- 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
Are there any Original Stories left?
Gamespot is reporting that Midway Games is being sued by William L. Crawford III on grounds that the plot for Midway’s games was not wholly original, and in fact is a rip-off of one of his own screenplays – also called Psi-Ops.
The premise for the Psi-Ops screenplay is government soldiers with paranormal abilities, or ‘Psi-Agents,’ that fight terrorists that also have paranormal abilities,” according to the lawsuit. It mentions a number of characters, including a foreign-born pyrokinetic with a troubled past; a cool and menacing mind control specialist with a slender masculine build, black hair, trench coat, and sunglasses; and a rogue Psi-Agent who establishes his own underground terrorist organization using other Psi-Agents.
Uh yeah cause his story was SO original to begin with….
GoDaddy Whacked By DDoS Attack
The Go Daddy Group Inc has been hit by a massive distributed denial of service attack that took down many of its customers’ websites and other services for several hours. The company, the largest registrar of internet domain names and one of the largest web hosting providers, said it was the subject of “large-scale, sophisticated attacks” that lasted four to five hours.
Those who thought this was a DST screwup were wrong apparently. Some clever hacker just picked the “right” time to DDoS GoDaddy.
Source: CBR Online
PlayStation Home Rollout in Three Phases, Launch in October
At his GDC keynote, Harrison revealed that PlayStation Home will be a free service going into beta starting April will a full scale launch in the fall. Through a Sony developer document (PDF), however, we have learned that there will be three phases to rollout of PlayStation home.
Until August, 15K users are expected to beta test the service, with 45K testing the service before the final launch. Here’s to hoping that Xbox Live has a run for it’s money. Competition is a good thing ;-)
Source: Daily Tech
OpenOffice To Dell: Pre-load Us, You’ll Like Us
The OpenOffice Project has sent a letter to Michael Dell, showering praise on Dell Inc.’s chairman and CEO and asking him to consider pre-loading OpenOffice onto PCs. The letter is the result of a flood of requests on Dell’s online suggestion box, IdeaStorm, for Dell PCs pre-loaded with both Linux operating systems and the open-source suite of desktop productivity applications.
If you are not after the new pretty graphs or intuitive GUI, OpenOffice can easily compete with Office 2003/2007. It’s just up to Dell to listen…
Source: CRN.com
Valve Questions Microsoft’s PC Gaming Commitment
GamesIndustry.biz is reporting on comments from an interview they conducted with Doug Lombardi, marketing manager at Valve Studios. Lombardi criticized Microsoft’s recent commitment to PC gaming in the form of the ‘Games for Windows’ initiative, which we’ve previously discussed here on the site. In Lombardi’s view, this new push for games on the PC platform is nothing more than an extended advertising scheme to sell the Vista OS.
It’s hard to disagree with Doug here, considering half the games (I tested) ran like dirt under Vista. Maybe I am in the minority? Nah doesn’t seem like it.
Source: Slashdot
Is That Just Some Game? No, It’s a Cultural Artifact
Mr. Lowood and the four members of his committee — the game designers Warren Spector and Steve Meretzky; Matteo Bittanti, an academic researcher; and Christopher Grant, a game journalist — announced their list of the 10 most important video games of all time: Spacewar! (1962), Star Raiders (1979), Zork (1980), Tetris (1985), SimCity (1989), Super Mario Bros. 3 (1990), Civilization I/II (1991), Doom (1993), Warcraft series (beginning 1994) and Sensible World of Soccer (1994).
Many of the choices listed here I have to agree with. Spacewar! for example was one of the first computer games, if not -the- first. Who doesn’t remember playing SMB3? These games no doubt paved the way for current and future games in some way.
Source: NY Times
Gentoo in Crisis?
Last week, the Gentoo project entered the lowest point of its 7-year old existence. Yes, this is the same Daniel Robbins who founded Gentoo Linux back in the year 2000 and who left the project in 2004 for personal reasons. He officially re-joined the Gentoo development team two weeks ago – only to resign a few days later. The reason? Strong personal attacks by some of the current developers of the project.
If you happen to be a Gentoo user like myself, does this cause reason to be alarmed? Not really. Though Daniel Robbins has proved to be a noteworthy coder, Gentoo has survived a while without him. It’s too bad that so many developers hold such a grudge.
