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May 2010 |
Motherboard Blues Window
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Monday, 31-May-2010 20:25:06 (GMT +10) - by Agg
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A little while ago I mentioned I'd donated some motherboards to a mate for use in an artwork. Dan has finished the artwork now and sent along some photos for us to check out. As you can probably guess he's a stonemason by trade and he's used the different coloured motherboards to make a stained-glass effect in a sandstone tracery window. The windows themselves have a "good vs evil blues" theme:
    
click images to enlarge!
Update: A few people have asked for more info about Dan, so his website (showing his "day job" work) is here.
Today's your last chance to order your OCAU Hoodie!
There was an iPad frenzy in Sydney on Friday, with long queues at the Apple store. Amusingly nobody seemed to realise they could buy them from a nearby shop which had plenty of stock and no queues. Why wasn't someone handing out flyers to the queue then, we wonder. One JB Hi-Fi store in Sydney's George St, just metres from Apple's flagship Australian store, had no queues, available demonstration models and plenty of stock at 10am, even though Apple fans queued in their hundreds nearby.
Still, that hasn't stopped Apple from becoming the biggest technology company in terms of market capital. Apple's shares rose as much 2.8 percent on Nasdaq on Wednesday, as Microsoft shares floundered, briefly pushing its market value above $229 billion, ahead of its longtime rival. Both stocks ended down after a late-day sell-off, but Apple emerged ahead with a market value of about $222 billion, compared with Microsoft's $219 billion, according to Reuters data. Let me just put "AAPL" on my "list of stocks I wish I'd bought into", right next to "Google on IPO day". Discussion here.
Stephen Conroy has vowed to push on with internet filtering despite widespread criticism. The poll results are interesting too. Let's see if we can flog this horse back to life! The scheme has attracted broad opposition from communications experts, search-engine companies Google and Yahoo!, the federal opposition and members of the nation's intellectual elite.
Blizzard say that DRM is a losing battle. "If you start talking about DRM and different technologies to try to manage it, it's really a losing battle for us, because the community is always so much larger, and the number of people out there that want to try to counteract that technology, whether it's because they want to pirate the game or just because it's a curiosity for them, is much larger than our development teams," he added. "We need our development teams focused on content and cool features, not anti-piracy technology."
Wired report on how the Web can rewire your brain. We’ve always skimmed newspapers more than we’ve read them, and we routinely run our eyes over books and magazines to get the gist of a piece of writing and decide whether it warrants more thorough reading. The ability to scan and browse is as important as the ability to read deeply and think attentively. The problem is that skimming is becoming our dominant mode of thought.
TechSpot show how an Ubuntu flash drive can save the day. Being prepared by having another environment to troubleshoot your PC helps tremendously. We will cover a few ways an Ubuntu boot flash drive can save your tail when disaster strikes like resetting a forgotten Windows password, clearing malware and retrieving lost data.
That's not all Ubuntu can retrieve, with widespread reports it can bypass iPhone security, thanks JD. More info here, thanks HyRax1. Basically, plugging an up-to-date, non jail-broken, PIN-protected iPhone (powered off) into a computer running Ubuntu Lucid Lynx will allow the people to see practically all of the user's data--including music, photos, videos, podcasts, voice recordings, Google safe browsing databases, and game contents. The "hacker" has read/write access to the iPhone, and the hack leaves no trace.
Monday Afternoon Reviews
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Monday, 31-May-2010 13:18:40 (GMT +10) - by Agg
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Audio Visual:
Logitech Squeezebox Touch internet radio on Metku.
Dell UltraSharp U2711 27" LCD Monitor on Tweaktown.
ASRock ION 330HT-BD 1080P Blu-Ray HTPC System on LegitReviews.
Ultrasone HFI-2400 Headphones on DigitalTrends.
FaceVsion TouchCam-N1 HD 720p WebCam on BenchmarkReviews.
Wicked Audio Earbuds - Wicked Empire - Knight on DragonSteelMods.
Eagle Arion 2.1 Soundstage Speakers with Dual Subwoofer on CCEReviews.
Canon VIXIA HF S21 HD Camcorder on TestFreaks.
Cases:
GMC H-80 on TechPowerUp.
Cooler Master USP 100 (RC-P100-RKR1) Mid Tower on Tweaktown.
Thermaltake V3 Black Edition on HWSecrets.
NZXT Vulcan Crafted Series Enthusiast m-ATX on Tweaktown.
Thermaltake V3 Black Edition on DragonSteelMods.
Ikonik Zaria on OCClub.
Power Supply:
Silver Power SP-SS750M 750W on OC3D.
Gigabyte Odin Plus 700W on HWSecrets.
Storage:
Drobo S: 5-Bay Direct Attached Storage on HotHardware.
Western Digital My Book World Edition II NAS on Metku.
Western Digital My Passport Essential 320GB External Drive on OCIA.
Interesting Forum Threads
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Sunday, 30-May-2010 20:44:14 (GMT +10) - by Agg
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A quick snapshot of what's going on in the forums:
GIGABYTE Motherboard’s #1 Biggest Fan Contest -- win a trip to Taipei in Overclocking & Hardware.
All GOOC Australia 2010 Pictures Here! in Overclocking & Hardware.
EVGA Readies X58 FTW3 Motherboard on Overclocking & Hardware.
MSI Radeon 5870 Four-Way Turbo Charged with LN2 in Overclocking & Hardware.
Nvidia Removes Hybrid PhysX Blockage in Video Cards & Monitors.
Crucial RealSSD C300 - owners post your results in Storage & Backup.
Corsair Memory Upgrade Resource Guide 2010 in Memory.
