Yummy Silicon Chips

reBlog from thor78: Sheep Gives Birth to Lamb With a Human Face! | The Daily Inquirer

2010-01-15T11:58:00.001-08:00

I found this fascinating quote today:

Now this is disturbing! A sheep in a Turkish village just gave birth to a mutant lamb with a human face!thor78, Sheep Gives Birth to Lamb With a Human Face! | The Daily Inquirer, Jan 2010

You should read the whole article.

iPod Touch and Nano - Spanking New! Again!

2008-09-16T06:27:00.000-07:00

With the 3G iPhone hype finally stabilizing, Apple discreetly releases more product update in the form of the updated iPod Touch and Nano. Both of them are already feature-packed and now Apple makes it so much better! Read on!

iPhone's Polished Stainless Steel and other design changes

The iPhone get even sexier and better to hold and ogle at! That's polished stainless steel used for the countoured casing! Apple seems to have learned its lesson and listened to customer feedback on the iPod Touches battery lifespan! And oh yeah, a built in speaker - which is great for easy listening without the headphones.

More Music, Video and Games!

Now capable of runnning for 6 hours of video and 36 hours of music! The battery bump now allows owners to play even more complicated games that make use of the built-in accelerometer. You can now play racing games sans the stylus and tilt your iPod touch to steer!

But wait there's more, the Nano!

Now this is improvement! Enter the Musical Genius! The Nano analyzes your music and creates a playlist of songs that it thinks goes well togother! Maybe even playlist you never thought would click! Also utilizing the built-in accelerometer, you could now do some nifty stuff with the Nano. Shake it up a bit, it shuffles your music. Tilt it 90 degrees and you can view the album cover art and even select the album you want to listen to. Do the same with your pictures and view your pictues in portait and landscape. And of course - GAMES!

The iPod Touch starts at $229 and the Nano at $149! You can visit Apple's store to see the other variations.

My new SITE! FTW!

2008-09-15T08:04:00.000-07:00

I recently bought my own domain! YEAH! 5 years too long at that! HAH! :D My own domain was always on top of the things I promised myself I'd buy once I got a stable job! Here's the link to my personal site: [Ron]Notepad[/Ron]!

Useless posts and content :P
I don't really have any specific content to put up, so at the moment my site serves as my online scratch pad or my Notepad as I like to call it. Maybe a few posts about my violin lessons/escapades or maybe some photos of me if you guys re interested. haha :D

More shameless redirects
If you missed the link to my site you can click this again: [Ron]Notepad[/Ron]
I do hope you get to read of my worthless posts and subscribe to my feeds! :D

The iPhone get it's much needed tune up!

2008-09-12T08:41:00.000-07:00

Tired of the dropped calls and your iTunes is taking forever to backup? Or is your iPhone's short battery giving up sooner than expected? These and many more bugs are prime targets for Apple's new iPhone 2.1 Software Update released today (09/12/2008) .

Update Contents

Here's the update content list from Apple's iPhone software update site:

Decrease in call set-up failures and dropped calls
Significantly better battery life for most users (most users? WTH)
Dramatically reduced time to backup to iTunes (FAIL)
Improved email reliability, notably fetching email from POP and Exchange accounts
Faster installation of 3rd party applications
Fixed bugs causing hangs and crashes for users with lots of third party applications
Improved performance in text messaging
Faster loading and searching of contactsImproved accuracy of the 3G signal strength display
Repeat alert up to two additional times for incoming text messages
Option to wipe data after ten failed passcode attempts
Genius playlist creation (Which means?)

Updating Process

To update your iPhone, you MUST have iTunes 8 installed - you can get it here from Apple's iTunes Download Page. Once you have iTunes 8 installed you simply connect your iPhone and select it using iTunes, select the summary page and click on update! While your iPhone is being updated, keep your grubby hands off for a while or you'll end up with a shiny looking brick. :D

Happy Updating!

Pimp your iPhone with Wraps and Accesorries!

2008-09-06T09:38:00.000-07:00

With the 3G iPhone different size specifictions you'll have to get wraps tht fit your 3g iPhone, don't make the mistake of buying an old iPhone wrap! Here's one from More Thing:

Or if you like to savor iPhone sexiness, but still want a wrap you should check this out tranparent protector:

The ultra slim design can keep the beautiful shape of iPhone 3G and transparency material will show up the Apple logo on the back. Our silicone products are made of 100% pure silicone, no alternative materials (such as TPR) is added. Pure silicone is odor-free, strong, anti-static, dust proof and ultra slim that is perfect-fitted to your devices preserving the original features and shape with good looking and protection. And completely safe with U.S. 21 F.D.A. Regulation Part 177.2600 (rubber articles) standard.

If you have cash to burn, why not dress your iPhone in an equally expensive Louis Vuitton iPhone case! The leather case fetches about $1250... Why not buy another iPhone eh? :D

AND Finally, we all know the iPhone's battery can go by sooo fast, especially if you're are an application maniac! The charger can be a drag at times, so why not get an emergency battery to prolong those precious hours you have with your iPhone?

The Microsoft Philippines SQL Server 2008 Architect's Forum

2008-09-05T05:21:00.000-07:00

I was at the Architect's Forum earlier this afternoon which took place at Dusit Nikko, Makati. Although database management or development isn't exactly my field of specialization - I attended to check it out anyway and to get the usual freebies (includes a Heroes T-Shirt, pen, pack bag and flyers!) Hahaha! :D

Technical Event - Doh!

I thought the forum would be easily digested by my feeble brain, but sadly it failed to catch up during the break out sessions! The welcome plenary was given by Pepeng Rollan, GM of Microsoft Philippines and the keynote was delivered by Mark Souza from Microsoft Corp.

The keynote speaker enumerated the three development pillars of the SQL Server 2008 release as Trusted, Intelligent, and Productive. And after he briefly explained each pillar, three guys local Microsoft guys (Glenn Gamboa, Dindo Fernando, and Jojo Ayson) glady gave demos highlighting some of the key concepts of the pillars via the SQL Server itself, mostly executing scripts of TSQL and SQL. I did not get 90% of everything they said. :D

Hungry... Misconeptions... Break Out Sessions...

Now at about 3PM, the breakout sessions started with the Grand Ballroom (where the forum was held) being divided to create another make-shift room to accomodate the other session. And now my stomach was grumbling as usual and I allowed it to take over, making me say stuff like "God, Microsoft rents out a great place but isn't serving any food yet!" and "I should have stay at the office!" AND "This is all they're serving coffee?!?". The first session (SQL Server 2008 SSAS enchancements) I attended flew by quite quickly, not because I thought the speaker (Nicholas Dritsas, Customer Advisory Team, Microsoft Corporation) was boring, but it was because my carbo deprived brain couldn't process anything anymore, that and the fact I didn't know squat about SSAS!

By the time they announced that their would be another break before the next session AND the waiters start coming out with... SALAD! I told myself, "Better than nothing!", heck I gobbled the green salad in less than 2 mins! But after 5 min, lo and behold more waiters come out of the kitchen again with pasta in hand! I finally give Microsoft a pat in the back. Ok now I'll listen to your sessions! :D And I did, I knew enough TSQL and SQL to get what Michael Hotek (MCITP - SQL Server DBA) was saying about Database Auditing in SQL Server 2008.

As usual Microsoft gets it right by developing powerful applications with customer convenience in mind. That's one of the main reasons open source development tools don't really hold any special place in my toolset, yes it may be free and it does have user support but it still takes a long time and requires more effort to code.

FriendFeed! My latest addiction!

2008-09-03T07:35:00.000-07:00

Can't help but post, like and comment everything! FriendFeed is a predictable byproduct of the Web 2.0 revolution, similar to Twitter or Plurk, but much more interactive on a grand and sometimes confusing way. People get really addicted to FriendFeed and spend most of their time commenting, liking and posting (*Ahem* Mona N. *Ahem*), so just to be sure minimize you window size when your at the office!

How to Feed your Friends and be Fed

You start your time in FriendFeed building up contacts to subcribe and maybe post something yourself. But believe me, it's better to subcribe and interact first with your subcribed contacts, you'll get more exposure that way, meaning people would be more likely to comment or like your posts or shares. The more friends you subcribe to the more you get to discover about what they share via Twitter, Flicker, a Blog, and more! Here a quick glance at my subscribed contacts and the things they share online:

Most of the updates happen in real time (thank you AJAX) so you won't have to refresh all the time. But if you're obsessive compulsive like me, you'll end up refreshing your tab anyway. :)

Widgets for your Sites

If you love widgets and and your website, but can't wait for the next update on FriendFeed - you can embed your FriendFeed status and current Feed via FriendFeed's embed. And if you like an additional to dd to your site's already overflowing badges you can get one too from FriendFeed!

So if your already on FriendFeed, hook me up to your list of subscriptions and see you there! This is my FriendFeed Link! +1 to me!

Sweetcron - The Automated Lifestream Blog Software

2008-09-01T08:42:00.000-07:00

Another micro-blogging platform to rival Twitter, FriendFeed, and the rest - Sweetcron is dubbed as the Automated Lifestreaming Blog software created by YongFook. It operates something like FriendFeed, pulling selected content from your selected sites like Twitter, Flicker, etc. and automatically posting them to your blog hence the Automated keyword.

The Main Features Mapped Out (from Sweetcron's site)

Automatic Imports
Uploaded a photo to flickr? Bookmarked a new site? In a few minutes it will show up on your blog!

Easily Customizable
Edit simple templates to change the way your Sweetcron Lifestream looks. Default Sandbox theme included!

Self Hosted
Keep all your data safely on your own server and run Sweetcron via your own domain.

100% Free and Open Source
Oh and did I mention Sweetcron is extensible, too? Write your own php classes and slot them right in!

Now in Public Beta
Sweetcron is currently in public beta! Want to join the funz?

Lifestreaming Defined
According to Word Spy's entry is

an online record of a person's daily activities, either via direct video feed or via aggregating the person's online content such as blog posts, social network updates, and online photos.

If you use Facebook, I'm quite sure you're quite familiar with the term.

If you want to try it out head over to Sweetcron's site and register to get an email with the download, documentation and support URL's.

World of Warcraft outside your PC!

2008-08-29T08:15:00.000-07:00

Can't get enough of World of Warcraft(WOW)? Do you still feel the need to play even after 4+ hours of WOW, but your computer just breathed it last from overuse? Well you have several options available!

The World of Warcraft Board Game!
Designed and published by Fantasy Flight Games (also known for DOOM: The Board Game and Descent: Journeys in the Dark), World of Warcraft: The Board Game is your very first option and was also the first out-of-game product of WOW. The game was designed to be played by 2-6 players who are willing to devote 4 hours of fantasy gaming! 4 hours! At least your eyes won't be stressed to the point of exhaustion! The board game lets player choose from all the classes, races, and your faction available in the actual game to explore the continent of Lordaeron, where you could explore, gain items, and level up your hero - on a smaller scale of course.

The players are represented by miniatures included with board game, as well as supporting cards and tokens to represent items, abilities and other game elements. The ultimate goal of the game is to defeat a powerful "Overlord".

But if you're not able to find an Overlord, the players can always opt to fight the opposing faction to determine the winner. Being a premium game, it doesn't come cheap priced at $79.95, about P3600. Another downside of the board game is that the time it takes to play can start to drag especially if you're not enjoying the game but can't do much if your friends still want to continue! The board game also has two expansions to date: Shadow of War and The Burning Crusade - adding quests, 2 new races, dungeons, as well as the Outlands sub-continent!

The World of Warcraft Trading Card Game (WOW TCG)!
Not into board games nor the exhausting time it takes to finish one? Do you favor quick battles but still love WOW? Then the WOW TCG may be the option for you! Brought to you by Upper Deck, the WOW TCG has mechanics quite similar to TCG's available in the market. You have Creature card, items, abilities, a graveyard, and the while lot! The whole game process can take forever to post so I've included the demo from UpperDeck's site:

But if you don't want to watch the video, you can read the rulebook here. Please take note that it is a PDF file.

The World of Warcraft Miniatures Game!

So you not into cards but still looking for tangible action to whet your WOW craving? Also from Upper Deck is the WOW miniatures game! I'm not sure about the gameplay details yet, but I have the feeling that it would something like Heroclix by WizKids with dice rolling nd mybe some modifier cards to supplement the minis.

NEED MORE DOTA!

