Content and news by Rob Williams

But recently, we learned of Oscuro’s Obvlion Overhaul, also known as OOO. This is a complete overhaul of gameplay, and this finally makes game more playable for old farts like yours truly. OOO changes the gameplay in a way that you will have a separation between the low-level and high-level areas, so no more epic battles with rats around the first city (yeah, five wolves on lvl15 can be quite a challenge).

I admit I am not a big fan of Oblivion, although the gorgeous and expansive world is by far one of the best I’ve seen in any game. For those, like me, who do not enjoy the general gameplay aspects of the game, Oscuro has taken it upon himself to revamp the game. He didn’t only modify rules, but added a slew of new items, dungeons and monsters. From the FAQ:

Oscuro’s Oblivion Overhaul was designed to enhance the immersion, variety, realism and difficulty of TES IV: Oblivion through extensive changes to its gameplay structures and aided by the addition of high-quality content.

Do you need more of a reason to give this mod a try?

Source: The Inquirer

It’s not too often that a console firmware update catches my attention, or even affects me, but this one is an exception. The latest 1.80 firmware update (in the coming days hopefully) will offer upscaling of both DVD movies and PS1/PS2 games.

First off, firmware v1.80 will enable “upscaling of PlayStation / PlayStation 2 games and DVD movies up to a full 1080p when viewed on a compatible HDTV set.” Of course, that “up to” bit frightens us a bit, but we’ll take any progress we can get.

Anyone who uses a classic console on their HDTV knows it looks horrible. Colors are blotchy and the image doesn’t scale properly. Great job to Sony for making this happen, but I’m sure most are going to reserve comment until we see just how well it works.

Source: Engadget

If you lived with your folks and were involved with illegal activities, should the police have the right to bypass your computers password in order to find evidence? In this particular case, the investigators took it upon themselves to do just that.

The suspect was not at home. However, his 91-year-old father answered the door in his pajamas, invited the agents in, and eventually gave them permission to enter his son’s bedroom and search the hard drive on his son’s password-protected computer. The agents used EnCase to perform the search, a common forensic tool programmed to ignore Windows logon passwords. Agents found child pornography on the computer.

First off, this son in question should be thrown behind bars for a while in my opinion. Child pornography is a massive no-no. That aside, I don’t believe it’s right for investigators to be able to have the ability to break into your computer in search of evidence, without a warrant.

What makes all of this worse is the fact that this son was not even home at the time. Had he been there, he could have granted a search, or turned it away as well. The fact that they caught this guy with child porn is fantastic, but the utter lack of respect for privacy is appalling.

Source: Wired

A new 3D Realms job posting on Gamasutra has revealed another small screenshot from Duke Nukem Forever, the long in development first person shooter sequel. A previous job posting in January also included a teaser picture. George Broussard of 3D Realms has this to say about the image: “Just to head off any questions. Real-time in game asset, like the last job ad shot. Taken from a game level with a dark background, on purpose, because we wanted to focus attention on the character.”

It still amazes me that this is a game we should have seen near ten years ago. However, it’s difficult to not be excited for it, as it should be the best game to ever hit due to the amount of time it has taken.

Source: Shacknews

Proving that Second Life is indeed a reincarnation of the Wild West, the Australian Broadcasting Commission (ABC) was literally blown off the face of Second Life Tuesday by “miscreants” according to The Sydney Morning Herald. ABC Island featured a number of venues where visitors could listen and dance to music, attend talks and watch videos of selected ABC programs before it was reduced to something more like Hiroshima circa 1945.

Although it’s disturbing to see a virtual business wiped right off the map by a bunch of vandals, I cannot help but laugh at the same time. As if Second Life wasn’t enough like real life as is.

Source: Tech Crunch

Over the past month, Engadget has had a three part series explaining how to build an Xbox 360 notebook. The instructions are very in-depth, but it looks like they covered everything there is to be covered.

You now have been taken through the most extensive making-of guide for an Xbox 360 laptop ever written. This information will come in quite handy for your own hacks and should give you the basis with which to create your own Xbox 360 projects.

If you have a lot of time on your hands and a desire to potentially maim your Xbox 360, give the project a ponder.

Source: Part 1, Part 2, Part 3

Okay, it wasn’t that bad, but Adobe knew it had issues with the older code; with CS3, they’ve completely overhauled the drawing engine to get a much larger boost and bring an end to any nostalgia for the speedy—yet crashy—days of yore. Of course, this update also comes with Universal Binary Intel Mac support, a new interface, and some things called “new features” that we’ll also take a look at.

If you are a Photoshop user and are considering an upgrade to the latest version, Ars has got you covered. The review focuses on the Mac version, but PC users will be able to relate to a good portion of it.

Source: Ars Technica

An international team has broken a long-standing record in an impressive feat of calculation. On March 6, computer clusters from three institutions (the EPFL, the University of Bonn, and NTT in Japan) reached the end of eleven months of strenuous calculation, churning out the prime factors of a well-known, hard-to-factor number — 2^1039 – 1 — that is 307 digits long.

So if you just so happen to be using 1024-bit encryption and believe you are the target of a super computer, it’s probably a good idea to change your password every nine months.

Source: Slashdot

If finding a hotel with cheap (read: free), reliable wifi is a crucial part of your travel accommodation choices, HotelChatter’s annual roundup of the best and worst hotels for wifi is a good place to start looking. Marriott and its chain of hotels (Residence Inn, Courtyard, etc.) top off the best list, while Intercontinental and Four Seasons hotels round out the worst.

If you are going on a business trip, this kind of information is just as important as whether the room is smoke-free or not.