KHX2000C8D3T1K3/6GX DDR3-2191Mhz CAS7! in Memory.
Bulldozer and AM3 support confirmed! in AMD Hardware.
iPad Owners Thread in Apple Hardware & Software.
Carbon fibre vinyl netbook in Modding.
Worklog: 1/10 RC Bumblebee Camaro in Other Toys.
Memory Lane - Retro RC needs overclocking in Other Toys.
World sizes for different games in Games.
Google Chart Tools in Programming & Software Development.
15.5 hour exposure! in Photography.
Custom AV Setups - Customer Installs in Audio Visual.
Missing meat shames Aussie pies in Geek Food.
Breakthrough as artificial life is created in Science.
Lewis Hamilton to face court over Aussie burnout stunt in Motoring.
Sunday Afternoon Reviews
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Sunday, 30-May-2010 14:57:18 (GMT +10) - by Agg
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Motherboard & CPU:
ASUS Crosshair IV Formula AM3 board on BenchmarkReviews.
Zotac H55-ITX WiFi LGA1156 Mini-ITX board on XbitLabs.
MSI 890GXM-G65 AM3 board on OC3D.
Asrock X58 Extreme 3 LGA1366 board on RBMods.
Cooling:
Thermaltake Contac 29 on OCClub.
Noctua NH-D14 Lower Noise Heatsink on Frostytech.
CoolIT ECO A.L.C. Liquid Cooling System on XbitLabs.
Nexus VCT-9000 CPU Cooler on PureOC.
ioSafe Solo Disaster Proof External Hard Drive on HWSecrets.
Antec’s Designer Notebook Cooler on MegaTechNews.
Thermaltake Frío Overclocking CPU Cooler on LegitReviews.
Video Cards:
ASUS Matrix 5870 Platinum on PureOC.
Gigabyte Radeon HD5750 Silent Cell on NinjaLane.
Asus Matrix 5870 Platinum on Bjorn3D.
Zotac GeForce GTX 470 1280MB on iXBTLabs.
Nvidia GeForce GTX 465 on XbitLabs.
Galaxy and Palit GeForce GTX 470s in SLI Overclocked on Tweaktown.
Storage:
HighPoint RocketRAID 640 SATA 6Gb/s 4-Port PCI-E 2.0 Controller on Tweaktown.
Icy Dock MB990SP-B DUAL 2.5” TO 3.5” HDD Adapter on Tweaknews.
Verbatim 2.5" eSATA/USB 2.0 Combo on InsideHW.
Seagate Momentus XT Hybrid SSD/HDD on TomsHardware, thanks Kosta.
Western Digital SiliconEdge Blue 64GB Solid State Drive on OCIA.
OCZ Enyo USB 3.0 Portable SSD on Guru3D.
Intel Core i7-875K and Core i5-655K
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Saturday, 29-May-2010 19:14:36 (GMT +10) - by Agg
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Intel have released a couple of new CPUs aimed squarely at enthusiasts, the Core i7-875K and Core i5-655K. These are budget CPUs with unlocked multipliers!
Coverage on HWHeaven, TomsHardware, HotHardware, PC Perspective, Tweaktown, LegitReviews, Motherboards.org, Guru3D, Techgage, Tech Report, OCClub and Anandtech.
Discussion here.
Note that OCAU will be down for a couple of hours early tomorrow morning (6am ish) for maintenance. But in the meantime..
     
     
     
And if you're after more, check out this Wiki page which lists ALL "misc pics" news posts from the archive.
Only a few days left to pre-order and pay for your OCAU Hoodie! Orders close on Monday.
Apple's iPad is to be released in Australia today. The iPad, which beat industry expectations by selling 1 million tablets in the first month of sales in the U.S., will be released Friday in Australia, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Spain, Switzerland and the UK. I imagine it's going to be pretty crazy in our Apple Hardware & Software forum!
Meanwhile from disfunctional, Dell's iPad challenger. DELL will release an iPad rival based on Google's Android operating system in June. Called "Streak," the tablet will have a 5-inch screen, wi-fi, Bluetooth and work on a 3G network. Users can download music, interact with social networking sites, send email, text and instant messages and make phone calls.
Marty sent word of a further battery recall from HP. HP has added battery packs to the replacement program originally announced on May 14, 2009 and revised on October 15, 2009. Product model series were also added to the list of products that may have been sold with affected batteries. The battery packs have the potential to overheat, posing a fire and burn hazard to consumers. The affected battery packs were distributed worldwide in certain HP, HP Pavilion, HP Compaq, and Compaq Presario Notebook Computers.
BP's "Top Kill" effort to block the gulf oil leak is being cautiously called a success so far, but the scale of the disaster is still being determined. Scientists observed 130,000 to 270,000 barrels of oil on the water's surface on May 17, and think a similar amount had already been burned, skimmed, dispersed or evaporated. That would mean 260,000 to 520,000 barrels had been leaked as of 10 days ago. The Exxon Valdez leaked about 250,000 barrels into Alaska's Prince William Sound in 1989.
Warner Brothers are being sued for pirating anti-piracy technology. "We disclosed our anti-piracy technology to Warner Bros. in 2003 at their request, under strict confidentiality, expecting to be treated fairly," the company said in a statement. "Instead, they started using our technology extensively without our permission and without any accounting to us."
There's a new PhysX in Mafia II demo video out, and I don't have much to say about it, except: very nice, but can we really not do all that with a normal GPU? Really? But then I've said that about every PhysX thing I've ever seen, so I'll just move on.
