If you think you have an addiction to gadgetry, you’ve got nothing on Apple cofounder Steve Wozniak.  Woz, as most people call him to avoid confusing him with Steve Jobs, carries around more gadgets than I’ve ever owned on his person at one time.  He’s got some 6 gizmos on his person at all times, not counting any iPads or laptops he might have stashed away in his luggage.

As profiled in his Newsweek write-up, he might be the only person in America buying two iPads (the launch edition and a 3G version in April).  Then again, he’s got more use for one than most folks.  Right now he’s carrying around a Motorola Droid, a Nexus One, two GPS systems (a Garmin and a TomTom), and not one, but two iPhones (to get around their lack of multitasking and abysmal battery life).  If it seems like overkill, that’s because it is.  Then again, if you’re a millionaire, you can afford to do things like this.

You have to admit, he’s found a novel solution to solve the iPhone’s technical problems.  Just think, all he needs to do is tape those two iPhones together and he’d have an iPad before the release date!  Though he’ll probably need both those iPads to get around their battery issues.

Via Neatorama.

Hey you!  Do you live in the UK?  Want to join the good fight against pirated DVDs?  No?  Okay, do you want a job working in the IT industry?  Much better answer.  Actually, it’s not a job, it’s a 12-month internship with Warner Brothers UK.

The job, amusingly enough, is fight piracy.  They want college kids, the people who do the most downloading of music, movies, etc. to turn against their peers and aid Warner’s fight against Torrent websites and whatnot.  From the inside out, no less!  They’re going to pay you to infiltrate, download, and track pirated materials, like some kind of nerdy spy.

Admittedly, it’s an approach that works when you’re fighting the Mafia or a drug ring, but Torrent sites are hardly the same type of collective.  I guess their focus is more on busting forums for providing homes for pirates and IRC user groups where people engage in one-on-one trading.  Since they can’t stop the opium, they’re planning on burning down the opium den, as it were.

Do you think it’ll work?  I mean, killing an Internet forum is like killing a ghost; you can try and chase it away, but it’ll find somewhere else to go.

Frodo can't believe how mediocre the LOTR Blu-ray picture looks.

The Lord of the Rings Blu-ray discs should be an achievement for the ages.  Combine one of the most impressive visual movies with one of the most impressive, high definition visual physical media ever created, and the results should be phenomenal.  The DVDs themselves looked great, so the Blu-ray should look amazing, right?  Well, if you’re CrunchGear, the answer is… not so much.

A side-by-side comparison of the Blu-ray and televised HD versions of the movie reveal some pretty telling differences.  According to the writer of the article, anyway.  The concensus is somehow, someone messed up the encoding and gave the world an inferior copy of Lord of the Rings versus the broadcast HD, which is just kind of astounding.  Looking at the images presented over at AVS Forum, and I can believe it.

There’s no way the Blu-ray version shouldn’t be significantly better than the HD broadcast version.  Yet here they are, side by side, and if anything the broadcast version looks a little better thanks to not being as overly-processed.  On some things the Blu-ray is better (the title, background definition), but on the important things, it’s a push at best.  Sad, really.

As I’ve said forever, Apple’s vaunted virus-free state is merely a house of cards.  As market share grows, if it grows, Apple will start getting hacked.  And those hacks will be bad, given that Apple’s native web browser for OSX is the easiest one to compromise.

During Pwn2Own 2010, the annual hacker’s challenge, the four major web browsers, Safari, Firefox, Chrome, and Internet Explorer 8, were put through the security wringer for cash and prizes.  The results are eerily similar to last year.  In spite of all the security upgrades, coding changes, and bug fixes, Safari was still the first browser to be hacked.  IE8 went down after that.  Then FireFox toppled.

The only browser that, so far, hasn’t been hacked?  Google Chrome.  Seriously! Even Safari for the iPhone got hacked, but they’ve yet to managed to design an exploit to take over the Google Chrome browser. I may have to rethink Google Chrome.  Apparently Google Chrome’s native sandbox combined with built-in Windows protections make the browser nearly impossible to crack (even harder than the second-toughest combo to compromise, IE8 on Windows 7).

