Content and news by Rob Williams

Shortly after the Playstation3 was first announced, there were gripes from developers saying that the console was difficult to develop games for, especially where porting was involved. Well, the official word from Sony is that it is indeed more difficult to develop for, but only because there is more power to tap into.

It seems reasonable, but at this point in time there hasn’t been any real evidence that a PS3 game is much better because of the Cell processor. Sure, it’s powerful and rids certain boundaries that developers run in to, but is it all worth it for a console that’s more difficult to develop for? Aside from all of that, both consoles have some great games regardless of the hardware they are running on.

If your game starts on Xbox 360 you will have to re-engineer aspects of the game to run properly on PS3. This means additional effort. Some developers have been complaining about this but I don’t believe we can solve that. Xbox 360 is a different machine with good, but lower powered hardware in a different architecture. Developers have to view them as two different machines not as a common platform.

Source: Playstation Blog

Razer made headlines when they first released their Boomslang back in 1998 thanks to it’s spiffy 1000 DPI, and it looks like they are about to kick it old school with a special edition. If you want one, get your wallet prepped when they go on sale as they are limited to 10,000 copies.

The Boomslang Collector’s Edition 2007 will make its debut at this summer’s DreamHack, will be limited to 10,000 units worldwide, and will be encased in a sleek titanium housing. Moreover, the mouse will glow green from underneath to add that final dash of 1337-ness at a dark LAN party, but there’s no word yet on DPI nor price.

Source: Engadget

You get what you pay for. How many times have you heard that in your lifetime? Brent from Hard|OCP proves in this article that paying more is not always the wise choice. NVIDIA’s 320MB 8800GTS hardly lagged behind AMD’s Radeon HD 2900 XT, and even surpassed its performance in some of the tested games.

The reason this matters to you is that the 320MB 8800GTS costs well over $100 less, and still offers a similar or better gaming experience than the 2900 XT could give you. Not a good thing to see on AMDs part.

When you compare this to the lowest price we could find on Newegg of the ATI Radeon HD 2900 XT, $409.99 you will see a very large gap in price. What is surprising though is the large gap in performance as well, and it doesn’t swing the way you would typically think.

Source: Hard|OCP

Steve Jobs keynote this past Monday wasn’t groundbreaking, but there was a fair amount of good info brought up, including a new deal with Electronic Arts. Not only are NFS: Carbon, Command and Conquer 3 and Battlefield 2142 coming to the Mac, but a few sport titles later this year.

But as Extreme Tech found out, there was a little tidbit kept from the audience. None of the mentioned games would have a native OS X client, instead, they will be running through Transgaming’s Cider platform. This will result in less than ideal performance and potential problems, since that method is still not entirely reliable. Nothing stops regular users from using Cider themselves and running these games, so this was technically nothing more than a PR stunt. It could be that EA wants to see how well these versions will sell, before fully delving into the world that is Mac.

So, in a nutshell, the games that use Cider will not be running natively in Mac OS X. Why is this significant? Well there may be potential performance hits compared to running the same game under Windows (which is obviously now possible on a Mac given Boot Camp). How big a potential performance hit might we be looking at? There’s no way to know at this point.

Source: Extreme Tech

If you’ve read the news here for a while, you’ve probably gained the knowledge that I hate basically all brick and mortar stores. Nowadays, it’s difficult to find one that actually caters to the consumer. Most will purposely deceive their customers and apply methods that are not a far stretch from stealing. Well, Best Buy has been in the limelight for poor customer service many times, but the Consumerist now has a ‘confession’ from a former Circuit City worker.

How bad do things get? If all true, then really bad. His confessions go into detail about their useless protection plans and warranties, computer add-ons and general laziness of the employees. Did you know that they offer you a $30 Windows add-on that comes with the OS to begin with?

When buying a PC you will be asked to have a backup DVD made for a charge of $30. This is done through an application found on all computers, sometimes hidden. You could do it yourself for free. Also, it was very common to sell this on Toshiba laptops. Little do the customers know, it’s already in the box. So we would charge, and do nothing.

Source: Consumerist

The popular ads management program, Openads, has just received $5 million in capital to fund the business, an impressive feat. Though not of real importance to those who don’t run a website, it’s a great program to ad handling, with the best part of it being that it’s free. The profits will be earned by developing useful add-ons.

Openads, formerly called phpadsnew, is the most popular adserver solution when measured by number of publishers using it. They have 25,000 publishers using the sofware on 100,000 sites in 140 different countries and in 20 languages.

