- Qualcomm Launches Snapdragon 4 Gen 2 Mobile Platform
- AMD Launches Ryzen PRO 7000 Series Mobile & Desktop Platform
- Intel Launches Sleek Single-Slot Arc Pro A60 Workstation Graphics Card
- NVIDIA Announces Latest Ada Lovelace Additions: GeForce RTX 4060 Ti & RTX 4060
- Maxon Redshift With AMD Radeon GPU Rendering Support Now Available
Social & RSS Feeds
Latest Videos
Latest News
Tech News
Sinbad Rises From The Dead
Comedian Sinbad had the last laugh this week after his Wikipedia entry announced he was dead. Rumors began circulating last weekend regarding the posting, said Sinbad, who first got a telephone call from his daughter. The gossip quieted, but a few days later the 50-year-old entertainer said phone calls, text messages and e-mails started pouring in by the hundreds.
It doesn’t mention how this happened in the first place, but it sounds like it could have been deliberate. As you’d expect from a comedian, Sinbad took it all in stride.
Source: Sun Times
Chinese Hackers Wake Up To Malware
"The past three to four months have seen a slow increase in Chinese malware. It used to be the odd file every now and then, but it is now almost every day," Chris Boyd, director of malware research at FaceTime Communications, told vnunet.com. China has traditionally been a hotbed of password stealers who go after log-in names and passwords for online games such as World of Warcraft. The criminals are after virtual currencies and goods which can be sold on auction websites.
This is one more reason you should make sure you have your computer protection at the highest level possible to avoid any hardships down the road. Especially with games like WoW, where people could hack and sell your goods for loads of cash.
Source: IT Week
The Student vs Hacker Security Showdown Rematch
During the three day event, small teams from eight of the areas colleges are handed insecure networks that they have to lockdown and keep running — all while a team of hackers attempt to gain access any way they can. To keep it interesting, the teams also had to perform various tasks, such as program web applications, install IDS systems and more.
This sounds like a ton of fun, but I could imagine the stress to come along with it at else. It’s like real life IT/IS taken to a new level.
Source: Slashdot
Yet Another Contest Reminder
We have two different contests going on right now and all you need is one ugly computer case or a hilarious gaming screenshot to enter. The winner of our case contest will walk (to their door) to receive a new silver Thermaltake Armor! On the funny screenshot contest side of the things, the winner there will receive a Tarantula gaming keyboard, DeathAdder mouse (non-ambidextrous!) and their Barracuda HP1 headset! Both contests end at the end of the month, with a fourth and final birthday contest being unveiled this coming Thursday.
Source: Contest Page
Entire SNES Collection on eBay
Up for auction is a once in a lifetime opportunity. I used to be an avid collector of video games, but as times changed I decided to sell off my collection. The majority of it I have sold of piece by piece, but I no longer have the time or energy to do that. Many of you remember me from selling my NES collection a few months back and that was very good, but this collection is definitely my pride and joy.
I’m not sure how much pride or joy he has in his collection if he’s selling it, but he might not care since he expects at least $15,000 for it. What’s impressive is the fact that the entire collection is in great shape, complete with box and manual. So if you want to put off buying a new car, here is the next best thing.
Source: eBay Auction
Run Vista For A Year Without Activating
Livingston, who publishes the Windows Secrets newsletter, said that a single change to Vista’s registry lets users put off the operating system’s product activation requirement an additional eight times beyond the three disclosed last month. With more research, said Livingston, it may even be possible to find a way to postpone activation indefinitely.
It’s amazing that this can be accomplished with a single registry hack. Does Microsoft even review their own documentation? This hack can only be used with earlier versions of Vista, as recent versions seem to have this "exploit" patched up. It looks as though the business versions will retain the feature, however.
Source: Computer World
The Score is IBM – 700,000 / SCO – 326
After years of litigation to discover what, exactly, SCO was suing about, IBM has finally discovered that SCO’s ‘mountain of code’ is only 326 scattered lines. Worse, most of what is allegedly infringing are comments and simple header files (like errno.h). These probably aren’t copyrightable for being unoriginal and dictated by externalities and aren’t owned by SCO in any event.
Hmm, what’s that smell in the air? It’s owned! After these facts, it doesn’t look like SCO has much of a leg to stand on. The fact remains though, these snippets do exist, but none of them are copyrighted or seem to have any real value.
Strong: Slashdot
Ballmer Says Google’s Growth Is Insane
Steve Ballmer spoke to the Seattle PI this week, commenting that Google’s pace of employee growth is ‘insane,’ and the company has few successful businesses outside of Internet search and advertising. He referred to Google’s non-search efforts as ‘cute.’ Google’s current number of employees is nearly doubling each year. ‘I don’t really know that anybody’s proven that a random collection of people doing their own thing actually creates value.’
Is Ballmer scared? Nah. It’s no secret good coders are sought after like gold though. Microsoft might have to start paying more to keep their best ones. Although after using Vista, I am wondering if they have such a thing to begin with.
I’m kidding. Calm down.
