- 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
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- Maxon Redshift With AMD Radeon GPU Rendering Support Now Available
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Games for Windows Vista
Even so, from a GUI-perspective, Vista features a user-friendly central location for cataloging, accessing, and tweaking (settings, parental controls, updating, etc.) GFW-branded games — non-GFW games won’t necessarily be excluded, but they won’t feature many of the required functionalities built into the branded titles.
It seems that GFW branded games will be more than just game boxes with a special logo. They will feature special features to inter-operate with Vista seamlessly. You can read more on the technology here.
iPhone Officially Announced
It turns out that much of the riff-raff surrounding a mobile phone device from the Mac-maker was completely misplaced. Yes, the iPhone is officially real today, but it’s not from Apple – The iPhone was announced today by Linksys as its new line of VoIP devices.
It seems as though all the rumors proved absolutely false and the iPhone actually has nothing to do with Apple at all. As for the “i” in front of the name? Cisco, who owns Linksys, has had the copyright to this usage since before Apple began using it. It’s easy to understand why the rumors began though.
Corel aquires InterVideo & Ulead
Corel Corporation today announced the completion of its acquisition of InterVideo, Inc., a leading provider of digital media authoring and playback software with a focus on high-definition video and DVD technologies. Corel purchased InterVideo for $13.00 per share of InterVideo common stock resulting in an aggregate acquisition price of $198.6 million in an all-cash transaction.
This may seem like a “small” acquisition compared to some recent ones, but this is a huge win for Corel. They already have a huge lineup of their own software, so adding these two companies into the equation should help them make a greater impact in the video market.
Linux.com holiday buyers guide
he holiday season is approaching rapidly, and if you’re like us, you probably still have some holiday shopping left to do. In the spirit of crass consumerism, we’ve compiled a list of gifts you may want to add to your wishlist, or for the other geeks in your life.
Now you don’t have an excuse to forget the Linux geek on your list! Included is a Skype phone, Make subscription, Ubuntu book and a 150-Country adapter. There is a lot more listed here, so check it out.
White House policy angers scientists
A new Bush administration policy for reviewing scientific documents before publication has angered some U.S. Geological Survey scientists, who say the elaborate internal review of their work may impede them from conveying information to the public.
This is a big problem and for good reason. It could easily slow down scientific development and research. The article notes that some of the more complex research could take up to six months to be evaluated… and for what reason?
25 Killer Apps of All Time
eWeek has a list of 25 “killer apps” as chosen by Peter Coffee. This is far from being a current list, but are apps that helped shape how we use the computer today. Some apps in the list include AutoCAD, Lotus, Excel, Mathematica, Photoshop and of course, Mozilla Firefox.
Time person of the year: You
But look at 2006 through a different lens and you’ll see another story, one that isn’t about conflict or great men. It’s a story about community and collaboration on a scale never seen before. It’s about the cosmic compendium of knowledge Wikipedia and the million-channel people’s network YouTube and the online metropolis MySpace. It’s about the many wresting power from the few and helping one another for nothing and how that will not only change the world, but also change the way the world changes.
It’s about time we got some recognition!
Gears of War: 2 million copies
All this effort paid off, we gave the game a 9 when we reviewed it. More importantly for Microsoft though are the sales numbers, and those are likewise impressive. The title has sold 2 million units in the six weeks since its launch, easily becoming one of the most popular next-generation games.
The new consoles certainly didn’t stifle the 360s sales! 2 Million copies for a brand new series is a huge accomplishment.
Ultra unveils an 8GB SDHC card
Ultra Products, a global leader in technology solutions, today introduces the Ultra 8GB SDHC High-Speed Secure Digital Card, offering users the highest capacity SD card technology to date, and starting at just $149.99. With an 8GB SD card, digital devices such as digital cameras, MP3 players, PDAs and cellular phones break free from the limitations of traditional memory devices.
This is a surprising launch, because Ultra isn’t exactly known for this type of product. They are one of the first out the door with an 8GB card and it’s actually retailing for a reasonable price. Thanks to it’s high density though, you can expect some very slow write speeds.
Photoshop 3 beta out today
Well, the future is here and CS3 is available for download. As with previous upgrades of Photoshop, there’s a lot of cool new stuff here: some features we’ve been dying for, some we didn’t know we wanted until we saw them, and some stuff that will just make our lives a lot easier.
