General Gaming Article |
- Firefox Adds Outdated Java Plugin Versions to Blocklist
- January 2012: Set Up Your New PC The Right Way
- Google Shows Off Awesome New "Project Glass" HUD Project
- Leaked AMD Trinity Slide Promises Big Gains Over Llano APUs
- OCZ's New Indilinx Everest 2 Controller And Vertex 4 SSD Bring Blazing Fast Random Read Speeds
- Cooler Master Announces QuickFire Pro Mechanical Gaming Keyboard
- Sapphire Radeon HD 7970 Toxic 6GB Graphics Card Tips Up in Russia
- Android Users Crash the Instagram Party, Elitist iPhone Users in a Tizzy
- Floppy Autoloader is Ten Years Too Late, Still Awesome
- Hitachi Rolls Out for 4TB Hard Drive for Enterprise Applications
| Firefox Adds Outdated Java Plugin Versions to Blocklist Posted: 04 Apr 2012 08:19 PM PDT
Back in February, Oracle rolled out a "critical patch update" for Java SE, patching as many as 14 remotely exploitable vulnerabilities. But considering the Java plugin's notoriety for remaining outdated, the holes that Oracle plugged last month still pose a risk to many users. In fact, according to Mozilla, these vulnerabilities are being actively exploited in the wild. "To mitigate this risk, we have added affected versions of the Java plugin for Windows (Version 6 Update 30 and below as well as Version 7 Update 2 and below) to Firefox's blocklist," announced Mozilla channel manager Kev Needham in a blog post Monday. "Mozilla strongly encourages anyone who requires the JDK and JRE to update to the current version as soon as possible on all platforms," he further wrote. "Affected versions of the Java plugin will be disabled unless a user makes an explicit choice to keep it enabled at the time they are notified of the block being applied." The latest versions of JRE for Windows and Linux can be obtained from the official Java website. |
| January 2012: Set Up Your New PC The Right Way Posted: 04 Apr 2012 03:23 PM PDT
Click the cover image on the right to download the PDF archive today! |
| Google Shows Off Awesome New "Project Glass" HUD Project Posted: 04 Apr 2012 11:09 AM PDT They're real, and they look spectacular! Back in February, we reported that both 9 to 5 Google and The New York Times claimed to be hearing rumors about devices we cheerfully dubbed "Google Glasses:" Oakley-esque glasses sporting a HUD and all other kinds of useful technology. Today, that rumor became reality when Google unveiled "Project Glass," from the Google[x] division responsible for those self-driving cars. We'd prattle on about how the concept video shows an awesome augmented reality full of on-the-fly directions, pictures, music, voice commands, locational awareness and video chat, but that'd be silly: just check out the video above to see it for yourself. We first saw the story over at AllThingsD, but a Project Glass page has already been set up over on the Google-fied social network. (Is it still okay to call Google+ fledging or are we past that stage?) Initial reports put the price of the Google Glasses -- I'll continue to call them that, thank you very much -- at somewhere between $250 and $600. How much would you drop on a pair after watching that video? |
| Leaked AMD Trinity Slide Promises Big Gains Over Llano APUs Posted: 04 Apr 2012 10:52 AM PDT All the headlines have been going to Intel's upcoming Ivy Bridge CPUs -- When will it launch? How will it perform? When are the Core i3s coming? -- but AMD's preparing to roll out a new line of chips of its own before too long: the Trinity Fusion APU. AMD's been talking big about the Piledriver-based procs, and new leaked slides suggest that Trinity has been able to hit projected performance gains AMD bragged about during its February investor conference.
