General Gaming Article |
- Old School Monday: Dream Machine 1998
- Google Realtime Search Vanishes as Twitter Deal Ends
- Intel Betting Big on Ultrabook Concept
- Poor Yields Push Fermi Successor to Q1 2012
- Intel Releases New Open Source Packages
- NBA Erases Player Images from Websites, Face Stiff Fines for Facebook
- NEC and Lenovo Team Up to Launch Japan's Biggest PC Company
- Contrary to Hacked Fox News Twitter Feed, Obama was Not Shot and Killed
- It's Official: GoDaddy Partners Up for $2.25 Billion
| Old School Monday: Dream Machine 1998 Posted: 04 Jul 2011 02:13 PM PDT It's that time of year again - the sun is out, the days are warm and we've been up to our elbows in high-performance components for weeks. That's right, it's Dream Machine season and this year's build is one slick rig. In just seven days you'll get to set your eyes on one of the sweetest, sharpest, most powerful rigs to grace our pages and in order to start off our countdown week to Dream Machine 2011 we're going to go back to where it all began: the first Maximum PC Dream Machine. Last year we reminisced about the very first Dream Machine ever (from a 1996 issue of boot), gave homage to the evolution of the Dream Machine, and checked on our predictions. This year we'll be sharing even more behind the scenes stories by telling you the parts and pieces that didn't make it into this years build, getting the Maximum PC staff to discuss their favorite Dream Machines, and we'll make predictions for Dream Machine 2015. We'll unveil this years rig next Monday, July 11th - and we also have some video footage of the making of the Dream Machine to follow. Stay tuned for all that - but first, take a moment to remember where it began: an Intel 400MHz Pentium II, 128MB SDRAM, a 56K modem, Alps Floppy Drive and a Tyan S1836DLUAN Thunder motherboard.
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| Google Realtime Search Vanishes as Twitter Deal Ends Posted: 04 Jul 2011 01:18 PM PDT
Back in 2009, Google inked a deal with Twitter to pipe all its data into Google for use in Realtime. While the direct feed has been shut off, Google has stressed that its web crawlers can still index all the public posts on Twitter. It just won't be so much real time. Google Realtime Search will apparently come back with a variety of data sources, but it is unclear if Twitter will be one of them. Certainly Google+ will be in the mix, but it will not be the only one. With Twitter's crazy-short search index, we'd really like to see a new deal with Google. |
| Intel Betting Big on Ultrabook Concept Posted: 04 Jul 2011 11:20 AM PDT
Intel's goal is for its Ultrabook concept to snag 40 percent of the notebook market by the end of 2012, but according to DigiTimes, notebook vendors are weary of developing Ultrabook products for multiple reasons. One of these is the fact that Intel's Consumer Ultra Low Voltage (CULV) ultra-thin line in 2009 never dominated the market like Intel hoped it would. Perhaps a bigger reason, however, is the challenge of launching an Ultrabook at under $1,000 with a pricey Ivy Bridge processor inside. To help alleviate pricing concerns among first-tier notebook vendors, Intel has committed to "providing a significant budget to support its partners launching Ultrabooks," DigiTimes says. At least one vendor is willing to give Ultrabooks a go, and that's Asus. Asus plans to launch its UX21 Ultrabook in September, which will sport an 11.6-inch screen, second generation Core i5 or i7 processor, USB 3.0, SSD, and measure 17mm thin at its thickest point. Image Credit: Asus |
| Poor Yields Push Fermi Successor to Q1 2012 Posted: 04 Jul 2011 10:59 AM PDT
According to news and rumor site Fudzilla, Nvidia's 28nm Kepler part and successor to Fermi likely won't launch until the first quarter of 2011. Fudzilla's sources say there's still a chance Kepler could arrive by the end of this year, but given the current maturity of the 28nm process, a Q1 2012 launch is much more likely. Nvidia isn't the only one affected by poor yields. AMD faces the same dilemma, though according to Fudzilla, the chip maker is still on schedule to launch 28nm GPUs in 2011, they just won't be available in mass quantities. |
| Intel Releases New Open Source Packages Posted: 04 Jul 2011 08:03 AM PDT