2008-08-28T06:27:00.000-07:00

More DOTA! For those that eat, drink, and sleep DOTA - here the stuff you need to know about the latest version 6.54b:

* Added extra dynamic replay data to help replay parsers present in-game data (see below)
* Rebalanced Invoker (see below)
* Reworked Shadow Priest (see below)
* Various changes to Phantom Lancer and Spirit Lance (see below)
* Changes to Aphotic shield and Borrowed Time (see below)

* Improved hero selection process in RD
* Added hotkeys for recipe stores
* Changed Elder Dragon Form MS Bonus from 10/35/60 to a constant 25
* Changed Freezing Field mechanics a bit. The slow now comes from the area rather than the explosions. Changed the distribution method on Freezing Field as well
* First Blood bounty is shared with the team if Sent/Scourge get the last hit
* Untouchable now triggers off being targeted by attacks or spells
* Rewrote Avalanche to fix various minor bugs
* Decreased Inner Vitality cooldown from 30 to 25 seconds
* Lowered Clockwerk's strength gain
* Lowered early damage on Rocket Flare
* Added Internationalized text support for GameScore Board, EndScore Board and Observer Board
* Added extra data to end of replay (Player Gold, Assists, Neutral CS, Items)
* Improved Bloodrage a little
* Lowered base armor on Lycan's Wolves from 5 to 2
* Minor reduction to Clockwerk's base armor
* Rewrote Maledict for some optimizations
* Toss no longer uses manacost/cooldown if you make an invalid cast
* Toss now seeks its target
* You can now only -kickafk allied afk players
* Temporarily undid the movability of items in cooldown while some issues are being fixed
* Phantom Lancer's images now create a dummy Spirit Lance effect when the primary casts it
* Player turn indicator for RD is made clearer
* Added extra orb effect notations to items and abilities (228748)
* Blur visual effect is now applied only to enemies (190092)
* Changed the name and icon for Flask of Sapphire Water (206885)
* Illuminate wave now gives vision (226661)
* Rewrote Devour. It now shows progress bar overhead and doesn't reveal you (217291)
* Sentinel Ancients buildings are now in rooted model form (216494)
* Added a new fun mode -mi(miniheroes) that creates the hereos at half size
* Added a new command to customize water color for local player (-water red, -water blue, -water green or -water default)
* Displayed gold animation for First Blood bounty
* Winners are now displayed in Warcraft's score screen (234657)
* Dummy lineup units in RD now show player name
* Improved Acid Spray visual effect
* Increased Spin Web visual transparency
* Increased the size of the recently added $ symbol for observers and replays
* New Sonic Wave visual effect
* New Maledict visual effect
* New Freezing Field visual effect
* New Black Hole visual effect
* New Spirit Lance visual effect
* New Flask of Sapphire Water visual effect
* New visual effect for units with Poison Nova buff
* New Weave cast visual effect
* Updated Hookshot tooltip
* Fixed a bug with casting March of the Machines on a cliff (DonTomaso)
* Fixed a bug with Feral Heart and swapping or repicking
* Fixed a minor bug with Grow
* Fixed a bug with Infest and Refresher-Necronomicon
* Fixed a bug with Melting Strike on Invoker
* Fixed a bug with Timewalk and Power Cogs
* Fixed a minor bug with Expulsion
* Fixed a rare glitch with Time Walk
* Fixed Armlet typo
* Fixed a rare bug with Borrowed Time where it sometimes doesn't use cooldown when triggered
* Fixed Battle Hunger buff tooltip
* Fixed Bottle activating Mana Leak
* Fixed Enchant on neutral creeps with initially reduced mana
* Fixed Feral Heart buff level tooltip
* Fixed -fs text bug introduce last version
* Fixed -kickafk warning text not showing up
* Fixed some issues with Hookshotting someone near trees
* Fixed some targetting bugs with Lucifer
* Fixed Stifling Dagger not working properly when it hits a fogged unit
* Fixed various other tooltip errors

++ Invoker Changes:
- Invoke levels at 2/7/12/17 with cooldown from 30/30/15/5 to 30/25/12/5 and manacost from 20/40/60/80 to 20/50/80/110
- Sunstrike: cooldown 60->30, manacost 250->175
- Deafening Blast: cooldown 25->40
- Chaos Meteor: cooldown 30->70
- Forge Spirit: cooldown 70->30, manacost 200->75, casting with ones already on field kills old ones. Improved visual look slightly. If both elements are level 4 or higher, double spawn.
- Tornado: Airtime from 0.4/0.7/1.0/1.3/1.6/1.9/2.2 -> 0.6/0.85/1.1/1.35/1.6/1.85/2.2 Same final damage, 120 starting damage instead of 190
- Alacrity: Is now WWE, cooldown 20->15 Duration 5->6, manacost 125->50, Original IAS: 40/60/80/100/120/140/160. New IAS: 30/40/50/60/70/80/90. It now gives damage as well: 20/30/40/50/60/70/80.
- EMP: changed to pure Wex ability, WWW. 0.5 HP lost for each mana drained. Tweaked various other aspects such as cast range and manacost.
- Ice Wall: Rescaled duration from 4->10 to 3->12. Improved Exort based damage from 5/10/15/20/25/30/35 to 6/12/18/24/30/36/42

++ Shadow Priest:
- Changed Shallow Grave completely. It is now a basic ability
- Changed how Weave works. It is now an ultimate
- Reduced Shadow Priest's cast point
- Shadow Wave can now bounce back to you at the last wave if you are in range. Also added an extra bounce at level 3 and 4

++ Phantom Lancer:
- Reworked Spirit Lance
- Phantom Lancer images now create a dummy Spirit Lance effect when the real one casts it
- Lowered Doppelwalk invisibility duration from 12 to 8
- Increased and Standardized all Phantom Lancer images' percentage of damage taken
- Lowered maximum image count

++ Abaddon:
- Improved how Borrowed Time works and increased cooldown
- Reworked Aphotic Shield stats

6.54b: Fixed an exploit with Borrowed Time

Get the latest DOTA version from the official DOTA Download site!

More LOL CATS! RAWR!

2008-08-27T07:38:00.000-07:00

I love Cats! Independent, undisciplined, naughty, and so full of energy! So during a cat picture hunt I stumbled on the LOL cat pictures. Cat (mostly) pictures with witty captions in unique LOL cat language! Typing a quick Google run, I quickly found one of the best sites to satiate my LOL cat itch! You can check it out here : icanhascheezburger

Weird name eh? It's actually I Can Has Cheez Burger. Here's why:

I just kept laughing when I browsed through pages and pages of LOL cat pictures! My office mates even told me to keep it down! Here's another!

And get this, there is a programming language based on the LOL Cats language! Check my post on LOLCODE.

Y4IT - Youth Congress for Information Technology 2008!

2008-08-26T07:53:00.000-07:00

It's that time of the year where the Philippine Youth gets together once a year to listen and participate in seminars hosted by the University of the Philippines Information Technology Training Center (or UPITTC) and conducted by respected techvangelists from all over the country! The Y4IT will run from Sept. 2 to 5! With 17000+ registered participants, it obvious this youth congress is something you don't want to miss! Register here!

The Latest IT Trends Crash Course

With talks ranging from eLearning 2.0 to Wordpress, the Youth Congress takes about 4 days to finish, with each day featuring different topics and speakers and with Senetor Kiko Pangilinan as the key note speaker to boot. (Yawn) Although not yet final, here are some of the topics to be discussed:

Nanobiophotonics & Wireless Technology
eLearning 2.0
Blogging
CGI in Film Animation
Social Networking
Blu-Ray Technology
IT Certifications
Careers in Embedded Systems
Podcasting
PhilNITS as a National IT Standard
What Employers Look for in IT Graduates
Outsourcing & Offshoring
News Portals: The New Information Channel
Next Generation Game Development
IT in Medicine
Video on Demand
Mobile Animation
Ruby on Rails
IT Forensics
IT Entrepreneurship
Wikipedia & Collective Intelligence
Information Security Analytics
Digital Media & Distribution Channels
Photoblogging

Sponsor Booths and so much more!

Of course, being an event that would reach out to thousands of potential customers, the Y4IT will have a lot of sponsors and their product booths tailing behind. Some of the notable sponsors are Sun Microsystems, Microsoft, Acer and Fujitsu Ten. Trivia - I got Fujitsu Ten's (my current employer) hiring pamphlets during the last Y4IT, so this event is not limited to high school or college students, all you unemployed graduates move your asses and visit the booths! Oh and yeah, there will be loads of exhibitors to keep you busy for an hour or so with their wares!

For more information and registration go to the Y4IT's site!

The overated 3G iPhone!

2008-08-23T08:47:00.000-07:00

Ah yes, the venerable iPhone finally hits the Philippine shore (legally) via Globe. But why am I not jumping up and down screaming iPhone? This is why:

The only way anyone's getting the iPhone free is if you subscribe to a monthly P5000 (roughly $110) Plan, which is way beyond a typical Filipino salary man's pay for a phone with an iPod touch hybrid. The prepaid offer is even worse! P41899 ($931)!!! I could buy a friggin' laptop with that! Brand new to boot!

All in all, the iPhone was too hyped and overated by most people, now the demand is exploding on everyone's face. I'm sticking to my phone without an I, which is priced right for its features and still allows my to enjoy my life without worrying about phone bills.

Earn while searching!

2008-08-22T20:40:00.000-07:00

Yup, another way to earn while doing sometime you do almost everyday! Which is? Searching of course! A new site just popped out a few weeks back that promises to pay you while you search! This site is Scour! To earn you just have to use the scour website (or the scour toolbar) to search, and the great thing about it is that it uses the Google, Yahoo, and MSN search engines so you could browse all of the possible search results in one page, neat eh? You could also generate positive or negative feedback by clicking on the thumbs up or thumbs down icons and by commenting the results, this affects the search results ranking, meaning if you want a certain result to be more visible, give it positive feedback. Each time you search, give feedback or comment you earn corresponding points which you have to accumlate to reach your desired payout. The lowest payout being $25 for 6500 points you earn.

Never Again GLOBELINES! Never Again!

2008-08-22T04:01:00.000-07:00

After almost one month of being cut off from the Internet, I finally get to post something! Geez! The problem started when a thunderstorm was brewing a month ago and I think my wireless router picked up more than it could handle. Immediately after that, I lost my connection.

Here is where I get so pissed at my service provider (Globelines) - when I called their technical support they told it was a facilities problem their technicians were working on, so OK I gave them three days. I followed up again after three days and now they tell me that my loss of connection had nothing to do with the facility they told me about during my last call! So I told them to send a technician to service my unit or connection, they say OK and wait for the technician to call. After a WEEK of more waiting, the technicians arrive (without calling) and diagnose my problem to be sim related and that it should be replaced. So OK I told them I'd follow up with Globelines stating the sim problem. So Globelines tells me to wait AGAIN for the techs to arrive with a new sim replacement. Another WEEK goes by, and the technicians arrive - WITHOUT A SIM CARD ON HAND! I mean C'MON! I specifically told the technical support to give the techs a sim card before coming to my house! So yet again I follow up with Globelines and they said they'd now coordinate with the technicians! What morons! Why not do that in the first place?!? Now this is the worst part of it all, after three days the technicians arrive again, now saying that it wasn't the sim that was faulty after all! It was Globelines that DID NOT connect me to the F**king system! And that Globelines just had to do something remotely to fix my damned connection! WHY DIDN'T THEY F**KING DO THAT IN THE FIRST PLACE - ABOUT A MONTH AGO!

Never again Globelines, never again... Once my 1 year contract is done, they're losing this customer.

The DOTA legacy continues with v6.53!

2008-07-22T05:54:00.000-07:00

Included in v6.53 of DOTA is a new hero - Rattletrap, the Clockwerk Goblin. I haven't had the chance to use Rattletrap, but I know and experience first hand that in the hands of a skilled gamer, Rattletrap can reach the GODLIKE status quite easily! Here is the fluff taken from the Dota-Allstars site!

The by-product of Goblin technological weapon research during the old War, Rattletrap the Clockwerk Goblin was shut away into storage for countless decades until the Sentinel found and reactivated him. Combat-wise, this goblin's capabilities know few bounds; his body is stocked with a huge array of armaments that destroy targets both near and far with ease. His trademark wrench can even extend itself like a grappling hook, allowing him to pick off individual targets with pin-point accuracy.

For those who haven't downloaded the latest map of DOTA, get it from DOTA's official map download site.

