Nine Inch Nails Release Yet Another Free Album

It's been two months since the launch of NIN's last album, Ghosts I-IV, but the band has wasted no time with a follow-up, entitled 'The Slip'. While Ghosts was an instrumental album, The Slip goes back to their roots and deliver hard-hitting tracks that fans are used to.

Like Ghosts, NIN is offering The Spin free of charge... in its entirety. You can go to sign-up page to enter your e-mail address, and you will receive an e-mail with a download link. I have yet to receive mine, however, so the servers are no doubt getting pounded. It might be wise to wait until this evening to enter the address, if you think you can hold off that long.

The band stresses that the album is one hundred percent free. It's free to pass to a friend, to a stranger, to a blog and free to remix. For those who want hard copies (like me), the album will become available in July on both CD and LP. Oddly though, despite ordering Ghosts on the launch date, I have yet to receive my hard copy.

the music is available in a variety of formats including high-quality MP3, FLAC or M4A lossless at CD quality and even higher-than-CD quality 24/96 WAVE. your link will include all options - all free. all downloads include a PDF with artwork and credits.

Source: NIN - The Slip

Amazon Sues NY State Over New Tax Rule

New York state loves taxes, who knew? Last week, the state put forth a requirement that e-tailers in other parts of the country would have to begin taxing NY-based consumers appropriately. Currently, Amazon does not tax consumers on any of the merchandise, as far as I can tell. I have looked through my previous Amazon receipts, and even being in Canada, I have never been taxed for items there. I didn't even realize this until now.

Well, consumers are not the only ones upset with this new decision. Amazon has wasted no time in suing the state in order to void the sales tax rule. Whether they will be successful or not is anyone's guess. One major e-tailer vs. one major city. That's a tough one to call.

I have to wonder if things are a little different in Canada, though. While Amazon doesn't charge me taxes, I noticed that another e-tailer based in Canada does charge tax, on par with what I'd have to pay if I walked into a store. They base it off of whatever province you are in, and adjust the sale accordingly. Whether this e-tailer even has to do this, I'm unsure, since Amazon seems to get away without charging any tax at all.

If Amazon fails to succeed at this lawsuit, then it could mean bad things for online shoppers. If New York is successful, there's nothing stopping other states from joining on in.

The new law is based on a novel definition of what constitutes a presence in the state: It includes any Web site based in the state that earns a referral fee for sending customers to an online retailer. Amazon has hundreds of thousands of affiliates—from big publishers to tiny blogs—that feature links to its products. It says thousands of those have given an address in New York State, although it does not verify the addresses.

Source: New York Times

Ubuntu 8.04 is Well Worth the Look

The latest Ubuntu release came out just two weeks ago, but that's old news by now. I have never been much of an Ubuntu fan, and the fact is, I disliked it... a lot. I still stand by the fact that I believe the distro was severely over hyped with the earlier versions, but the latest launch, "Hardy Heron" changes my thoughts quite a bit.

New Ubuntu versions come out often, but this one is different. It offers "Long-Term Support", so you can install it and not have to worry about support fading before three-years pass. From my previous experience with Feisty Fawn, however, Hardy Heron is far more polished and is putting Linux on the right track to mass adoption.

Booting up on the notebook, everything worked, from the graphics to WiFi to audio to Bluetooth to web cam and beyond. I couldn't find anything that didn't work. And that was before the installation! So to say I'm impressed would be an understatement. I use Gentoo on the desktop and have zero interest of using Ubuntu there given I prefer how that distro works, but for the notebook, it's absolutely perfect. The less work you need to do in the initial setup process, the better.

I am not a fan of GNOME, however, so I tested out both Ubuntu and Kubuntu, and ultimately stuck with the latter. It's hard to not notice the difference between the two, though. While hardware detection is the same, Kubuntu lacks the overall polish of Ubuntu, which is fine by me since I tend to configure things a lot anyway, but it's still too bad. There's not even a GRUB bootsplash like there is for Ubuntu, which is beyond strange given how simple it is to add.

But that aside, I'm pleased so far with Kubuntu and have no real complaints. It lacks certain things that I like, but that's because I'm so used to my current setup. Ubuntu is catered towards new users and veterans alike, so it's design can't be faulted too much (although there are a few things I do find strange, but I'll tackle that later). Overall though, this is the first time I've ever recommended Ubuntu, so I'm off to go pinch myself.

Source: Ubuntu

NVIDIA's David Kirk Discusses CUDA, CPUs & GPUs

It's unlikely that many would disagree that parallel computing is in the future, and if you ask NVIDIA's David Kirk, it's best done on a GPU. Bit-Tech's Tim Smalley sat down with Kirk, NVIDIA's Chief Scientist, for a lengthy chat discussing everything from parallel computing with CUDA to Intel's Ct to ray tracing and rasterization and oh so much more. There is little ground not covered, so a coffee refill would make sense before reading.

CUDA is NVIDIA's answer to parallel computing, allowing developers to write code in C designed for special purposes that would execute much faster on a GPU than on a multi-core CPU. Kirk mentions in the article that certain tasks would just not be feasible on a CPU, and when speaking of offloading GPU processes to a CPU, he mentions that "it would be at least a thousand times too slow". Well then, can't get a more straight-forward answer than that.

