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- Intel Launches Sleek Single-Slot Arc Pro A60 Workstation Graphics Card
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- Maxon Redshift With AMD Radeon GPU Rendering Support Now Available
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Contest #4 In Full Swing
We are now a week into our fourth birthday contest, sponsored by ASUS. The prize up for grabs is either a Crosshair AM2 or Commando 775 board, both part of the Republic of Gamers family.
What do you need to do to win? It’s simple. Review a product that you own, and despise. Don’t lie… I know you have one. We all do. Write a small, but professional review that spans 200 – 500 words. Doing so will get you entered. There have been some great entries so far, so make sure you get your $0.02 in!
Source: Contest Page
Tom’s Hardware Sold for $15 – $20 Million
Tom’s Hardware Guide and its parent company TG Publishing have been sold to an undisclosed buyer for an undisclosed price. The deal will close later this month, said Omid Rahmat, CEO of Tom’s Publishing, in a letter to the Inquirer. The rumored price, however, is $15-$20 million.
Keyword: Rumor. Rumors like these don’t normally just come out of the blue though, so chances are good that it’s true.
Source: Mashable
Apple’s iPod Cracks 100 Million Barrier
Apple announced today that it has sold its 100 millionth iPod music player. The first iPod was launched in November 2001 and has gone on to become the “it device” when it comes to portable music players and commands over 75% of the digital audio player market. The iPod family has changed the way we view digital music and the signature white headphones can be seen everywhere from subways to gyms to college campuses.
I wonder how many of these iPods are still being used, as opposed to being broken and in the trash. Either way, this is a very impressive milestone.
Source: Daily Tech
Xbox Live and Windows Messenger Buddies to Merge
Xbox Live users with friends lists could soon see those lists grow dramatically. Starting May 7, Microsoft will launch a new service called Windows Live Messenger on Xbox 360. This will allow users of Xbox Live friends lists to merge those rosters with Windows Messenger buddy lists.
This is a great idea, actually. I’d still rather keep my lists separate though. I don’t care to know how someones grocery trip went awry while I am fragging a couple buddies.
Source: News.com
Intel Launches Latest Quad-Core QX6800
SANTA CLARA, Calif., Apr. 9, 2007 – Intel Corporation today advanced its enthusiast-level quad-core processor family with the introduction of the Intel(R) Core(TM) 2 Extreme processor QX6800, the company’s twelfth quad-core processor offering. Running at 2.93 GHz — the fastest native clock speed yet reached with the Intel(R) Core(TM) microarchitecture for the quad-core desktop — this addition to Intel’s innovative processor family sets new standards for desktop PC performance.
Thanks to this latest release, the current lineup is as follows:
|
CPU Model
|
Clock Speed
|
FSB
|
L2 Cache
|
TDP
|
Cores
|
Pricing
|
| Intel Core 2 Extreme QX6800 | 2.93GHz | 1066MHz | 4MB x 2 | 130w | 4 | $1199 |
| Intel Core 2 Extreme QX6700 | 2.66GHz | 1066MHz | 4MB x 2 | 130w | 4 | $999 |
| Intel Core 2 Extreme X6800 | 2.93GHz | 1066MHz | 4MB | 75W | 2 | $999 |
| Intel Core 2 Quad Q6600 | 2.40GHz | 1066MHz | 4MB x 2 | 105W | 4 | $851 |
| Intel Core 2 Duo E6700 | 2.66GHz | 1066MHz | 4MB | 65W | 2 | $530 |
| Intel Core 2 Duo E6600 | 2.40GHz | 1066MHz | 4MB | 65W | 2 | $316 |
| Intel Core 2 Duo E6400 | 2.13GHz | 1066MHz | 2MB | 65W | 2 | $224 |
| Intel Core 2 Duo E6300 | 1.86GHz | 1066MHz | 2MB | 65W | 2 | $183 |
| Intel Core 2 Duo E4300 | 1.80GHz | 800MHz | 2MB | 65W | 2 | $163 |
$200 more to go from an X6800 to a QX6800? That would be a hard one to pass up, even if you didn’t need Quad-Core.
Source: Intel Press Release
Hybrid Technologies L1X-75: Zero-60 in 3.1 Seconds
Perhaps it was fate—We were walking towards the parking lot to leave the New York auto show’s second day or press previews Thursday as a strong gust of wind blew the cover off of a little, red roadster parked on a side street. We went back to investigate, and discovered the L1X-75, a 600-hp, carbon-fiber rocket that’s powered by nothing more than your 110 outlet.
This is a gorgeous car, and it flies. The downside is it doesn’t have that rumble that sends blood pumping. Instead, it’s more like a jet engine. Still, amazing piece of technology.