Fans of the show The IT Crowd who are eagerly awaiting the fourth season will be pleasantly surprised to hear it has already been renewed for a fifth season. Speaking at preview screening of the show's fourth season – which will be broadcast this summer – Linehan said that a fifth series had already been commissioned. Linehan, who also wrote Father Ted with Arthur Mathews and Black Books with Dylan Moran, said that after four seasons of writing The IT Crowd alone, he intended to put together a team of writers to work on the fifth series.
For some reason I find this wooden tool chest fascinating. Massachusetts piano maker Henry Studley built his magnificent tool chest over the course of a 30-year career at the Poole Piano Company. The chest lived on the wall near his workbench, and he worked on it regularly, making changes and adding new tools as he acquired them. Using ebony, mother-of-pearl, ivory, rosewood, and mahogany -- all materials used in the manufacture of pianos -- he refined the chest to the point that now, more than 80 years after his death, it remains in a class of its own.
Today's timewaster is circle the cat from Sciby. I think we've seen it before but it's quite fun - I got it on my third go.
Thursday Afternoon
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Thursday, 27-May-2010 13:03:35 (GMT +10) - by Agg
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A British man has "infected" himself with a computer virus. Dr Mark Gasson from the University of Reading contaminated a computer chip which was then inserted into his hand. The device, which enables him to pass through security doors and activate his mobile phone, is a sophisticated version of ID chips used to tag pets.In trials, Dr Gasson showed that the chip was able to pass on the computer virus to external control systems.
A couple of bizarre tech marketing videos have appeared, firstly Valve's parody of Apple's 1984 ad to celebrate the release of HL2 for Mac. Secondly a strange one (part of a series) from Western Digital, with characters based on HDDs. Brent, Gus and Blake are the new guys in Western Digital and they are already the centre of attention. They are getting corner offices and they are appearing everywhere.
Tweaktown have some four-way CrossfireX with LN2 action. For some time now I’ve looked forward to some five-pot action; that’s liquid nitrogen containers on the CPU and one on each of the MSI 5870’s. But one hold up, or should I say hardware failure after another has made this long overdue. At long last those false starts are behind me and I am finally ready to let this monster setup loose.
Kurt spotted this 1922 film imagining the wireless future. I get the umbrella antenna but I'm not sure about plugging it into the fire hydrant?
Google have released Chrome 5.0, the first version of their browser to be on all three major operating system platforms. Adobe's Flash Player is not yet integrated into the stable branch of Chrome; however, the Google Product Manager Brian Rakowski says that it will be enabled when the final version of Flash Player 10.1 is released. The developers say that it's their "fastest version of Chrome to date" and note that they have fixed "a range of minor issues such as non-exploitable crashes, hangs and other annoyances".
A test of Amazon's Kindle in American universities has not gone that well, thanks mpot. At Princeton University and Portland-based Reed College, a small liberal-arts institution, students praised the Kindle for its long battery life, paper savings and portability. They then complained they couldn't scribble notes in the margins, easily highlight passages or fully appreciate color charts and graphics. "You don't read textbooks in the same linear way as a novel," said Roesner, 23, a graduate student in computer science and engineering. "You have to flip back and forth between pages, and the Kindle is too slow for that. Also, the bookmarking function is buggy."
Misc Reviews:
Telstra HTC Desire mobile phone on JasonJordan, thanks mpot.
TRENDnet High Speed PC and Mac Share Cable on MadShrimps.
Scythe Mini Kaze 50mm Fans on MadShrimps.
Aerocool HorsePower 750W PSU on HWSecrets.
ASUS P6X58D-E LGA1366 motherboard on InsideHW.
Thursday Midday Reviews
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Thursday, 27-May-2010 12:39:09 (GMT +10) - by Agg
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Storage:
OCZ Enyo USB 3.0 Portable Solid State Drive on OCIA.
Mushkin Callisto 120GB SSD on OCClub.
Patriot Inferno SandForce SSD Kit on BenchmarkReviews.
Icy Dock SATA/USB EZ-DOCK MB881US-1S-1 on TechPowerUp.
Samsung Station STORY USB 3.0 Hard Drive on EverythingUSB.
G.Skill Phoenix 100GB SandForce SF-1200 Solid State Drive on Tweaktown.
Seagate Momentus XT Hybrid Platter/SSD on Bjorn3D.
Super Talent USB 3.0 RAIDDrive on TechReport.
OCZ Vertex 2 100GB SSD on Bjorn3D.
Vantec NexStar 3 SuperSpeed 2.5-inch USB 3.0 Enclosure on OCIA.
SUNBEAMTECH Airbox USB 3.0 External Hard Drive Enclosure on LegitReviews.
Audio Visual:
Hercules Dualpix HD720p for Notebooks webcam on TestFreaks.
Roccat Kave 5.1 Headset on OC3D.
HIS Multi View II Adapter monitor adaptor for laptops on CCEReviews.
Eagle Tech Arion ET-AR506-BK speakers on Bjorn3D.
HP All-in-One 200 on TechReviewSource.
Samsung SyncMaster LCD PX2370 monitor on TBreak.
Video Cards:
XFX RADEON HD 5770 1GB GDDR5 on MadShrimps.
XFX Radeon HD 5770 1GB GDDR5 on LegitReviews.
Galaxy and Palit GeForce GTX 470s in SLI on Tweaktown.
Gigabyte GV-R587SO-1GD Radeon HD 5870 on PCStats.
ZOTAC GeForce GTX 480 Amp! Edition on TechPowerUp.
Cases:
Zalman MS1000-HS2 Mid-Tower on OCOnline.
Thermaltake Armor A90 mid-tower on LegionHW.
Cooler Master HAF X on OCClub.