Here's the change log for you nit picky gamers:

* Added a new Sentinel Hero (Goblin Clockwerk)
* Localized script text to allow cross-language compatibility
* Completely reworked and improved the way RD hero picking is done
* Imported a temporary rune model to replace the default one until the death animation in 1.22 is fixed (thanks PGRu-Unexpect3D)
* Reworked Lycanthrope a bit

* Removed the "undroppable while in cooldown" mechanism added a long time ago to prevent item abuses. This mechanism is no longer needed as of Warcraft patch 1.22
* Improved Fire Panda's movement speed per level
* Observers and replays now see a $ symbol above a dying creep when a player gets gold for killing a unit
* Improved Drow's Marksmanship slightly
* Increase AOE on Dispersion
* Lowered Soul Keeper's base movement speed and increased cast point
* Improved Stifling Dagger
* Improved Open Wounds a little
* Decreased Mana Void's cooldown
* Lowered Infest manacost

* Fixed a minor bug with the order of the heal and damage operation on Purification when combine with Aphotic Shield on a nearby enemy
* Fixed a bug with Magic Immunity and Haunt
* Fixed a bug with Song of the Siren and Berserker's Call
* Fixed a bug with selling Aghanim's Scepter
* Fixed a minor bug with Soul Assumption and buying items
* Fixed a bug with Magic Immunity and Strygwyr's Thirst
* Fixed Berserker's Call interaction with Neutrals at night
* Fixed Stout Shield hotkey conflicting with Kelen's Dagger in the Goblin Shop
* Fixed a bug with Shackles and Berserker's Call
* Fixed a bug with Magic Immunity and Sand Storm
* Fixed Mana Leak to not trigger off of Exort/Quas/Wex
* Fixed -ah for observers

* Added Tavern colors (218144)
* Added a new blink animation for Antimage
* Improved Magic Missile cast effect (170262)
* Added a visual effect for when Dispersion is damaging units
* Improved Shapeshift animation (186555)
* Improved Chaos Knight's Blink Strike cast effect (222605)
* Added new icon for Ethereal Jaunt (227376)
* Added a visual effect when Necrolyte regains mana with Sadist
* Swapped icon positions of Sange and Yasha in the recipe shop
* Added a new Balanar hero story (by Grujah.Noob)
* Added a new Lina Inverse hero story (by Wyvernoid)
* Added a new Medusa hero story (by Inferno[DK])
* Added a new Sand King hero story(by Yousuckatdota)
* Added a new Shadow Priest hero story (by miel09)
* Added a new Warlock hero story (by Inferno[DK])

This version marks the first official simultaneous multi-lingual release. The first round of translated languages includes Russian, Korean and Chinese. More will be added over time. I'd like to thank Danat and DonTomaso for their dedication and support to this project. This would not have been possible without their contributions. Thanks to the following translators for their work as well: Aschen, Heintje, Etc., RiiNoA, zhangx05053, Sodoes, NightMare, Attly, c.lucifer, Orange_soso, Kua, Kaka, Sprite93, Danat, Vizakenjack, Lego-, Magot, PeaceHeaver, ill-Lich, Kariy, ptizza, Vanger, John Doe, CuPaKy3, Johny

The main feature of these translations, aside from being translated of course, is that the maps are compatible with each other. That means, I can have only the English version on my computer and then join a game where the host is using the Russian map without needing to download it. The Russian players will see the language of the map they downloaded, and I will see my own language. The core game code is what is used to authenticate the map as official and the strings are externalized from this. The same is true for replays. You can watch any 6.53 replay, regardless of the original language, using only your one map. This will make sharing replays worldwide a seamless process.

Wrath of the Lich King! RAWR!

2008-07-15T06:37:00.000-07:00

A quick game overview:
The Lich King Arthas has set in motion events that could lead to the extinction of all life on Azeroth. With the armies of the undead and the necromantic power of the plague threatening to sweep across the land, only the mightiest heroes can oppose the Lich King's will and end his reign of terror for all time. Blizzard Entertainment's latest expansion to World of Warcraft – Wrath of the Lich King – adds a host of epic content to the existing game world. Players will achieve soaring levels of power, explore a vast new continent, and battle other high-level heroes to determine the fate of Azeroth.

Features (at the moment!):

Master the necromantic powers of the Death Knight – World of Warcraft's first Hero class.
Quest to level 80, gaining potent new abilities and talents along the way.
Learn the craft of spell augmentation with the new Inscription profession.
Brave the harsh new continent of Northrend, the icy domain of the Lich King.
Engage in epic siege warfare, deploying mighty siege engines to lay waste to destructible buildings in your path.
Transform your hero's look with new character-customization options, including new hairstyles and dances.
Explore perilous new dungeons filled with some of the deadliest creatures – and greatest treasures – on Azeroth.

You can download Blizzard's Fansite Kit of Wrath of the Lich King and play with the goodies included like sample HTML files, avatar pictures some screen shots, artwork, fluff, and much more!

Some examples of the Fansite Kit's content:

Sample wallpaper (Utgarde Keep)

Sample Artwork (Azeroth Map with Northrend)

Sample Avatar

OMG! Diablo 3! Cain lives again!

2008-07-04T07:26:00.000-07:00

The rumors are now true! Blizzard finally announces the development of Diablo 3! I just finished watching the sample game trailer - it rocks! The trailer starts out in a dungeon where a barbarian has to find Cain (a character from Diablo 1 & 2). As the barbarian moves through the water filled dungeon you could see the great water effects and the incoming demon horde charging the barbarian! The barbarin quickly dispatches the demons with impunity and with stunning character animation fluidity! Blizzard really ups the notch with a very stunning physics engine throughout the fight - demons flying everywhere after getting hacked it bits!

The next bit of the video showcases the new character class available in Diablo 3, the witch doctor! The witch doctor has some really cool spells like a locust swarm that eats enemies alive, some pets and a fire spell - all of these showcasing another string of cool 3d and lighting effects!

Canon's 1000D - switch to DSLR - NOW!

2008-07-02T07:12:00.000-07:00

Taking up Nikon's challenge and a piece of the entry-level pie, Canon releases the 1000D - Canon's so called entry-level Digital SLR (DSLR). Although I remember Canon saying that their last DSLR release, the 450D was entry-level. But I guess the 450D is already so feature-packed, it almost qualifies as a mid-range DSLR.

Some 1000D specifications (full specifications):

10.1 Megapixel CMOS and Digic III
EOS Integrated Cleaning System
In-Lens Image Stabilization
SD card compatible
Universal EOS design
3fps continuous shooting

The 1000D price range may be about $800 (body only) and the $900-ish kit.

Photos and some text taken from Canon's 1000D page.

Nikon's new Full Frame monster, the D700!

2008-07-02T06:35:00.000-07:00

Taken from Engadget's D700 article:

Well, we can finally put the D700 rumors to bed. The beast that houses Nikon's newest monster (near) full-frame FX format 12.1 megapixel CMOS (not dissimilar from that found in the D3) is officially announced tonight, and it takes UDMA CompactFlash, and comes packing with a live view 3-inch display, 51 point autofocus (with 3D tracking), scene recognition, four-speed active dust reduction, ISO up to 6400, 5 or 8 fps full-res shooting, HDMI out, and a whole lot more. Expect it in July for $3,000 US (for the body).

Also being released are the SB-900 speedlight (August, $500), and the PC-E Micro NIKKOR 45mm f/2.8D ED and PC-E Micro NIKKOR 85mm f/2.8D lenses (August, $1,800 and $1,740, respectively).

Help Mozilla set a World Record! Download Firefox 3!

2008-06-18T09:07:00.000-07:00

Help Mozilla set a new world record for the most downloaded application in 24 hours by download the highly anticipated Firefox 3! With it's proven track record of safe browsing, lightning fast browsing and rendering, and a whole gamut of powerful, funky, and useful add-ons - you can go wrong with FireFox! Download your copy before the 24 hour window closes! Here's the link:

Download FireFox 3

To show off your love for FireFox, you could also get badges for your web site like this:

Visit Mozilla's world record site now and get involved!

I just finished downloading and installing Firefox 3 to my PC - it looks great! The interface looks a lot more polished, you could even use Firefox as is with downloading a new theme to spice it up! Another great feature that I recently noticed was Firefox's built-in Auto Complete address bar! It does not only show you your previous sites visited, it also shows the site's description to boot!

iPhone Features - Maps with GPS

2008-06-18T08:57:00.000-07:00

From Apple's iPhone Page - Maps with GPS

Maps with GPS

Find your location, get directions, and see traffic — all from your phone. Maps on iPhone 3G combines GPS, Wi-Fi, and cell tower location technology with the Multi-Touch interface to create the best mobile map application ever.

Find yourself.

iPhone 3G finds your location via GPS or by triangulating your position using Wi-Fi and cellular towers. It also finds points of interest by keyword: Search for “coffee” and iPhone shows you every cafe nearby.

Get directions.

Get directions to wherever from wherever. View turn-by-turn directions or watch your progress with live GPS tracking.

Enjoy the view.

Just like Google Maps on your computer, Maps on iPhone lets you switch between map view, satellite view, and a hybrid view of both. Multi-Touch makes the difference: Tap to zoom, pan, and change your view on the move.

See traffic.

Maps on iPhone shows you live traffic information, indicating traffic speed along your route in easy-to-read green, red, and yellow highlights.

The 3G iPhone

2008-06-10T05:49:00.000-07:00

Always wanted to get your hands on an iPhone, but you fall under these conditions: 1) You don't live in the USA and don't have access to AT&T 2) You live in the USA but don't want to switch to AT&T and don't want to risk the messy (and often fatal) unlocking and most importantly 3) You don't want to spend an exuberant amount of money on the iPhone?

Well the wait is finally over, Apple is finally releasing the 3G iPhone, which will be priced at a reasonable $199 (8GB version, the 16GB version is $299) or about plus minus PhP10000, to the world. Yes the World. Most major cities anyway.

The countries to get the iPhone by July 11 will be:
Australia, Austria, Belgium (French), Belgium (Dutch), Canada (English), Canada (French), Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Hong Kong, Ireland, Italy, Japan, Mexico, Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Portugal, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland (French), Switzerland (German), UK, USA

And The list of countries slated to distribute the iPhone later this year:
Argentina, Botswana, Brazil, Cameroon, C. African Republic, Chile, Colombia, Croatia, Czech Republic, Dominican Republic, Ecuador, Egypt, El Salvador, Equatorial Guinea, Estonia, Guatemala, Guinea, Guinea-Bissau, Greece, Honduras, Hungary, India, Ivory Coast, Jamaica, Jordan, Kenya, Latvia, Liechtenstein, Lithuania, Macau, Madagascar, Mali, Malta, Mauritius, Nicaragua, Niger, Paraguay, Peru, Philippines (Yehey!), Poland, Romania, Senegal, Singapore, Qatar, Slovakia, South Africa, Turkey, Uruguay.

The 3G iPhone will be slightly thicker than it's predecessor at 4.5 by 2.4 by 0.48 inches and will weigh about 4.7 ounces. For those network happy users, the 3G iPhone is equipped with Wi-Fi (802.11b/g), UMTS / HSDPA (850, 1900, 2100MHz), GSM / EDGE (850, 900, 1800, 1900MHz), Bluetooth 2.0 + EDR. Owing to it's 3G core, the new iPhone is definitely faster than the 2.5G iPhone, roughly 30-40% faster pageloads.

Can't wait for the it's release here in the Philippines! Oh but wait, $199 + buttload of taxes and other network markup, I'm guessing it'll actually be around $299-399 here. Sigh.

How Google Realy Places Map Markers

2008-05-25T03:49:00.000-07:00

Make one now! Maybe Google would notice! :p

CS4?

2008-05-25T03:42:00.000-07:00

From TGDaily:Santa Clara (CA) – GPU acceleration is one of the most significant trends in today hardware industry, opening the doors to an entirely class of software running desktop. What will be possible is fascinating to see on a monitor, nut it is not tangible, if you just hear about it. It appears that the next Photoshop will be one of the first mainstream applications that will tap into the GPU for a speed up. And, at least from what we have seen during a first demonstration, the progress is simply stunning.

We have been saying it for a while now, mainstream applications need GPU acceleration to ring in the next major evolutionary step in software development. Far too long we have been stuck in a cycle of programming that relies on increasing clock-speeds, brings acceleration with new CPUs and a slow-down with new software releases. Even if Photoshop supports multi-core CPUs, it is one of those applications that always are very time intensive to use and especially if you are a professional user and work with huge images, then you are very familiar with “The Great Wait”, which typically describes the time lost when opening a big file or when applying a filter.

But there appears to be a very effective solution on the horizon, a solution that is most likely more effective than anything else we have seen before and in our experience using Photoshop over the past 14 years. During a demonstration at Nvidia’s headquarters in Santa Clara, we got a glimpse of Adobe’s "Creative Suite Next" (or CS4), code-named “Stonehenge”, which adds GPU and physics support to its existing multi-core support.

So, what can you do with general-purpose GPU (GPGPU) acceleration in Photoshop? We saw the presenter playing with a 2 GB, 442 megapixel image like it was a 5 megapixel image on an 8-core Skulltrail system. Changes made through image zoom and through a new rotate canvas tool were applied almost instantly. Another impressive feature was the import of a 3D model into Photoshop, adding text and paint on a 3D surface and having that surface directly rendered with the 3D models' reflection map.

There was also a quick demo of a Photoshop 3D accelerated panorama, which is one of the most time-consuming tasks within Photoshop these days. The usability provided through the acceleration capabilities is enormous and we are sure that digital artists will appreciate the ability to work inside a spherical image and fix any artifacts on-the-fly.

