 LGF Game Tourney Closes Festival
An audience of 12,000 gathered to watch the final stretch of a three-day game tournament that closed the London Games Festival this weekend.
The World Series of Video Games (WSVG) UK Gaming Championship was held at the Trocadero in Piccadilly Circus and featured 200 professional gamers from around the world battling it out for bragging rights and cash prizes. Contestants played Counter-Strike 1.6, Warcraft III, and Quake 4, all on the PC. Well-known professional gamers including Fatal1ty, Stermy, Toxic, Team Fnatic, and homegrown UK entrants 4 Kings were in attendance.
The Counter-Strike winners were Pentagram G-Shock in first place and Hoorai in second. Johan "Toxic" Quick won the Quake 4 tournament, with Alessandro "Stermy" Avallone coming in second. Manuel "4k^Grubby" Shenkhuizen was the Warcraft III champion, and Michael "mouz. Glacomo" Hladik grabbed runner-up. The first and second place winners for each game will be invited on an all-expenses-paid trip to the finals later in the year, when the overall winners will be crowned.
Although the action at the UK event was confined to PCs, the WSVG is a multiple-platform video game competition circuit and has previously held competitions for console offerings like Halo 2 and Project Gotham Racing 3. The group is aiming to "develop a set of unified rules and regulations, and to elevate competitive gaming as a sport and a profession."
Other highlights of the event included an appearance by Steve-O from Jackass, a Miss World of Video Games contest, and a working three-metre-high joystick.
News Posted by : GoogleFreak On
: October 11, 2006, 4:38 pm
News Source : Gamespot UK
 Samsung To Release 10 Megapixel Camera Phone
Samsung Electronics will put a 10-megapixel camera phone on the market in South Korea shortly. The mobile phone was first shown at Cebit in Germany in March this year and was originally due to launch in the second quarter.
Like some of the company's previous phones the SCH-B600 is styled to look like a conventional digital still camera from one side and a bar-type mobile phone from the other side. It has a 3x optical zoom lens like those typically found in digital still cameras, auto focus, manual focus, continuous and time-delay picture taking and a flash.
Other features include a tuner for South Korea's TU Media satellite multimedia service, Bluetooth and MP3 player, business card reader and TV-output. It will cost 900,000 won ($950) in South Korea and Samsung said it won't be selling it in other markets.
The phone is the latest in a line of high megapixel camera phones from Samsung. The company launched a 5-megapixel camera phone in October 2004, a 7-megapixel phone in July 2005 and an 8-megapixel model in November last year.
News Posted by : GoogleFreak On
: October 11, 2006, 4:38 pm
News Source : Macworld UK
 Windows Live Is Top Microsoft Priority
Windows Live is the most important initiative at Microsoft, Steve Ballmer, Microsoft's CEO, told the audience at the annual Gartner Symposium and IT Expo here on Oct. 10.
"We're in a transition to software that is live. It will be click to run, like a Web site," said Ballmer. "We believe in evolving to click to run."
Windows Live is a growing collection of service add-ons for Windows. Some of the services are shipping, such as Windows Live Messenger and Windows Live Expo online classifieds. Nearly a dozen services are currently in beta test on the Windows Live Ideas Web site.
"The most important thing is the Live platform. The next level of consumerization is coming from Internet services and Internet delivery," said Ballmer, whose comments dovetailed with a theme espoused by Gartner analysts at this year's conference: that consumer technologies such as search, podcasting, on-demand video and blogging will seep into enterprise IT infrastructures in the years ahead.
News Posted by : GoogleFreak On
: October 11, 2006, 4:37 pm
News Source : eWeek
 Apple Fourth Quarter May Exceed Expectations
Two analysts last night issued positive predictions that Apple will exceed its stated financial business targets in its September (FY 2006) quarter. Apple will report its September 2006 and full financial year 2006 results on Wednesday 18 October.
American Technology Research analyst Shaw Wu expects the company will "report results at the upper end, if not exceed its guidance of $4.5-4.6 billion in revenue and $0.46-0.48 in EPS".
Wu predicts that continued demand for portable Macs and robust demand for iPods will drive Apple's results. He also predicts Apple management will offer a conservative target for the Christmas quarter, predicting a target of $5.7-6.1 billion.