Cooler Master HAF X Black Gaming Case on LegitReviews.
Lian-Li Armorsuit PC-P50R Dragon Case on BenchmarkReviews.
Cooler Master HAF X on NeoSeeker.
Cooler Master HAF X on NinjaLane.
Cooler Master HAF X Full Tower on Tweaktown.
Cooler Master HAF X on FutureLooks.
Cooler Master HAF X on HWSecrets.
Wednesday Night Reviews
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Wednesday, 26-May-2010 23:20:37 (GMT +10) - by Agg
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Motherboard & CPU:
Jetway NC96FL-510-LF mITX Atom board on APHNetworks.
ASUS P7H55-M Pro LGA1156 board on iXBTLabs.
ASUS Sabertooth 55i LGA1156 board on Modders-Inc.
ASUS Crosshair IV Formula AM3 board on Tweaktown.
AMD Six-Core Phenom II X6 CPU on HardCoreWare.
Gigabyte 890FXA-UD5 Socket AM3 on Pro-Clockers.
ASUS Rampage III Extreme LGA1366 board on HWSecrets.
Video Perspective: MSI Big Bang XPower LGA1366 board on PCPerspective.
MSI Big Bang X58 XPower LGA1366 board on Guru3D.
Portable:
Intel intros 32-nm CULV CPUs for thin-and-light notebooks on TechReport.
Sony VAIO Z117 Notebook on TBreak.
Sony Vaio Z - Z11Z9E/B Laptop on ITShootout.
Memory:
G.Skill DDR3-1600 CL7 6GB PI Series DDR3 Memory Kit on LegitReviews.
Kingston HyperX DDR3-2400 & HyperX DDR3-1600 LoVo on HWHeaven.
Kingston HyperX 4GB 1866MHz Low Voltage Dual Channel DDR3 Memory Kit on FutureLooks.
Input Etc:
Logitech Wireless Desktop MK710 keyboard and mouse combo on TestSeek.
Enermax Aurora Micro Wireless Keyboard & Twister Fans on HWHeaven.
Cooling:
Zalman VF950 LED & Zalman VF770 video card coolers on RBMods.
Thermalright Venomous X CPU Cooler on FutureLooks.
Thermalright Spitfire & VRM-R5 VGA Cooler on PureOC.
XSPC RX360 Radiator on PureOC.
Virtual Racing Chassis by Bob Earl
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Wednesday, 26-May-2010 16:36:31 (GMT +10) - by Agg
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I've taken a look at the Virtual Racing Chassis by Bob Earl. Just the thing for the aspiring World Champion!
Click for the review!
Wednesday Morning
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Wednesday, 26-May-2010 02:46:37 (GMT +10) - by Agg
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CeBIT Australia managed to completely escape my attention this year (no email love, organisers?), but today is the last day if you want to go check it out in Darling Harbour in Sydney. CeBIT Australia is the most influential event of its kind in the Asia-Pacific region. In 2010 the game has changed. Technology no longer follows strategy. It drives it. Successful organisations are building their strategy around it to create 'first-mover' advantage. Thanks to Rohan for the heads-up.
Nintendo Australia scored some brownie points by giving a DS to a little girl who asked for one. In fact Helen was such a big fan of Nintendo she couldn't resist asking for a DS gaming console after her parents "refused" to buy her one. "I also have a request to make. My request is quite big. I would like a DS please for those many reasons," Helen wrote. Nintendo obliged and sent a new DS to Helen's school along with a letter of reply to the young girl. I'm sure there's some kind of negative life lesson there, but anyway, free DS!
It's looking increasingly grim at Foxconn, with another worker dying in a fall. A Chinese employee of Foxconn Technology Group fell from a building and died Tuesday, state-run media said, in the 10th such death this year at the world's largest contract maker of electronics, such as the iPod, Dell computers and Nokia phones.
HotHardware have an SSD roundup. Despite the rapid pace of advancement in the solid state storage market, innovation doesn't seem to be slowing. With that in mind, we've pulled together a quintet of the newest drives to hit the market, based on recently released controller designs from SandForce and long-time player JMicron, the SF1200 and JM612, respectively. We've got drives from OCZ, OWC, Corsair, and Patriot Memory on tap.
Given the current games-for-adults debate in Australia it's interesting to hear Rockstar's take on the audience for their new game Red Dead Redemption: Our games are not designed for young people. If you're a parent and buy one of our games for your child you're a terrible parent. We design games for adults because we're adults. There's a lot of kids games out there that we're not interested in playing. Just like you enjoy watching movies and TV shows with adult themes and language and violence that's the kind of thing we seek to produce.
Photography Gallery
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Tuesday, 25-May-2010 20:51:39 (GMT +10) - by Agg
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Here's some recent photos from our Photography Gallery forum.
FutureMark have released a very nice DirectX 11 "Deep Sea" Demo. Deep Sea is a demonstration of DirectX 11 technologies created using an early development build of the 3DMark 11 engine. 3DMark 11 will be released in the third quarter of 2010. There will be a free edition that allows unlimited runs available at launch.
If you think the Moon rocks, you might want to join the MoonZoo project, thanks Dopefish. Enter Oxford astrophysicist Chris Lintott. He's asking amateur astronomers to help review, measure and classify tens of thousands of moon photos streaming to Earth. He has set up the website MoonZoo.org, where anyone can log on, get trained and become a space explorer.
Speaking of amateur astronomers, some say the recent mystery USAF shuttle launched last month has an orbit suitable for launching spy satellites. On Friday, US Air Force spokesman Gary E. Payton - who on launch day admitted he had "no idea" when the X37-B would land again - emphasised its "non-offensive" capabilities. “The program supports technology risk reduction, experimentation and operational concept development,” he said.
