approach to optical disc product development,” said Pioneer Electronics director of optical disc sales Steve Cohn, in a statement.
In addition to BD formats, the writer can also handle traditional DVD media at up to 16× and CD media at up to 40× speeds.
The BDR-205 should be available in October to systems integrators; a retail version of the drive, dubbed the BDR-2205, should hit retailers in the first quarter of 2010 with a suggested retail price of $249.
In 1950, Alan Turing asked whether machines can think. Rather than argue over definitions, he turned the question into a party game, where an interrogator trades typed messages with hidden players and tries to work out who is who. Since then, chatbots have gotten so good that they have already fooled humans in modern versions of the test.
So, four researchers from Paris Cité University asked the obvious follow-up question in a new study published in Computers in Human Behavior Reports: can AI at least catch its own kind?
Mozilla is giving Firefox’s Smart Window two new tricks. If you haven’t tried it yet, Smart Window is an optional AI mode in Firefox with a built-in chat that helps you get things done while you browse. With this update, it can fill out online forms using details from your tabs and keep an eye on websites for you.
Tired of typing the same details into every form?
The absolutely absurd idea of putting a touchscreen display on a mouse isn't exactly new. Turtle Beach already did it with its Command Series MC7, which features a 2.25-inch control screen. But apparently, even that wasn't ridiculous enough for Arctic Fox Technologies. Its new Super Mouse looks like someone took the chunky old Atari ST mouse, slapped a touchscreen and scroll wheel on it, and called it an upgrade.
The result is a rather unusual-looking mouse that is now on Kickstarter, starting at $199. And as ridiculous as it looks, some of its features are genuinely intriguing.