He also has no issue with commenting on the competitors, and some of the responses are quotable, such as, "Their market cap is about three billion, so it's hard to see where the future is in that picture. Really speaking, they're going to have to pull not one, but several rabbits out of the hat." when speaking about AMD. Harsh, but it's difficult to disagree at this point. Don't worry, Intel feels the wrath as well, with "Building a CPU is not that hard".

I am pointing out the humorous bits, but the article as a whole is informative if you want to brush up on where CUDA stands, why it exists, and what's in store for the future.

"The biggest problem ahead for GPUs is that they are designed to be multi-core and we've made all of the mistakes before," David explained, while laughing. "OK, maybe not all of them - but we've learned a bunch of things over the years through the course of building massively parallel GPUs.

Source: Bit-Tech

Microsoft Withdrawals Bid for Yahoo!

After almost three months of constant bartering with Yahoo!, Microsoft has withdrawn their bid for the company. Microsoft's last offer sat at $47.5 billion, or $33 per share, while Yahoo! refused to accept anything lower than $37 per share. It was not in Microsoft's best interest to go higher, which Ballmer addressed over the weekend.

Despite the withdrawal, Ballmer believes that the final bid was more than fair, and many others agree as well. All except Yahoo!, of course. For the past couple years, Yahoo! has not been doing well at turning traffic into profit, which is one of the reasons they are willing to be bought up by someone. However, since Microsoft's initial bid, CEO Jerry Yang has kept adamant about the fact that the company is on the rise, and not vice versa.

Regardless of that, today is going to be an incredibly interesting day for Yang, as many shareholders are not expected to stick around after the news of Microsoft's withdrawal. Once the "aftermath" settles, Yahoo!'s market value is expected to plummet to $30 billion, down from the ~$40 billion it sits at now.

Microsoft's withdrawal doesn't mean the fun stops now, however. Some speculate that Microsoft could consider a re-bid if Yahoo! continues to go downward, but at this point, it's hard to guess what could happen.

Analysts now expect Ballmer to use the money he had earmarked for the Yahoo acquisition to explore other possible deals with large Internet companies like Time Warner Inc.'s AOL and News Corp.'s MySpace and promising startups like Facebook Inc. and LinkedIn Corp. Microsoft already owns a 1.6 percent in Facebook, the second-largest social network behind MySpace.

Source: Yahoo!

GTA IV What? Iron Man Scores $100.8 Million at the Box Office Over the Weekend

Over the course of the past month, it was speculated by many sources that the theatrical release of Iron Man could potentially see lackluster sales thanks to Grand Theft Auto IV's release earlier in the week. Could a game actually keep people home, who would otherwise want to see the flick? Not according to the weekend box office sales reports, which put the film at a staggering $100.8 million, far ahead of the $15 million that the movie to take the second spot scored.

This result isn't too interesting, however. Are there really that many people, who after playing a game for days on end, wouldn't take a three hour break to go see a new movie that they've been waiting for? I can see it for some, but I can't see it for the majority, and I guess the sales numbers back up those claims. If someone is that worried about the game not being there once back home, they could just as easy take it with them to the theatre.

I saw Iron Man last night and highly recommend it to anyone, Iron Man fan or not. It's been a while since I've enjoyed a superhero movie, but this one was executed perfectly. I'm sure glad I took a break from the game to see it. Oh wait... I still haven't opened it, that's right. Where are my sense of priorities...

Iron Man crushed its competitors this weekend with a stunning estimate of $100.8M in ticket sales over the Friday-to-Sunday period delivering the tenth largest opening of all-time and the second highest ever for a non-sequel after the $114.8M of 2002's Marvel Comics sibling Spider-Man. The Robert Downey Jr. flick began its run on Thursday at 8pm with advance showtimes grossing $3.5M in the four-hour period ending at midnight, the official start of Friday.

Source: Rotten Tomatoes

May 5th Tech Roundup

Motherboards & Processors
• DFI LANParty DK X38-T2R - Hardwareoverclock Austria
• Gigabyte DES X48T-DQ6 - Hardware Logic
• XFX nForce 790i Ultra SLI - Legit Reviews

Displays & Video Cards
• ASUS EN9600GT Silent - i4u
• Honeywell Arius 2216 LCD - Bjorn3D
• nVidia GeForce 9800GTX Triple SLI - T-Break

Memory & Storage
• Kingston HyperX 2GB PC2-9200 DDR2 - Big Bruin

Peripherals & Gadgets
• Audioengine W1 Wireless Audio Adapter - The Tech Lounge
• Spire SP332CB 3.5" Internal Card Reader - Red and Blackness

Cooling
• Coolermaster Hyper Z600 Passive Heatsink - FrostyTech
• Nexus XiR-3500 Copper Ed. CPU Cooler - TweakTown
• Noctua NH-U12P CPU Cooler - Modders-Inc
• SilenX iXtrema IXC-120HA2 Heatsink - Overclockers Club
• Thermolab Nano Silencer CPU Cooler - DragonSteelMods

Chassis & Power Supplies
• be quiet! Dark Power Pro 450W - Technic3D
• Cooler Master Centurion 590 - techPowerUp!
• Eagle Tech I Series USB HDD Enclosure - ClubOC
• Hiper Anubis Chassis - 3D Gameman
• NZXT Tempest - Legit Reviews
• Spire Powerfuse S162 Surge Protector - XSReviews
• Ultra X3 800w Modular Power Supply - ClubOC