Mark Zuckerberg has responded to privacy concerns on Facebook, thanks Paul. Facebook has been growing quickly. It has become a community of more than 400 million people in just a few years. It's a challenge to keep that many people satisfied over time, so we move quickly to serve that community with new ways to connect with the social Web and each other. Sometimes we move too fast -- and after listening to recent concerns, we're responding.
TechARP explore Win7 SSD Performance. Microsoft Windows 7 is the first Windows operating system to include native support for solid state drives (SSDs). Its SSD-specific optimizations make Windows 7 the best operating system for solid state drives. But just how much of a boost in SSD performance can we expect from upgrading to Windows 7? That's exactly what we intend to find out.
Back to the space theme, with a time-lapse shuttle assembly and launch video from Tzorst. The result, produced in collaboration with Andrews’ son Philip (a photojournalist himself), is a stunning, one-of-a-kind, four-minute chronicle of Discovery’s trip from the Orbiter Processing Facility to the pad, beginning with the "rollover" to the Vehicle Assembly Building on February 22 and ending with the STS-131 launch on April 5.
The war of words between Senator Conroy and Google continues. While Google has declined repeated requests for an interview, in a statement a spokeswoman said the company was surprised to hear criticism about Facebook and Google's privacy record in a hearing supposed to be focused on the Government's proposed internet filters.
Tuesday Evening Reviews #2
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Tuesday, 25-May-2010 19:39:11 (GMT +10) - by Agg
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Audio Visual:
Microsoft LifeCam Cinema on Hardware-Pacers.
Canon EOS 500D DSLR on TBreak.
Netgear Stora NAS MS2110 Cheap Easy Backup and Home Media Server on RamblingThoughts.
Beresford TC-7520 DAC amplifier on Guru3D.
Lenovo ThinkVision L2251P LED screen on TechReviewSource.
Video Cards:
PowerColor Radeon 5550 512MB DDR3 on PureOC.
Palit GeForce GTX 470 Dual Fan Video Card on Tweaktown.
Cases:
Antec Sonata Elite Mid Tower on ThinkComputers.
Thermaltake Armor A90 Computer Case video overview on APHNetworks.
Thermaltake Armor A90 Tower on Pro-Clockers.
Input Etc:
Gigabyte KM7600 keyboard and mouse on Guru3D.
Razer Imperator Mouse on HWSecrets.
Tuesday Evening Reviews
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Tuesday, 25-May-2010 17:35:57 (GMT +10) - by Agg
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Motherboard & CPU:
Gigabyte 890GPA-UD3H and ASUS M4A89GTD PRO/USB3 AM3 boards on NeoSeeker.
Asus P7H55D-M EVO microATX LGA1156 board on XbitLabs.
Biostar TH55XE LGA1156 board on XbitLabs.
ASUS P6X58D-E LGA1366 board on OC3D.
Memory:
Kingston HyperX PC3-19200 (2400MHz) 4GB Kit on Tweaktown.
Kingston HyperX LoVo 4GB 1866MHz DDR3 Ram Kit on BonaFideReviews.
Storage:
Mushkin Callisto 60GB SSD w/ Sandforce SF-1200 on LegitReviews.
Seagate Momentus XT 500GB hybrid drive on OCClub.
OCZ Vertex 2 E Series 120GB Solid State Drive on Tweaktown.
Western Digital VelociRaptor 600GB on Techgage.
Cooling:
Thermaltake SpinQ VT and Xigmatek Balder SD1283 CPU coolers on XbitLabs.
Zaward 140mm ZG2-140A Golf Fan GII on DragonSteelMods.
Danger Den NVIDIA GeForce GTX480 All Copper Water Block on LegitReviews.
There's only a few days left to pre-order your OCAU hoodie! Orders will be taken until the end of May. For full info and ordering details, see here.
Click for more info!
Seagate Momentus XT Hybrid SSD/HDD
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Tuesday, 25-May-2010 03:23:22 (GMT +10) - by Agg
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Seagate have released the hybrid drive we mentioned a few days ago, the Momentus XT. Designed with high-performance core components on an innovative platform, the Momentus XT solid state hybrid drive consists of a 7200-RPM hard drive with 32MB of cache, 4GB of solid state SLC NAND flash storage, and Adaptive Memory technology.
This aims to combine the capacity of spinning disks with the speed of SSDs - but does it work? Coverage on LegitReviews, BigBruin, ViperLair, HotHardware, BenchmarkReviews and OCClub.
More info here, discussion here.
The CSIRO say a change in Microsoft licensing fees could cost them up to 50 IT staff. According to the union, CSIRO's corporate support area had a frozen budget and $9 million in extra costs, $3 million of which were for Microsoft licences. The CSIRO is no longer considered as an academic organisation for software purposes, which has led to the additional charge, Borgas said.
Scientists have announced a breakthrough in artificial life. Scientists in the US have succeeded in developing the first living cell to be controlled entirely by synthetic DNA. The researchers constructed a bacterium's "genetic software" and transplanted it into a host cell. The resulting microbe then looked and behaved like the species "dictated" by the synthetic DNA. More here. thanks polymorph.
Meanwhile scientists at Perth's Curtin University have a new cooling breakthrough, thanks Kosta. Curtin's research team, led by the university's head of mechanical engineering, Associate Professor Tilak Chandratilleke, has developed a method of creating a jet without having additional fluid circuits - a periodic fluctuating jet rather than a continuous flowing jet. An oscillating diaphragm keeps injecting a pulsing jet onto the fluid stream, giving a much better heat transfer.