Source: Lifehacker

It’s difficult to consider this a scam, because it seems to pass through many legal loopholes. What Kevin Ham negotiated, is that all traffic from a non-registered domain with Cameroons TLD would automatically be passed through to his ad site.

Business 2.0’s Paul Sloan has been digging into the .CM domain name scam. A domain name broker managed to convince the government of Cameroon, which controls .cm, to do a deal where any mis-typed domain name, like Google.cm (instead of google.com), takes the visitor to an advertising-filled landing page (the ads are served by Yahoo).

Bear in mind that .cm is a common mistake. I have even found myself typing it in by accident. This is is sheer brilliance from a business standpoint as it could be worth billions over time. However, it is no surprise that no one is pleased, except Kevin Ham’s pocketbook of course.

Source: Tech Crunch

People familiar with the matter say the Cupertino-based Mac maker has called upon its award-winning design chief Jonathan Ive and his team to cut the fat from the the current iMac line and outfit a pair of new Core 2 Duo-based models in a form factor that will be both slimmer and sleeker than today’s offerings.

The article points out that Apple is likely to rid their 17" iMac from the line-up entirely, while concentrating on their 20" and 24" models. It is going to be interesting to see what the iMacs will look like after a re-design.

Source: Apple Insider

Reportedly, Kingston is looking to reveal its DDR3 1500MHz HyperX and DDR2 800MHz low latency memory modules at Computex, which should play nicely with Intel’s DDR3-friendly Bearlake chipset. The DIMMs are expected to be “nearly twice as fast (over 20Gbps) as today’s highest speed DDR2 counterparts,” and the lower voltage (1.5v compared to 1.8v) claims to provide a “more efficient memory solution for both mobile and server platforms.”

Kingston is out to kick some ass. It’s incredible that DDR3 is not even publicly available and we are already seeing insane stock clocks.

Source: Engadget

We’re still puzzled as to what kind of spaz lets go of their Wiimotes during play, since none of the people we know have had this problem. But if you’re one of the lucky few who flip out in Wii Baseball and chuck that thing across the room, this LCD Safety shield should be just the ticket to keeping your investment safe.

Hah, this should protect all those over-ambitious Wii players.

Source: Gizmodo

Sunnyvale, Calif.—May 22, 2007—OCZ Technology Group, a worldwide leader in innovative, ultra-high performance and high reliability memory, today announced their official crossover into DDR3 memory to coincide with the recent launch of the Intel Bearlake Chipset. OCZ’s hand-tested DDR3 solutions enable ardent enthusiasts to take advantage of the highly-anticipated P35 platform while experiencing the legendary quality and reliability of OCZ memory.

Source: OCZ Press Release

GENEVA and SANTA CLARA, Calif., May 22, 2007 – STMicroelectronics, Intel and Francisco Partners today announced they have entered into a definitive agreement to create a new independent semiconductor company from the key assets of businesses which last year generated approximately $3.6 billion in combined annual revenue.

Source: Intel Press Release

Seagate has released a version of Disc Wizard and Maxtor’s Max Blast 5, but what makes these utilities highly on the “me want” list is the fact that both are based on the OEM version of the excellent True Image app. Disc Wizard and Max Blast utilities now offer a plethora of options that give people options previously offered only by commercial applications.

It’s not often that companies give away free software that turns out to be incredibly useful as well. You need to own at least one Seagate drive in order for the program to function, but given the size of the company, it’s not going to leave a lot of people out.

Source: The Inquirer

We are lacking on P35 content thus far, but I have just received some new Kingston 2GB DDR3 which might just be the fastest stock-speed kit on the market, at DDR3-1375 (PC3-11000) speeds. Yes, a company has already broke JEDEC standard which tops out at DDR3-1333.

I am not yet sure on the timings, but will find out later today. You can expect a review of these modules next week with possible P5K and P5K3 reviews later this week.

The XPS 720 H2C Edition uses an Intel Core 2 Extreme QX6700 processor that has been factory overclocked to 3.46GHz. The processor along with 2GB of 800MHz Corsair DOMINATOR DDR2 memory (factory overclocked to 1066MHz) find a home on an NVIDIA nForce 680i SLI MCP motherboard. Graphics duties are handled by two 768MB NVIDIA GeForce 8800GTX graphics cards operating in SLI mode.

Included with the large $6,000 price tag is a 24″ LCD, 2x Blu-ray drives, 2x 160GB 10K RPM hard drives, Creative X-Fi and your choice of Windows Vista or XP. It’s pricey, but such a drool-worthy rig!

Source: Daily Tech

In a valiant effort to keep lead out of CPU production, Intel announced that their upcoming High-K metal gate transistors will be completely lead-free.

SANTA CLARA, Calif., May 22, 2007 – Intel Corporation today announced that its future processors, beginning with its entire family of 45 nanometer (nm) high-k metal gate (Hi-k) processors, are going 100 percent lead-free. The Intel 45nm Hi-k family includes the next-generation Intel(R) Core(RM) 2 Duo, Core 2 Quad and Xeon(R) processors, and the company will begin 45nm Hi-k production in the second half of this year.

High-K MG transistors are designed to be more efficient while lowering voltage leakage. Add to the fact that they are now lead-free, it’s growing to become a technology that enthusiasts and regular consumers alike will enjoy.

Source: Intel Press Release

The Senator was allegedly reaching for her cell phone when she crashed into the driver in front of her. The irony of this story lies in the fact that Senator Migden voted for a bill that would have outlawed cellphone usage while driving.

If there are any political stories I enjoy a lot, it’s these. Of course hypocritical political figures are not new, but this story is still hilarious.

Source: Autoblog