Pioneer Develops 400GB Blu-Ray Disc

It's been a long road for Blu-Ray. But now that the format war and the need for a completive edge is long over, one might have guessed the members of the Blu-ray Disc Association would have given up on creating a means for higher capacity discs. It looks like we were wrong.

Today, Pioneer put out a press release touting their newest and greatest achievement in optical media yet. Their "wide-range spherical aberration compensator and light-receiving element" enabled them to produce a 16-layer read-only Blu-Ray disc, complete with the standard 25GB capacity per layer. Naturally, while this technology is only available for testing purposes for the time being, we will undoubtedly see a similar solution headed for retail when the technology is more mature.

Pioneer plans to release more details at the International Symposium on Optical Memory and Optical Data Storage on July 13.

July 7, 2008, Tokyo, Japan - Pioneer Corporation has succeeded in developing a 16-layer read-only optical disc with a capacity of 400 gigabytes for the first time in the world*1. Its per-layer capacity is 25 gigabytes, which is the same as that of a Blu-ray Disc (BD). This multilayer technology will also be applicable to multilayer recordable discs. This development has bolstered Pioneer's confidence in the feasibility of a large-capacity optical disc, which is expected to become necessary in the near future.

Source: Pioneer Press Release , Via: Engadget

PC Gaming Isn't Dying, EA's Games Just Suck

Way back in April, EA Sports President Peter Moore opened the "PC is dying" floodgates by announcing that Madden 09 would not have a computer-counterpart. The reasoning was that the games are selling less and less, and less, with each year that passes. Fair enough, and understandable.

But, Mr. Moore has again gone ahead and re-opened the gates for more debate, but this time has omitted important facts that anyone who's ever played an EA sports title on the PC is fully aware of. Moore on his blog states that piracy is a massive reason EA is choosing to step away from the PC, and sales go down each year. Again, fair.

But as Rock, Paper, Shotgun investigates, one of the potential reasons for decline might very-well be the fact that their sports titles on the PC get worse with age. While FIFA 06 received an 83% score from PC Gamer UK, FIFA 07 received a 71% and 08 received a 66%. Seems like a lot more than piracy is to blame.

I can agree that their PC games are lackluster, over the console counterparts. Not ever have I bought an EA-developed PC game and been floored. The graphics on the PC should be better, but they aren't. Heck, NFS: Pro Street on the PC doesn't even offer a 2560x1600 resolution, when every other current game does. Of course that's a very limited issue with gamers, but it goes far beyond that. They half-ass their PC games, and that's why they're on a downhill slope.

But regardless of whether EA will admit it or not, that's what they want. With the PC as a low priority, they can push more efforts towards the consoles, where all their money seems to be.

Also, conflating employee pay with return on investment is extremely disingenuous. Of course your employees deserve to be paid. However, if they produce substandard work not of a quality to see good sales, I’d suggest they should no longer be your employees. If employees are paid based on the sales of the product, rather than for their time creating them, then the products need to be really good.

Source: Rock, Paper, Shotgun

Keeping PC's Cool During Summer Months

Ahh, summer. The time for beaches, brews and babes. It's also the time of year when computers are your worst enemy. As if the heat from the sun isn't bad enough, we have CPUs reaching in excess of 50°C, resulting in a consistently warm room. It's a disaster if you happen to be in an overly small room.

Well, Ars Technica might come to the rescue for you, with some tips on how to keep your computer, and in turn, yourself cool during this warm season. Their tips include underclocking and lowering voltages, and also to stay away from CRTs. That seems like a harsh choice, when strapping a house fan to one would be a far less expensive option.

Personally, I recommend simply making sure the computer is clean inside and out and has a superb airflow scheme. The better the airflow, the lower the temps. Past that, another good solution would be getting an air conditioner. Or, turning the PC off when it's not being used. That might be the easiest solution of all...