Source: Popular Mechanics
Patti Santangelo v RIAA: Battle Won?
Odds are that Patti Santangelo, the New York mother who was the first RIAA victim to make a determined stand against the Big 4, helped to no small extent by p2pnet readers who put their money where their mouths were, contributing thousands of dollars towards her legal costs, has won her battle to clear her name and show up the Big 4 for the bullies they are.
Let’s see this kind of result for all the RIAA cases!
Source: p2pnet
Putting Flash Memory Into Any iPod
These last few days I’ve been living like a monk. Why? Well, after the success of my former project, turn your iPod mini into a flash based iPod, I started thinking “wouldn’t it be great if we could do this to almost any iPod ever made?  I mean, eliminating all moving parts out of our current iPods would be great, wouldn’t it?
I am not sure why anyone would want to downgrade their iPods storage capacity, but 16GB Compact Flash would sure add to the durability factor.
Source: Geek Technique
Can’t Drink Coke In A Movie Without Coca Cola’s Permission?
Take the latest example, pointed out by Justin Levine about Coca Cola forcing some movie makers to stop the release of their film, because officials at Coke were upset that a character in the movie drinks a can of Coke. Why wouldn’t Coke be happy about this bit of product placement?
Where does it end? Coke should be happy that their product is being given free advertising, but instead they want to halt a film from being released. Unbelievable.
Source: Tech Dirt
GAIM Becomes Pidgin
After a long, and unfortunately secret debate (as we could not say why we were looking at a name change, we ended up just doing this ourselves), we settled on the name “Pidgin” for gaim itself, “libpurple” for libgaim (which, as of 2.0.0 beta6, exists), and “Finch” for gaim-text. Yes, the spelling of “Pidgin” is intentional.
At first I thought this might be a long overdue April Fools joke, but it was no such thing. I’ve been a GAIM user for a few years now and have come to enjoy and rely on it quite a bit. It’s sad to see it’s original name go.
Source: Official Site
RIAA and MPAA Seek Authority To Pretext
According to an article in the LA Times, the RIAA and MPAA sometimes need to lie in their pursuit of bootleggers. They would like the legislation to exempt anyone who owns a copyright, patent, trademark, or trade secret from restrictions against pretexting.
Hah. Exempt from a crime charge just because you own a copyright? That’s quite the request. What’s next? Request for permission to execute violence on someone whose downloaded music?
Source: Slashdot
Microsoft Dropping DRM From Zune Music Store
Microsoft says that it’s dropping DRM from some of the catalog in the Zune store. This is the other shoe-drop we’ve all been waiting for since Apple announced last week that it would sell the entire EMI catalog (albeit at a 30% higher price) without DRM through the iTunes Music Store. Interestingly, Microsoft seems to be implying that it’s going to sell DRM-free tracks from labels other than EMI.
It’s good to see that this was not an exclusive deal with Apple. Now all we need is other record labels to follow suit…
Source: Boing Boing
Intel Readies Merom-L Core
In the recent PCN 107423-00 Intel notified its customers about a stepping change for Celeron M 520. Although a Celeron M 530 was introduced on March 25th at $134, in the PCN this model is not mentioned at all. Intel informs that said model will transition from a Merom B2 stepping core to a new Merom-L core with A stepping, which will be available starting the 1st of June.
Celery love is always a good thing. Celeron used to be a CPU that screamed budget, but today even the budget models pack a nice punch.
Source: Daily Tech
100,000 Pink Soons Coming Zune.. Err..
We all knew it was coming — and we’ve seen the rather more garish 100-unit hot pink Zune before — so this isn’t exactly the biggest news ’round these parts. No, if Microsoft really wanted to impress us, they’d take their minds off planning a targeted, 100,000 unit production run of pink cases and set their mind to really fixing the Zune.
Ouch, harsh words. I need one of these to go with the rest of my pimp outfit though. I can’t complain.
Source: Engadget
Top 10 Student Inventions
You don’t have to be a famous researcher or engineer to come up with the next big invention. These ten student projects prove just that. Which one is your favorite?
Some of these are great! My favorite would have to be the kitchen appliance that actually creates dinnerware.
Source: TecheBlog
Is Microsoft Dead?
Microsoft cast a shadow over the software world for almost 20 years starting in the late 80s. I can remember when it was IBM before them. I mostly ignored this shadow. I never used Microsoft software, so it only affected me indirectly—for example, in the spam I got from botnets. And because I wasn’t paying attention, I didn’t notice when the shadow disappeared.
It’s foolish to assume that Microsoft is "dead", but the gist of what the author is saying is that people are no longer scared of them… they have nothing to worry about when trying to compete. Companies like Google no doubt played a huge role in this happening.
