- 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
Corsair releases PC2-10000 Memory
LAS VEGAS (January 8, 2007) – Corsair, a worldwide leader in high performance computer products, today unveiled the new TWIN2X2048-10000C5DF DOMINATOR memory kits. Designed for overclocking and achieving the highest frequencies in mind, the TWIN2X2048-10000C5DF DOMINATOR is rated and tested at a frequency of 1250MHz, thus making it the world’s highest frequency production ready memory. Specially designed for NVIDIA nForce 680 SLI media and communications (MCP)-based motherboards, the new DOMINATOR extends Corsairs leadership in enthusiast memory.
It was only a matter of time! You can read the entire release here.
Microsoft Announces Windows Home Server
Microsoft released some details at CES yesterday of there upcoming Windows Home Server platform. This application, which will ship in late 2007, will function as a file and multimedia server for Windows connected PC’s. Backing up is something everyone hates to do, and most people do very little of. WHS is designed to make this easier by automatically backing-up the contents of Windows connected PC’s every night. It also will be Internet accessible, meaning you can connect remotely and access your files over the Internet.
The server will be sold as a software package and also it will be bundled with WHS certified home servers. HP demonstrated a home server at CES. See SuperSite for more information on this unique product.
Second Life Releases Client Under GPL
Linden Labs announced today that they are releasing the Second Life client source code under the GNU General Public License (2.0). This move will certainly help boost developer relations with the company, and strategically place it in a unique position as one of the only (major) open source MMO’s out there. You can grab the source code from this page.
TiVoToGo Comes to Mac
Wired News tells us that while it took two years and the software costs $100, Mac-owning TiVo users can finally move recorded shows onto their Mac or iPod.
In a joint release on Monday morning, TiVo and Roxio announced that Toast Titanium 8, available immediately, includes full TiVoToGo functionality. The announcement comes two years after the software was released for Windows and nearly as long since TiVo first promised it would be made available to Mac users.
AACS Encryption Scheme Remains Uncracked
It was widely reported last week, that the ACCS protection scheme used on all HD DVD and Blu-Ray discs was cracked by an anonymous hacker. Ars Technica reports today that this is not entirely true. The “crack” that was released, simply decrypts AACS discs based on its own decryption implementation. The crack requires keys, unique to each disc, be used to break the encryption. The crack does not work around the AACS encryption but uses its decryption algorithm to play the discs. These keys are used by DVD playing programs to decrypt the disc and read it. The method by which the keys are obtained is being called into question. The author of the program apparently found them in memory after loading the discs using PowerDVD Ultra. So far, nobody has been able to locate these keys which effectively makes his program useless. As of today, the AACS encryption scheme has yet to be cracked.
ASUS Unveils External Graphics Card
From DailyTech: ASUS introduces the world’s first external graphics card for notebook users!
ASUS today introduced a dedicated external graphics card for laptops — the XG Station. The XG Station is an external graphics card that allows laptop users to enjoy high end graphics performance while plugged in. As the XG Station is an external graphics it can be unplugged when portability is needed.
The XG Station connects to any notebook’s ExpressCard slot and provides a PCI Express x16 slot for graphics cards. Since ASUS has opted to equip the XG Station with a standard PCI Express x16 slot, the station can be equipped with any PCI Express based graphics card: AMD, NVIDIA or even Matrox. ASUS launched the default XG Station with an NVIDIA 7900GS powered graphics card.
The XG Station is powered externally. A separate power brick plugs directly into the adaptor. An integrated LCD display and control also grace the XG Station. The display is customizable and can display information such as frame rate, fan speed, GPU temperature and more while the control knob can change various settings of the XG Station such as the core and memory clocks.
Expect ASUS to release the XG Station in Q2’07 this year. Pricing of the XG Station is unknown at the moment.
The XG Station adaptor only interfaces with ExpressCard interfaces at the moment, but will work with with PCIe ExpressCard interfaces installed in a desktop PC.
Cotropitorii Review at Bytepress
“Cotropitorii” has been reviewed at Bytepress and is a single-player/MMOFPS, depending on how you choose to play it, developed by the Romanian studio, 2 Bad Design. It is a low-budget game, really low budget, but that, contrary to what’s expected of it, manages to get a relatively good mark.
Quoted from the review
“It’s a free game, a free MMOFPS, freely downloadable, that works “out-of-the-box”. Even if the game’s interface is in Romanian and partially English, all English-knowing gamers can make it through the interface and enter an already created LAN game, or maybe, create their own, without to much knowledge.
Flash in the Pan or in the PC?
Wired News lets us know that flash-memory-aided hard drives and software that harnesses the full power of multi-core CPUs will make PCs speedier and more convenient in 2007.
Next-gen computers will boot up and load applications more quickly as speedy flash memory helps alleviate the bottleneck caused by the slower rotations of a traditional hard disk’s components.
Flash memory’s efficiency could also increase laptop battery life and shave time off the “very agonizing seconds” that pass as PCs awake from hibernation mode, said Mike Trainor, chief mobile technology evangelist for Intel. Such advances should increase demand for portable machines and further the demise of the desktop as the mainstream PC form factor.
