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Thursday Night (3 Comments) (link)  Thursday, 11-March-2010  21:45:11 (GMT +10) - by Agg New Zealand's internet filter has gone live. O'Brien says there is no compulsion for ISPs to tell their customers their internet service is being filtered. "It's a voluntary system and there's no legislation," he says, adding he understands the ISPs currently on the system have informed their customers. Closer to home, the Labor Party will reportedly vote within two weeks to decide if mandatory filter plans will become legislation in Australia, thanks enigma. The move puts Senator Lundy up against Communications Minister, Senator Stephen Conroy, and the Prime Minister, Kevin Rudd, both of whom have publicly backed the filter. Senator Conroy is known to be a strong advocate and has rejected public protests as well as political opposition from Independent Senator Nick Xenophon and the Australian Greens. Meanwhile the European Parliament has strongly opposed the ACTA. A strong majority of MEPs (663 against and 13 in favour) today voted against the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA), arguing that it flouts agreed EU laws on counterfeiting and piracy online. In addition, the Parliament's decision today states that MEPs will go to the Court of Justice if the EU does not reject ACTA rules, including cutting off users from the Internet "gradually" if caught stealing content. Gearlog got their hands on one of the fake Intel Core i7-920 CPUs, thaks mpot. They are, err, very fake. When turned it over, we quickly discovered that this was not a real processor. It looked and felt a lot like lead. Oh, yeah, this looks legit. You've probably seen them in the CPU reviews linked below, but in case you're only interested in the new gargantuan stock cooler from Intel, there's some photos here. Text isn't English but the pictures are pretty good. iiNet are in a trading halt, probably due to another acquisition, most likely Netspace. iiNet has pursued an aggressive acquisition strategy over recent years in a bid to cement its position as the nation’s third largest ISP. In 2005 the ISP spent $100m to buy OzEmail and in 2008 acquired Perth-based Westnet. Over the past four years, iiNet has bought out about 30 small ISPs. William Shatner has launched a science-fiction themed challenger to Myspace, kinda. Myouterspace.com (and can you see what they’ve done there?), is not quite the Next Generation of websites. It’s essentially a nicely constructed portal where creative professionals who have a love of the arts – and in particular science fiction, horror and fantasy – can talk with each other, network, and find jobs. Guru3D took a look at USB 3.0 performance, while iGadgetLife checked out two USB 3.0 34mm Expresscards. Today for review I’ve got two USB 3.0 34mm Expresscards, each feature two USB 3.0 ports and they’re basically the same really. One is from Unitek and the other is a no-name or generic one. Is there really a difference between them? Read on to find out. Gamepron report on a police raid going wrong and ending up with some game developers in handcuffs, thanks KF. Y’see, the gamers, who are currently hard at work on golf/thug-life release Ghetto Golf, have offices right next to a medicinal marijuana store. One evening, an alarm was triggered in the store, and police were dispatched to check out the ‘break-in’. Hangon, hangon.. Ghetto Golf? Seriously? Apparently so. Thursday Evening Reviews (0 Comments) (link)  Thursday, 11-March-2010  21:05:42 (GMT +10) - by Agg Portable & Prebuilt: MSI Wind Box Intel Atom 330 NetTops on Phoronix. Asus UL30A & Lenovo ThinkPad Edge 13 CULV Notebooks on SilentPCReview. Lenovo ThinkCentre A70Z & Asus EeeTop ET2203 All-In-One PCs on SilentPCReview. Lenovo ThinkPad T410 laptop on HotHardware. Cases: Cooler Master 690 II Advanced on OCOnline. Raidmax Skyline Windowed Mid-Tower on Tweaktown. NZXT Hades Crafted Series Tower on Pro-Clockers. Lian Li PC-T1R Spider mini-ITX on TechPowerUp. Antec P183 Advanced Mid Tower on ThinkComputers. Inwin Maelstrom on SilentPCReview. InWin Diva MITX on TechWareLabs. NZXT Hades on TechPowerUp. Audio / Visual: Proluma Deluxe Triple LCD Stand on Tweaktown. Samsung PN58B650 58 Inch Plasma TV on Tweaknews. Panasonic Lumix DMC-FP8 ultra-compact camera on TBreak. Mionix Keid 20 Headset on RBMods. Video Cards: ASUS EAH 5850 TOP DirectCU on TechPowerUp. Sapphire