According to information we were given, all of these new features are part of the next-gen Photoshop, which should be a part of the “CS Next” suite. The package is expected to be released on October 1.

Bird's Eye View of the Burj Dubai

2008-05-25T03:36:00.000-07:00

Set to trump the current highest structure in the world, the Burj Dubai looks awesome even during construction! The actual floor number is still kept secret.

The World's First Digital Camera

2008-05-04T16:46:00.001-07:00

Invented in 1975 by Steven J. Sasson. It weighed eight pounds, was the size of a toaster, and produced a 0.01 megapixel image that took 23 seconds to record onto a digital cassette tape.

read more digg story

CPU-Z validator

2008-05-02T00:24:00.000-07:00

You can get your CPU-Z dump validated here and get a small sig for BB forums once your dump is entered into their database.

You can check out my database entry here.

You'll need CPU-Z to generate your dump file (.cvf). To do so, run CPU-Z, click on the About tab, and click on the validation button and finally click on the Save validation file. Upload that file and you get the sig.

Closer to Mission Impossible!

2008-04-23T21:34:00.000-07:00

The movie Mission Impossible featured a lot of cool gadgets and other stuff we often dreamed about using. One of these (or something similar to it) has been developed by German company DVD-D Gemany Ltd. The gadget I'm referring to would be the self-destructing mission tape. But unlike the self-burning/exploding tape, the DVD-D works like this: Once you take the DVD-D out of it's packaging, you have 48 hours to use the DVD-D before it degrades until it is rendered unusable. Useless? Not quite, the industry that could .benefit from this technology is the rentals industry. Rentals could reduce operating costs by not having to retrieve DVD's that were rented out. Several countries, like France, Italy and Scandinavia, are already implementing this technology.

The only implication of this technology is that we now have more garbage to deal with, perpetual Earth day everyone. :D

Pictures of my Rig

2008-04-22T17:35:00.000-07:00

To start off, here is a quick look at the front view of the Antec Nine Hundred. Composed of mostly steel part and being a full ATX tower, the 900 is HEAVY. As in 8 Kg heavy without any components installed. I remember lugging the case around when I bought it and had to commute by train, my arms ached for several days. =)

Although not shown in my picture, the 900 has a huge 200m fan mounted on top and constantly blows air downward cooling the CPU and GPU which is blown out by the rear 120mm fan and the two 120mm front side fans. All of the fans feature cool blue LED's to show that there is power. The only thing amiss in the picture would be my old DVDR, which stands out because it's white.

This is how my Rig looks like from the side clear panel. You can see the Zalman 9700 LED sitting prominently on top. I took picture while the computer was running, so you should see the blue LEDs of the rear fan and the CPU fan. Also shown here is the Corsair PSU sitting at the bottom. The 900 tower case is designed so that the PSU's are place at the bottom and you can adjust the PSU's fan position. You should also be able to see the 8800 GT video card just below the CPU fan. It's not quite sa big as the GTS or GTX, but its big enough for me. =)

This picture is a close up of the Zalman 9700 and the G.Skill DDR3 memory. The memory sticks are dual channel and are connected in the first and third slot of the motherboard memory slots. You'll also notice the fan RPM switch, this controls the speed of the fan. Lastly, you can also see part the the X38 Diamond's CircuPipe just below the CPU fan.

My new bad ass Rig!

2008-04-20T22:26:00.000-07:00

Just last month I was able to assemble what I consider to be my "Diamond in the Rough", the rough being my humble home. hehe

Here are the Specs:

Intel Q6600 Quad Core G0 stepping (2.4GHz with 4MB L2 cache)

The brains of my rig. It may be considered "Entry-Level" relative to other Quads available, but hey, I got it for almost $45 less from a local forum marketplace. The great thing about it being G0 stepping is that it supposedly uses less heat than its B3 counterpart, which makes it a better choice for overclockers.

MSI X38 Diamond

I will admit, the MSI X38 Diamond wasn't the best idea when I chose a motherboard. The most important drawback is it's crippling inability to support DDR2, and that the X48 came out just 2-3 months after I bought the X38. Frustrations aside, it is still a respectable board with FSB speeds reaching 1300 Mhz, better cooling courtesy of it's CircuPipe (Pure Copper Cooling solution, shown in the pic), and supports PCI 2.0 cards. Another cool feature that I really enjoy and use, is the board's ability to show a more advanced fuzzy logic view of the POST state, like if it's checking CPU->DDR->VGA-IDE to a successful boot.

Inno 3D 8800GT OC edition

I love this card. Without having to break the bank too much, the GT OC delivers almost the same performance as the stock 8800 GTS and doesn't eat up too much power. It is overclocked at about 15% from the stock GT GPU and only requires only one GPU power connector.

G.Skill 2GB DDR3

The G.Skill main memory was the result of my early motherboard choice blunder. I'm not saying that the G.SKill memory is a bad piece to acquire, but it just wasn't supposed to be included in my budget, and at $340 dollars you'll understand why. And like my CPU choice, this memory is considered entry-level in the DDR3 range, but delivers power proportional to its hefty price tag. =P

Antec Nine Hundred Gaming Case

Before I even thought of the other parts to buy for my rig, I was already decided on the tower case to buy. This was it. Although a bit heavy (almost 8 Kg), its features far outweigh its weight. It's a full ATX tower and features three 150mm fans mounted in front with cool blue LEDs, one 150mm in the rear, and a HUGE 200mm Fan on top! The 900 isn't screwless and the hard disk and optical drive mounting can be a hassle, even if the hard disk rack is modular. My only problem with the 900 is its grilles; more holes, more dust, more cleaning, 'nuf said.

Zalman CNPS 9700

This wasn't necessary in my rig, but when I saw the blocky and definitely "unsexy" stock Intel cooler, I knew I just had to replace it with a sexier alternative. With its hot looking 100% copper fins and 110mm Fan with blue LED, I was hooked.

Corsair 620W PSU

Since most of the parts I bought were relatively heavy weight in terms of power consumption, I went safe and selected a robust power supply with wattage to spare (unless I crossfire or SLI my GPU's =D ). The good thing about the PSU was it's cables were designed to be modular, meaning, if you don't need a certain cable, you simply don't connect it. Simple and clean workaround to messy cables.

New Online Pokemon games

2008-04-20T21:14:00.000-07:00

Since the sad closing of Pokemon crater, I've been searching the Internet for other replacements, and luckily someone posted a comment about the Pokemon Crater closure with a link to his blog, which surprisingly contained a whole bunch of sites featuring FREE Pokemon playing opportunities.

Below are some the featured sites from OnlinePokemonGames blog:

Pokemon Crater Closes!

2008-03-15T23:01:00.000-07:00

After 8 strong years, Pokemon Crater closed last December 1, 2007 by it's webmaster Aaron. Due to the intense responsibility of maintaining the site and other responsibilities, webmaster Aaron decided to take Pokemon Crater offline. This was his message posted on his website:

In the ninth grade, I became fascinated with Pokémon. I bought all the games and played them over and over. When a friend who shared my interest moved away, I thought that it would be great to put a similar game on the Internet that he and I could play together. Through the years, he and I and thousands of our site viewers enjoyed my version of Pokémon.

Soon I will be graduating from college. Life has its demands and responsibilities, life will be changing, and it is not going to be possible to maintain PokemonCrater.com. As a result I have decided to shut down PokemonCrater.com on December 1, 2007.

Thank You to all the viewers who shared my interest in Pokémon and a special Thank You to those who contributed ideas and challenges through the years. It has been great.

The site was a great place to play Pokemon for free, my only wish was that someone could have succeeded Aaron and continued the legacy, but as they say, all things must come to an end.

Chatting Online without a chat client!

2008-02-07T05:59:00.001-08:00

Ever get tired of changing computers and find out that your favorite chat clients (Yahoo Messenger, MSN Messenger, Google Talk) aren't installed?

To solve that problem, Meebo came along several years ago and addressed that problem by creating a site that acts as a proxy for the clients, allowing you to access your YM, Google, MSN, etc. accounts via an innovative log in system as shown:

Meebo does give you access to your accounts, but unfortunately the features are quite spartan compared to the real clients. An example of this is that you can only include simple smileys not the flash animated one say on Yahoo Messenger. But if chatting is all your after, Meebo does the job quite well.

Windows XP SP3 due March '08

2007-11-07T22:05:00.001-08:00

Not only is Windows XP Service Pack 3 alive and kicking, but Microsoft also managed to leak details about what the refresh will contain. The Redmond Company's policy when it comes down to future releases of the Windows platform is to gag all details. XP SP3 is old news for Microsoft. And with the general availability of Windows Vista it was pushed to the background. But in all fairness, Microsoft never confirmed the cancellation of the third service pack for Windows XP. The company only scrapped it out of sight and under the rug with repeated delays. More...

Taken from Softpedia XP SP3 Article

Google buys www.g.cn

2007-11-05T02:39:00.000-08:00

In it's attempt to make it easier for Chinese user to access Google, Google recently purchased the domain www.g.cn. This isn't the first time Google had to compromise for China. Google had to remove certain content form their search engine results to conform to China's policies. More...

2007-11-05T02:09:00.000-08:00

Here's Tux (Linux mascot) in all his glory as a huge LEGO model. Everybody loves penguins right?

picture taken from ericharshbarger

The first Brian Lam Halo 3 Swag Video!

2007-09-24T23:04:00.000-07:00

To those who weren't able to watch the video in Gizmodo (the video was taken down) and are stuck with Brian Lam's Rebagging (with the apology) video. You can also view the video in Gizmodo's Australian site here. For you YouTube lovers here's the link.

I personally don't mind that Brian throws the stuff around. Most of them where in their packaging and wouldn't suffer any damage anyway. And c'mon... It's not like its our swag bag to touch and cherish right??? Give the man a break!

The Linux Base File Structure

2007-09-24T20:51:00.000-07:00

Click here or the picture itself to enlarge the picture.

If Apple Never Existed

2007-09-24T20:40:00.000-07:00

A great read, found it while searching Digg, enjoy!

Loyd Case - ExtremeTech Sun Sep 23, 8:20 PM ET

Back in 2005, I wrote a column depicting a day in a fictitious world without Microsoft. Now I want to turn the tables and imagine a world without Apple.

I arrive at the office, courier bag slung over one shoulder, Peet's coffee in one hand. It feels earlier than it is, probably because I'd been working on deadline until late in the evening.

The problem with writing about home computers is keeping track of all of them. There are times I wish a single home computer standard existed, but that's a pipe dream. Still, HC's have come a long way since the early days of the Altair and Compupro boxes.

When I arrive at the office, several large boxes are awaiting me. The new Harmon Kardon home entertainment computer is in one of the boxes. Harmon is trying to establish a new category, the "HEC". I say, to HEC with it. Who wants to get locked into one type of media, when the CD is perfectly adequate? The Harmon PR rep had spoken eloquently about how transferring the music from a CD to the magneto-optical drive built into the Harmon HEC meant you could have as many as thirty CDs on tap at any one time. But once in the HEC, you couldn't get the music out, locking you into Harmon gear forever.

I plopped myself down at my desk and pulled out the Tandy NB5000 portable computer. It's a neat device, not much bigger than a large paper notebook, with an 80-column LCD screen. It had been a long, arduous process getting the Ziff-Davis IT department to approve the Radio Shack NBCs. Apparently, buying the utility software to convert the text format to something the DEC minicomputers could recognize was expensive.

I found myself wishing that one of the big computer companies had dived into the market for HCs, but alas, they had ceded the territory to the big consumer electronics companies. Sony, Toshiba, NEC and others had gobbled up companies like Amiga, Atari, and the various CP/M hardware companies in the late 1980's, and proceeded to deliver dozens of different HCs. It was really a hobbyists dream and nightmare both. All the different devices were pretty cool—except that getting your data from one to another was a real mess.

This was all exacerbated by the dozen or so companies building microprocessors for HCs, all of which had different instruction sets, different word lengths and different bit order. But it was job security for writers like me, who could make sense of it all to end users. No one company had gained enough traction to set a single standard.

I read over my roundup on the latest 200MB magneto-optical drives, then transferred it to the 5MB floppy built into the side of the NBC. The NEC unit was clearly best, but Sony's was a close second, due to its support for both the standard 200MB format and a Sony proprietary format that was also 200MB. However, the proprietary format could store up to twenty minutes of video, making it a sort of poor man's Laserdisc. I popped out the floppy drive and walked over to our production team.

The roundup needed to be edited, then formatted for the various electronic mail blasts as well as the print version. We had four people dedicated to reformatting the text into formats that the various mail readers on the several dozen HCs could understand.

I returned to my office just as the phone rang. It was Steve, a PR rep from a new company starting up Santa Clara. "Hey, we have a pretty neat gadget. It's about the size of a cassette Walkman, but uses a tiny MO drive to hold three hours of music. It only weighs about eight ounces. Want to check it out?"

