| Battlefield 3 Review Posted: 17 Jan 2012 04:56 PM PST Behold the Chimera! There is a creature in Greek mythology known as the Chimera. The Chimera was an unholy patchwork of a beast, a combination of lion, snake, and goat. Battlefield 3 is the software equivalent of a Chimera—a beast of a game stitched together from disparate parts. Battlefield 3's single-player campaign is undoubtedly the goat. The game resorts to every dirty funneling trick to keep you on its chosen path, ranging from invisible walls to flat-out killing you and forcing a reload if you wander. You'll spend much of the game running a high-speed conga line with your AI squad mates, dashing from one checkpoint to the next. 
Battlefield 3 offers an expansive battlespace that can go from desolate to crowded in a heartbeat on 64-player maps.
The action remains maddeningly scripted when you reach those checkpoints. Ever-present mortar, grenade, and rocket explosions, combined with seemingly random enemy spawns, leave you waiting behind cover while the game essentially plays itself. Make your presence felt and your AI squad mates will do their best to get you killed by bumping into you, shoving you out of "their" cover, and getting in the way of your shots, all while the enemy seems to target you exclusively. And if ever there was a game you didn't want to play staring at teammates' backs, it's Battlefield 3. This game boasts the most photorealistic graphics we've ever seen, with crisp textures, smooth animation, and almost no texture pop-in, a feat made all the more impressive by the game's high fidelity and remarkable draw distance. The Frostbite 2 engine's hyper-realistic volumetric effects add to the visual wow factor: Black smoke belches from burned-out tanks, sand blows across desert wastelands, and every explosion ejects chunks of dirt and plumes of dust skyward. EA's digital-distribution and DRM system, Origin, plays the part of the snake, slithering into your Battlefield 3 experience whether you want it or not. While we suffered no technical or stability problems with Origin, the client is wholly unremarkable. It gets the job done, but it pales in comparison to Valve's well-established and feature-rich Steam. EA's Battlelog, the web-based launcher that serves as BF3's main menu, is equally unimpressive: Managing and communicating with friends is cumbersome, voice chat is absent, and trying to set up a game with a large group is nigh impossible. 
The Frostbite 2 engine delivers unparalleled lighting effects and stunning, near-photorealistic environments.
Thankfully, Battlefield 3 roars where it matters most: Multiplayer is nothing short of sublime. Classes are extremely well balanced, weapons are varied, and the leveling and unlock trees entice you to keep playing without overwhelming new players. The game features five competitive modes: squad deathmatch, team deathmatch, rush, squad rush, and conquest. In typical Battlefield fashion, vehicles play a big role, especially in the larger maps. The spectacle of 32 or 64 players firing devastating tank rounds, crashing helicopters, and shooting down jets leads to jaw-dropping "wow" moments of emergent, chaotic goodness. So, is the Chimera that is Battlefield 3 held back by its worthless goat element and its sneaky snake component? Yes, but not all that much. Battlefield 3's unparalleled immersion factor and fantastic online modes render it the go-to multiplayer FPS well into the foreseeable future. $60, www.battlefield.com/battlefield3
ESRB: M |
| 20 Key Stages in the Evolution of the Internet Posted: 17 Jan 2012 02:12 PM PST  The Internet's 43 years old this year—that's the same age as The RZA and Patton Oswalt—putting 1969 in the running for Best Year Ever. But for all we know about the Wu-Tang Clan and KFC Famous Bowls, the mass majority of users surfing the interwebz know next to nothing about its history. To get you up to speed we've put together a pictorial timeline of 20 of the most significant events in the history of the Internet, from its inception right up to the meme, kitteh and rickrolling phenomenon it is today.
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| Fast Forward: Multiple Multicore Manifestations Posted: 17 Jan 2012 12:37 PM PST It's been about 10 years since multicore processors burst on the scene, and we're now seeing several innovative variations. At first, chip designers simply replicated CPU cores, filling their silicon with copies of the same brain. Now they are exploring alternatives—and these variations will change the way we benchmark performance and compare processors. A basic symmetric or homogeneous design has two or more CPU cores of the same type running at the same clock speed. As the number of cores grows, however, this approach becomes less power-efficient, and the software struggles to use all the cores. So AMD and Intel introduced "turbo" technology that can run the CPUs at different clock speeds, which saves power and scales performance with demand. 