Source: Tech Crunch

If shelling out over $100 for the ‘Ultimate Edition’ Halo 3 wasn’t enough, how about $60 for a skinned controller and another $60 for the ugliest Xbox 360 headset to ever see the light? Closer to Halo 3s release, GameStop will be offering two different skinned controllers and the appalling headset to Halo freaks everywhere. Is the extra $20 for a skinned controller worth it? Naw, but the value is added when you know that Todd McFarlane was behind the artwork and that you also receive a figurine. Geeky yes, but you know you want one.

The two controllers and wireless headset each cost $59.99, and the controllers are covered in artwork designed by Todd McFarlane. If that wasn’t enough to get you to spend $10 above normal retail for a 360 controller, they also come with a Halo figurine from McFarlane toys. Feel free to play rough with your new controllers though, as GameStop assures us they’re “scratch and wear resistant.”

Source: Ars Technica

If you are a WHS beta tester, your release candidate awaits. For those who want to jump in on the action, Microsoft has re-opened signups for the time being, so don’t waste any time. They didn’t mention what was new or fixed, but you can bet we are getting very close to RTM. If you are unsure what WHS is all about, you can read our preview from earlier this year.

The community has been chomping at the bit for RC. And while with Beta 2 and CTP we accepted applicants into the beta program in stages, we’ll make the RC software available to all 100,000+ beta program applicants asap, as well as all new sign ups.

Source: Windows Home Server Blog

This is a story that will leave you scratching your head or sitting there dumbfounded. Some people like to use natural oil as gasoline to help the environment, save money or flip the oil industry the bird. In the case of Bob Teixeira, that decision cost him a $1,000 fine, with additional fees on the way.

The reason is that he didn’t pay his motor fuel taxes. But why should he? He’s making his own fuel, and fuel that actually doesn’t harm the environment. This situation is like being charged for food at a restaurant that you didn’t pay for, or like paying $400 for an operating system only to have Notepad crash on you. Oh, and don’t think of leaving without reading this great quote:

“With the high cost of fuel right now, the department does recognize that a lot of people are looking for relief,” said Reggie Little, assistant director of the motor fuel taxes division. “We’re not here to hurt the small guy, we’re just trying to make sure that the playing field is level.”

Source: News Observer

This past weekend, information was raised about the MPAA going after popular file-sharing site TorrentSpy, demanding that they begin tracking their users. If this were to happen, it would be a bad day for site visitors. TorrentSpy responded by stating that they would never track their users.. ever. Now, the MPAA is on them again, claiming they are withholding evidence.

The question remains, what is going to happen to TorrentSpy? Not much, at least right away. The Pirate Bay has had an insane amount of legal trouble, but they are still alive and kicking. TorrentSpy still voes to never share information, but the next few weeks are going to be interesting.

The judge stayed the order on Friday to allow TorrentSpy time to prepare an appeal, which must be filed by Tuesday. The judge also allowed the website to mask the IP addresses of users for now.

Source: DailyTech

Whew, this is the story that will not die! We’ve posted a few times about the possible inclusion of Sun’ Zettabyte File System in Leopard, which was easy to believe since the CEO of Sun himself said that would be the case. Then we heard that he was wrong, which was also easy to believe since Steve Jobs didn’t mention it in his keynote on Monday.

So what is it going to be? ZFS is in Leopard, but it’s for diagnostic means only, not as a bootable system. What that means in the grand scheme of things is… most people will never deal with it, and those who do, have nothing to be excited about.

An IW reader claims to have accessed the system through Disk Utility’s Erase menu, and states that “ZFS is only available on non-boot drives on Sun systems, so this is also the case for Leopard” — seemingly reinforcing Croll’s later assertion that Apple is really only “exploring it as a file system option for high-end storage systems with really large storage.”

Source: Engadget

MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif., June 12, 2007 – Intel Corporation and Google* joined with Dell*, EDS*, the Environmental Protection Agency*, HP*, IBM*, Lenovo*, Microsoft*, Pacific Gas and Electric*, World Wildlife Fund*, and more than a dozen additional organizations today announcing their intent to form the Climate Savers Computing Initiative.

Source: Intel Press Release

In an effort to curb copyright infringement on the huge video sharing website, YouTube is rolling out a technology that will apply unique identifiers to uploaded videos and scan them for the audio tracks. This is to see if they match up with copyrighted music. YouTube will then contact the the media company responsible for the copyrighted content and see if they want the video pulled, or want profit sharing.

The technology seems a little confusing, but whatever works. YouTube is the hot company to sue, so this implementation might thwart it from happening so often.

These tools will be used to identify copyrighted material, after which media companies can decide if they would like to remove the material or keep it up, as part of a revenue-sharing deal with YouTube, which can sell advertising alongside it.