SEGA say they'll be bringing some SEGA Genesis classics to Steam. “It’s exciting to be able to offer these classic games to a new audience” said Nick Pili, Network Business Director at SEGA Europe. “Delivered via our digital partners, every PC owner can now enjoy these timeless masterpieces whenever they want!” Certainly some classics in that list.
Speaking of classic games, here's a funny article about the origins of Pac-Man. I was trying to come up with something to appeal to women and couples. When I imagined what women enjoy, the image of them eating cakes and desserts came to mind, so I used "eating" as a keyword. When I did research with this keyword I came across the image of a pizza with a slice taken out of it and had that eureka moment.
YouTube and Facebook are now blocked in Pakistan, thanks Kosta. PTA spokesman, Khurram Ali Mehran, said the action was taken after the authority determined that content considered blasphemous by devout Muslims was being posted on the website. "Before shutting down (YouTube), we did try just to block particular URLs or links, and access to 450 links on the Internet were stopped, but the blasphemous content kept appearing so we ordered a total shut down," he said.
Paul and mpot both noticed that Google over SSL is now available. With Google search over SSL, you can have an end-to-end encrypted search solution between your computer and Google. This secured channel helps protect your search terms and your search results pages from being intercepted by a third party. This provides you with a more secure and private search experience.
A lot of people are talking about Red Dead Redemption which was released this weekend. It's the latest from Rockstar, of Grand Theft Auto fame, but it's set in a Deadwood-esque Wild West.
The Atlantic took a look back at Bill Gates's book The Road Ahead, which was published 15 years ago. How do Gates's prophecies hold up now that the road ahead has arrived? Let's take a look at Bill's hits and misses.
Facebook's privacy woes continue, with ad companies apparently recieving private user data they don't want. Representatives of both DoubleClick and Right Media told the Journal reporters that they were unaware they were receiving such data - and stressed that they hadn't tried to make use of any of it. More info on ArsTechnica.
IBM have egg on their faces after handing out USB sticks with malware at AusCERT, thanks mpot. Ironically, the AusCERT conference, named for the Computer Emergency Response Team (CERT) in Australia, is the country's premier information security event, bringing together numerous security vendors and IT professionals from all over the world to discuss trends and showcase the latest security products.
TheReg report that Seagate have another hybrid SSD/HDD on the way. He said that all writes go the hard drive first so that, should the SSD ever fail, the data is still on the drive. The SSD uses single-level cell NAND and Seagate has tested it for five years' worth of use and not seen any loss of performance. It is a second-level cache as there is a 32MB DRAM cache which, Seagate says, improves write I/O speed with the SSD greatly increasing read I/O speed. The caching operations do not require any support from the host operating system, a requirement which derailed the previous Seagate Momentus PSD drives of 2006 and 2007.
Here's a funny IKEA ad about a lamp.
Saturday Night Reviews
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Saturday, 22-May-2010 21:53:21 (GMT +10) - by Agg
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Video Cards:
Inno3D GTX 470 Hawk on OCClub.
Zotac GeForce GTX 480 on Guru3D.
Sapphire Radeon HD 5870 Vapor-X 2GB on Techgage.
Inno3D GTX 480 iChill on TechSpot.
Asus EAH5870 (Asus 5870v2) Voltage Tweak on Bjorn3D.
Sapphire Radeon HD 5870 2GB Vapor- X on Tweaktown.
Palit GeForce GTX 470 Dual Fan on TechPowerUp.
Power Supply:
Cooler Master Elite Power 460W on HWSecrets.
Huntkey Balance King 5000 500W on HWSecrets.
Storage:
OCZ Vertex 2 100GB Solid State Drive on Tweaktown.
OCZ Enyo 128GB USB 3.0 Portable SSD on PCPerspective.
OCZ Vertex 2 100GB on PureOC.
Cooling:
Thermolab Baram 2010 CPU cooler on LegionHW.
Intel DBX-B CPU Cooler on HWSecrets.
Antec Notebook Cooler Designer on ThinkComputers.
Thermaltake Contac 29 Heatsink on Frostytech.
CoolIT ECO A.L.C. CPU cooler on Overclockers.com.
Corsair H50 CPU cooler on OC3D.
Prolimatech Armageddon 6-Heatpipe CPU Cooler on LegitReviews.
Noctua NH D14 Cooler on KitGuru.
Noctua NH-C12P SE14 CPU Cooler on OCIA.
Cases:
Microcool Banchetto 101 Open Air Modular Chassis on LegitReviews.
Antec Sonata Proto on OCClub.
Prebuilt and Portable:
Zotac ZBox HD-ID11 and Next Gen ION prebuilt mini-PC on HotHardware.
Samsung NB30 Netbook on CCEReviews.
HP Pavilion All-in-One 200-5020 Desktop PC on TestFreaks.
Paradigm SHIFT: MainGear's Unique Gaming Rig on HotHardware.
Audio Visual:
Ozone Gaming Oxid Headset on OCIA.
ASUS O!Play Air HDP-R3 Media Player on PureOC.
Epson PowerLite Presenter Projector/DVD Player Combo on HWSecrets.
Creative Sound Blaster Arena Surround Gaming Headset on EverythingUSB.
Intel Wireless Display on PCPerspective.
It's somebody's birthday..
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Saturday, 22-May-2010 01:44:32 (GMT +10) - by Agg
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See if you can guess who. PS: It's playable!
Friday again!
     
     
     
And if you're after more, check out this Wiki page which lists ALL "misc pics" news posts from the archive.
Just a reminder that you can order your OCAU Hoodie at the moment..