Radeon HD 5770 1GB on XSReviews. PowerColor PCS+ 5830 1GB on PureOC. Asus EAH5750 Formula on SilentPCReview. Cooling: Scythe Setsugen GPU Cooler on SilentPCReview. Cooler Master V8 Heatpipe CPU Cooler on BigBruin. Gelid Tranquillo CPU Cooler on HWSecrets. Thermaltake SpinQ VT CPU Cooler on LegitReviews. Thermaltake Silent 1156 CPU Cooler on OCIA. Zalman CNPS10X Performa CPU Cooler on ThinkComputers. Intel Core i7-980X Extreme Edition (3 Comments) (link)  Thursday, 11-March-2010  16:50:25 (GMT +10) - by Agg Intel have unveiled their first 6-core, 12-thread desktop CPU, the Core i7-980X Extreme Edition. This is a 3.33GHz 32nm CPU with 12MB L2 cache, for LGA1366 platforms, and comes with a beefy new cooler design. Coverage on Tech Report, Anandtech, HotHardware, Tweaktown, Guru3D, OCClub, Techgage, NeoSeeker, BenchmarkReviews, PC Perspective, HardCoreWare, HWHeaven and Motherboards.org have a video review. Discussion from here. Thursday Morning (2 Comments) (link)  Thursday, 11-March-2010  11:49:54 (GMT +10) - by Agg Victoria is expanding their use of Linux-powered voting kiosks, thanks mazzanet. However, in tender documents released last week, the state revealed it would expand its use of the machines. About one hundred kiosks will be deployed to early voting centres (including mobile facilities) around the state as well as in the United Kingdom. You and I might not think too much of the iPad, but a certain Fat Kid from St Albans really wants one. Now I'll be doing it again, but 17,000km away - in New York City, a small place somewhere in the USA, which is a whole different country. The iPad is being released a month earlier in the USA than in Australia, which bums me out, as I'm an impatient nerd with too much time on his hands. I can't explain it, but gadgets are what I live for. I don't drink, don't smoke, don't gamble, don't stay out all night and don't have any other vices except for a terrible technology addiction. Plus it's a great excuse to see one of the world's most amazing cities - so why not!? Someon3 sent in an interesting article about somewhat dodgy SD cards. Armed with this evidence, we confronted Kingston — both the distributor in China as well as the US sales rep. First, we wanted to know if these were real cards, and second, if they were real cards, why were the serialization codes irregular? One of our most popular Wiki pages is still the fake memory cards guide from a few years ago. Bizarrely, there's a reports of a USB battery charger with a trojan. The charger at fault is the Energizer Duo USB Battery Charger, you’re only at risk if you’re a windows user and downloaded the software for the charger from the Energizer site. Energizer have released more info about the problem. In addition, the company is directing consumers that downloaded the Windows version of the software to uninstall or otherwise remove the software from your computer. This will eliminate the vulnerability. In addition CERT and Energizer recommend that users remove a file that may remain after the software has been removed. The file name is Arucer.dll, which can be found in the Window system32 directory. LegionHW have a Radeon HD 5870 Crossfire CPU Scaling article. The time has come once again for us to take a pair of the gaming industry’s fastest performance graphics cards and couple then with a range of processors from both AMD and Intel. In this first part, which will be just one of many, we are taking the Core i7, Core i3, Phenom II X4, Phenom II X2 processors and testing them with Radeon HD 5870 Crossfire graphics cards at frequencies from 2.0GHz through to 4.0GHz. Meanwhile TechSpot checked out Battlefield: Bad Company 2 GPU Performance. Any game that looks this good is going to be demanding. What we experienced is that tuning down visual settings along with the resolution still hurt budget and even some mid-range graphics cards. DICE recommends at least a GeForce GTX 260 or Radeon HD 4780 graphics card to play Battlefield: Bad Company 2, and it is rare to find this kind of high performance GPUs falling under the recommended specifications. Read on for our in-depth findings on GPU performance and CPU scaling. The Large Hadron Collider's woes continue, with the operators now admitting there are design issues which require the machine to be shut down for a year while they are addressed. He said: "The standard phrase is that the LHC is its own prototype. We are