General Gaming Article

General Gaming Article

NVidia’s Jen-Hsun Huang Talks About Windows Arm, Tegra, and the Cost of R&D at AsiaD

Posted: 23 Oct 2011 11:45 AM PDT

HuangNVidia's founder and president Jen-Hsun Huang was on hand at this years AsiaD conference, and as usual, he put on quite the show. In addition to reconfirming the companies future plans for the Tegra platform, he offered up sage advice for Microsoft on how to manage Intel during the transition to arm, how much his company is spending on R&D, and even openly fantasized about getting his chips in future versions of the iPad. 

When asked about his feelings towards Windows on ARM, Huang was quite specific, don't call it a PC.

"It's important for [Microsoft] not to position these as PCs. From a finesse perspective -- I can't speak on their behalf -- but I would come out with tablets first with Windows on ARM. It helps to establish that this isn't a PC. Will yesterday's Office run on tomorrow's Windows on ARM PC? Will a new version of Office run on tomorrow's Windows on ARM tablets? Both questions are about legacy, and both are about Office. The actual implementation of it is radically different. I see no reason to make Office 95 to run on Windows on ARM. I think it would be wonderful, absolutely wonderful -- I'd say, as someone who uses Windows -- it would be almost a requirement to me that [the ARM] device runs Windows interoperably. If Office runs on Windows on ARM -- it's the killer app. Everything else is on the web."

On the topic of Tegra, Huang explained that NVidia has been literally transformed by its work in this area, and now finds itself in direct competition with Qualcomm. Development has been expensive, and he estimates they have already spent well in excess of $2 billion on R&D. 

"In order to build these system-on-chips, we need 500 chip designers and 1,000 software engineers to bring them to market. Two or three years each, so not exactly economic to build 'em for just the tablet, but some versions are perfect for tablets, some for high-end smartphones, somewhere between two segments. A long time ago there was only one CPU shipping at the time, and that was from Intel; and now there are many. We started out with the smartphone, but it's going to explode to all kinds of mobile devices. We also have the car market, the ultimate mobile processor."

"The cost for developing such a chip is likely to go up over time, Huang said, and is driven by an approach to come up with "something magical" and "unexpected" in every product generation. For example, while Kal-El will be moving to four cores, with one additional supporting core, the cores in the succeeding product generation will offer more performance and there will be a feature that catches NVidia's rivals "off-guard", the executive said."

As for the iPad? "It would be a great delight to have NVIDIA's tablet chip in an iPad", Huang confirmed. NVidia already powers approximately 70 percent of all non-iPad's sold in the market today, so convincing Apple to outsource on chip development would be a huge win.

Hard Drive Shortages and Higher Prices Confirmed Due To Flooding in Thailand

Posted: 23 Oct 2011 09:54 AM PDT

WD

A few days ago we were speculating, along with the rest of the web, that the massive flooding in Thailand could end up playing havoc with the mechanical drive industry. New images of Western Digital's flagship production facility just barely above water have surfaced (no pun intended), along with dire predictions from CEO John Coyne. According to Coyne, the water damage will result in significantly reduced hard drive supplies going into 2012. 

CRN is reporting that hard drive prices are already beginning to spike in distribution channels, and OEM's are likely to be the hardest hit. Apple CEO Tim Cook claims they are already planning around possible shortages, and a Dell Spokesperson confirmed the same. 

Head on over to thisismynext.com for more photos of the devastation.

Note:

Maximum PC's focus is on the technology impact of this disaster, but as always, our thoughts go out to everyone impacted by the tragedy.

Google Drops Chromebook Subscription-Only Policy

Posted: 23 Oct 2011 09:27 AM PDT

ChromebookWhen Google launched its Chromebook initiative for business and education customers, potential clients weren't given very much flexibility when it came to financing. Basically they either chose to agree to a three-year subscription fee, or they could look for something else. In a rather rare change of heart, Google has reversed the three-year requirement, and are now giving both sets of customers the option to buy the machines outright with one year of support instead. Clients will have the option to renew web-based admin, phone support, and hardware for years two and three, but it is no longer required.

Google admits that the change was a result of not fully understanding how budgets in this market were allocated, and that in some cases, financing over three years just wasn't an option. Pricing for the Chromebook's are now as follows:

Education: 

1-Year Upfront: $449 (Wi-Fi), $519 (3G)
Years 2-3: $5/month per Chromebook for management & support

Business:

1-Year Upfront: $559 (Wi-Fi), $639 (3G)
Years 2-3: $13/month per Chromebook for management & support

It's also interesting to note that Google has yet to announce any major victories for the Chromebook in either market. I'm sure it will take time, but if these things were selling like hot cakes I'm sure we'd be hearing about it by now.