Security flaw in Adobe PDF reader
Internet users are being urged to check that they have the latest version of Adobe’s Acrobat Reader software, a popular application used to view PDF (portable document format) files.
Security experts have warned that a plug-in for the application could allow hackers to see and edit the folders on a person’s hard drive. Users of Mozilla’s Firefox browser and people using versions of Internet Explorer previous to the latest version, IE7, are at risk.
“PDF files are trusted and very popular, making any significant PDF vulnerability a cause for concern” said Ken Dunham of security firm iDefense. There have been no reports of any hackers actively exploiting the flaw at the moment but according to Dunham, exploit code is available on the internet.
“One of the main websites hosting code for this vulnerability has been hammered with traffic all day, showing great interest in this new exploit” he was quoted as saying.
Internet users are advised to upgrade to version 8 of Acrobat Reader, which is available here.
Dual-format devices may solve movie disc standoff
In an effort to head off an impending format war between rival high-definition disc standards, according to New Scientist Tech, electronics firms will unveil dual-format discs and players at the 2007 Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, US.
Discs and players compatible with both Blu-ray (backed by Philips, Sony and Panasonic) and HD-DVD (supported by Toshiba, NEC, Microsoft, Warner and Universal) will debut at the show, which opens on 8 January.
South Korean electronics firm LG will offer a player featuring a dual standard disc reader, which can read both types of disc. Although prices have yet to be finalised, the dual-format player will initially be more expensive than single-format DVD devices.
Meanwhile, Warner Brothers plans to support both formats with a disc that works in either type of player. The studios new Total Hi-Def discs will have a Blu-ray movie on one side and the same film in HD-DVD format on the other.
Techgage at CES 2007
For those who are (absolutely) living under a rock, CES is the largest technology convention in NA and it takes place next week. This is the first time Techgage will be there, so you can expect a lot of unique content over the course of the next few weeks. This year is looking promising with a lot of unique and anticipated announcements, so stay tuned to the site as we keep you “in the know”.
Brazil Court Orders YouTube Shut on Celeb Sex Video
A Brazilian court ordered the popular video sharing service YouTube, a unit of Internet search provider Google Inc., to be shut down until it removes a celebrity sex video from its site, a judicial clerk said Thursday. Daniela Cicarelli, a model and ex-wife of soccer great Ronaldo, sued YouTube after a video of her apparently having sex in shallow water on a beach with her boyfriend was posted to the site.
While I don’t agree with shutting YouTube down for an incident like this, I do think they should implement filters so that videos with certain names could not be uploaded once the original has been removed. I think the bigger lesson is to stop leaking your personal porn online.
Project Entropia real estate sale fetches $179,000
After 10 days of bidding for three digital malls in the virtual world Project Entropia, buyers ponied up a shocking total of $179,668. According to a press release from MindArk, the Swedish company that publishes Project Entropia, two buyers won the three auctions: Onkel RobRoy Bob, who bought two of the malls, and Epsilon Eps Vaz, who purchased the third.
There we have it… people really will pay anything for anything. Seriously, $180K for a virtual property? No matter how I look at it, I have to feel sorry for the people who pay this, since they obviously have no life.
SanDisk introduces 32GB Flash-based notebook drive
The 32GB SanDisk SSD UATA 5000 is only a 1.8″ form-factor drive, but it has mighty impressive specifications despite its size: 62MB/sec sustained throughput, 0.12ms average access time, and it draws only 0.4 watts. This means that the SanDisk SSD has an average access time that is more than 100 times faster than any notebook hard drive, and it draws 50 to 87 percent less power than most notebook hard drives.
Now this is a seriously cool “hard drive”. The good? It’s fast as heck and uses less power than a standard drive. The bad? It’s $600 for the 32GB model.
Free Ryzom compaign loses battle
The Free Ryzom campaign failed to acquire the rights to the Ryzom Massively Multiplayer Online Roleplaying Game (MMORPG), but is refocusing its efforts on developing or acquiring another game. However, what strategy a new campaign will take and what support it will be able to attract remains unclear.
This is too bad. I really thought with such support, they would win the rights to the game. $170,000 euros is not a small sum of cash to raise that quickly!
Seagate confirms 1TB hard drives
Seagate’s 1TB hard drive will be our second generation 3.5-inch hard drive to feature capacity-boosting perpendicular recording technology, and it will use fewer heads and discs than similar-capacity products we expect to see from our competitors. It is clear that fewer heads and discs, along with our proven perpendicular technology, can increase drive reliability, and also reduce operating temperatures, power consumption, noise, and weight.
Seagate did not give a definitive release date for the product, but said it would be sometime before the second half of 2007. It will be accomplished using four platters instead of three, so it should definitely have some weight to it.
Rwanda Commits to Low-Cost Laptop Project
Rwanda is the eighth developing country to join the One Laptop Per Child initiative aimed at giving away inexpensive computers to all young students.
