Canon DSLR Suffers 3,000-Foot Fall AND Lives to Tell It's Tale

A photographer strapped a Canon Rebel XT to his helmet while skydiving, but instead of capturing some great airborne shots, it fell off his helmet and plummeted 3,000 feet to the ground. Unbelievably, it survived.

According to a friend of the photographer:

Amazingly, the Rebel survived the fall and my friend is still using it to this very day. It has a crack in the plastic body and the kit lens is a little jerky when zooming, but functional. I'd like to know if there is a similar story or something close to this but I doubt. It might be a world record indeed (for the height of a camera drop which survived).

Photos show that the camera is remarkably intact—the viewfinder is still functional, both the camera body and lens are pretty much fine. Not that we recommend you heave your DSLR out of a low-flying plane, but it's nice to know that if you do, there's a chance it'll be just fine. [FredMiranda via Canon Rumors via Crunchgear]

Apple Nemesis Psystar Permanently Banned From Selling Mac Clones

I feared that the Apple vs Psystar battle would just fizzle out, but it's ending with a strong punch as Apple Insider reports that Apple has been granted a permanent injunction against Psystar, marking the end of shady Mac clones.

Apparently Psystar has until the final second of this year, midnight on December 31, to cease all of these activities:

• Copying, selling, offering to sell, distributing or creating derivative works ofMac OS X without authorization from Apple.
• Intentionally inducing, aiding, assisting, abetting or encouraging any other person or entity to infringe Apple's copyrighted Mac OS X software.
• Circumventing any technological measure that effectively controls access MacOS X, including, but not limited to, the technological measure used by Apple to prevent unauthorized copying of Mac OS X on non-Apple computers.
• Playing any part in a product intended to circumvent Apple's methods for controlling Mac OS X, such as the methods used to prevent unauthorized copying of Mac OS X on non-Apple computers.
• Doing anything to circumvent the rights held by Apple under the Copyright Act with respect to Mac OS X.

It's noted that those rules laid down by judge William Alsup may not apply to "Psystar's Rebel EFI software, a $50 application that allows certain Intel-powered PCs to run Mac OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard," so this may not be the last we hear of the company. For now though, we can enjoy a few moments of quiet after this legal knockout. [Apple Insider]

Control Your Mac With an iPhone, the Patent

A newly unearthed Apple patent application describes a process in which an iPhone could control a MacBook or iMac, remotely.

Essentially, the iPhone establishes a connection with the computer, then it can control the OS in a similar manner to a TV remote. Using a virtual d-pad, users navigate through apps, open them remotely and even print. But what's possibly more promising that buttoning around an OS is that voice commands could be deployed to skip many of these navigational hassles.

Apple's Remote app, which allows the control of iTunes over a local network, is still one of my favorite apps on the iPhone. If Apple were to evolve that app into what we see in this patent, it'd only become more handy. [Patently Apple via 9to5Mac]

Google working with D-Wave on what may or may not be quantum computing

When we first mentioned D-Wave way back in early 2007 we immediately compared it to Steorn -- less than optimal beginnings. The company was promising quantum computing for the masses and, while it did demonstrate a machine that exhibited qubit-like behavior, the company never really silenced critics who believed the underpinnings of the machine were rather more binary in nature. Those disbelievers are surely shutting up now, with word hitting the street that Google has signed on, building new image search algorithms that run on D-Wave's C4 Chimera chip. The first task was to learn to spot automobiles in pictures, something that the quantum machine apparently learned to do simply by looking at other pictures of cars. It all sounds rather neural-networkish to us, but don't let our fuzzy logic cloud your excitement over the prospect of honest to gosh commercial quantum computing.

BMW-designed Thermaltake Level 10 Scores Breathless Review

As PC cases go, the Level 10 is easily the most outrageous design to ever get the go-ahead for commercial distribution, and according to PC Perspective the reason for that is clear: the product's workmanship and long-term durability match its most excellent looks. Weighing in at nearly 50 pounds of densely packed aluminum, the Level 10 sports a modular design with room for six hard (or solid state) drives, three optical drives, multiple jumbo-sized GPUs, and even an appropriately huge power supply. Alas, the one shortcoming of all this supersizing (apart from the price) is pretty big in itself -- the case turned out to be so large as to make it impossible to connect some components with their standard cabling. We'll call that a newbie filtration feature and continue to hope someone loves us enough to buy us one.