pushing technologies towards their limits." ... "You don't hear about the thousands or hundreds of thousands of other areas that have gone incredibly well." Bill Gates is no longer the world's richest man, having been pushed down a spot by Mexican tycoon Carlos Slim Helu. That massive hoard of scratch puts him ahead of Microsoft ( MSFT - news - people ) cofounder Bill Gates, who had held the title of world's richest 14 of the past 15 years. There's more CeBIT 2010 coverage on Guru3D and MadShrimps. Today's timewaster is a Lynx ad game (possibly NSFW, ish) called Keeping Keeley, with discussion here. Wednesday Night Reviews (0 Comments) (link)  Wednesday, 10-March-2010  23:40:23 (GMT +10) - by Agg Motherboards: ASUS M4A89GTD Pro/USB3 890GX AM3 board on PureOC. Gigabyte H55M-USB3 LGA1156 board on Techgage. MSI H55-GD65 Gamer Series LGA1156 on FutureLooks. ASUS M4A89GTD AM3 board on Guru3D. ASUS P6T7 and P7P55 WS Workstation Motherboards on PCPerspective. Input Etc: Gigabyte KM7580: Keyboard and Mouse Combo on Bjorn3D. Steelseries Xai gaming mouse on XSReviews. Mionix NAOS 5000 on OC3D. Power Supply: Coolermaster GX 750 on Pro-Clockers. Nexus RX-6300 on PureOC. Thermaltake Toughpower XT 775W on OCClub. CoolerMaster GX Series 750W on FutureLooks. Storage: WD SiliconEdge-Blue Solid State Drive on BenchmarkReviews. Kingston SSDNow V-Series 30GB Solid State Boot Drive on ThinkComputers. Mushkin Mulholland Drive 2GB USB Drive on OCClub. Thecus N7700 Pro 7 Drive NAS Server on Tweaktown. Asus TS Mini Home Server on Tweaknews. Seagate BlackArmor PS 110 Portable USB 3.0 Hard Drive on EverythingUSB. OCAU 10th Anniversary Stubby Holders (4 Comments) (link)  Tuesday, 9-March-2010  15:47:57 (GMT +10) - by Agg Polo shirt orders are now closed and should ship in a couple of weeks. But we still have quite a few stubby holders left over from the first batch, and they're ready to ship now! Click for ordering info! Beer not included :) Right now you can get two of these shipped to you anywhere in Australia for twenty bucks total! Get some cool stuff and support OCAU, it's win-win. :) Tuesday Afternoon (6 Comments) (link)  Tuesday, 9-March-2010  15:02:08 (GMT +10) - by Agg The Federal Government apparently recieved over 55,000 submissions on whether or not an R18+ rating should be introduced for video games in Australia. The federal Attorney-General's Department will prepare a report for the Standing Committee of Attorneys General based on the submissions. Information on submissions that didn't request confidentiality would be made public in "due course". Some more info on Electronic Frontiers Australia. A particularly noteworthy submission is here. Kotaku meanwhile report that the recent game violence vs smoking study was done by a group funded by Michael Atkinson, a vocal opponent to R18+ game classification. Now, as reported by News.com.au, it comes to light that the ACCM has received considerable funding from the office of Michael Atkinson, the censorship minister who opposes the introduction of an R18+ rating for videogames. Mr Atkinson also apparently demanded $20k from someone who had posted a rude remark about him online. Kytro sent in a radio interview where Dr Christopher Ferguson criticises the moral panic about video game violence in Australia. Dr Christopher Ferguson has a Ph.D. in Clinical Psychology from the University of Central Florida and is the co-author of: Much Ado About Nothing: The Misestimation and Overinterpretation of Violent Vido Game Effects in Eastern and Western Nations: Comment on Anderson et al. (2010). USA retailer NewEgg have released a statement about the fake Intel processors people received from them recently. Initial information we received from our supplier, IPEX, stated that they had mistakenly shipped us “demo units.” We have since come to discover the CPUs were counterfeit and are terminating our relationship with this supplier. Ford have unveiled their first electric vehicle, and it's a van aimed at fleet users. Ford says as many as one in four cars it builds in 2020 will be a hybrid or electric vehicle, and it’s rolling out an electric Focus next year. But it’s starting with a delivery van because fleets are a perfect market for EVs. The vehicles tend to follow set routes, so range isn’t an issue. They return to a centralized location, making recharging a snap. The up-front cost is higher, but the operating costs are lower. Kingston have