Source: DistroWatch
Tech Firms Push to Use TV Airwaves for Internet
A coalition of big technology companies wants to bring high-speed Internet access to consumers in a new way: over television airwaves. Key to the project is whether a device scheduled to be delivered to federal labs today lives up to its promise.
This would give the ability to anyone in a rural area to access the internet, so I can’t disagree there. Sounds like a good idea overall, but may take a while to being a reality.
Source: Washington Post
OCZ Technology Announces the 1010 Watt GameXStream Power Supply
Sunnyvale, CA—March 12, 2007—OCZ Technology Group, a worldwide leader in innovative, ultra-high performance and high reliability memory and components, today announced the addition of an 1010W power supply to the GameXStream family. Building on the acclaimed performance and features of the OCZ NVIDIA SLI(TM)-Ready GameXStream series, the new 1010W configuration offers a more powerful solution for today’s advanced PC systems in the same compact form factor that is an advantage to many gamers and system builders.
Source: OCZ Press Release
Intel Marks Energy-Efficient Milestone With 50-Watt…
SANTA CLARA, Calif., March 12, 2007 – Further expanding its quad-core processor family line-up, Intel Corporation today announced two energy-efficient 50-watt server processors that represent a 35- to nearly 60-percent decrease in power from Intel’s existing 80- and 120-watt quad-core server products.
Source: Intel Press Release
Seagate Delivers Industry’s Strongest Security for ASI Laptop Computers
SCOTTS VALLEY, Calif. — March 12, 2007 — Seagate Technology (NYSE:STX) today announced that Momentus® 5400 FDE.2, the world’s strongest encrypting 2.5-inch notebook PC hard drive with a comprehensive suite of powerful security capabilities, is shipping to ASI Computer Technologies for secure notebook systems that will feature Wave Systems Corp. (NASDAQ: WAVX) security management software to simplify enterprise deployments.
Source: Seagate Press Release
Corsair Showcases Families of Products at CeBIT Germany
Fremont, CA (March 12, 2007) – Corsair®, a worldwide leader in high-performance computer products, today announced the company will showcase its impressive breath of award-winning products in the upcoming CeBIT Germany trade fair. CeBIT is the world’s largest IT related trade event targeting the industry and users passionate about technology. Show attendees can expect to see the latest and next generation Corsair products including the DOMINATORTM series as well as the latest announced high performance USB drive – Flash VoyagerTM GT. Corsair executive team as well as regional sales and marketing leads will be on site to conduct meetings and provide interviews.
Source: Corsair Press Release
Quad-layer DVD Technology Becomes the Third HD Format
The home entertainment market is still wrestling with having two HD optical formats, HD DVD and Blu-ray Disc, but soon it will have to deal with another. UK-based New Medium Enterprises (NME) has developed the Versatile Multilayer Disc (VMD), a new optical-based format capable of storing 20GB of data.
You know, just last night I was thinking to myself, “Yanno Rob, we really need another next-gen optical format.” And here it is!
Source: Daily Tech
Four Wide Screen 19inch Monitors Compared
So get used to the idea that if you’re looking for a low-cost monitor, you’ll have to move to 16:10 format. But "low-cost" doesn’t have to mean low quality – the quality of the 19″ wide displays I tested was quite satisfactory overall. That doesn’t mean that you can ignore the wide variations in performance in the panels I tested in this roundup.
If you are in the market for a widescreen 19" screen, then this is a pretty good article to reference. They touch on details that many people don’t usually touch on, including latency. Before you make your purchase, you may want to peruse this first.
Source: Toms Hardware
id Software CEO Talks Piracy
Todd Hollenshead, CEO of id Software, has had to deal with PC game piracy multiple times during his tenure at id. In fact, Hollenshead mentioned that many of the projects the id Software team worked on ended up being stolen — Quake, Quake II, Quake III Arena, Doom 3 Alpha. The U.S. computer and video game software industry grew to $7.4 billion in 2006, with an estimated loss of $2-to-3 billion lost from piracy — the number does not include piracy that occurs over the Internet..
One of the main methods mentioned to combat piracy is to push out more games for consoles instead of PCs. I could see that if that were to be the case, piracy would simply increase towards the console side. In no way do I want to play Doom IV on a console by the way… that game is designed strictly for the mouse and keyboard. Whatever the conclusion, piracy is hard to combat and it doesn’t look like a good solution will come along soon.
Source: DailyTech
Debian Package of the Day
Debian has launched a new daily column called “Package of the Day” which takes a look at a new package in the repository each day, as you probably have already guessed. This is a cool way to learn about new applications, even if you don’t use Debian.