If you happen to be using an older, workstation-class system, don't underestimate its power consumption. I finally got around to slapping my Kill-A-Watt meter on my own rig, and was astounded to see that my system was drawing 300W of power at idle. Firing up Folding@Home + Unreal Tournament 3 pushed power consumption up to 420W—the most I've ever seen from any rig, including the ones I benchmark.

Source: Ars Technica

Gentoo 2008.0 Released, Offers Revamped Installer

It may have taken a while to get here, but the latest version of Gentoo, 2008.0, is now out and ready for your CD burners. The road to 2008.0 wasn't easy. We originally saw a skipped 2007.1 release, followed by a very-delayed current release, but hopefully things will be smoother from here on out. One of the reasons for the delay are staffing issues, so if you have ever wanted to join a distro team and happen to like Gentoo, then the opportunity is there.

The latest release includes an updated installer, one that's equipped with more drivers for better hardware support (I've yet to test X48/P45 support) and also a fresh coat of paint, using Xfce as the backdrop. In addition, packages have been upgraded to their latest stable versions, including the Linux kernel (2.6.24), gcc (4.1.2), glibc (2.6.1) and Portage.

Profiles have also been completely reworked, so for the best optimization, you can emerge --sync and then select a new profile using eselect profile list and eselect profile set after choosing the appropriate one for your machine. Performing an emerge -avuD world will enter you into 2008.0-land.

If you are interested in testing out the latest version, there are numerous versions available on the downloads page. If you are unsure of what Gentoo is or why I use it as my full-time OS, you can check out previous reviews and other Linux-related content right here.

Code-named "It's got what plants crave," this release contains numerous new features including an updated installer, improved hardware support, a complete rework of profiles, and a move to Xfce instead of GNOME on the LiveCD. LiveDVDs are not available for x86 or amd64, although they may become available in the future. The 2008.0 release also includes updated versions of many packages already available in your ebuild tree.

Source: Gentoo Linux 2008.0 Forum Thread

Bah, Uptime is Overrated!

We offer our sincere apologies to all who attempted to access the web site this weekend, as it was down from late Friday evening to supper time on Sunday. The stem of the issue goes beyond simple coding issues, but rather server and software configurations.

To make a long story short, we have now recovered, we are now better people and we now have wider waists thanks to the amount of beer required to get through the ordeal. The result is a far better running web site, and the intent to never let such an issue creep up again.

Along with the website being back online, we've imported some fresh code also, which doesn't affect anything noticeable. But, that doesn't mean bugs couldn't have creeped in. If you happen to notice anything out of the ordinary, please don't hesitate to let us know, and we'll fix it immediately.

That all aside, we have some big plans for the site throughout the summer, so stay tuned as we work towards making the site much more feature-rich, more enjoyable to use and easier to look at. Thanks guys!

July 7th Tech Roundup

• Intel DX48BT2 - Motherboards
• Zotac nForce 790i Supreme - Technic3D

• Force3D Radeon HD4850 - Overclocker Cafe
• ASUS EN9600GT Top/HTDI/512MB - PCSTATS
• Diamond HD 4870 512MB - TheTechLounge
• XFX GeForce 8800 GS & 8800 GS XXX - Bjorn3D
• Sapphire HD 4850 - InsideHW

• Prestigio Data Safe II Fashion Edition - InsideHW
• Super Talent Pico-C 8GB - Madshrimps

• Qpad CT Mousepad - Rbmods
• LapLogic AeroGel Extreme Lapdesks - Virtual-Hideout
• Linksys WRT610N Simultaneous Dual-N Band Wireless Router - Technic3D

• CoolJag LED Flash Fan - Overclockers Online
• Xigamatek Red Scorpion S1283 CPU Cooler - Tech-Reviews
• Coolink GFXChilla VGA Cooler - Legit Reviews

• Tagan Black Pearl - Motherboards
• NZXT Tempest - Virtual-Hideout
• SilverStone Kublai KL-02 - APH Networks

• Design Contest - ZEROtherm