Source: Slashdot
Microsoft: OneCare Should Not Have Been Rolled Out
Microsoft has said that its OneCare security suite has "a problem" with the underlying antivirus code, and admitted that security is just “" a little part of Microsoft". Speaking to ZDNet UK exclusively at the CeBIT show in Hanover, a senior manager for the software giant said that its consumer security product is far from perfect and that pieces are actually "missing".
There we have it. Microsoft made a mistake and fessed up to it. They openly admit that “security is not [our] business”, but note that updates are being developed to fix what was wronged. Still, not reassuring to those who paid for it.
Source: ZD Net
Commodore Gaming PCs Unveiled
The high-end XX packs enough grunt to make an Alienware machine run to its deformed alien mum. It uses an Intel Core 2 Extreme QX6700 quad-core processor, 4GB of RAM and two Nvidia GeForce 8800 GTX graphics cards running in tandem. The bottom G wimps out with an E6320 1.83GHz dual-core chip, 2GB of RAM and an Nvidia GeForce 7900 GS — but even this is fast enough to run most games.
Commodore is back and they want to make a huge splash with gamers once again. These PC’s look great, I must admit. The cases are not extravagant like Alienware, which is a good thing as far as I am concerned. Their high-end XX proves that they are not here to mess around. Welcome back Commodore.
Source: CNet Crave
Take Two Sues Jack Thompson Over Nuisance Lawsuits
Despite his failure to win a restraining order against the T-rated game Bully, Jack Thompson has not stopped pursuing Take Two, the game’s distributor. This week, Take Two took a proactive step to stave off Thompson’s prerelease assaults on their titles by filing a federal court case against him in the state of Florida.
It’s a wonder why it took this long for someone to file a suit against Mr. Thompson. If Take Two wins, they should use the money gained to develop a GTA IV: Violence Fetish Edition. Wouldn’t that be ironic?
Source: Ars Technica
Why Can’t We Buy Naked PCs?
ZDNet’s reporters posed as undercover buyers to identify the policy of the top-five PC vendors in terms of supplying systems without an operating system, known as naked PCs. A naked PC gives IT professionals freedom to install the operating system of their choice. But the ZDNet investigation showed that none of the five manufacturers would sell any PCs without Windows, our reporters found.
All of the included companies seem to just be making excuses. That, or they really, really don’t mind caving in under Microsofts pressure.
Source: ZD Net
Your ISP Might Be Selling Your Clicks
David Cancel, the CTO of the web market research firm Compete Incorporated, raised eyebrows at the Open Data 2007 Conference in New York when he revealed that many Internet service providers sell the clickstream data of their users. Clickstream data includes every web site visited by each user and in which order they were clicked.
Some people are worried about what kind of records search engines like Google hold, but it’s the ISPs we should be worried about by the looks of things. Ridiculous, not two ways about it.
Source: Ars Technica
K3b 1.0 released
I am proud to announce the release of K3b 1.0. After years and years of development, all the sweat (actually in the summer it can get sticky in front of the screen), all the tears (ok, admittedly, not that many), and all the countless hours I spent on a single application finally we have what I think is worth the big 1.
This is quite a milestone to say the least. I’ve been using K3b for quite a while now and am proud to say it’s really the only CD/DVD burning tool I use. Huge congrats to the entire k3b team, especially Sebastian Trüg. I have been using the RCs for a while now, but now that there is a changelog I will write up my thoughts on the new version in the coming weeks.
Source: K3b
Razer Contest Now Underway
In case you haven’t noticed, we launched our third birthday contest yesterday, sponsored by Razer. All you need to enter this one are funny game screenshots! How hard can that be? The winner will receive a Razer Tarantula keyboard, DeathAdder mouse and their Barracude HP1 headset!
Contest 2 is still underway as well, for the chance at a new silver Thermaltake Armor case! If your PC has an ugly case, then check out our contest page for more information!
Source: Contest Page
Eidos Teaming Up With Steam
Eidos Interactive, one of the world’s leading publishers and developers of entertainment software, and Valve today announce an agreement to deliver dozens of new and best-selling PC titles via Steam. This first agreement includes complete franchise sets of classics such as Tomb Raider, Commandos, and many of the Hitman titles. In addition, Eidos is bringing some of this year’s most highly anticipated releases to Steam, including Tomb Raider: Anniversary, Championship Manager 2007, and more.
Finally, something new on Steam I am excited for. I am a big Tomb Raider fan, so I look forward to seeing the new Anniversary version and also any other versions they release there. I know there are many Hitman and Commandos fans out there as well. It’s too bad that people who own the original versions of these games couldn’t simply add the title to Steam for free. It’s nice having everything in a single location.
Source: Valve Press Release
CeBit 2007 Coverage – Part 3
There are many CeBit updates today. Hexus has a flew of articles taking a look at the new GeForce 8600 and some NVIDIA integrated graphics as found on a FOXCONN motherboard. It looks like abits Peter du Perez is looking to set some world records with the help of the craziest cooling setup I have ever seen.