"Sure," I said. "Might be a cool gadget for our holiday gift guide."

"One other thing. I've picked up a new account. They're building these HCs using off-the-shelf components and the same magnetic disk technology used in minicomputers and mainframes. It even runs a kind of UNIX."

I sighed. "How much does it cost."

"That's the great part. It's under $10,000."

"Steve, that's too much for most families."

"Hey, it's really cool. You know, Loyd, you've got to learn to think different."

You might wonder how this rather bleak scenario might exist if Apple had never come to pass. Despite not being a Mac user, it's my belief that Apple acted as a catalyst for the industry. Prior to Apple, there were a host of home computers and business-oriented PCs, either running proprietary operating systems or some variant of CP/M. But even CP/M machines often couldn't talk to each other.

Had there never been an Apple, the IBM PC may never have emerged, which then set off the tidal wave of innovation + standardization that allows us to have cheap PC technology today. Apple has had a tremendous impact, both directly through its suberb industrial design and efforts to simplify technology, and indirectly, by stimulating competition that eventually resulted in the PC ecosystem we have today. What do you think?

2007-09-19T03:28:00.000-07:00

We're not sure what's wrong with the old drugs-up-the-anus technique, but a Malaysian businessman tried to smuggle 2 kg worth of heroin inside two laptops. Where he went wrong was using two incredibly old laptops instead of something current, and well, looking suspicious while he did his smuggling thing. The airport officials took his stuff, X-rayed it, and found five plastic packs with said heroin inside. Why this cheap bastard couldn't spring for some gigantic Alienware laptops that are already heavy is anyone's guess. [Zjol via Spluch]

(Gizmodo Article By Jason Chen)

Microsoft to Disclose Windows Secrets to Developers!

2007-09-18T22:21:00.000-07:00

Computer users were promised better and cheaper products yesterday after Microsoft lost a three-year European legal battle.

In a ruling described as a major victory by consumer groups, a Brussels court confirmed that the software giant must make it easier for rival systems to work with its Windows operating system.

It means that Microsoft must disclose its secret computer codes to enable rival companies' gadgets such as media players to work seamlessly with Windows personal computers when downloading songs and videos.

The European Court of First Instance, the EU's second-highest court, also ruled that the world's biggest software company must pay a £343 million fine imposed in 2004 by the watchdog European Commission when it ruled that Microsoft abused its near-monopoly position to freeze out competitors.

Jim Murray of BEUC, a consumer organisation, said:

The decision should bring more competition in the market and more incentive for other companies - and for Microsoft - to offer improved products and services at a competitive price.

(Taken from Daily Mail's Article)

Chinese Man dies due to 3 days of continuous gaming!

2007-09-18T03:03:00.000-07:00

Another death from gaming too much... A 30-year old Chinese man from the Chinese city of Guangzhou died last Saturday in an internet cafe due to exhaustion. Chinese officials claim that the man's death was brought about by 3 day of continuous Internet gaming, prompting the other clients to flee the Internet cafe after witnessing the man's death.

Shame really... People have to learn that everything must be done in moderation, and that was ancient Greek philosophy, yet we still fail to apply it to our lives.

Yowza Vlog! The Review!

2007-09-12T19:45:00.000-07:00

Yowza Vlog is one video blog (Vlog) you shouldn't miss! Designed and developed by the very talented Nico Cardenas, a member of the locally renowned PhilWeavers (group of proven and talented Filipino Flash Developers), the Yowza Vlog features a sleek looking interface, accessible components that are easy on the eyes and to my knowledge, is part Nico's latest site iteration soon to be released summer 2008. You can check out the portal here.

The jewel of the Vlog is the cute looking panda/teddy bearish looking TV. The TV allows you to watch (duh) select on-site movies, all with a fully functioning player. Yowza also allows you to download the movies, I don't know if they're freely distributable elsewhere, buy hey! =P

The Vlog features a fully working comment box situated in the upper right corner, along with links to select blogs. If you happen to pass by, be sure to leave your comments! One thing that caught my eye, was the login textboxes on top, but there doesn't seem to be a registration link anywhere! Pending work I suppose!

Scrolling down (which is a bit of a chore because the mouse wheel scroll event listeners don't seem to be implemented yet) you get the other half of the Vlog, the blog per se! There are some posts on a wide variety of articles like Transformers, gaming and gaming lifestyle articles, technology, and a whole lot more to keep prospective readers busy for a while. Beside the blog posts, are the video archives of Yowza. Here you could browse through the archived videos, aptly categorized as technology, animation, and gaming.

To be fair, I'm going to release the inner critic in me. Maybe the vlog would look better if the video content and the blog could be displayed side by side, so users won't have to scroll down to much. And maybe the comment box could be placed in it's own column, along with ads and other quick browse stuff. Lastly, the video information would look better if it were coupled with the now playing area. That way, it would save some space and still keep it's aesthetic look.

Phew! That's it! Keep it up Nico! =)

Mario's Latest Adventure

2007-09-11T20:32:00.000-07:00

After almost five years of relative inactivity, Mario is back for a new adventure, this time you get to use the Wii! Super Mario Galaxy is set for release on Nov 12, 2007.

(Nintendo)

Self Playing Mario Level (Video)

2007-09-10T23:08:00.000-07:00

The Only Mario Level That Plays Itself - Watch more free videos

Check out this cool video of a Mario level where Mario gets through the level without user intervention.

NoPoPo - Pee Powered Batteries!

2007-09-10T03:33:00.000-07:00

The Japanese have done it again! Another wacky invention to add to their already wacky portfolio is the NoPoPo (No-Pollution Power) Battery! Powered by fluids containing ions (your urine, blood, sweat, etc.) the battery can last up to ten years with a capacity of 500mAh. If it runs out of energy, what do you do? Pee on it! =)

(Original Post)
(Aqua Power Systems)

Apple iPod Touch!

2007-09-09T23:59:00.000-07:00

With the relative success of the iPhone, Apple is now set to release it's latest iPod iteration, featuring the iPhone's touchscreen technology! At 3.5 inches, the widescreen display lets you feast on movies and browse through your pictures and album pictures without sacrificing too much quality! Not bad for something so small! The iPod touch also features a fully working Safari browser, and note that Apple has sign a deal with Starbucks to allow the iPod touch unlimited access to their Wi-Fi network!

With the release of the iPod Touch, Apple felt it was time to revamp the iPod line. Consolidating the iPod Video and the other iPods to one name and a quick design change here and there, Apple renames it to the iPod Classic. Although the Nano retains it name, it design changes a bit. Check out the image below for the changes.

(Apple)

Google Earth Flight Simulator (with Video)

2007-09-04T20:16:00.000-07:00

A cool flight simulator has recently been discovered in Google Earth. Oh C'mon you say? You can check it out yourself by pressing the following key combination: CTRL+ALT+A. The flight simulator features two planes to try, a F-16 jet and a SR22 prop plane. Although the simulator may not be as good in terms of flight physics or the other features you normal see in flight sims, Google's flight sim is good enough for me because it already features a primitive (and functional) HUD and you get to experience Google Earth better by skimming through the great looking scenery and landmarks.

The HP Virtus!

2007-09-04T19:15:00.000-07:00

HP is currently keeping their new Virtus Desktop details under wraps, but Engadget has managed to get some cool looking picture leaks! For more pictures check out Engadgets article on the HP Virtus!

Darth Vader... Transformer?

2007-09-02T18:40:00.000-07:00

This is one hot looking transformer, and yet not your run of the mill transformer! This is the uber bad ass of the Star Wars myth brought to you be Hasbro! Darth Vader himself transforming to the equally infamous Death Star! This beats Unicron any day hands down! God I'm such a nerd! =D

The toy is currently on a pre-order basis in Amazon, order your very own here for $49.99! Or you can check out Hasbro's Transformer line here.

Microsoft's New Sidewinder Mouse

2007-08-30T19:21:00.000-07:00

A mouse may not seem like the typical gamer upgrade since mice are point and click hardware right? Wrong! For the really serious gamers, a good gaming mouse can really improve your gaming experience assuming that you make use of the gaming mouse features. To pre-order your own Sidewinder, Amazon is currently accepting pre-orders for $79.99. Check it out here.

The Sidewinder's main features from Microsoft:

Shape Designed for Handling
The unique shape and button positions are engineered for fast, comfortable, precise gaming action.

On-the-Fly DPI Switching
Three buttons instantly switch between DPI 400, 800, and 2000—or you can customize settings using special software.

First-Ever LCD Display on a Mouse
DPI settings and macro recording icons are displayed on the mouse to reduce on-screen interference.

Cable Anchor + Accessories Storage Box
Enjoy wired performance with the feel of wireless, easily adjust your cable configuration, and conveniently stow away your accessories.

Quick Launch Button
One-touch takes you to Games Explorer in Windows Vista. Easily access your games on your PC.

5 Programmable Main Buttons
Customize your main gaming buttons to your preference.

Advanced Gaming Software
Buttons and switches can be assigned on the fly, you can program macros and profiles, and game settings can be customized for fast action.

Engineered for Speed

Resolution: 2000 dpi
Image Processing: 7080 frames per second
Max Acceleration: 20 G
Max Speed: 45 inches per second
USB reporting: 500 Hz
Glide 3 sets of different mouse feet (for glide preference)
Buttons (Left/Right): 9 million clicks

Replaceable Mouse Feet
Choice of three different materials for glide preference.

Wide Metal Scroll Wheel
Better feel and response with detent clicking action.

Vertical Metal Side Buttons
The top/bottom design makes locating the side buttons easier and reduces the inadvertent actuation risk.

Adjustable Mouse Weights
Select your preference of mouse weight with the included 4 weights, giving you the choice to adjust your mouse weight anywhere between 5 and 30 grams in 5 gram increments.

iPhone Hacked by 17 year old in 500 hours!

2007-08-28T22:46:00.000-07:00

Here's George Hotz interview on how he hacked the iPhone to use another carrier instead of AT&T! This George really inspires me! Being only 17 years old and he gets to crack the iPhone, and here I am 20 years old with a college degree and almost worthless to the world! By the way, George traded a second cracked iPhone to the Co-Founder of CertiCell for a brand new Nissan 350Z, three 8GB iPhones, and a consulting job in CertiCell!

Crazy Windows-Based Messages!

2007-08-28T03:30:00.001-07:00

Really crazy Windows messages, no wonder there are more Linux converts! Enjoy! Click on Read More for more crazy Windows messages!

Thanks Microsoft...

Hmmm.... I see...

My Favorite!

Digg Arc

2007-08-28T00:12:00.000-07:00

From Digg Lab's:

Digg Arc displays stories, topics, and containers wrapped around a sphere. Arcs trail users as they digg stories across topics. Stories with more diggs make thicker arcs.

A really great looking flash movie showing active Diggs updated and added on the fly by by users! I video captured 2 minutes worth of video and saved it as a MOV for both PC and Mac users. Check it out yourself here!

Nokia Issues Recall for it's BL-5C batteries!

2007-08-16T18:17:00.000-07:00

To users of the following Nokia mobile phones and accesories:

Nokia 1100, Nokia 1100c, Nokia 1101, Nokia 1108, Nokia 1110, Nokia 1112, Nokia 1255, Nokia 1315, Nokia 1600, Nokia 2112, Nokia 2118, Nokia 2255, Nokia 2272, Nokia 2275, Nokia 2300, Nokia 2300c, Nokia 2310, Nokia 2355, Nokia 2600, Nokia 2610, Nokia 2610b, Nokia 2626, Nokia 3100, Nokia 3105, Nokia 3120, Nokia 3125, Nokia 6030, Nokia 6085, Nokia 6086, Nokia 6108, Nokia 6175i, Nokia 6178i, Nokia 6230, Nokia 6230i, Nokia 6270, Nokia 6600, Nokia 6620, Nokia 6630, Nokia 6631, Nokia 6670, Nokia 6680, Nokia 6681, Nokia 6682, Nokia 6820, Nokia 6822, Nokia 7610, Nokia N70, Nokia N71, Nokia N72, Nokia N91, Nokia E50, Nokia E60, Nokia Wireless GPS Module LD-1W, Nokia Wireless GPS Module LD-3W

Please be aware that Nokia has recently issued a product advisory on it's BL-5C battery warning consumers that there have been reports of the battery over heating and short circuiting while charging, dislodging the battery from the phone. There have already been approximately 100 incidents globally.

To check if your battery is under risk, check out Nokia's battery replacement page.

Scientists Create Paper-Thin, Flexible, Biodegradable Battery

2007-08-15T03:49:00.001-07:00

Part of the problem with designing flexible batteries and supercapacitors has always been the necessity of layering such devices. Typically, two electrode layers sandwich two charge-holding layers, with an insulating layer in the middle of it all. As the layers build up, flexibility goes out the window.

read more | digg story

Useless stuff about me!