The analyst dismissed Wall Street concerns about Apple, calling these "unreasonably aggressive", countering, "we believe Apple remains among the best positioned technology companies, with several catalysts in 2007."
Equity Research managing director, Jonathan Hoopes, also sees potential in Apple stock, saying, "the recent weakness in Apple stock is, in our opinion, unwarranted and represents a good buying opportunity." He holds a 'Buy' rating on the stock with a $100 per share price target.
The analyst expects much more growth from the company, which he predicts will continue to accumulate PC marketshare. Hoopes believes that: "Never in the history of the PC has a company been better positioned to both gain share and improve profitability."
He sees retail demand as high, notebook demand causing shortages, and the impact of the stock options debacle lifting. Looking forward, Hoopes sees more Apple growth in PC marketshare, iPod popularity, Apple retail stores, software releases and speculates on a "likely move into the enterprise".
"We expect the company to significantly increase market share, experience above-industry unit shipment and revenue growth, and improve earnings power, which should result in higher valuation multiples," he told investors last night.
News Posted by : GoogleFreak On
: October 11, 2006, 4:36 pm
News Source : Macworld UK
Yahoo Creating Worlds Biggest Time Capsule
Yahoo has launched what it ambitiously calls the largest time capsule in the history of the world. It is encouraging people from around the globe to contribute personal photos, stories, thoughts, ideas, poems, home movies, the flotsam of every day life, in other words, to its site, timecapsule.yahoo.com. The point as with all time capsules, is to illustrate life in 2006.
Submissions can be made on such topics as love, anger, fun, sorrow, faith, beauty, past, now, hope and "you." Yahoo will then weave the contributed multimedia content into a single piece of digital art online. At the end of the project, the content will be saved in a digital archive and sealed, to be opened at Yahoo corporate headquarters in Sunnyvale, Calif., on the company's 25th anniversary in 2020. It will also provide copies of the content to the Smithsonian Folkways Recordings archives in Washington, D.C.
"It will be fascinating to see what people submit as their part of this 2006 snapshot, which will be shared with generations to come," said Jerry Yang, co-founder and chief of Yahoo.
News Posted by : GoogleFreak On
: October 11, 2006, 4:36 pm
News Source : Tech News World
 Nvidia GeForce 7600GS SLI Performance
After recently publishing an article which looked at the performance of two GeForce 7300GT cards in SLI, we have received a number of requests for a similar article based on the 7600GS. More than likely the reason is that the GeForce 7600GS has become a very affordable option over the past few months.
In fact just recently Newegg.com ran a rebate on the BFG 3D Fuzion GeForce 7600GS which reduced its price to $60. Unfortunately that opportunity is now gone, but for a short period of time you could have bought two 7600GS cards capable of running in SLI mode for just $120, which is roughly the price of a single GeForce 7600GT.
If you were to buy a mid-range Nvidia graphics card today, what would you get? Currently a no frills version of the 7600GS will set you back about $95, while the average 7600GT card is ~$140. Because of the close price range and the potential of being able to put two GS cards running in parallel, then the question becomes which will deliver the best performance?
News Posted by : GoogleFreak On
: October 11, 2006, 4:34 pm
News Source : TechSpot
Support ends for Windows XP SP1
Microsoft will end support for Windows XP Service Pack 1 and SP1a today, leaving people no option but to upgrade to Service Pack 2 if they wish to continue to receive crucial components, including security software.
The move to drop support for SP1 is in line with Microsoft's stated strategy for support. According to its guidelines, Microsoft guarantees to provide "mainstream support" for a full product for five years, but will only guarantee to support a service pack for 12 months after the launch of the next version of that pack.
SP1 shipped in September 2002. SP2 was released in September 2004.
There's little reason for anyone to still be running SP1; SP2 contained a range of improvements to XP's security. People can check which version they are running by right-clicking on the My Computer desktop icon and then selecting properties.
News Posted by : GoogleFreak On
: October 11, 2006, 4:33 pm
News Source : CNet News
Microsofts IE 7 May Beat Mozilla's Firefox 2.0 To Market
Mozilla Corp. has released Firefox 2.0 Release Candidate 2 (RC2), but may be beat in the race to final by Microsoft, which said that Internet Explorer 7 would ship in October.