The latest? RSIBreak… a utility used to help people with RSI, or help those who don’t have it, to prevent it.
Source: DebADay
Hallucinate, Mate?
As is usual for a Monday, news seems a little slow. So, I will link to an animation that should -not- be viewed if you have epilepsy or ever suffer from any seizure. For those who love to pretend like they are on drugs for a few moments, give it a try. Warning, this could give you a headache.
Source: Digg
20 Must-Have Firefox Extensions
We’ve ferreted out 20 of the best extensions and add-ins used and recommended by hardcore Web surfers, developers and IT pros. Whether you’re looking for more streamlined surfing, improved look and feel, cool design tools or serious Web development help, there’s something (and more than likely several things) here for you.
This is a solid list, but many of the extensions listed are for an acquired taste only. Some of my favorites on the list include ForcastFox, ColorZilla and WebDev. Could not live without those! Well I could, but I’d have to resort to alcohol often.
Source: Computer World
ReactOS 0.3.1 Released
It’s been almost half a year since the last release (0.3.0). And all this time work was going on like crazy – sometimes up to 50 commits per day.
Mainly, the work focused on rewriting certain parts of the ReactOS Core (kernel, HAL, bootloader, etc).
For the uninitiated, ReactOS is a “Windows Replacement”. Though it’s based on Linux, it supports a lot of Windows applications. It’s far from perfect, but it’s fun to toy around with if it’s something your after.
Source: ReactOS
10 Most Expensive Computer Keyboards
It used to be that graphics cards and processors defined a computer but I for one think the most defining characteristic of a computer are the parts you actually interact with: the display, mouse and keyboard.
As you’d expect, some of these are -really- expensive. It’s no surprise that the Optimus keyboard is also listed here, thanks to it’s $1K+ price tag. Of course, we need to see it actually solidify…
Source: Most-Expensive
Judge Says Linux Guru Hans Reiser Can Stand Trial for Murder
Reporter Joshua Davis phones in from Alameda County courthouse in Oakland to report that prominent Linux developer Hans Reiser will stand trial for the alleged murder of his estranged wife, Nina Reiser, who’s been missing since September 3rd.
And so it begins. It’s going to be interesting to see how this one plays out.
Source: Wired
Geek Squad Insider Speaks Out
Based on what’s been said here and previously, you might be better off taking your computer elsewhere for repairs. Unless you like the idea of a guy who used to work at Taco Bell fondling your laptop. Now we’re sure there’s some competent and even talented and enthusiastic folks doing repairs for Geek Squad, but there’s enough of them that aren’t to raise concerns for consumers.
To see what points are made, you will need to check out the article. Disgusting really, but Geek Squad is not the only service out there like this. They just happen to be one of the worst.
Source: Consumerist
Apple May Have Trouble Selling 10 Million Phones In 2008
According to Forbes, it may not be as easy to sell ten million iPhones in 2008 as Apple hopes, both because of Apple’s strategy and because the market it has to compete in isn’t as large as Steve Jobs alluded to in his January keynote.
As cool as the iPhone is, there is a lot more hurting it than helping. The high price is one, but the fact you have to switch providers (unless you already belong to the one needed) is the bigger one. How far are people willing to go for the cool new tech gadget?
Source: Ars Technica
New Autopilot System Could Help to Prevent Another 9/11
After the tragedies that happened on 9/11, many steps have been taken to beef up the security at airports and on commercial airliners. The scientists at Boeing are doing their part by developing a new Uninterruptible Autopilot System (UAS) which would prevent the takeover of an aircraft’s controls in the event of a terrorist takeover.
This is one of the coolest stories I’ve read in a while. Essentially, the UAS will be activated if brute force entry to the cockpit is detected. At that point, it cannot be deactivated by anyone on board and must be further controlled by ground controllers.
Source: Daily Tech
Why Apple’s Consumer Macs Are Enterprise-Worthy
Not too long ago, ad agencies, design firms and other creative companies were about the only businesses that widely deployed Macintosh computers to their employees. But for a number of reasons, word of the benefits of Apple Inc. hardware — and software — on enterprise desktops is now spreading.
Reasons included are obvious… lack of spyware, extra stability and a simpler learning curve. Linux didn’t make the list apparently, I’d assume because it doesn’t have the support for certain business applications.
Source: Computer World