TweakTown has some new updates as well, including ATIs Roadmap for their R600. Shuttle also announced a new "Car PC" that has similar specs to a notebook, but is designed to be installed specifically into your vehicle. It looks like a solid product and has the specs to match.
I am unsure why Hexus believes they need to split one piece of content into 70 different articles, but here are a few more that you may find interesting: GigaByte Ramdrive, Zalman Reserator XT, OCZ suck-n-blow CPU Cooler, OCZ Vindicator 2.
More tomorrow as news hits our inbox…
FlatOut Ultimate Carnage Screenshots
Empire Interactive have released on 15th of March 2007 some brand new
in-game screenshots from their eagerly anticipated Arcade Destruction
Racer FlatOut Ultimate Carnage, releasing exclusively on the Xbox 360â„¢
video game and entertainment system from Microsoft, which highlight in
stunning detail the level of technical and graphical expertise the
developers, Bugbear Entertainment, are displaying in the next-generation
debut of the FlatOut series.
I have to say, these are impressive. The comparison shots between Flatout 2 and Ultimate Carnage are unbelievable!
Google to Anonymize Searches
Unless we’re legally required to retain log data for longer, we will anonymize our server logs after a limited period of time. When we implement this policy change in the coming months, we will continue to keep server log data (so that we can improve Google’s services and protect them from security and other abuses)—but will make this data much more anonymous, so that it can no longer be identified with individual users, after 18-24 months.
Using a proxy (and other methods) is a good way to remain anonymous now, but it’s nice that Google is taking the steps to assure better privacy for everyone. I am not sure how much this really matters in the grand scheme of things though. They will be “non-anonymous” for up to two years before going anonymous.
Source: Google Blog
KDE 4.0 Release Roadmap
Hereby we, the Release Team, present a draft KDE 4.0 Release roadmap which has
been discussed on our mailinglist the past few weeks. It’s an optimistic schedule
that aims to release in late October, based on 3 Beta’s and 2 release candidates.
If you are dying for KDE 4, then this will be worth a read. It looks like we will see the final release in October, but won’t be receiving all the features hoped for at that time. Alpha will be released next month with the first RC destined to hit at the end of September.
Source: GMANE
Half-Life 2 Orange And Black Box Details Emerge
For those who recently upgraded their PC video cards to support DX10, you’ll be happy to know that both Episode Two and Team Fortress 2 will support the advanced technology of these cards, even if the PC is running Windows XP. On the low-end front, Valve still plans on supporting PCs that can only run DX8 applications. Valve’s attempting to also support DX7, but couldn’t confirm if it’d go back that far with technology.
Intriguing. It will support DX10 features on Windows XP which doesn’t have DX10 available? I am wondering if Vista will offer any additional features to the game over XP though. Hopefully not…
Source: Game Informer
Wife Googled ‘How to Commit Murder’
At exactly 5:45:34 on April 18, 2004 a computer taken from the office of the attorney of Melanie McGuire, did a search on the words “How To Commit Murder.” That same day searches on Google and MSN search engines, were conducted on such topics as `instant poisons,` `undetectable poisons,’ ‘fatal digoxin doses,’ and gun laws in New Jersey and Pennsylvania.
Some people are beyond screwed up. McGuire was having an affair, so instead of divorcing her husband, she kills and dismembers him. Thanks to clever computer tricks, she was unable to claim that she didn’t do it.
Source: Daily Record
Web Censorship on the Increase
Close on the heels of the temporary blocking of YouTube by a Turkish judge, a group of academics has published research showing that Web censorship is on the increase worldwide. As many as two dozen countries are blocking content using a variety of techniques. Distressingly, the most censor-heavy countries (which includes China, Iran, Saudi Arabia, Tunisia, Burma and Uzbekistan) seem to be passing on their technologically sophisticated techniques to other areas of the world.
I was going to say something insightful here, but it no doubt would have been blocked by half the planet.
Source: Slashdot
DSL Gateways Will Mark Video to Catch Pirates
Home gateway manufacturer Thomson SA plans to incorporate video watermarking technology, which it also developed, into future set- top boxes and other video devices. The watermarks, unique to each device, will make it possible for investigators to identify the source of pirated videos.
This type of protection can still be compromised. If video is not re-encoded directly, but instead has individual frames captured and audio extracted, it would essentially rid all remnants of the watermark. What’s interesting though, is that they state if a video is re-encoded and uploaded, it’s source can be traced within seconds.
Source: PC World AU
Optimus Maximus Shots… Finally
For $1,490, we should — at the very least — expect some free press shots of the Optimus Maximus this morning, right? Good, ’cause that’s all we’re going to get from the design cats at Art. Lebedev Studio. No prototype, no working OLED keys, just press shots. Still, kinda dreamy eh? Cue the Chinese knockoffs… now.
Yup, 1,500 bucks. If that’s not bad enough, there are no additional “spare” keys included, as they go for $10 a pop. I am interested to see how well this thing will sell.
Source: Engadget