The first is an open source solution for Scalable Virtual Environments called Distributed Scene Graph (DSG). According to Intel, DSG breaks the environment into separately executable components, and when combined with a cloud computing model, it allows applications to scale user experiences far beyond existing limits. Intel's other gift is Embree, a collection of high-performance ray tracing kernels developed at Intel Labs. Intel says the kernels are optimized for photo-realistic rendering on the latest Intel silicon with support for SSE and AVX instruction sets. Embree is designed for Monte Carlo ray tracing algorithms where most of the rays are incoherent, Intel says. You can learn more about DSG and Embree and download the source code for each here and here, respectively. |
| NBA Erases Player Images from Websites, Face Stiff Fines for Facebook Posted: 04 Jul 2011 07:26 AM PDT
"We're going back to the stone ages of the Internet," one team website administer told ESPN. "It's all going to be very dumbed down." According to ESPN, depending on you interpret "fair use," teams could get in trouble just for mentioning a player's name on an NBA-owned website, though different teams interpret this stipulation differently. Plenty of other gray areas abound, such as social networking. Yahoo News is reporting that team owners who communicate with players using social media tools like Facebook and Twitter face a million dollar fine from the league, as well as potential loss of draft picks. The ban on Facebook extends beyond team owners and also includes coaches, managers, and front office personnel. They can follow players on Twitter, but aren't allowed to send messages or retweet player updates. If you head to NBA.com, instead of seeing the Heatles or world champion Dallas Mavericks, you'll instead see pics of Chris Mullen, Magic Johnson, Dave Bing, and other retired NBA players. And on team websites, player profile pictures have been replaced by team logos. Welcome to the crazy world of digital media and intellectual property. |
| NEC and Lenovo Team Up to Launch Japan's Biggest PC Company Posted: 04 Jul 2011 06:55 AM PDT
Lenovo says it's been engaged in "extensive talks" with NEC ever since the announcement of a possible joint venture was made back in January. Lenovo's CEO Yang Yuanqing says he "would like to stress again that we are fully committed to the Japanese market and we are determined to continue to lead the PC industry in Japan," but is also interested in "expand[ing] this strategic alliance beyond the PC business." "With this alliance, both companies will continue to progress and be committed to Japanese PC users as well as contributing more to the growth of the PC market in Japan. We will also strengthen our efforts to achieve the No. 1 customer satisfaction for our quality, function and service. Furthermore, based on this strategic partnership, we will continue to discuss and assess new opportunities with this global partnership," stated Nobuhiro Endo, President of NEC. Lenovo will wear the pants in this new relationship with a 51 percent stake, with NEC holding onto the remaining 49 percent. |
| Contrary to Hacked Fox News Twitter Feed, Obama was Not Shot and Killed Posted: 04 Jul 2011 06:36 AM PDT
Fox News acknowledged the incident and apologized for the "malicious and false tweets," saying it "regrets any distress the false tweets may have created." As of this writing, the tweets are still there. They went up around 2AM Pacific time falsely reporting that Obama suffered two gunshot wounds, that the shooter was unknown, and that Vice President Biden would take over. None of that actually happened, and according to the Associated Press, Obama plans to spend the Fourth of July holiday at a barbecue at the White House with military and administration personnel. This is the latest attack in a string of hacker attacks targeting corporations and governments over the last couple of months. According to Stony Brook University's Think Magazine, a group known as "The Script Kiddies" initially claimed responsibility for the Fox News attack, but perhaps thought better of the idea and have since removed all past mentions of the incident. The group says it has ties with Anonymous. "I wold consider us to be close in relation [to Anonymous,] two of the members of our group were members of Anonymous," a representative of The Script Kiddies told Think Magazine. "I was a member of Anonymous. We hope to be working with them soon." |
| It's Official: GoDaddy Partners Up for $2.25 Billion Posted: 04 Jul 2011 06:04 AM PDT