Source: Paul Graham
1Passwd Introduces New License Cards
License keys don’t need to be boring text strings. All the data contained within the license key can be kept in a beautiful image. Drag-and-drop defines the Mac. We do not want people trying to type the license key by hand; images can be dragged and dropped with ease.
This idea is Mac-only for the time being, but it’s cool to see. The scenario would be installing a new piece of software, and dragging the graphic to your license manager, instead of typing in a huge serial key. I understand how this may benefit downloadable software, but what about all the boxed software you buy?
Source: Switchers Blog
Asus C90 Will Be First User Upgradeable Lappie
Asus says you’ll even be able to pop out the system’s graphics card and install a new one all within minutes. Spec-wise, the C90 will be the first to include HDMI 1.3 and an ESATA port. Not to mention it’ll be packing an upgradeable Core 2 Duo CPU and a mystery video card. Upgradeable components, HDMI, mystery video card? We’re sold. The notebook is expected to debut sometime next month.
It’s about time! These laptops should sell relatively well. The ability to upgrade your GPU, CPU and other components at any time would be a huge draw. Certainly beats needing to upgrade the entire laptop!
Source: Gizmodo
Vista Taking a Nibble Out of Apple in OS Wars?
Despite all of the positive buzz about the Mac operating system and the ‘halo effect’ of iPod sales, Mac OS X market share actually dropped last month, reports Computerworld: ‘The share of PowerPC-based Macs fell … from 4.29% in February to 3.94% in March. That dip was not fully offset by an increase in Intel-based Mac hardware, leading to a overall net decline in Mac share of 0.3%, to 6.08% in March.’
According to reports, Vista usage is now up to 2%. I’m curious as to whether this trend will continue, or if Vista sales will slow down abruptly. It’s no surprise to see great sales right after launch, but to keep that momentum going is another story.
Source: Slashdot
Violent Video Games Only Affect Unstable Youth
This carries over well with the news posting below.
Researchers discovered three distinct groups upon analyzing the data. Seventy seven participants maintained the same anger level. Twenty two subjects had anger levels that doubled from the same starting point as unaffected participants. Eight participants started out a higher level of anger before the test started, but dropped down to normal levels after 20 minutes of game play.
This is surprising, because I would immediately assume that the players who began playing the game while angry would be the ones to become even angrier afterwards. Once again, this is some proof that it’s not the game, it’s the person playing it.
Source: Daily Tech
Yet Another GTA-Related Murder
Ezekiel Maxwell, a paranoid schizophrenic, launched the horrific attack after years of smoking super-strength ‘skunk weed’. The 17-year-old claimed ‘gangster voices’ from the ultra-violent computer game Grand Theft Auto had set him on a mission to stab a black woman.
This story is focusing more on the fact that he used a strong drug prior to the murder, which is good since most media try to spin the entire blame on the video game. Sad case, and a good reason to stay off drugs! Thanks to Stork for passing me this news.
Source: Daily Mail UK
iPod For Michigan Kids
It was President Herbert Hoover who campaigned on the promise of prosperity under his administration when he vowed “a chicken in every pot, a car in every garage.” Michigan state Democrats want to do him one better: an iPod for every child. An unsigned editorial in The Detroit News is, to put it mildly, not a fan. “An iPod for every kid? Are they !#$!ing idiots?” the headline screams.
It sounds great at first, but there are many skeptics. Michigan is in the middle of a budget "crisis", so spending $38 million dollars out of the blue is strange. Worse still, they plan to increase taxes on various products (like soda) to help ease the strain on the states wallet.
Source: News.com
Corel Releases Important Update for InterVideo WinDVD
Our decision stems from recent reports that hackers have illegally obtained certain software licensing keys and have used them to duplicate copyrighted content without prior authorization. Corel takes this situation very seriously. We have been working closely with our partners and other industry organizations to ensure we take the steps necessary to prevent copyright infringement from happening in the future.
Until you update, even your legal content will cease to play. Once again it seems like companies are inconveniencing the legal users more than those who are pirating movies.
Source: Official Website
Microsoft: $179 is a Fair Price For Xbox 360 Hard Drive
“What we have done is release a smaller laptop size drive. If you compare what we are offering with a real plug-and-play drive the closest thing would be to take a 120 gig self-powered external PC drive,” said Microsoft’s Aaron Greenberg. “In that case we are seeing those retail at anywhere from $160 to $200 for comparable laptop sized external hard drives”
$179 for 120GB? It doesn’t matter what you take into consideration… that is expensive! Even top of the line hard drives cost far less than $1/GB, but this drive is closer to $1.50/GB. It’s too bad that the Xbox 360 doesn’t have the hard drive upgrade capabilities of the Playstation3.
Source: Daily Tech