This is a quick article but showcases some of the coolest new features and improvements over CS2. If you are interested in the beta, you need to own CS2 and pay attention to the official site.
Edit: Looks like the beta is now available here. I am going to give it a download and maybe write up a quick article for next week on what’s new.
Dell to Introduce New HDCP-enabled 22-inch LCD
Dell is poised to release a new 22-inch wide-aspect LCD flat-panel. The new E228WFP has already shown up in Japan. The screen has a 1680×1050 resolution, which is typical for a screen around this size, although many recent ones are showing up to be capable of displaying images at 1920×1200. As with recent displays, Dell is definitely showing off the speed of the new E228WFP, claiming a 5ms grey-to-grey response time.
This sweet monitor will run you about $560, which is thanks to the 5ms and HDCP support I’m sure. It has the same styling as the other widescreen Dells we’ve seen so you know what to expect there. So… where’s that 27″?
Vista and Samba?
Early adopters of Microsoft’s new Vista operating system may notice that it will not connect to Samba share folders out of the box. This will be a bit of a pain for many enterprise customers. The technical reason is because Microsoft Vista’s default security policy is to only use NTLMv2 authentication. According to a Google search Samba doesn’t support this yet.
Although this won’t matter to many Samba users right now, it’s good to know for the future. It’s a very simple fix, so you may want to bookmark this one.
10 Tech Concepts You Need to Know for 2007
Popular Mechanics has a great top 10 list of what you should be keeping an eye out for in the new year. Some new concepts? Bendable concrete may sound like an oxymoron, but it may be the way of the future. Though this stuff bends, it’s still ultra strong and takes a lot of force for it to do it’s thing. On the hacking front they believe we will see a lot more action on the RFID side of things. For the other eight, you will need to check out the article.
AMD outlines plans for future processors
During its four-hour Financial Analyst Day presentation today, AMD revealed new elements of its processor roadmap spanning the next couple of years, as well as its plans to scale beyond the current multi-core model. Intel talked about processors with “tens to hundreds of cores” at IDF earlier this year, but AMD believes the core race is just a repeat of the megahertz race and that adding more cores isn’t the best way to go about scaling processor performance in the future. Instead, AMD is cooking up what it calls “Accelerated Processing Units”.
If you want to understand where AMD is going, you will want to read this article. These APU’s seemed sketchy to me at first, but now it seems like a natural progression for computing to go.
15 Things Apple Should Change in Mac OS X
Window management is tough enough without giving the user only one corner that he can drag to change the window’s size. Microsoft Windows lets you drag any window edge on all four sides, in addition to dragging two sides at once from any of the four corners. There are times when dragging a single window side could eliminate two adjustments on the Mac: a window resize followed by a window move. When you’ve used both operating systems, it becomes clear that Mac window resizing is less convenient.
There’s a complaint I’ve heard from Mac users time and time again. Hard to believe something as simple as this has not been fixed up yet! If you are a Mac user and have a gripe, it may very well have made this list.
OCZ Technology Expands their Popular Modular EvoStream Series to 720 Watts
Sunnyvale, CA—December 14, 2006—OCZ Technology Group, a worldwide leader in innovative, ultra-high performance and high reliability memory, today announced the availability of a 720W configuration in the EvoStream power supply family. This 100% modular PSU is equipped with EZMod technology to allow complete customization of your power system by utilizing only the cables you require. Ideal for the high-power user, the 720W EvoStream combines leading-edge technology for high power users with a classic, sleek look that enthusiasts and system builders enjoy including in their PCs.
You can read the full press release here.
World’s First Jail Sentence for BitTorrent Piracy
Hong Kong newspaper The Standard reports on what seems to be the world’s first case of a BitTorrent movie pirate being sent to jail. (Others have been jailed for related crimes.) After losing his appeal against a November 2005 conviction, Chan Nai-ming, a 38-year-old BitTorrent user known as ‘Big Crook,’ has begun serving a prison sentence for making the films ‘Daredevil,’ ‘Miss Congeniality,’ and ‘Red Planet’ available for download via BitTorrent. His appeal was based on the fact that he did not profit from the piracy.