2007-08-14T19:52:00.000-07:00

I happen to stumble upon BlogThings, a repository of quirky quizzes that determine your personality and relate them to a certain item. Here are some of mine:

You Are 70% Boyish and 30% Girlish

You are pretty evenly split down the middle - a total eunuch.
Okay, kidding about the eunuch part. But you do get along with both sexes.
You reject traditional gender roles. However, you don't actively fight them.
You're just you. You don't try to be what people expect you to be.

How Boyish or Girlish Are You?

You Are Chinese Food

Exotic yet ordinary.
People think they've had enough of you, but they're back for more in an hour.

What Kind of Food Are You?

What Your Latte Says About You

You don't treat yourself very often. You find that indulging doesn't jibe with your very disciplined life.

You can be quite silly at times, but you know when to buckle down and be serious.

Intense and energetic, you aren't completely happy unless you are bouncing off the walls.

You're addicted to caffeine. There's no denying it.

You are responsible, mature, and truly an adult. You're occasionally playful, but you find it hard to be carefree.

You are honest and genuine, but you are never tactless.

What Does Your Latte Say About You?

Your Fragrance Profile

The best calming fragrance: jasmine
The best fragrance for everyday wear: sandalwood
The best fragrance to boost your sex appeal: rose
The best fragrance for energy: peppermint

What's Your Fragrance Profile?

If GOD was a Programmer

2007-08-12T19:27:00.001-07:00

Crazy program authored by "God"! A really enjoyable read! Check out the source of the page to review the "Code"! =D

Solar Powered Mouse?

2007-08-12T19:15:00.001-07:00

Although still in the testing phase, the solar powered mouse promises to reduce power consumption by relying on natural light to power it.

read more | digg story

Windows XP: The OS that won't die?

2007-08-12T19:11:00.001-07:00

"Due to the longevity of Windows XP Professional, it has become necessary to produce more product keys for system builders in order to support the continued availability of Windows XP Professional through the scheduled system builder channel end-of-life date," wrote the Microsoft system builder team on its blog yesterday.

To supply consumers with more XP, Microsoft will be issuing XP SP2c. No, there won't be any major changes from SP2 or any knowledge base updates, the SP2c designation will be used only for the distribution of the new batches of XP.

read more | digg story

Super Typhoon Sighted!

2007-08-09T02:55:00.000-07:00

Early Christmas Shopping? Get Great Discounts here!

2007-08-08T02:50:00.000-07:00

With Christmas looming, why wait for November or December to buy your loved ones and relatives their presents? Why endure the long lines and crowded malls? Why wait for the Christmas season sale? Why go through all these when you could avail of Coupon Chief's offers to get really great discounts on all kinds of great stuff!

My Family Christmas Wish list:

Dad: I know he loves watches and the ones with great utility features, so a great product line would be Reebok. A great brand with a lot of stylish goods with great features.

Mom: My mom is into fitness. She stays in great shape with a rigid diet and discipline. A great gift idea would be the Vitamin Shoppe, a great place to get your daily supplements as well as other healthy lifestyle products.

My Sister: My Sister loves books! Whenever I visit her room, I always see her nose buried in a book! So naturally a great site to get great deals (coupled with coupons) would be Amazon.

My Brother: My brother on the other hand values his shoes! He likes buying a lot of shoes of all occasions, on for his skateboarding, one for his school, and about three for casual occasions. For casual and sporting needs, I think Converse would be the one stop solution!

The New iMac!

2007-08-08T02:21:00.000-07:00

Apple's iMac Statement:

More than ever before, iMac allows you to live a digital life. Loaded with iLife, the new iMac makes it easy to turn your photos, movies, and music into blogs, podcasts, books, and calendars. All the other essentials are built in as well, including an iSight camera, Wi-Fi, and Bluetooth. Just plug it in, turn it on, and you’re ready to create something great.

Some of the iMac's features:

iLife ’08 - Included in iLife is Apple's digital lifestyle applications, designed to help you create new and better ways of authoring your very own videos, music, websites, and photos! The included software are: iPhoto, iDVD, iWeb, and GarageBand and a completely reinvented iMovie.

Intuitive OS - Mac OS X sets the standard for operating systems with its combination of power and simplicity. Learn more

More fun with photos - Quickly and easily organize, enhance, and share your photos in the most fantastic ways. Learn more

Rock-solid security - Mac OS X — still the world’s most advanced operating system — is built for security. Learn more

Fast web browsing - Experience the web with the fast Safari browser, and enjoy its other great features. Learn more

Music maker - Create your own songs, soundtracks, and podcasts with GarageBand. Learn more

iTunes + iMac - Import, organize, and play your songs and videos using the world’s best digital jukebox. Learn more

Video chatting made easy - Start a video chat at a moment’s notice with the built-in iSight camera and microphone. Learn more

(Apple - iMac)

Internet-Over-TV plan gets new life

2007-08-03T19:09:00.000-07:00

Move over paypal, check out Google Checkout!

2007-08-03T18:23:00.000-07:00

Super Mario... Wurm?

2007-07-31T23:12:00.000-07:00

If you've recently received an email with an attachment that contains a seemingly harmless .exe file and tells you that the attached file is a Mario game, Beware! The attached file is actually a Mario side scrolling game with a Romario-A worm running in the background! Always exercise caution when opening attachments, especially .exe formats!

According to Ben Camm-Jones of www.webuser.co.uk:

Once it has infected your PC, the worm then attempts to mail itself to contacts in the recipient's address book as well as spreading on USB drives and other removeable media.

And Graham Cluley, senior technology consultant at Sophos:

Fraudsters are constantly innovating to find new ways of tapping into users' psyches to tempt them into clicking on infected links and attachments, This kind of attack is particularly stealth-like because nostalgic gamers can actually play the game once they click, giving them no reason to suspect that something more sinister is lurking beneath

Starbucks prices soar!

2007-07-31T00:37:00.000-07:00

Coffee Junkies now have to pay even more at Starbucks, which has boosted it's price on coffees, lattes, frappuccinos by three percent - about nine cents a cup nationwide.

Hello Business Cards anyone? Gold Hello Kitty Business Cards?

2007-07-29T22:19:00.000-07:00

To commemorate Hello Kitty's 33 anniversary, Sanrio would be issuing limited edition Hello Kitty Business cards made of pure gold (99.99%)! Weighing 1g, the business card contains all of Kitty's vital stats like her real name, date of birth, zodiac sign, and even her blood type! Because this IS real gold, the card will be sold at 10500 Yen or $85! Order yours here (if you understand Japanese)!

NASA Astronauts Drunk on the Job???

2007-07-29T19:33:00.000-07:00

The Difference Between the iPod and MP4 players

2007-07-29T18:24:00.000-07:00

China Cracks Down On Unlicensed Cellphones

2007-07-27T03:29:00.000-07:00

Apple's iPhone not that hyped up!

2007-07-27T01:52:00.000-07:00

The highly anticipated debut of the Apple iPhone was marred by disappointing preliminary activity. Analysts expect to get a clearer picture on the long-term sales trend for the device when Apple releases quarterly results on Wednesday.

Conway G. Gittens reports from New York

US war veteran gets a new (bionic) hand!

2007-07-27T01:36:00.000-07:00

A US war veteran who lost his hand in Iraq is showing off the world's first bionic hand with independently moving fingers.

Play Pokemon Online!

2007-07-25T18:48:00.000-07:00

Ever wanted to play Pokemon again? But lost your cartridges or your Gameboy? Want to challenge friends online without the hassle of linking your Gameboys and going to the Pokemon center to link? Look no further, just head to Pokemon Crater's site and experience Pokemon online with friends! Below is a sample screen shot of the my Pokemon team within Pokemon Crater.

Like the real Pokemon games, your team is limited to six Pokemon and your attacks are also limited to four attacks. But unlike the real games, the Pokemon do not benefit from stat increases when leveling up and additional attacks. When leveling up, your Pokemon get an increase in HP and when at the appropriate level (usually 16 and 36) you have the choice of evolving them and get a whole new attack skill set (replaces the old four, so choose wisely).

Shown above is an example of a battle. As you can see, you have four attacks to choose from and so does your enemy! The attacks have different elemental attributes associated with them like thundershock is obviously electric. The elements have different effects on the Pokemon, some can be effective, not very effective, or have no effect at all! One thing I didn't like was that attacks with varying attack stages like pin missile, where you attack your enemy for a random number of times. In Pokemon Crater, pin missile is treated as one attack compressed into one.

To capture and heal Pokemon you naturally need items, shown above is the item shop where you can buy items to use.

Now I bet your wondering how do players get around the Pokemon world? Shown above is the interface of the Pokemon world in Pokemon Crater. You can move around be clicking on any of the visible red arrows to move your avatar (highlighted by a yellow outline and arrow). The other people you see on the map are actually other human players, who you can click on to view their information or issue battle challenges. Also, as you move around the map, you will randomly encounter Pokemon available for capture!

I'll leave you to explore (which is half the fun) and maybe you can find me online. I'm thor787 within the game!

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Got an iPhone? Wrap it up in style!

2007-07-20T03:24:00.000-07:00

Lucky or wealthy enough to get your hands on an iPhone? Wrap it up in style with these two great looking iPhone cases to protect your "precious"! The case shown above is from DLO,
a company that specializes in accesories like iPod to iPhone cases, earphones and so much more!

If you have cash to burn, why not dress your iPhone in an equally expensive Louis Vuitton iPhone case! The leather case fetches about $1250... Why not buy another iPhone eh? =D

Mac or PC?

2007-07-19T19:02:00.000-07:00

Check out this rap parody on the seemingly never ending war between the Mac and PC! Enjoy!

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For all your back-up needs! All 1TB of it!

2007-07-16T18:46:00.000-07:00

Another sweet looking backup solution from TrekStor, the Data Station duo w.c packs a lot of data at 1 TB! Being an external 3.5" hard disk drive, and a big boy at that, TrekStor integrates an onboard power supply (100V - 240V) sans the noisy fan. Read speed is 24.5 MB/s and write speed at 16.0 MB/s. Connecting it to a computer is simple as plugging the USB 2.0 connector to any USB 2.0 compatible port as the Data Station comes preformatted to work on the fly without the help of drivers. The Data Station runs without a hitch on Vista (all of the Windows OS from Win 98 SE to Vista work), Linux, and Mac OS X. If you want a copy of the Data Station's Data Sheet, click here.

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Cool Imation Flash Wristbands

2007-07-14T04:06:00.001-07:00

Imation's great looking wristbands aren't just for show, they feature a fully functional flash disk drive embedded within the wristband itself! Now you can take your data anywhere without having to dig your pockets or have it dangling on your neck! Imation also gives you the choice to customize your wristband, the following are the customizable features:

Color
Drive Capacity
Your logo
pre-loaded files (optional)

Check out Imation's Page on the Flash Wristband here.

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Mario Party 8 Recalled due to offensive word!

2007-07-14T03:01:00.000-07:00

Nintendo issues this press release that notifies the public that it would recall it's Mario Party 8 game:

The above game was launched in the UK today. Unfortunately we have discovered that a small number of games contain the wrong version of the disk due to an assembly error. We have therefore decided to recall all copies of the game from UK retailers so that this mistake can be corrected.

We will re-launch Mario Party 8 in the UK as soon as possible and will announce a new launch date shortly. We very much regret any inconvenience caused.

But contrary to it's press release statement, Nintendo's real reason for the recall is because of the word "Spastic". Although it's meaning can vary from culture to culture, in European countries (especially the UK), the word spastic refers to someone afflicted with cerebral palsy. It is similar to calling them retard, dimwits, etc.

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Extreme Gaming PC - Dell's XPS 720 H2C!

2007-07-11T19:57:00.000-07:00

Taking gaming PC's to the extreme, Dell now includes the H2C Version of it's XPS line of performance PC's. There are so many cool features (I begin to drool and cry when I see the specs!), that I don't know where to begin - almost every aspect of the XPS H2C is mouth-watering!

Maybe a good place to start would be the CPU included in the XPS. A consumer is given three choices to when choosing the CPU:

Intel^® Core^TM 2 Extreme QX6700 Factory Overclocked to 3.46GHz
Intel^® Core^TM 2 Extreme X6800 Factory Overclocked to 3.73GHz
Intel^® Core^TM 2 Extreme QX6800 Factory Overclocked to 3.73GHz

All three are overclocked Quad-Core suckers! All four cores are designed to execute four separate threads concurrently resulting in blazing fast processing and rendering! The XPS also comes bundled with NVIDIA's nForce 680i SLI MCP core logic chipset, which allows two graphic cards to concentrate their capabilities to render one image, as if four simultaneous thread weren't fast enough for Dell!

To add to the sweetness of the XPS, Dell includes a pair of Corsair Dual Channel 4GB RAM that operates @ 800MHz. If your have a 64-bit OS, Dell also offers the 8GB version. For the hard disks the XPS H2C supports up to four SATA Hard Disk Drives. Configured as RAID 0 or 1, the XPS can support up to 2.75TB of data and up to 1TB of data on a single connection.