AMD's Bulldozer processors have pairs of cores that share some internal resources. They are similar to Intel's multithreaded cores, and both techniques will continue to evolve. Some embedded processors have four or more threads per core. To conserve power in mobile phones and tablets, ARM and Marvell have designed asymmetric or heterogeneous CPU clusters. ARM calls its strategy "big.LITTLE"—a big core sleeps while a little core handles routine chores. When the user needs more performance, the big core awakens and helps little brother. Someday, PC processors will do this, too. Freescale and Texas Instruments have chips that combine conventional CPU cores with a digital-signal controller (DSC) or digital-signal processor (DSP). The CPU runs application software while the DSC or DSP controls a motor or decodes wireless signals. PC processors could do this, too, although DSP instruction-set extensions may be an acceptable substitute. As these and other variations proliferate, processor benchmarking and comparisons will become more difficult. But for PCs, smartphones, tablets, and other devices running highly variable workloads, the power efficiency of asymmetric multiprocessing will override other considerations. |
| HTC Starts Scrubbing Carrier IQ From Sprint Phones Posted: 17 Jan 2012 11:29 AM PST  Long before legislation was dominating the headlines, the Carrier IQ controversy raised the hackles of tech geeks and privacy advocates around the world. Even though the software didn't turn out to be quite as nefarious as was originally reported, carriers and manufacturers still started distancing themselves from the tracking and diagnostic software. Along those lines, HTC is starting to roll out updates designed to scrub Carrier IQ off of its Sprint phones, starting with the HTC EVO 3D.
In fact, Android Central reports that some EVO 3D users have already gotten the update. Sprint stopped collecting Carrier IQ data a while back, so the move is more house cleaning than anything else. The Verge tapped HTC for comment, and they said updates for other phones will be forthcoming: HTC can confirm that we're working with Sprint to provide maintenance releases that will remove Carrier IQ and provide security enhancements and bug fixes beginning in January. Between this and SOPA possibly being shelved, it's starting to look like complaining on the Internet can actually be constructive! |
| Sony Launches Sexy SuperSpeed USB 3.0 Flash Drive Posted: 17 Jan 2012 10:39 AM PST  With native SuperSpeed USB 3.0 chipsets on the horizon and a whole host of USB 3.0-capable motherboards already on the market thanks to NEC, Marvell, and other third-party chip makers, there's no reason to saddle yourself with a USB 2.0 storage device, not unless it comes down to cost. Dollars and cents aside, Sony's new Micro Vault MACH USB 3.0 flash drive is a looker and a scorcher.
Available in capacities from 8GB up to 64GB, the Micro Vault MACH whips your data to and fro at up to 120MB/s for reads and up to 90MB/s for writes. Of course it's backwards compatible with USB 2.0, so even if you can't take advantage of the added speed right away, you can still own one of the better looking thumb drives, if that matters. That's because it's housed in a sleek, solid aluminum body with a brushed design. The Micro Vault MACH series will ship sometime this month and includes a five-year warranty. Pricing has yet to be announced. Image Credit: Sony |
| Google Joins Tomorrow's SOPA Protest, Tells Admins How To Black Out The Right Way Posted: 17 Jan 2012 10:38 AM PST  Even though SOPA's odds of worming through into law are looking increasingly slim, it's still a threat, as is PIPA, its sister bill in the Senate – and websites are lining up to combat it. After Reddit announced it would be blacking out on January 18 to protest the bill, a host of other organizations followed suit, culminating in Wikipedia's announcement that it, too, would shut down tomorrow. Today, Google said it would lend its voice to the cause – but not with a full-fledged blackout. One of its employees also outlined how websites can blackout in a search-friendly way.
Tomorrow, some of the most valuable virtual real estate on the 'Net – Google's home page – will include a link to a page that outlines Google's opposition to SOPA and PIPA. It's not a blackout, but given Google's giganticness – my grandmother actually calls Google the Internet, in a naïve rather than ironic way – it's a strong move nonetheless. "Like many businesses, entrepreneurs and web users, we oppose these bills because there are smart, targeted ways to shut down foreign rogue websites without asking American companies to censor the Internet," a Google spokeswoman told CNET. "So tomorrow we will be joining many other tech companies to highlight this issue on our US home page." Meanwhile, Google Webmaster Trends Analyst Pierre Far explained how websites who want to temporarily shut down – "Perhaps for server maintenance or as political protest" – could do so without adversely affecting their search rankings. Basically, you'll want to use a 503 HTTP status code, but if you want more details, be sure to check out Far's post on Google+. (Note, also, that he posted the information on his personal account, so it isn't officially sanctioned by the search giant.) Twitter's CEO, on the other hand, says calls to shut down that service are "just silly." Check out the tweet below. 