Source: Reuters

AMD has finally released a DX10 demo to showcase what their high-end cards are made of. Sadly, the only people who can run the demo need to own an HD 2900 XT, so that keeps things pretty exclusive right now. For the rest of us, there is a high-definition video available that shows us what we are missing.

This fast paced, action packed demo exploits the power of the ATI Radeon HD 2900XT to create a rich and expansive landscape of snow, rock, and ice. From the procedural snow accumulation on the harsh terrain to the wrinkles on Ruby’s brow and the physics that drive each strand of fur on Ruby’s fur collar, the ATI Radeon HD 2900XT can handle it all.

Source: Official ATI Page

We reported last week that Sun’s Zettabyte File System would be making an appearance in Apple’s upcoming OS X Leopard. Who would be to disagree? Word came straight from Sun’s CEO. Well, it turns out that ZFS is not happening after all, and Leopard will be sticking with a version of HFS+.

The big question is, was ZFS ever slated to be included with Leopard? The CEO of Sun seemed quite confident in saying so. Was Steve Jobs rubbed the wrong way with his ‘leaked announcement’ and in turn decided to pull it from the OS, or was the Sun CEO looking to increase his stock?

During an interview with InformationWeek, Brian Croll, senior director of product marketing for the Mac OS, said, “ZFS is not happening,” when asked whether Sun’s Zettabyte File System would be in Leopard. Instead, Leopard would use Apple’s current hierarchical file system, called HFS+. The Apple file system was first introduced in 1998 in Mac OS 8.0.

Source: Information Week

If someone breaks into your house while you are at home, you might be tempted to haul out a wimpy pistol, but not Damian Fernandez. No, he waited in his room prepped with a samurai sword, waiting for the thief to return to his room and take off with his PS3. Needless to say, some thief is out there today with a gaping hole in his chest. He was caught by the police, but released on bail. Something tells me this kid has been playing a fair amount of the Ninja Gaiden Sigma demo.

The burglar found the empty PlayStation 3 box and ran out of the room, but Damian was waiting for him. “Once I saw him take off running back, I jumped off my (bunk) bed and I grabbed my sword … and I just waited for him,” he said. Damian said he lunged at him with his samurai sword, striking him in the chest.

Source: Local 10

We all hate spam and love to see the people behind the spam being sent to prison. Take Adam Vitale, who was responsible for millions upon millions of spam e-mails, earning himself upwards of $40,000 a week. No wonder it’s so difficult to get out of the spam business once you are in.

According to court documents, Moeller and Vitale had devised a way to defeat AOL’s filtering system. During one week in August 2005, the two of them managed to target over 1.27 million AOL e-mail addresses with spam. The indictment accuses of them of violating a section of the CAN-SPAM Act that says that “the volume of electronic mail messages transmitted in furtherance of the offense exceeded 2,500 during any 24-hour period, 25,000 during any 30-day period, or 250,000 during any 1-year period.”

Source: Ars Technica

Unless you were asleep all yesterday, you know of all the announcements to come out of the WWDC, one being the release of Safari for Windows XP and Vista. Well, not all is going according to plan, as there are reports of many problems with usage, even for simple tasks. Aside from that, the same hacker behind the infamous Apple WiFi discovered numerous bugs just hours after the release. Maybe using it right now is not such a great idea.

David Maynor, infamous for the Apple Wi-Fi hack, has discovered bugs in the Windows version of Safari mere hours after it was released. He notes in the blog that his company does not report vulnerabilities to Apple. His claimed catch for ‘an afternoon of idle futzing’: 4 DoS bugs and 2 remote execution vulnerabilities.

Source: Slashdot

Blu-ray seems to be dominating the charts the past few months, but some changes that the HD-DVD promotional group made last month seems to be paying off twofold. The rebates responsible are no longer available, but given the response, it wouldn’t be surprising to see them again.

So far, consumers have purchased over 150,000 dedicated HD DVD players, up from 100,000 in mid-April. This figure does not include the HD DVD drives available as a $199 add-on for the Xbox 360 and pales in comparison to the number of PlayStation 3s shipped with built-in Blu-ray drives.

Source: Ars Technica

If you are a fan of Italian exotics (not the women), then the idea of 385 Ferraris on one race track should excite you plenty. Of course, this wasn’t something by chance. Ferrari wanted it to happen, and so it did. Now they have a place in the Guinness books for the largest parade of Ferrari cars. From what I hear, that’s a difficult thing to accomplish.

Ferrari estimates that over £60 million worth of Italian automotive exotica was on the Silverstone Circuit at once, including everything from a 250 California Spyder to a 250GTO to F40s, F50s, Enzos and ultra-rare FXX.

Source: Autoblog