Rupert Murdoch Admits MySpace was “Mismanaged” and Everyone Involved Has Been Sacked

Posted: 23 Oct 2011 08:52 AM PDT

Rupert

The debate over whether or not MySpace could have fended off Facebook with a different set of managers at the helm is one for the ages, however, in a recent News Corp shareholder meeting CEO Rupert Murdoch was pretty candid as to what went wrong, but also deflected the blame. When it came answering questions on their role in mishandling the once dominate social networking giant, Murdock admitted that following the acquisition, "We proceeded to mismanage it in every possible way and all the people involved with it are no longer with the company."

Everyone that is, except for Murdoch himself.

To investors, or anyone who follows the technology industry, MySpace's "mismanagement" was fairly oblivious. Still, hearing a CEO put it so bluntly is a rare and welcome admission. Murdoch also admitted that after purchasing MySpace for $600 million, he passed on an opportunity to offload it early for a huge profit. "We bought it for $600 million. We could have sold it for $6 billion a month later."

Ouch.

Dropbox Improves Third Party API’s and Beefs Up Security

Posted: 23 Oct 2011 07:57 AM PDT

DropbloxWe've recommended Dropbox to our readers more times than we can count, but with good reason. Recent security issues aside, its still the best file storage / sharing service in town, and that doesn't appear to be changing anytime soon. Dropbox has always had a very robust and flexible set of third party API's, but on Friday the company announced these would be expanding to offer not just more flexibility, but improved security as well. 

What does this mean for your average Dropbox user? For one, they are adding support for application specific folders. This means when you install a camera app on your phone for example, you can authorize it to place images in one or more folders of your choosing, without giving that application full access to your entire Dropbox. Third parties will also now be able to tie into the versioning system, which will allow users to jump back to an older version of a file, or recover something that was accidentally deleted. 

That covers off the most noticeable changes from a user experience standpoint, however security is also getting a rather important makeover. As opposed to simply typing your Dropbox information into random websites or phone apps, third parties will need to redirect users to the website and allow you to enter your credentials directly. By doing this third party apps are assigned very specific permissions, and never get an opportunity to store your user name and password. This approach makes it easier for users to manage third party access, and more importantly, make it easier to revoke access if needed. 

Its great to see Dropbox finally taking security seriously, but they are still missing a few critical features that prevent us from recommending it as a solution for your sensitive data. Multi-factor authentication and client side encryption aren't just nice to have features for cloud storage these days, its critical for anything you'd like to keep private. Dropbox has openly admitted that each file is scanned and checked against their database for duplicates prior to uploading, and a copy of your encryption key is kept on-hand as a result. This doesn't mean someone at Dropbox HQ is sitting around sifting through your files just for kicks, but its still a pretty big security vulnerability. 

EFF Gives Thumbs Up to Amazon's Silk Web Browser

Posted: 23 Oct 2011 05:57 AM PDT

Even as all other Android tablets seem hopelessly incapable of holding a candle to the Apple iPad, Amazon's upcoming Kindle Fire can already be seen glaring rather invitingly (or ominously if you're Apple) in the distance. Its initial dazzle is perhaps largely due to its highly affordable price and cloud-accelerated Silk browser. While its hard to look beyond its unbelievably low price, certain folks are much more interested in the latter.

Unlike normal browsers, the Silk browser will actively tap into Amazon's powerful AWS servers to deliver a speedier browsing experience to the user. Given the novelty of this approach, it's no surprise that the Silk browser is drawing a lot of interest. Likewise, it's even less surprising that a lot of people are only interested due to obvious concerns attached with the whole idea of Amazon routing huge amounts of web traffic through its servers. In fact, even some Congressmen have expressed concerns.

However, in what is a huge vote of confidence in Amazon's favor, the Electronic Frontier Foundation has said that most of its data privacy concerns with the Silk browser have now been laid to rest. Actually, the non-profit digital rights group had approached Amazon with its concerns and sought answers. As it turns out, the e-tailer managed to allay most, if not all, of the EFF's misgivings.

"Cloud acceleration mode is the default setting, but Amazon has assured us it will be easy to turn off on the first page of the browser settings menu," reads EFF's statement. "When turned off, Silk operates as a normal web browser, sending the requests directly to the web sites you are visiting. "

Further, the EFF was told that the browser does not use cloud-acceleration for encrypted traffic, meaning secure web page requests (SSL) aren't routed through Amazon's servers whatsoever. Amazon also assured the EFF that it only logs the URL, timestamp and token identifying the browsing session.

"We repeatedly asked if there was any way to associate the logged information with a particular user or Amazon account, and we were told that there was not, and that Amazon is not in a position to track users."

All said, the EFF still has a few lingering concerns: "First of all, Amazon stores URLs you visit, and these sometimes contain identifying information. To pick a prominent example, there is an opportunity to identify people through their search history with some degree of accuracy. Indeed, given the common practice employed by search engines of putting query terms in the URL as parameters, Amazon will effectively have a database of user search histories across many different search engines."
Posted by Shri Krishna

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