Travellers can apparently now be searched for porn in Australia - even legal porn. Patten said officials now had an unfettered right to examine travellers' electronic devices, marking the beginning of a new era of official investigation into people's private lives. She questioned whether it was appropriate to search people for legal R18+ and X18+ material. More here (possibly NSFW URL). How long until customs make sure your laptop has an appropriate Windows license?
If you get mugged, you might be lucky if there's ninjas nearby. They also failed to notice a ninja, Nathan Smith, standing in the shadows outside the dojo. Mr Smith immediately alerted his sensei, or teacher. Another ninja, Steve Ashley, said: "It was probably the worst place in Sydney where they could have taken him."
A few people sent word of a new partnership between Foxtel and Microsoft. Microsoft and Foxtel today announced a new partnership that will soon offer Australians the chance to watch pay television via their Xbox 360 console rather than a set-top box. Foxtel by Xbox Live will include Foxtel channels like Fox Sports, Discovery, Nickelodeon, Disney and MTV as well as video-on-demand services such as movies and television programs. Foxtel's announcement here, more here.
Sean spotted that ASRock have added fast iPod charging to a few of their motherboards, similarly to Gigabyte's recent announcement. Presumably ASRock's parent company ASUS won't be too far behind, and indeed everyone else may follow, hopefully enabling it on a range of existing boards.
Google have open-sourced the VP8 codec, thanks Sean. Open-sourcing the VP8 codec (under a BSD license) is a major win for the open-source community and is even something that the Free Software Foundation had publicly been trying to get Google to pursue.
And remember, there's only a few days left to get your free Portal!
Friday Morning Reviews
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Friday, 21-May-2010 02:48:35 (GMT +10) - by Agg
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Video Cards:
Sapphire 1GB 5670 on KitGuru.
Galaxy GeForce GTX 470 GC Overclocking on Tweaktown.
Motherboard & CPU:
AMD 6 Core 1090T CPU Overclocked with LN2 and Benchmarked on MadShrimps.
Zotac NM10-DTX Motherboard on OC3D.
AMD Phenom II X6 1090T 3.20 GHz on TechPowerUp.
Gigabyte 890GPA-UD3H AM3 board on Guru3D.
Asrock P55 Extreme LGA1156 on Pro-Clockers.
Storage:
Crucial RealSSD C300 128GB Solid State Drive on Tweaktown.
Intel X25-V 40GB Value Performance SATA Solid-State Drive on FutureLooks.
Kingston SSDNow V+ (Gen 2) 64 GB Solid State Drive on TechARP.
Power Supply:
Thermaltake Toughpower XT Series 775W on PCPerspective.
Antec CP-1000 on HWLook.
Interesting Forum Threads
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Thursday, 20-May-2010 15:13:23 (GMT +10) - by Agg
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A snapshot of what people are up to in the forums:
A Brief, Incomplete, and Mostly Wrong History of Programming Languages in Programming.
mytriptime.info - An Alternative to Brisbane's Translink Journey Planner in Programming.
1,000,000 points cost in Team OCAU - Distributed Computing.
Telstra capping YouTube in Networking, Telephony & Internet.
Old yellowed cases/keyboards/mice? Fix them here in Modding.
Corel Asia-Pacific Digital Art Competition 2010 in Graphic Design & Digital Art.
National Base Station Map of Carriers' Cell Sites in Mobile Phones.
How we wrecked the ocean in Science.
The Known Universe in Science.
Trip to see the Shuttle Launch in 2010 in Lifestyle.
100 Oreos in an hour, can you do it? in Geek Food.
Betta Splenden Spawning in Pets & Animals.
Open plan vs closed office in Career, Education & Finance.
Defence grounds new chopper fleet in Current Events.
Google logging WiFi access points when mapping streetview in Current Events.
Muppet of the week, or unleaded into a Diesel in Motoring.
So I drove an AM Vantage V8 the other day *pics* in Motoring.
The D-Drive Infinitely Variable Geared Transmission in Motoring.
Foxtel TV Guide to Major World Motorsport in Motorsport.
The Wikipedia Hitler Game in The Pub.
Sponsor Specials
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Thursday, 20-May-2010 12:25:05 (GMT +10) - by Agg
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Remember to keep an eye on our Sponsor Specials Forum if you're shopping around. In there our various sponsors have specials and info on wireless phone chargers, media players, fitness supplements, watercooling components, camping axes and first aid kits, bedding, speakers, LCD monitors, hard drives, video cards and a range of other goodies. Check 'em out!
EU regulators have fined 9 memory manufacturers 331 million Euros for participating in a price-fixing cartel. The EU antitrust watchdog levied its biggest penalty of 145.73 million euros against Samsung, while Infineon (IFXGn.DE) was fined 56.70 million and Hynix Semiconductor (000660.KS) 51.47 million for a cartel of DRAM (dynamic random access memory) chip makers that operated from July 1998 to June 2002.
PowerColor are working on a 12-monitor EyeFinity card. PowerColor's upcoming Eyefinity monster features a 2x256-bit memory interface backed by 4GB of GDDR5 VRAM, 3200 Stream Processors, DirectX 11 and Quad CrossFire support, and takes up three slots when utilized 'in full'. If you don't want to connect more than six monitors to the HD 5970 Eyefinity 12 then there's the option to remove the daughter card with six outputs that's at the rear.
Guru3D meanwhile have some 4-way SLI action. Create an uber-PC worthy of breaking that personal 3DMark Vantage score of mine. Alongside of this all we will overclock a Core i7 980 Extreme CPU over 4600 MHz. Will we shatter 35~40k points in 3DMark Vantage?