If you remember correctly, AMD said that Trinity would boast a 25 percent CPU increase and 50 percent GPU increase compared to the Llano chips currently available on the market. TechPowerUp pointed us towards SweClockers.com, which claims that the slide shown above is a leaked marketing slide targeting OEM partners. As you can see, AMD says that Trinity rocks a 29 percent productivity/CPU increase and a 56 percent graphics/GPU increase over Llano, along with an impressive 12 hours of resting battery life in mobile versions of the 32nm chip. Will those numbers stand up to testing? Is the slide legit? Why do we ask so many questions? The answers are anybody's guess, but the slide looks pretty kosher, and it gets us more pumped for Trinity's eventual release. (Especially after re-watching the Trinity trick AMD played on conference-goers at this year's CES.) How about you? |
| OCZ's New Indilinx Everest 2 Controller And Vertex 4 SSD Bring Blazing Fast Random Read Speeds Posted: 04 Apr 2012 10:30 AM PDT
First, the controller itself: the Indilinx Everest 2 rocks a 400GHz dual-core processor and a 6Gbps SATA 3.0 interface. OCZ says the controller features "a highly parallel and pipelined hardware design with extremely efficient data management algorithms" and the company's new Ndurance 2.0 NAND memory management tech, all of which combines into an SSD bundle that OCZ claims has virtually zero (0.4 ms) latency, "unsurpassed speeds" and a long lasting life. So long, in fact, that OCZ is tossing a 5 year warranty in with the Vertex 4. Spec-wise, the Indilinx Everest 2-powered Vertex 4 SSD line rocks max sequential read/write times of 535/475 MB/s, respectively, and a maximum random I/O IOPS of 120k. The max random 4k read/write IOPS are 95K and 80k -- not too shabby at all, considering the Vertex 3 has a max random read IOPS of 60k. Though, to be fair, the Vertex 3 also has slightly higher max sequential read/write speeds than the Vertex 4 -- though it isn't based around an Everest controller. What does that mean in real life? "In typical use case scenarios, the Vertex 4 outperforms the Vertex 3 by as much as 400 percent," OCZ boasts in its press release. We'll be the judge of that! Here are more Indilinx Everest 2's specs, taken from the press release:
The Vertex 4 and its new controller look pretty sweet on paper and will launch later this month in 128GB, 256GB and 512GB flavors -- presumably for much more than those budget-priced Intel 330 SSDs that are also right around the corner. Any thoughts? |
| Cooler Master Announces QuickFire Pro Mechanical Gaming Keyboard Posted: 04 Apr 2012 10:09 AM PDT Cooler Master may be known best for its cases and cooling supplies, but the company also offers a fairly spiffy line of gaming accessories. Yesterday, Cooler Master unveiled a new entry in its CM Storm QuickFire line of mechanical gaming keyboards: the QuickFire Pro. As any serious gaming 'board should be, this one is all about the keys.
The QuickFire Pro sports laser-etched, matte-finished keys on top of Cherry MX Red, Black, Brown, or Blue switches -- depending on the type of resistance and feedback you're looking for -- complete with red LED lighting for the most-used gaming keys. A set of backup caps come in the box along with a handy-dandy key puller. N-Key rollover is supported regardless of whether you're connected via USB or PS/2. An optional Game mode disables the Windows key to avoid any potentially devastating window minimizations in the midst of a hot and heavy frag fest. No word on an exact release date, but the QuickFire Pro will launch sometime this month for $100. Check out more about the keyboard on the CM website. |
| Sapphire Radeon HD 7970 Toxic 6GB Graphics Card Tips Up in Russia Posted: 04 Apr 2012 06:09 AM PDT
As displayed at OCLab.ru, The Sapphire HD 7970 Toxic sports a dual-fan cooler dressed in black with aggressive curves and lines, and a blue LED light on top for good measure. It's a mean looking card with "Vapor-X" written on the back and not much branding on the front. Connectivity options include two DVI ports, dual mini DisplayPorts, and HDMI. Underneath the heatsink sit 24 GDDR5 memory chips, a dozen on each side of the PCB, for a total of 6GB of onboard memory. According to OCLab.ru, the Toxic edition graphics card boasts a 1150MHz GPU clockspeed and 1500MHz (6000MHz effective) memory clockspeed. It also features an 8+3 VRM with solid state chokes and two 8-pin power connectors. You can take the visual tour here. Image Credit: OCLab.ru |
| Android Users Crash the Instagram Party, Elitist iPhone Users in a Tizzy Posted: 04 Apr 2012 05:44 AM PDT
First things first. If you're an Android user, you can download Instagram from Google Play and see for yourself what all the fuss is about, provided you own a camera phone with Android 2.2 or above with support for OpenGL ES 2. Many of you may have already downloaded it. On the day of launch, there were more than 430,000 Android users signed up on Instagram's waiting list. Now, onto the iPhone nonsense. Several disgruntled iPhone users immediately took to Twitter to post their disdain for welcoming Android users to the club. "Don't follow me on Instagram if you have an Android... Ew," one user tweeted. "Ew. I don't want to see Android phones in my Instagram feed. I like it being an Apple club. #elitist," another one wrote. "I feel gross knowing people with an Android phone can follow me on Instagram," yet another posted to Twitter. There are more. Many more. "Ew, Instagram is now available for Android users... I don't need anymore creepers/weed haters on my shit... LOL," one of the tweets read. "Man, Android users getting instagram is like the losers in high school taking over the cool table in the cafeteria," another one stated. Now let's get one thing straight. There are plenty of sensible iPhone owners who couldn't care less what smartphone platform someone else is running, but the number of pretentious tweets from iPhone toting tools is a little bit staggering. Android users, you know what it is you have to do. Download Instagram and commence crashing the party. Image Credit: Instagram |