Firefox 2.0 RC2 went live late Friday, with the update pushed automatically to users of earlier editions of Firefox 2.0, the open-source browser's first major update since 1.5 in November 2005. Others can download RC2 in versions for Windows, Mac OS X, and Linux in 39 localized editions, including ones for Arabic, Chinese, Dutch, Mongolian, Russian, and Slovakian speakers.
However, at least one more release candidate will be issued by Mozilla. "There are a handful of security and stability bugs we'd like to see get in before the final FF2 release. Thus we'll be doing a third release candidate," wrote Mike Schroepfer, Mozilla's director of engineering, in an entry on the developer's message forum.
But while Mozilla has not set a final release date for Firefox 2.0 -- on this calendar, it was once pegged to late October, but was withdrawn weeks ago -- rival Microsoft said that it will ship IE 7, the first significant upgrade to its browser since 2001, this month.
News Posted by : GoogleFreak On
: October 11, 2006, 4:33 pm
News Source : TechWeb
Microsoft Likely to Ship Vista On Time
Microsoft Corp. will most likely ship its upcoming Windows Vista operating system on time and meet its deadline for both corporate and retail consumers, a Wall Street analyst said on Wednesday. Goldman Sachs analyst Rick Sherlund sent a note to clients saying that Microsoft may be ready to send the final test version of its much-anticipated Windows upgrade later this week or next week, indicating that Vista will be available for business customers in November and retail PCs by late January.
Windows Vista, already five years in the making, has been postponed by Microsoft several times and some industry analysts have speculated that the world's largest software maker will again be forced to push back its release dates. "We had been skeptical of the launch schedule," wrote Sherlund, who has a "buy" rating on Microsoft. "But the team seems to be making great progress in addressing issues of performance, reliability and compatibility."
News Posted by : GoogleFreak On
: October 5, 2006, 6:10 pm
News Source : eWeek
 NVIDIA "G80" Retail Details Unveiled
DailyTech's hands-on with the GeForce 8800 series continues with more information about the GPU and the retail boards. The new NVIDIA graphics architecture will be fully compatible with Microsoft?s upcoming DirectX 10 API with support for shader model 4.0, and represents the company's 8th generation GPU in the GeForce family.
NVIDIA has code-named G80 based products as the GeForce 8800 series. While the 7900 and 7800 series launched with GT and GTX suffixes, G80 will do away with the GT suffix. Instead, NVIDIA has revived the GTS suffix for its second fastest graphics product?a suffix that hasn?t been used since the GeForce 2 days.
NVIDIA?s GeForce 8800GTX will be the flagship product. The core clock will be factory clocked at 575 MHz. All GeForce 8800GTX cards will be equipped with 768MB of GDDR3 memory, to be clocked at 900 MHz. The GeForce 8800GTX will also have a 384-bit memory interface and deliver 86GB/second of memory bandwidth. GeForce 8800GTX graphics cards are equipped with 128 unified shaders clocked at 1350 MHz. The theoretical texture fill-rate is around 38.4 billion pixels per second.
News Posted by : GoogleFreak On
: October 5, 2006, 6:09 pm
News Source : Daily Tech
Mag names Mac Pro 'fastest PC in UK'
Apple's four-core Intel-based Mac Pro desktop has been named the UK's fastest PC after it was lined up against a top-of-the-line Windows machine by British magazine PC Pro.
According to the publication's upcoming November issue, out in two weeks' time, the 3GHz Mac Pro was run alongside a Pentium D-based machine. The Mac Pro has two dual-core Xeon 5160 CPUs, 4GB of DDR 2 memory mounted on FB-DIMMs, a Quadro FX 4500 graphics card and 1.75TB of hard disk capacity. Windows XP was installed on the Mac using Apple's Boot Camp utility.
News Posted by : GoogleFreak On
: October 5, 2006, 6:09 pm
News Source : Neowin
Apple?s Jobs apologizes to shareholders
Apple CEO Steve Jobs has apologized to shareholders after an internal investigation found that he had been aware of the company's practice of "backdating" employee stock options.
"I apologize to Apple's shareholders and employees for these problems, which happened on my watch," Jobs said in a statement. "They are completely out of character for Apple."