Luckily for Chan, the sentence is only 3 months. Is this the beginning of things to come? BitTorrent may very well be the next Kazaa.
Linus Puts Kibosh On Banning Binary Kernel Modules
On LKML’s periodic GPL vs. binary kernel module discussion, Andrew Morton hinted that he favors refusing to load binary modules in 12 months. Greg Kroah-Hartman then posted a patch to do exactly that. Surprisingly Linus chimed in and called it ‘stupid’ and a ‘political agenda,’ and even compared it with the RIAA’s tactics.
As soon as this news was reported, it seemed highly unlikely that anything like this would ever come into play. If it had, it could easily spell a huge decline for Linux usage.
Monarch Computer Bites the Dust?
Monarch Computer seems to have fallen on some hard times in 2006. We then saw constant complaints about Monarch’s customer service in our forums and at that time we decided to end their advertising contract with HardOCP. And finally this week Monarch is not answering phones or returning many of their customers’ emails.
The end of Monarch Computer as we know it? It’s certainly not looking good for them after eying all of the details.
Hum a song to identify it?
This morning, the music software and remixing company Nayio is launching its Humming Search feature in the U.S. This tool is supposed to be able to identify songs by listening to you hum a few bars. If you hear a catchy tune on the radio and it gets stuck in your head, and you don’t know the artist, Humming Search could save your sanity.
If you enjoy humming, and I know there are many people (in front of me in a line at the supermarket) who can’t stop, so this new service may be right up your alley! For those who have non-IDed songs on their PC, you can use Tunatic for that. I’ve used it in the past, and it’s pretty reliable.
Is Linux the Devil?
The first version of Ubuntu Satanic Edition, “Evil Edgyâ€, is available for download from our secure APT repository. This release contains a number of themes to reveal Ubuntu’s darker side. Ubuntu Satanic Edition can be installed over any Ubuntu Edgy variant. We suggest Ubuntu Christian Edition, but the standard Ubuntu will do fine.
Just as Linux is growing ever faster in popularity, something incredibly stupid like this comes along. Ok, I admit it’s rather humorous, but a big waste of time regardless.
Carbon Fiber MacBook
While it may look like the Giz was visited by one of Apple’s little elves, what you’re looking at is actually an ordinary MacBook. Albeit one that’s in disguise. Tired with the MacBook’s lack of color options, an inventive Apple fan customized their MacBook with Carbon Graphix, an easily attainable $20 vinyl sticker that looks like real carbon fiber.
I don’t usually link to many mods, especially simple ones, but this caught my eye. For $20, you can add some carbon fiber to your MacBook or any laptop for that matter. You can also use this on a 5 year old laptop to make it “feel” faster.
Locked out of Windows?
Once your grace period is up, Windows refuses to let you login anymore. You cannot access your files. You cannot go on the Internet. You cannot do anything, except the thrill of trying to activate Windows. For those who do not and have been so unfortunate enough to have their Windows expire on them, I present to you a bit of relief.
This is not a solution to activating Windows without actually… activating it. Instead, it’s a way to show you how to access your files while your system locked you out. This activation process is nothing but a headache overall, but your choices are slim if you want to regain your system back.
Play A Violent Video Game… Go To Jail?
Wired’s Chris Kohler has some more details on the legislation that has actually been proposed and apparently it isn’t just about banning the games, but would potentially send all sorts of people to jail for just about any association with a violent video game — including playing one.
If this law actually went into “play”, it would suck to live in Germany. You may as well give up video games in general, considering even family games like Mario could be considered violent. It’s going to be amazing if this case actually goes anywere.
Where are the broadband price wars?
Industry analyst Dave Burstein argues that rates are actually going up, due in large part to the unwillingness of cable companies to lower prices. DSL operators then realize that they aren’t in a price war, and subsequently raise their own prices. He cites the examples of both AT&T and Verizon, and says that AT&T’s basic DSL rate now starts at $39.95 unless you’re a new subscriber.
This is interesting, because broadband has been around for quite a while in the US and Canada, yet the prices have not really gone down. Back in 1999 I had a DSL connection for $43 a month Canadian, and the prices are still essentially the same today. It makes me cringe to know over in Japan you can get a 100Mbit connection for only $35/month.