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| Microsoft Reveals Next Generation File System in Windows 8 (for Servers) Posted: 17 Jan 2012 10:09 AM PST  Much of the focus on Windows 8 has been centered on the Metro UI and whether or not it will translate well to non-touch devices, like your typical desktop PC or notebook computer. Dig a little underneath the hood, however, and you'll find a nifty nugget in the form of a next generation file system. It's called ReFS (Resilient File System), a newly engineered file system built on the foundations of NTFS.
It's going to be introduced only as part of Windows Server 8, which is a bit of a bummer for home users, but it's also the same approach Microsoft has taken each time it's introduced a new file system, the company said in a blog post. Designed from the ground up, ReFS maintains a high level of compatibility with a subset of NTFS features. In case it's not obvious by the name, ReFS is intended to be more resilient and features meta data integrity with checksums; support for large volume, file, and directory sizes; data striping for performance; disk scrubbing for protection against latent disk errors; and a whole bunch of other things outlined in great detail here. |
| Cooler Master Shows Off New "Vertical Vapor Chamber" Heatsink Technology Posted: 17 Jan 2012 10:05 AM PST Plan on buying a Cooler Master heatsink sometime soon? If so, you could be buying into a new cooling design the company's dubbed "Vertical Vapor Chamber Technology." Cooler Master claims that by tinkering with the traditional heatsink design, Vertical Vapor Chambers run cooler and quieter than traditional cooling solutions. 
So how, exactly, does "Vertical Vapor Chamber Technology" work? Cooler Master details the technology in its press release: Vertical Vapor Chambers feature less than half the air resistance by reducing airflow vortexes and noise generated by air streaming through a heatsink. At the same time vertical vapor chambers exhibit 3 times the fin contact area, enabling faster and more efficient transfer of heat from the vapor chambers to the fins, and overall more efficient use of the available fin surface area. No word yet on pricing details, but TechPowerUp reports that the first heatsinks packing the new design are scheduled to hit the streets soon after the CeBIT trade show in March. |
| Hacker Group Backs Down from Releasing Symantec Source Code...For Now Posted: 17 Jan 2012 09:49 AM PST  An Indian hacking group known as "The Lords of Dharmaraja" celebrated swiping the Norton antivirus source code from Symantec earlier this month and promptly began releasing fragments to the public before promising to upload the full Monty on January 17, 2012. That's today, but rather than release the source code in its entirety, the hacking group decided now is not the time.
"We've decided not to release code to the public until we get full of it =) 1st we'll own evrthn we can by 0din' the sym code & pour mayhem," a hacker known as Yama Tough posted to this Twitter account yesterday. Even if the group does decide to release the source code, Symantec isn't terribly worried about it, saying that the digital bits relate to a discontinued enterprise version of the software dating back to 2006. "The code that has been posted for the 2006 version poses no security threat to users of the current version of Norton Utilities," Symantec said in a statement. "Furthermore, we have no indications that the code disclosure impacts the functionality or security of any of Symantec's other solutions. Lastly, there are no indications that customer information has been impacted or exposed at this time." Based on comments in Yama Tough's Twitter feed, it appears the reason Symantec was targeted in the first place was because of a class action lawsuit accusing the security firm of using scareware tactics to sell its products. Image Credit: mygaming.co.za |
| NZXT Announces Switch 810 Hybrid Full Tower Case Posted: 17 Jan 2012 09:25 AM PST  There are more computer cases to choose from than you can shake a Shake Weight at, many of which are purpose built with a particular goal in mind, like sound proofing or extreme cooling performance, a pair of tasks that are often in conflict with each other. The new Switch 810 hybrid full tower chassis from NZXT is built with flexibility in mind for a variety of scenarios.
"Built for the hardcore PC enthusiast, Switch 810 is the most versatile and highly adaptable full tower chassis to date. It enables you to easily modify cooling performance from extreme liquid cooling, to superb airflow, or whisper-quiet silence," NZXT claims. NZXT founder Johnny Hou calls it "one of the most unique designs" his company has ever created. All that hype translates into a full tower case with nine expansion slots for installing up to EATX motherboards with Quad SLI or Tri-CrossFire, space for up to seven hard drives, a hard drive dock, SD card reader, two USB 3.0 ports, tool-less installation, and ten 120/140mm fan mounts, four of which are included (140mm). The Switch 810 has four watercooling cutouts and supports liquid cooling solutions with up to three fans. That's part of the ballyhooing over the case's hybrid design, though the main attraction are the fins that you can close to minimize noise and dust accumulation, or open up for better airflow. The Switch 810 is available now for $170. Switch 810 Product Page |
