Thursday Night Tech News

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Meanwhile, Chute reported that Kodak currently is the top dog in the U.S. digital-camera market, with sales of 2.15 million units in the first half of 2005 and a 22.1 percent market share. Next up is Canon, with sales of 2 million units and market share of 20.6 percent. Sony is third, with 1.78 million digital cameras sold and 18.3 percent of the market.

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An Intel representative dismissed reports suggesting the company was exiting the low-end chipset business altogether but said the company was in the middle of making changes to its manufacturing plants to make way for more mobile-focused and high-performance products. Despite reports of which products would be phased out, Intel declined to officially state which chipsets would be put on the back burner.

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The robot does not even need a catching mitt. It resembles a single metallic claw, with just three fingers instead of the human complement of five. An array of 32 by 48 individual photo detectors in its “palm”, tracks a ball's trajectory at high speed. And a series of specialised image processing circuits recognise this movement almost instantly.

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The announcement came after a night of wind tunnel tests which proved that sizeable chunks of the small thermal blanket—damaged on launch and puffing out from just below the orbiter’s leftmost flight deck window—would likely not rip off and smash into a vulnerable section of Discovery. The blanket clearance was the last piece needed to clear Discovery for landing. Its heat-resistant tiles and reinforced carbon carbon (RCC) panels were cleared during earlier inspections, shuttle officials said.

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The California-based company said iTunes would charge 150 yen ($1.35) each for 90 percent of its songs and 200 yen for the other 10 percent, undercutting existing services such as Sony Corp.'s Mora, which charges 210 yen per song.