This being a top of the line gaming machine, it goes without saying that the XPS will include two SLI enabled NVIDIA 8800 GTX graphics cards, the first card to incorporate and fully support Microsoft's DirectX 10 Technology. The 8800 also features NVIDIA's PureVideo technology making HD and blue-ray capable!

Helping the 8800 GTX is the uber cool AGEIA^®PhysX Accelerator. The accelerator renders particles to their highest possible level further pushing the physics engine and greatly improving the user experience.

Simply overclocking and plugging in all the best components you could think of would be futile if you didn't have the proper gear to handle all the heat! At the heart of Dell's XPS H2C System is Dell's sexy looking cooling solution which features a two stage cooling system, from Dell's XPS web page:

The H₂C hybrid solution combines a liquid radiator, a thermoelectric cooling module and control circuitry, optimizing CPU cooling with minimal power consumption. The result is a processor that stays cool when it's overclocked.

If you're curious on why Dell named the XPS with the H2C? R134A refrigerant or CH2FCF3, which is the cooling liquid used in the system.

And did I mention the price tag? For just $5939 you can experience one of the best gaming experiences currently available in the market! Start saving! =)

All images taken from Dell's XPS website

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Microsoft releases critical .NET patch!

2007-07-10T18:53:00.000-07:00

Microsoft is planning to launch 6 patches that target 3 Critical, 2 Important and 1 Moderate vulnerabilities in Microsoft products. From the July 2007 Security Bulletin Summary, there are currently 3 critical Remote Code Execution vulnerabilities, which Microsoft states as: "considered to be the worst vulnerability, given that it leaves systems vulnerable to hijacking." The affected systems affected are Office, Excel, Windows and surprisingly the .NET framework (the framework has it's own form of security in the form of the Code Access Security (CAS)).

Some of the reported implications of Remote Code Execution are that crafty hackers can remotely access your computer and websites, enabling them to run scripts and initiate Denial of Service (DOS) attacks. Another implication is programs that are programmed using the .NET framework are vulnerable and software companies are skeptical if the patch will adversely affect their software's performance.

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Wii Laptop - Weeee!

2007-07-10T02:28:00.000-07:00

A great invention by Benjamin Heckandorn, here is a invention that has both the capability to sense the movements of the controller and display the output in a small but effective 7 inch screen. You can also download a cool demonstration video from the inventors here! Key Features:

16:9 widescreen LCD, 7-inch diagonal.
Stereo sound
Gamecube controller port
Built-in short range Sensor Bar
Ports for using original Sensor Bar and A/V output jacks (for use on external display)
Built-in power supply and compartment for power cord
Dimensions: 8.5 x 7.7 x 2-inches

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It's Summer, Go Swimming - With your iPod?

2007-07-09T02:43:00.000-07:00

Fancy listening to your favorite music while scuba diving? H20Audio has a product that suits most outdoor and underwater excursions. Although it is submersible, there are limits off course to how deep you can go, due to pressure and all! Here are the features of the submersible iPod (video) casing:

Submersible up to 10ft/3m (when paired with H2O Audio Waterproof Headphones)

Commander™ Scroll Wheel allows function of the iPod Click Wheel in the water or while wearing a glove

LatchTight™ locking system

SealTight™ connector (compatible with standard 3.5mm headphone plugs)

Sport Armband included

*H2O Audio Headphones are NOT included

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Rubik's Cube Solved - By a Lego Brainstorm Robot!

2007-07-04T18:26:00.000-07:00

Ever tried solving the Rubik's cube? I tried it once during grade school and failed miserably! I tried solving it again during college when a friend brought one to school, and to no surprise, I still failed miserably (although I broke my family's Rubik's cube and arranged it to it's correct form to give me satisfaction!). Even 95% of Mensans (group of people with incredibly high IQ's) are unable to solve the cube!

Many have also tried to use computers to help solve the Rubik's cube, some have even created computer aided machines to help solve the cube. This is where the Lego Rubik Utopy(LRU) comes in. Created and programmed by a cool Italian dude named Daniele Benedettelli, the LRU is able to solve the cube in 1 min and 45 seconds! Daniele's inspiration for the LRU comes from JP Brown's CubeSolver.

Pictured the left is the User Interface (UI) of the LRU, and is the brain of the LRU. The algorithm he used was the Iterative Deepening A*, and if I remember my Artificial Intelligence right, it is a depth-first search used to look for the best path (least cost) to the best solution. Daniele also used Lego Brainstorm's new brick set - NXT (JP Brown uses the old RCX brick set). The LRU features 3 servo motors with the help of light and touch sensors to power the arm and turn the cube for adjustment. And did you notice the web cam? It is responsible for capturing the current position of the face colors, and sends the information back to the UI for processing.

Below is a sample shot done by Daniele. It's really scary to think that people like Daniele can already solve puzzles like this! Now I just have to practice once more and hopefully crack the puzzle!

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The Future of Robotic Warfare

2007-07-03T20:06:00.000-07:00

Wartime casualties, the bane of a country's war effort. Currently unavoidable, but with ever advancing breakthroughs in the field of robotics and electronics, inventors and scientists are coming up with advanced application of robots that can sense the world around them and hopefully can be absorbed into the military.

Pictured above is the Samson Remote Control Weapons Station, which the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) plans to install near the Gaza Strip to prevent Palestinian militants from crossing into Israeli territory. The weapon would be remotely controlled by fiber optics wired to a remote operation station and is configured to act as a robot sniper with 1500-meter-deep no-go zone.

Another robotic weapon designed for the navy is a project named "Project Trident Strike" developed by the Mapua Robotics Team from Mapua Institute of Technology (Philippines). The project is currently sponored by the Philippine Navy Sea Systems Command. The project description from the Mapua Robotics site:

This project is a remotely operated sentry gun which can be mounted on naval gun ships or in strategic locations for perimeter defense. Utilizes the Armed Forces' 50 cal. machine guns and is protected with a high impact bullet resistant plate armor
Three Complimentary Metal Oxide Semiconductor (CMOS) cameras are mounted on different locations atop the machine, providing a wider view range and cleared line of sight . The Gun Director may the view 3 corresponding LCD monitors and a robotic remote control system to aim the turret from a safe location, such as a command center or a boat's cockpit.

Seeing the potential of the wireless controlled weapon, the Mapua Robotics team went on to develop a land-based robot named "Project Phalanx", aslo sponsored by the Philippine Navy Sea Systems Command. The project description also from the Mapua Robotics team:

A mobile version of Project Trident Strike a multi-tasking Unmanned Ground Vehicle (UGV) using wireless technology. Provided with a detachable chassis depending on the task to be done such as Bomb Disposal, terrain surveillance or Assault.

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1000 years to a Habitable Mars!

2007-07-01T23:49:00.000-07:00

According to Robert Zubrin, the founder of the Mars Society, it would take approximately 1000 years for us humans to breathe oxygen and go bouncing on mars grown grass! But to jump start the thousand year dream, we have to get the planet Mars heated up to acceptable heat levels to allow it to sustain an atmosphere capable of keeping the greenhouses gases within and melt those polar ice caps for a sustainable flow of water. There are five steps outlined by Robert Zubrin to achieve the 1000 time frame for a habitable Mars.

Heat the planet up! - Mars needs to have the right temperatures and the necessary greenhouses to sustain life. Ideas like building a giant orbiting mirror to heat up the planet, bombarding Mars with ammonia asteroids, and building factories that would continuously pump CO2 into Mars atmosphere a la Earth style, are just some of the proposed ideas to warm the planet.
Free the trapped CO2 Gases found in soil - Releasing the trapped gases in Mars' soil would introduce more CO2 in the atmosphere and further kick the heat notch a bit.
Plant gardens all over Mars! - With the expected influx of water by a now heated Mars, plants should now be planted like crazy to convert some of the CO2 into Oxygen!
Harvest decaying Planets - Yeah, we have plants all over the place, but once they start to decay, they give off some CO2, potentially wrecking the progress of the CO2-Oxygen conversion. The plants should be regularly checked and harvested when signs of decay start to crop up.
Sit and Wait for 1000 years - 1000 years? Zubrin's calculated estimate for the plants planted on Mars to provide enough Oxygen for humans to breathe Martian air unassisted! And while we wait, we should continue to plant more plants to ensure that the 1000 year target is reached!

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Build a PC for less than $80!

2007-07-01T19:36:00.000-07:00

For just exactly $72 you could set up your own mini computer! Here is the parts and cost breakdown (from PopSci's article) :

Intel SU810 motherboard ($5; centrix-intl.com)

Two 64MB PC100 SDRAM modules ($4 each; pcprogress.com)

Intel Celeron 500MHz processor socket 370 ($11; pcprogress.com)

Intel Socket 370-compatible heatsink and fan (~$5; newegg.com)

Gateway 4000437 NLX riser card ($25; alancomputech.com)

512MB USB flash drive (free; salvaged)

Momentary, normally open SPST switch ($3.29; radioshack.com)

Insulated wire for switch (free; salvaged)

ATX power supply ($14.50; amazon.com)

As for the OS, since the total price of the mini computer should be ideally less than $100, the best alternative would be to get a USB flash drive (512MB should suffice) and load it with Damn Small Linux. Which is the portable version of Linux which can be booted from the flash drive. One of the best applications you could get your mini computer to do is usrf the Internet, provided you have a Wi-Fi card compatible with Linux and a browser to enable you to do the actual surfing! A FREE and also portable alternative is FireFox - Portable Edition. At 25MB (6MB to download) you have a fully functional FireFox that you can take anywhere along with your bookmarks, extensions, and saved passwords along with you!

Click here for instructions for the assembly and OS installation guide from Popular Science.

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Who I resemble?

2007-06-29T00:32:00.000-07:00

Really cool and useless widget! But a great spirit lifter! =)

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Paris Hilton's New Flash Game?

2007-06-28T22:26:00.000-07:00

From GSN.com's Description of the new Paris Hilton game:

"Paris is back home and designing t-shirts for some extra cash. Help her with her new venture and watch out for Tinkerbell!"

She gets out of jail now she has an online game! Simple game, but enough to keep you busy when you want to relieve some stress! Enjoy!

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One day remaining... iPhone here we come!

2007-06-27T23:15:00.000-07:00

With the iPhone soon to hit the markets, I think it's only fair that we put the iPhone in the spotlight once again for one more quick look at it's innocence before we find the bugs, glitches, etc.

Hi-Res Pictures from Apple's iPhone Gallery:

Great view of the iPhone's sleek body and main menu

Showcasing the cool album browser interface

Now we categorize the iPhone the way Apple envisions it:

Revolutionary Phone -The iPhone features an innovative touch screen where you can select the contacts, initiate a call, group the contacts, and even make phone conferences. All with the touch screen! For all you SMS users, the iPhone features a full QWERTY touchscreen keyboard that prevents and corrects some spelling problems. The iPhone also features a 2 MegaPixel camera and has a bundled photo management software, a feature lacking in most upscale phones where you have to transfer it to you computer to manage the photos.
Wide Screen iPod - The iPhone plays both music and video files on it's 3.5 inch display, and the files can be controlled via the touch screen. A neat feature included is that you can also view your videos in a wide screen format, just rotate the iPhone by 90 degree, and wala! Wide screen mode!
Internet in your Pocket - The iPhone is bundled with a fully featured Safari browser (which recently made its 3rd beta release a few weeks ago), which Apple claims to be the most advanced browser on a mobile phone. Loved Google Maps? You don't need to look further, the iPhone features both Google Maps and its own Maps application. More Google love is shown in the iPhone, YouTube is also integrated as a mini video player that can be launched from the iPhone's menu. And finally, coming from Apple, who can forget Widgets? iPhone as a decent collection of widgets to help you get information fast.

Fast Facts (Tech Specs from Apple!)

Size and weight

Height: 4.5 inches (115 mm)
Width: 2.4 inches (61 mm)
Depth: 0.46 inch (11.6 mm)
Weight: 4.8 ounces (135 grams)

Capacity

4GB or 8GB flash drive¹

Display

3.5-inch (diagonal) widescreen multi-touch display
480-by-320-pixel resolution at 160 dpi
Support for display of multiple languages and characters simultaneously

Operating system

OS X

GSM

Quad-band (850, 900, 1800, 1900 MHz)

Wireless data

Wi-Fi (802.11b/g)
EDGE
Bluetooth 2.0+EDR

Camera

2.0 megapixels

Audio

Frequency response: 20Hz to 20,000Hz
Audio formats supported: AAC, Protected AAC, MP3, MP3 VBR, Audible (formats 1, 2, and 3), Apple Lossless, AIFF, and WAV

Video

Video formats supported: H.264 video, up to 1.5 Mbps, 640 by 480 pixels, 30 frames per second, Low-Complexity version of the H.264 Baseline Profile with AAC-LC audio up to 160 Kbps, 48kHz, stereo audio in .m4v, .mp4, and .mov file formats; H.264 video, up to 768 Kbps, 320 by 240 pixels, 30 frames per second, Baseline Profile up to Level 1.3 with AAC-LC audio up to 160 Kbps, 48kHz, stereo audio in .m4v, .mp4, and .mov file formats; MPEG-4 video, up to 2.5 Mbps, 640 by 480 pixels, 30 frames per second, Simple Profile with AAC-LC audio up to 160 Kbps, 48kHz, stereo audio in .m4v, .mp4, and .mov file formats.