| Floppy Autoloader is Ten Years Too Late, Still Awesome Posted: 04 Apr 2012 05:12 AM PDT
A dude who goes by the Twitter handle OzzyDweller found himself needing to clear out his collection of 3.5-inch Amiga floppy disks. Dweller, as he calls himself on his blog, had been holding onto around 5,000 disks stored in large wooden crates, and before getting rid of them, he also needed to backup the contents. "Around 3 years ago, I tried reading the disks manually," Dweller states on his blog. "I made it through a hundred or so, before I realized my brain had gone numb, and I was at risk of chewing my tongue off and needing replacement eyeballs." Rather than go down the road of self-mutilation, Dweller fashioned himself a machine that would do the work for him. Inspired by a Lego Mindstorms kit and partially built from parts he tore out of a commercial disk duplicator he found on eBay, Dweller's contraption is rudimentary looking, but functionally awesome. It's also highly efficient. His home-brewed floppy autoloader only failed to fully eject a single disk out of 300 so far, and that was because of a torn and peeling label. Check out his contraption in the YouTube video below: |
| Hitachi Rolls Out for 4TB Hard Drive for Enterprise Applications Posted: 04 Apr 2012 05:11 AM PDT
Big on storage space, the 4TB Ultrastar 7K4000 delivers 33 percent more capacity in the same 3.5-inch footprint as its predecessor, and it boasts 24 percent lower watts-per-GB to boot. Looking at the big picture, HGST says IT managers can get 2.4 petabytes in the same footprint as a standard 19-inch storage rack by stacking ten 4U, 60-bay enclosures. "Our cost-effective, high-density, and scalable enterprise-class storage solutions are designed for a broad range of market applications including cloud, digital video storage, and backup, and HGST's high-capacity 7,200 RPM enterprise-class hard drives play a crucial role in our value proposition," said Gary Watson, CTO, Nexsan. "We all know that the need for more storage is expanding in multiple directions and dimensions, and Hitachi's highly reliable, high-capacity HDDs allow us to deliver solutions where large capacities, density, and power efficiency are highly valued. We have been using Hitachi Ultrastar drives for years and look forward to qualifying their new 4TB enterprise-class drives." The new drives also feature 7200 RPM spindle speeds, SATA 6Gbps interfaces, and 64MB cache buffers. Limited quantity shipments have already begun. |
Downright malicious browser plugins and add-ons are obviously a massive security risk, but make no mistake unpatched or outdated extensions are just as big a headache. For this reason, Mozilla has a 
The hardworking folks over at OCZ have been busy little beavers today: not only did the company announce its new and improved Indilinx Everest 2 controller for SSDs, but it's also gone ahead and unveiled a new Vertex 4 SSD line to show off the new controller's chops. If the numbers being tossed around in OCZ's multiple press releases are any indication, the Indilinx Everest 2 and Vertex 4 should be big improvements over their predecessors. 
Sapphire is getting ready to launch an AMD Radeon HD 7970 graphics card with a massive 6GB frame buffer, which is twice as much as found on every other variant. The card was actually first seen at CeBIT earlier this year, but has now been picked up by a Russian website, stripped naked, and photographed from top to bottom. Sapphire has yet to announce a release a date or offer up any pricing information, but given the photo gallery, we suspect it will start shipping soon.
Over 30 milion iOS device owners have registered accounts with Instagram, the free and popular photo sharing application that allows you to transform photos with a handful of digital filters and then upload the altered image to social media sites like Twitter, Facebook, and Tumblr. It's enjoyed almost a cult-like following, and the fact that it's now available for Android isn't sitting well with a select group of silly iPhone users.
What do you do when you need to backup several thousand floppy disks from yesteryear? If you're a true geek, you build a machine to automate the entire process, which not only demands mad respect, but also will save you the fatigue and frustration of having to pop each disk into your PC individually as you go through the tedious steps to copy the contents off of each one. This is the precisely the type of task machines were designed for, and the Copypro CP-2000, while a little late to the floppy party, is still a marvelous piece of equipment.
HGST, the company formerly known as Hitachi Global Storage Technologies, is wasting no time in showing new owner Western Digital how it rolls in the storage space by unveiling what it claims is the world's first 4TB enterprise-class hard drive family. The Ultrastar 7K4000 represents a new generation of 512e Advanced Format drives and offers up oodles of storage space for both traditional enterprise customers and the ever growing cloud/Internet market.| 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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