"I've always said we would make a move like this when the right deal with the right partners could help us do the right thing for our customers and our employees," said Go Daddy CEO and Founder Bob Parsons. "This is it! We are partnering with KKR, Silver Lake and TCV because of their technology expertise, their understanding of Web based businesses and because their values align with ours. We believe, together, we will take the company to the next level, especially when it comes to accelerating international growth." Terms of the deal were not disclosed, but quoting "people briefed on the matter," the New York Times says the sale partnership is worth $2.25 billion. Bob Parsons, CEO and founder of GoDaddy, will retain more shares than any other individual, but it's unclear if he'll have a controlling interest after the deal is complete. "Mr. Parsons will continue to be the largest single shareholder, even after the agreement is finalized," a GoDaddy spokesperson told Mashable. "This does not mean he has 51 percent -- it means, as an individual, he would have as much ownership as any one entity." GoDaddy, known for its sexually suggestive ads run during the Super Bowl, is the biggest domain registrar in the U.S. and has shown strong growth the past few years. Sales jumped up 25 percent to $947 million from 2009 to 2010, and are projected to reach $1.1 billion by the end of 2011. |
Over the weekend, Google's experimental Realtime Search page mysteriously 
Intel revealed a new category of laptops called Ultrabooks at the Computex trade show earlier this year. Intel's idea of an Ultrabook is a thin and light machine measuring 20mm (around 0.8 inches) at its thickest point and powered by the chip maker's 22nm Ivy Bridge processors, with a sub-$1,000 price tag. It's sort of a cross between a notebook and a tablet, and with a holiday launch rapidly approaching, Intel is looking to aggressively promote the form factor in hopes that notebook makers will jump on board.
Remember all the hoopla leading up to Nvidia's Fermi launch? We were teased with leaked photos, benchmarks, and several delays due to reported defects. Nvidia eventually ironed out whatever bugs it needed to in order to get Fermi to market in the form of a GTX 480, a fast videocard with a group of stream processors disabled. It also ran hot and a little bit loud, ultimately leading us to declare the the GTX 580 "the real Fermi" (see our review 
Intel's research division Intel Labs recently released a pair of open source software packages, including a distributed scene graph package to increase the maximum number of participants in 3D Web applications, like virtual worlds, by more than 20 times, and an advanced offline ray tracing package to help speed up rendering of photorealistic images on Intel-based systems by 100 percent.
In case you're not a sports a fan, or at least not a fan of the NBA, here's the prerequisite information you need before reading ahead. The NBA and the NBA Players Association failed to hammer out a new collective bargaining agreement (CBA) last week to replace the one that expired, and the NBA decided to lock out its players, forcing a work stoppage. What's interesting about this, and relevant from a technology perspective, is that webmasters had to remove all images and videos of NBA players from team websites, almost as if the players no longer exist.
If PCs are dead (they're not), someone forgot to tell Japan. And NEC. And Lenovo. In a 
How many times have you heard that you can't believe everything you read on the Internet? That holds especially true for the past couple of months in which hackers have been on a rampage, mostly to swipe and distribute other people's personal information, but sometimes to post fake news. It happened again this morning as hackers claiming to be tied with Anonymous infiltrated Fox's political 
Reports from all over the Web are saying the GoDaddy.com just changed hands for billions of dollars. According to GoDaddy's official statement, however, this isn't a sale, but a "strategic investment" and partnership with KKR, Silver Lake, and Technology Crossover Ventures, a trio of investment firms.| You are subscribed to email updates from Maximum PC - All Articles To stop receiving these emails, you may unsubscribe now. | Email delivery powered by Google |
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