A three-month investigation by Apple's board of directors found that the company had backdated option grants made on 15 dates between 1997 and 2002. Its findings raised "serious concerns" about the roles that two former officers had played in the matter, Apple said.
Apple did not identify these former officers, but the company's chief financial officer at the time of the grants, Fred Anderson, has resigned from Apple's board of directors, saying that this is "in Apple's best interests," Apple announced Wednesday.
News Posted by : GoogleFreak On
: October 5, 2006, 6:08 pm
News Source : Techworld
Microsoft to Lock Pirates Out of Vista
Microsoft said Wednesday that it plans to clamp down hard on piraters of its next-generation operating systems, crippling both Windows Vista and Windows Server "Longhorn" if users fail to activate their copies within 30 days.
While the restriction of operating system features has been around since the advent of Windows XP in 2001, the new program takes that process a step further. It would also make widely distributed volume-license product keys -- traditionally supplied to corporations -- harder to use.
Called the Software Protection Program, the initiative is made up of several parts. The first move is to make certain features unavailable unless the user has confirmed their copy of Windows as genuine. Only licensed copies would have access to Aero -- Vista's new user interface -- and ReadyBoost, which uses a flash drive to temporarily add more memory to a computer system.
Additionally, the functionality of Windows Defender would be crippled, and optional downloads from Windows Update would be unavailable to the unlicensed user. Microsoft would also place a watermark on the desktop at all times that reads "This copy of Windows is not genuine."
News Posted by : GoogleFreak On
: October 5, 2006, 6:07 pm
News Source : Betanews
Avant Browser Updated to Version 11.0
Avant Browser V11.0 has made it out of Beta for a release to the general public.
Try Avant Browser, the top rated multi-window browser in Internet, which adds a batch of features and functionalities to Internet Explorer. Avant Browser is the fastest web browser on Earth. Its user-friendly interface brings a new level of clarity and efficiency to your browsing experience, and frequent upgrades have steadily improved its reliability. Now, Avant Browser is available in 41 languages.
Avant Browser is freeware. That's right. 100% Free! No cost to you ever. No limitations. No Adware. No Spyware. You can donate if you want, but it's certainly not required.
News Posted by : GoogleFreak On
: September 28, 2006, 3:20 pm
News Source : Neowin
Download : Avant Browser 11.0
LimeWire countersues RIAA
LimeWire LLC is planning an enthusiastic defence against RIAA?s lawsuit against them. Lime Wire is countersuing the music labels for anti-competitive activities, illegal restraint of trade, tortious interference, and deceptive trade practices. LimeWire insists that it is different from the original Napster as it uses a "truly decentralized P2P technology" and only allows users to install the software if they agree not to use the application to infringe copyrights. It sounds great on paper, but this argument never saved Grokster.
LimeWire had planned to educate users about copyrighted materials but music labels did not allow LimeWire to redirect users to legal alternatives such as iTunes. The only acceptable way of doing so, was to partner with iMesh ? a P2P company with close RIAA connections. Lime Wire is asking for actual damages, punitive damages, and legal fees from the RIAA. The counterclaim states music labels form a practical monopoly that has engaged in the illegal restraint of trade. LimeWire agrees with the idea of ?copyright? in principle: the owner has the right to control the making of copies. However, LimeWire argues that the RIAA is using its copyrights over recorded works as a weapon to stifle competition from anyone in the Internet distribution business. After MetaMachine (the company behind eDonkey) settled with the RIAA two weeks ago, RIAA CEO Mitch Bainwol publicly claimed LimeWire was next.
News Posted by : GoogleFreak On
: September 28, 2006, 3:17 pm
News Source : Ars Technica
 Zero-day attacks continue to hit Microsoft
Microsoft issued a rare, out-of-cycle Windows patch on Tuesday that fixed one flaw, but attacks through other known, yet-to-be-plugged holes continue. Microsoft on Wednesday warned of "limited zero-day attacks" that exploit a new flaw in PowerPoint, Microsoft's widely used presentation tool. For the attack to be carried out, a user must first open a malicious PowerPoint file attached to an e-mail or otherwise provided to them by an attacker, Microsoft said in a security advisory.