released a 30GB SSD "Boot Drive". Seems like an odd move, but there's some logic to it. Coverage on LegitReviews, TestFreaks and HWLogic. The idea of an SSD boot drive like the Kingston 30GB V Series drive works well of a lot of users who just can’t dump a load of money into a drive but would really like to get rid of the HDD bottleneck in their system. Tuesday Morning Reviews (0 Comments) (link)  Tuesday, 9-March-2010  11:26:05 (GMT +10) - by Agg Video Cards: Sapphire Radeon HD 5830 Video Card in CrossFire on Tweaktown. PowerColor Radeon HD 5870 PCS+ on OCClub. Portable: HP dv6-1390ev Notebook on TBreak. ViewSonic ViewBook Pro VNB131S 13.3-inch Notebook on Tweaktown. Alienware M11x Notebook on TBreak. Toshiba Satellite E205-S1904 Laptop on HotHardware. Cooling: XtremeGear HP-1216B HSF on OCOnline. Thermaltake ISGC-300 CPU Cooler on Tweaknews. Noctua NH-D14 and C12P-SE14 CPU coolers on XSReviews. Thermaltake Silent 1156 CPU Heatsink on APHNetworks. Thermaltake Contac 29 Direct Touch CPU Cooler on LegitReviews. Memory: Crucial Ballistix Tracer Red PC3-12800 on OCIA. Kingston HyperX PC3-17066 (2133MHz) 4GB on Tweaktown. Cases: NZXT LEXA S Crafted Series on DragonSteelMods. In Win Fanqua Mid Tower on ThinkComputers. Coolermaster USP100 on Hi-TechReviews. Raidmax Skyline on OCIA. NZXT Panzerbox on OC3D. Software: Mass Effect 2 (PC) on YouGamers. Aliens vs Predator (PC) on GamingHeaven. Audio Visual: Auzen X-Fi Bravura 7.1 sound card on Guru3D. Masscool MP-1370S 'Media Mate' Media Player on LegitReviews. Mini USB 2.0 LED Projector with Tripod on BigBruin. Arctic Cooling E361-WM Headphones on RBMods. EOS wireless loudspeaker system on TechwareLabs. Misc: The WikiReader on TechwareLabs. ASUS U3S6 USB 3.0/SATA 3 6Gbps PCIE Card on TestFreaks. Brother HL-3070CW LED Printer on CCEReviews. Monday Night (7 Comments) (link)  Monday, 8-March-2010  21:00:20 (GMT +10) - by Agg Popular Science magazine have made 137 years of back issues available for free on the net. As you will soon see, it's an amazing resource. Aside from bringing back memories for longtime readers, as a whole the archive beautifully encapsulates over a century of PopSci's fascination with the future, and science and technology's incredible potential to improve our lives. Tweakguides have some info on Ubisoft's new DRM. It seems it was recently cracked in a matter of hours. More recently people were unable to play games with the new DRM when the authentication servers were having an issue. Well, as it turns out, when the Ubioft severs go down, no one can play their games and Ubisoft customers get very upset. At around 8am GMT, people began to complain in the Assassin's Creed 2 forum that they couldn't access the Ubisoft servers and were unable to play their games. enigma sent in some photos from the March 6th "Stop the Filter protest, in Melbourne and Perth. Melbourne also copped some freak hail and rain recently. Check out the amount of water coming down the road towards the end of this video. AirQ spotted this article about killing mosquitoes with lasers. In a lab in this Seattle suburb, researchers in long white coats recently stood watching a small glass box of bugs. Every few seconds, a contraption 100 feet away shot a beam that hit the buzzing mosquitoes, one by one, with a spot of red light. ... The scientists' actual target is malaria, which is caused by a parasite transmitted when certain mosquitoes bite people. Tweaktown have a couple of articles looking into the software side of Thecus NASs, here and here. At first it started out as a harmless test with a single drive on a different file system to see what would happen to performance. Forty-eight hours later has evolved into a nonstop Bawls fueled obsession to see how much improvement we could find just by setting our NAS up differently. Interesting Forum Threads: Gulftown testing begins in Intel Hardware. Are subs that important for movies/games? in PC Audio. This guy's macro-fu is better than yours in Photography. What's your colour IQ? in Photography. Radio circuit in Electronics. Dolphins are non-human persons in Science. Fill in the Blanks: Using Math to Turn Lo-Res Datasets Into Hi-Res Samples in Science. Car Motion Simulator in Modding. How much money is enough? Salary poll in Career, Education & Finance. The Jobs Of Yesteryear: Obsolete Occupations in Career, Education & Finance.

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