Linux Image Quality Comparison
With the great deal of articles that we publish in regards to NVIDIA and ATI display drivers, it is very evident that at this time NVIDIA has the lead when it comes to the frame-rate performance — with their Linux drivers performing nearly the same as their Windows ForceWare counterpart. ATI has been struggling to improve the performance of their fglrx drivers, and while they had made strides last year, they still have a great deal of work ahead of them. However, one of the areas that often is not mentioned in Phoronix articles is the
image quality between ATI and NVIDIA’s hardware with their respective drivers. In this article today we will be looking at both company’s image quality under Linux in video playback and gaming environments.
If you are a Linux user and want to know whether ATI or NVIDIA offers the better image quality, you will want to check out this article. NVIDIA would be my first choice either way, simply because their drivers are much more rich than ATIs.
Two Rare founders leave
Chris and Tim Stamper, two of Rare Ltd.’s (Goldeneye 007, Perfect Dark and Viva Pinata) three founders have left the studio. While the news surfaces in the wake of disappointing sales figures for Rare’s excellent Viva Pinata, Microsoft told 1UP that sluggish Pinata sales had “absolutely” nothing to do with their departure.
I have to wonder about Rare now. They were once a superb game developer, but nothing they have released recently has impressed me much. Well, except Kameo.. that’s a great title. For the love of gaming, bring back Donkey Kong and Killer Instinct and then we will see Rare claim back some of the market.
Why Bother With Episodic Games?
If you can buy into these three tenants as defining rules for an episodic game series, it begs the question: why bother making episodic games at all? The answer is not an obvious one when you consider that this content model presents a lot of challenges for an industry that, historically, has not been good at producing quality content in the studio-like TV show model that episodic game development would demand.
I am left with a bad taste in my mouth personally regarding episodic content, but that’s primarily because Ritual pulled out early and don’t intend to deliver the 2nd installment to their nine part game. I think if companies plan to do episodic content, they should be certain that they are able to pull it off. While Valve doesn’t have to worry much for support, other companies like Ritual do.
PDF cross site scripting vulnerability
It seams that PDF documents can execute JavaScript code for no apparent reason by using the following template: http://path/to/pdf/file.pdf#whatever_name_you_want=javascript:your_code_here. You must understand that the attacker doesn’t need to have write access to the specified PDF document. In order to get an XSS vector working you need to have a PDF file hosted on the target and that’s all about it.
If you run a website or server in general, you will want to look into this deeper. It’s a -huge- issue. There is no immediate fix for this, but it’s a very simple hack that anyone with basic Javascript knowledge can exploit. If you have a slew of PDF’s on your server, you may want to remove them, or keep an eye on things.
Pictures of Titan’s Lakes
“For decades, scientists have wondered if the thick orange haze that shrouds Saturn’s giant moon Titan hid lakes of liquid methane on the surface, but there was no way to confirm it, until now. The Cassini flyby of July 22, 2006 took these striking images and were released today.”
If you want to check out the only available photo of these liquid lakes, you can head on over to the NASA site. Complete information is available there also.
eVGA Releases 8800GTX ACS3
EVGA, a leading provider of performance computing hardware, today announced the release of their e-GeForce 8800 GTX KO w/ ACS3 (P/N: 768-P2-N837-AR) and 8800 GTS KO w/ ACS3 (P/N: 640-P2-N827-AR) NVIDIA technology-based graphics card. The new 8800GTX KO ACS3, in addition to EVGA’s patented ACS3 cooling, is spec’d at an amazing 626MHz core clock with 2.0GHz memory. The 8800GTS is spec’d at a groundbreaking 580MHz core, 1.7GHz memory. These new graphics cards will be available at online retailers at an MSRP of $649.99 for the 8800GTX KO ACS3, and $479.99 for the 8800GTS KO ACS3.
You can read the full press release here.
Ultra Products to Unveil Worlds First 2000W Power Supply
FLETCHER, OH – January 3, 2006 – Ultra Products, a global leader in technology solutions, today announces that it will unveil the world’s first 2000W ATX Power Supply Unit for the PC at next week’s Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas. The Ultra X3 Modular 2000W PSU has a footprint similar to some competitors’ 1000W units (just 10.25 inches) and is 80% efficient under typical loads. The 2000W X3 will be available to consumers sometime in early 2007. The product will be on display at the ShowStoppers media showcase at the Wynn Hotel on Monday night, January 8th.
Overkill? Yeah, I’d say so. Impressive? Hell yes! Full Press Release
James Kim benefit auction today
An auction of fine art + craft to benefit the family of James Kim organized by sisters Lisa Congdon and Stephanie Barnes and their mother Gerrie Congdon. 100% of the auction proceeds will go to the The James Kim Memorial Fund. Auction items from the artists listed below will be available for bid starting January 3, 2007on eBay. There will be a link to the eBay listing for each item from this site starting the morning of January 3. Bidding ends January 7th. Thank you for visiting and bidding!
If you are interested in partaking in the auction for James Kims family, then head on over to the official blog where more details and eBay links will be readily present.