"This issue can allow remote attackers to execute arbitrary code on a vulnerable computer," Symantec said in an alert sent to customers. The flaw affects PowerPoint in Office 2000, Office XP and Office 2003 on Windows and Apple Computer's Mac OS X, it said. Attacks appear to be aimed at specific targets, Symantec said.
For temporary protection against PowerPoint attacks, Microsoft suggests keeping security software up-to-date and not opening presentations files from untrusted sources. Also, PowerPoint Viewer 2003 is not vulnerable, the company said.
News Posted by : GoogleFreak On
: September 28, 2006, 3:16 pm
News Source : CNet
Processor, memory may marry in future computers
On Tuesday, Intel showed off an 80-core processor at its developer forum taking place in San Francisco this week and one of the prominent features of the chip is that each core is connected directly to a 256MB memory chip through a technology called Through Silicon Vias, or TSV.
The memory wedded to the processor cores could constitute the entire memory needed for a computer, Intel CTO Justin Rattner told News.com in an interview during the Intel Developer Forum. TSV could be used in a variety of chips, not just the 80-core monster. As a result, computer makers, when building a system, would get their memory when they bought their processors from Intel. They would not have to obtain memory chips separately from other companies like they do now.
Wedding memory directly to the processor would have huge performance benefits. Currently, memory and the processor in Intel-based computers exchange data through a memory controller, which moves at a far slower rate than the processor. It's one of the big bottlenecks in computer performance. TSV, which displaces the memory controller, would shuttle data far quicker.
News Posted by : GoogleFreak On
: September 28, 2006, 3:16 pm
News Source : CNet
Happy Birthday Google (8 Today)
There I was using google for my own personal search algorithms, and noticed it's now 8-years old.
History
Google Inc. is an American public corporation, first incorporated as a privately held corporation on 7 September 1998, that designed and manages the Internet's most used search engine. The company has approximately 8,000 employees and is based in Mountain View, California. Eric Schmidt, former chief executive officer of Novell, was named Google's CEO when co-founder Larry Page stepped down.
The name "Google" originated from a misspelling of "googol," which refers to a 1 followed by one-hundred zeros. Google has had a major impact on online culture. The verb "google" was recently added to both the Merriam Webster Collegiate Dictionary and the Oxford English Dictionary, meaning to use the Google search engine to obtain information on the Internet. - Source: Wikipedia
News Posted by : GoogleFreak On
: September 27, 2006, 4:47 pm
News Source : Neowin
AMD Preparing for Nov. '4x4' Launch
Although AMD declined to comment on the report, the Taiwanese daily DigiTimes claims that motherboard manufacturers are getting ready to support three new AMD premium processors. The new models, the FX-70, the FX-72 and the FX-74, are under the codename 4x4. The motherboards that will support these CPUs will feature two Socket 1207s, each support Dual-Core.
Manufacturers warn that the price of these premium systems could be driven up but as a result, the current FX-series processor prices should drop. A mid-November launch would be ideal in order to compete with Intel but the new architectural design needs to be a success. Intel is readying four cores in one CPU but 65 nm, instead of AMD?s 90 nm.
News Posted by : GoogleFreak On
: September 27, 2006, 4:46 pm
News Source : BetaNews
Gaming Physics: Einstein on a PCB
It was March 2005 when we all m heard that there might be a new contender in the graphics cards arena. The rumors surrounding the company Ageia hinted that they were to be responsible for the second '3dfx' like graphics revolution for PC games by releasing what they called the PhysX, PPU (Physics Processing Unit). According to AGEIA, things don't just look authentic; they act real and feel real. Massively destructible buildings and landscapes; explosions that cause collateral damage; believable characters with spectacular new weapons; pragmatic smoke, fog and cool oozing fluids are all now possible.
A few months ago (roughly April/May) Ageia released the Physx PPU and ever since had a really rough start. The games that currently support the Physx cards are Ghost Recon (GRAW), City of Villains, Bet on Soldier: Blood Sport and Cellfactor. One of the board partners of this aggressive new idea & innovation is BFG. They recently submitted a PhysX board to Guru3D.com, which they'll have a look at today.
News Posted by : GoogleFreak On
: September 27, 2006, 4:45 pm
News Source : Guru 3D
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