Of course, the Pwn2Own organizers didn’t test Opera, but that’s because nobody uses Opera.  I’d like to see it included in next year’s competition, though!

Nintendo has announced plans to change their hand-held video game system yet again.  When Nintendo moves, the rest of the gaming universe takes notice, and there’s no field where Nintendo dominates more than the handheld gaming market.  After all, the company has moved from Game Boy to Game Boy Color to DS to DSi, and now, they’re moving to the Nintendo DS3D.  That’s right, 3D games on a portable system!

And the kicker of this whole deal is that the 3D DSi will NOT need special glasses.  In fact, it may need no special changes at all!  There are already games that produce semi-3D graphics using the DS’s existing dual screen set-up and the DSi camera to determine proper 3D positioning based on face-tracking technology in the camera.  Check out a demo of how it’d work using the current DS technology.

Is there anything Nintendo can’t do with their consoles?  Aside from get Mature-rated titles to be successful on the Wii that is.

More posters, via Neatorama.

Think that your city is safe from zombie botnets, spam, malware, scammers, hackers, and the like?  Well, maybe it is, and maybe it isn’t.  If you live in, say, Seattle?  You’re smack dab in the middle of the danger zone.

The Emerald City is the #1 riskiest city in Norton Antivirus’ annual 10 most risky cities for cybercrime list.  Of the many factors assessed (aside from the aforementioned zombies, malware outbreaks, and viruses) are the city’s vast array of WiFi hotspots, high rate of Internet use, and lots and lots of risky online behavior (like banking and buying things online, which is basically what most people use their computer for).

It’s like I’ve said for years about Apple Computers:  if there’s a market for the virus, virus makers will go after it.  Where there’s no computer adoption, there’s little danger.  Where there’s massive amounts of computer use, there’s a market ripe for viruses.  Obviously, Seattle is ripe for virus infiltration because the entire city is a WiFi hotspot.  I have to admit, I was shocked to see Minneapolis so high up on the list, but I guess there’s nothing to do but play on the Web during those cold winters.

If you have a spare 1.5 million pounds, then do I have a deal for you!  They’re calling it the world’s most expensive television, and given what went into it, I find it hard to believe someone could top this cost.  The television is custom-made, hand built by designer Stuart Hughes and his team of four craftsmen in Liverpool.  The television, called the PrestigeHD Supreme Rose, is 61 pounds of solid 18-karat gold built into a 55-inch HD TV, designed by Prestige HD of Switzerland and crafted with parts from electronics company Metz.

The outer frame of the television is studded with 72 one-carat flawless round-cut diamonds.  Hundreds more amethysts and sunstones are mixed into the television’s golden frame.  The inner frame of the television is hand-sewn alligator skin.  Tasteful!

If that’s too rich for your blood, there’s a cheaper version that retails for only a million pounds.  It features only 41 pounds of 18-carat gold plating around the HD TV, and only 28 diamonds around the frame.  I’m not sure if it still has the alligator and amethysts and sunstones, but I’d imagine it does since it’s still a million pounds.

When it comes to the laundry room, there’s not a lot you can do to make it more technologically advanced and environmentally friendly.  There are lower-impact detergents and whatnot, but for the most part laundry technology is about the same as it’s always been, at least as far as dryers are concerned.  The dryer is the second-most energy-hogging appliance in the house, just behind the refrigerator.  However, there are ways you can cut back on your expenses and green up the laundry.

The crucial element would be to upgrade your washing machine.  New washers use less water, thus that means the clothes that come out of them require less drying (another tip might be to wring clothes out before dumping them into the dryer).  It uses less water *and* uses less energy to dry those sopping wet clothes.  That also means less detergent sloshing down the drain during the rinse cycle.

If you can’t quite make that big jump, then you can turn your laundry room into a multi-purpose room.  I couldn’t do that at my house (I have a laundry room/utility room combination already), but I do like the idea of turning the laundry room into some sort of home office combination.  There’s also something to be said of having the washer and dryer in the kitchen or off to the side from one of the bathrooms.  Fresh towels, right out of the dryer!  Any space you can save is useful.