Power and battery

Built-in rechargeable lithium ion battery
Talk time: Up to 8 hours²
Standby time: Up to 250 hours³
Internet use: Up to 6 hours⁴
Video playback: Up to 7 hours⁵
Audio playback: Up to 24 hours

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My Blog's Film Rating!

2007-06-27T20:03:00.000-07:00

I'm sure everyone is familiar with movie ratings like G, PG, PG-13, and R. I happen to chance upon Mingle2's site and found out they rate your blog according to the words within your blog. Check out my rating:

Mingle² - Online Dating

This rating was determined based on the presence of the following words:

sexy (2x)
bastard (1x)

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PutiPuti - Popping Delights!

2007-06-26T23:37:00.000-07:00

Ever popped the protective sheets with air bubbles that act as shock absorbers in appliance or furniture packaging? Fun and addicting right? But eventually the all the bubbles get popped and leave you craving for more.

But don't fret! Bandai has come up with a cute and novel toy that simulates the popping sensations and sounds created by the bubble sheets called PutiPut. Another cute feature is that for every 100 pops, PutiPuti issues one of it's many random sounds like farting sounds, barking, etc.

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Sony Ericsson's SeeSaw Concept Phone - Sexy!

2007-06-26T00:20:00.000-07:00

Designed by Karsten Willmannd, Sony Ericsson's new concept phone is basically just a phone, yep, your ordinary bread and butter phone without the MP3 players, radios, and the rest of the 3-4G phone. No camera you ask? Notice the weird bulge in the center of the phone? That's the camera and a built-in flash hidden somewhere in the bulge. The OLED screen is also so compressed that you begin to wonder just how far we are in terms of transistor or circuit miniturization.

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Some Best Practices to follow when coding .NET languages - Part 3

2007-06-24T23:40:00.001-07:00

"The Fundamental Theorem of Formatting is that good visual layout shows the logical structure of a program." - Steve McConnell

To continue the series, we start tackling proper code formatting. This topic is very broad so I'll try to compress it as much as possible and hopefully deliver the message properly.

To start, I'll reiterate the term self-documenting code, which generally means that when someone read and maintains your code, it should be as fluid as possible without having to guess what this procedure does or what these variables mean. It should be like reading a book where everything is straightforword (and enjoyable?).

Refactoring Code

Great algorithms are usually churned out on the fly and are generally very cluttered pieces of work. If you were to maintain the code about 6 months later, I really doubt you would understand the flow or the logic you used before. Sloppy code is still Sloppy code. Everytime you come up with procedures, always try to apply best practices like refactoring commonly used and grouping them into classes or at the very least into methods/procedures. An Example:

using System.Windows.Forms;
using System;

static void main(string[] args)
{
int FirstNumber = 0;
int SecondNumber = 0;
int ThirdNumber = 0;
int ArithmeticResult = 0;

ArithmeticResult = FirstNumber + Second Number;
ArithmeticResult = ArithmeticResult - ThirdNumber;
MessageBox.Show(ArithmeticResult.ToString);

ArithmeticResult = FirstNumber + Second Number;
ArithmeticResult = ArithmeticResult - ThirdNumber;
MessageBox.Show(ArithmeticResult.ToString);

ArithmeticResult = FirstNumber + Second Number;
ArithmeticResult = ArithmeticResult - ThirdNumber;
MessageBox.Show(ArithmeticResult.ToString);

ArithmeticResult = FirstNumber + Second Number;
ArithmeticResult = ArithmeticResult - ThirdNumber;
MessageBox.Show(ArithmeticResult.ToString);
}

I know this may look like a very simple example, but it work to show that this code example could use some refactoring. The first step is to determine the procedures that repeat within a method and replace it with it's own method. We can see that the following lines are repeated:

ArithmeticResult = FirstNumber + Second Number;
ArithmeticResult = ArithmeticResult - ThirdNumber;
MessageBox.Show(ArithmeticResult.ToString);

Refactoring this we have the following method:

public void RefactoredArithmeticMethod(int FirstNumber, int SecondNumber, int ThirdNumber)
{
int ArithmeticResult = 0;

ArithmeticResult = FirstNumber + Second Number;
ArithmeticResult = ArithmeticResult - ThirdNumber;
MessageBox.Show(ArithmeticResult.ToString);
}

We put the two commonly used operations wintin a new method to reduce the number of lines needed in the main method. Also note that the variable ArithmeticResults' only purpose is to display the arithmetic operation result, so we can move it to the refactored method to reduce it's scope to suit it's purpose.

using System.Windows.Forms;
using System;

static void main(string[] args)
{
int FirstNumber = 0;
int SecondNumber = 0;
int ThirdNumber = 0;

RefactoredArithmeticMethod(FirstNumber, SecondNumber, ThirdNumber);
RefactoredArithmeticMethod(FirstNumber, SecondNumber, ThirdNumber);
RefactoredArithmeticMethod(FirstNumber, SecondNumber, ThirdNumber);
RefactoredArithmeticMethod(FirstNumber, SecondNumber, ThirdNumber);
}

As shown above, doing the refactoring drastically reduces the amount of code to do the exact same thing. And the best thing about refactoring the method is that you can reuse the method anywhere within the namespace it is declared in.

Next in the series I'll be continuing code formatting, focusing on line continuation and line indention. Hope you guys stick around!

Links to the other articles in the Series:

Part 1
Part 2
Part 3

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Nvidia Tesla, hardcore graphic superchip!

2007-06-21T00:48:00.000-07:00

Nvidia finally releases it's entry to the high performance chips arena with Tesla, which Nvidia introduced as making high-density parallel processing capabilities available in workstation computers. It's intended application is focused on high-performance computing environments such as geosciences, molecular biology, or medical diagnostics. These fields require very powerful computers to continuously calculate predictions and give exact values, especially in the field of medicine.

The power of supercomputing coupled with Nvidia's advanced capabilities, enable the Tesla to graphically rendered some of the most complex graphics, examples include complex AI neural nets, and a super detailed view of biological specimens.

Tesla is currently available in two packages called Deskside Supercomputer and the Computing Server, the workstation and server versions, respectively. The Deskside Supercomputer includes two Tesla GPUs, is attached to a PC terminal or worksta, and delivers up to 8 teraflops of processing power. A teraflop is the processing of a trillion floating point operations per second.

Taken from Nvidia's Tesla Page

NVIDIA® Tesla™ D870 deskside supercomputer is the first to bring a massively multi-threaded architecture to high performance computing (HPC) applications for scientists, analysts and other technical professionals.

The Tesla D870 deskside supercomputer connects easily to a certified PCI Express workstation creating an advanced HPC solution powered by two 128-processor computing core GPUs.

With a C-language development environment for the GPU, a suite of developer tools, and the world’s largest ISV development community for GPU computing, Tesla D870 deskside supercomputer allows professionals to develop applications faster and to deploy them across multiple generations of processors.

The Tesla D870 deskside supercomputer is used in tandem with multi-core CPU systems to create a flexible computing solution that fits seamlessly into your existing IT infrastructure.

Product	Tesla D870
Form Factor	Deskside System
# of Tesla GPUs	2
Total Dedicated Memory	3 GB (1.5 GB GDDR3 per GPU)
Peak Flops	Over 500 gigaflops per GPU
Floating Point Precision	IEEE 754 single-precision floating point
Host Adapter Card	PCI Express x16 or x8, Small Form Factor, Passive (10W)
Power	520W max., 100-240 VAC Autosensing
Acoustics	40 dB
Weight	~19 lb

Taken from Nvidia's Tesla Page

NVIDIA® Tesla™ S870 GPU computing server is the first to bring a massively multi-threaded architecture to high performance computing (HPC) applications for scientists, analysts and other technical professionals.

The Tesla S870 GPU computing server is a slim 1U form factor to fit into an enterprise server cluster environment. In addition, it easily scales to solve the most complex, data-intensive HPC problems.

Featuring four 128-processor computing core GPUs, a C-language development environment for the GPU, a suite of developer tools, and the world's largest GPU ISV development community, the Tesla S870 GPU computing server allows professionals to develop applications faster and to deploy them across multiple generations of processors.

The Tesla S870 GPU computing server is used in tandem with multi-core CPU systems to create a flexible computing solution that fits seamlessly into your existing IT infrastructure.

Product	Tesla S870
Form Factor	Standard 19" 1U rack-mount chassis
# of GPUs	4
Total Dedicated Memory	6 GB (1.5 GB GDDR3 per GPU)
Peak Flops	Over 500 gigaflops per GPU
Floating Point Precision	IEEE 754 single-precision floating point
Power	550W typ. (800W max), 100-240 VAC Autosensing
Host Adapter Card	PCI Express x16 or x8, Small Form Factor, Passive (10W)

But all this comes at a relatively steep price tag of course! The Tesla GPU in it's lonesome cost about $1499, the Deskside Supercomputer at $7500 and the Computing Server at $12000! Tesla is expected to ship by November or December, if you're itching to get ordering information, visit Nvidia's "Where to buy" page.

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Google wins case against Microsoft? Too easy?

2007-06-20T02:48:00.000-07:00

Microsoft bowed down and agreed to change it's Vista search engine to conform to Google's complaint. Microsoft hasn't disclosed how it intends to implement this. Up to now, Google hasn't released any formal details on why Vista's search violates the anti-trust case, which is weird because Google Desktop and even Yahoo's product deliver better results. What's even weirder is that Microsoft decided to settle in such a short span of time without waging war on it's accusers.

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Cool Hard Disk Enclosure! Holds four SATA Hard Disks!

2007-06-20T00:06:00.000-07:00

For all you data storage freaks out there, Icy Dock has come up with cool Mac Mini inspired enclosure designed to hold 4 named the MB561 series, yes FOUR, hard disk drives! This baby even includes its own Open Frame power supply to power the disks and is connected via 4 e-SATA ports. The enclosure features a hot looking aluminum alloy body that ensures your hard disks are protected and shock absorbers to stabilize hard disk operations, these are SATA hard disks after all, FOUR of them! Icy Dock SRP for the MB561 series is about $229.95.

Icy Dock Hard Disk Enclosure Specifications:

Internal interface:	Serial ATA
Drive Fit	3.5" SATA HDD x 4
Cooling Fan	80 x 80 x 25mm ball bearing fan
Drive Type:	Standalone with vertical positioning
Transfer Rate:	eSATA 3Gb/Sec
Insert & Extract connection Via:	15 pin direct hard drive connection
Structure:	Aluminum body w/ partial plastic
LED Display Color:	Mini White
OS Requirement:	Windows 98/SE/ME/2000/XP ; Mac OS 9.0 or higher
I/O port:	e-SATA x 4
Power ON / OFF	Button Switch
Dimension (L x W x H)	234.9×141×175 mm

If you want to include four Seagate barracuda 500 GB 7200 SATA along with the MB561 series, check out the TheTechGeeks online store, they have a great offer on the MB561 series bundled with the hard disks for only $1000. Expensive you say? They already slashed $250, so hurry up!

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Jack PC Thin Client solution - fits in a wall socket!

2007-06-19T03:42:00.001-07:00

clipped from blog.scifi.com

This really compact thin client is small enough to fit a wall socket and is capable of running solely on Power Over Ethernet (power from your LAN cable!). This feature greatly reduces the number of wires you need, both the power and network connections are already intergrated into the Power Over Ethernet feature.

Included in the Jack PC is a resident Citrix ICA, Microsoft RDP, local browser IE 6, and many other plug-ins for local applications. It also features location memory feature for accurate location pinpointing, making remote configuration with Active Directory a breeze! Maybe one of the greatest features is the super low power consumption of 5W considering that the thin client only runs the basics needed to run (it's up to the host manager computers to provide the software). And since this is a thin client, you won't have to worry about data theft since data is not stored on the thin client.

Just connect the display, keyboard and mouse and your done!

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No More Google Video! Long Live Google Video!

2007-06-19T02:35:00.001-07:00

Dugg by moojj:

Google Video, the web-based service that provided almost the same functions as the popular YouTube, is not an online video sharing solution anymore. The parent company Google upgraded the product and made it a search technology that allows users to find clips on the entire Internet. At this time, the official page of the service is exactly the same

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