NASA have worked out what the problem was with Voyager 2 - a flipped bit. "A value in a single memory location was changed from a 0 to a 1," said JPL’s Veronia McGregor. Voyager 2 left Earth on Aug. 20, 1977 to explore Jupiter and Saturn. It successfully finished that mission, then flew by Uranus and Neptune before heading into interstellar space.
Tweaktown have a 4-way gaming mouse roundup. What it comes down to is in not knowing what I was missing - humans after all are masters at adapting and it really isn't until you try something new and improved that this becomes evident for yourself. With that said, when I was tasked to produce a roundup review of a few of the top gaming mice offerings on the market today, I was humbly introduced to the world I was missing out on - the world of the gaming mouse.
TheInq say that Seagate has confirmed 3TB drives are on the way, but there's some snags ahead. Unfortunately, though, the range of addresses is limited to capacities of 2.1TB. It’s a limit that until now has seemed so far off in the future that hardly anyone’s considered it a problem. “I think that’s what everyone thought,” says Craig. “Nobody expected back in 1980 when they set the standard that we’d ever address over 2.1TB.”
Microsoft have opened a Windows 7 restaurant in Taiwan, thanks Kosta. Those of you still mourning the loss of the Windows 7 Whopper can console yourselves with this new Windows 7 restaurant in Taiwan. Open just in time for the annual techgeek invasion that is Computex, Microsoft Taiwan is said to have worked with a famous seafood restaurant to come up with seven dishes featuring Windows 7.
BFG are exiting the graphics business, report HardOCP. "We will continue to provide our award-winning power supplies and gaming systems, and are working on a few new products as well. I’d like to stress that we will continue to provide RMA support for our current graphics card warranty holders, as well as for all of our other products such as power supplies, PCs and notebooks."
PCMag have an article on catching viruses deliberately to analyse them. Next comes the scary part; I launch each sample and take careful note of exactly what changes it makes to the file system and Registry. Of course, I do this inside a virtual machine, and after each test run I roll the virtual machine back to its pristine original state. To keep tabs on what happens during malware installation, I use an eclectic collection of tools.
Tech Report checked out some new Sandforce SSDs. A solid-state drive's controller chip largely determines its destiny. SandForce's SF-1200 is the latest controller to hit the market, and we've taken it for a spin in Corsair's Force F200 and OCZ's Agility 2 and Vertex 2 SSDs. Keep reading to see if all the hype is deserved.
Wednesday Night Reviews
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Wednesday, 19-May-2010 21:34:09 (GMT +10) - by Agg
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Cooling:
Thermalright T-Rad2 GTX & VRM R3 Video Card Heatsink on NinjaLane.
AquaComputer AquagratiX 5870 GPU Water Block on PureOC.
Zalman CNPS10X Performa and Zaward Vapor120 CPU Coolers on XbitLabs.
Thermaltake Frio Heatsink on FrostyTech.
Noctua NH-C12P SE14 on TechPowerUp.
Thermaltake Frio CPU cooler on OC3D.
ZAWARD ZCJ013 Vapor 120 CPU cooler on OCClub.
Portable & Prebuilt:
Asus' Eee PC 1201T ultraportable on Tech Report.
Kobo eInk Ebook Reader Unboxing Video & Size Comparison on RamblingThoughts.
Asus EeeBox EB1501 on DigitalTrends.
Cooler Master Notepal Ergostand on Overclockers.com.
Video Cards:
Asus GT240 1GB on OCClub.
Gigabyte HD5870 Super Over Clock on BenchmarkReviews.
GIGABYTE Radeon HD 5870 1GB Super Overclock on Tweaktown.
Software:
Valve's Mac Steam Client on Techgage.
Google Apps Premier Edition on BusinessComputingWorld.
Misc:
Thermaltake Toughpower XT 775W Modular PSU on ThinkComputers.
NZXT Premium Cables on Modders-Inc.
Wednesday Evening Reviews
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Wednesday, 19-May-2010 20:50:55 (GMT +10) - by Agg
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Motherboard & CPU:
Intel Core i7-975 EE and Core i5-750 in Contemporary Games on XbitLabs.
AMD Athlon II X4 960T OEM CPU on Motherboards.org.
Jetway NF96FL-510-LF IPC Atom Motherboard on Pro-Clockers.
AMD Athlon II X2 260 Dual Core Processor on LegitReviews.
Audio Visual:
High Definition Theater: Auzen X-Fi HomeTheater HD and Auzen OPAMPs on XbitLabs.
Arctic Cooling E361-WM In-Ear Phone on MadShrimps.
Storage:
Rosewill USB 3.0 Add-on Card and External Enclosure on Bjorn3D.
Unitek USB 3.0 TO SATA ADAPTER on DragonSteelMods.
Asus SBC-06D1S-U External Bluray drive on RBMods.
Proware EPICa Series EN-T800 SAS NAS on Tweaktown.
Corsair Flash Survivor GTR 32GB USB Flash Drive on CCEReviews.
Synology DS210j DiskStation Network Attached Storage on FutureLooks.
Verbatim SmarkDisk Crossfire 1TB USB External Hard Drive on ThinkComputers.
Cases:
Win Win Diva Swarovski Crystal Case on Tweaknews.
Thermaltake Armor A90 on HWSecrets.
Maxcube Amoris 6010 on MadShrimps.
Some more interesting things from the forums:
It's been a while since we've heard about phones exploding, but death_match found one reported on Gizmodo. So here I am, torso in the rear seat’s foot space, trying to see my phone, when I begin to hear a creaking. I look closer underneath the seat and my phone explodes in my eyes and my face. I immediately ran to the gym window, banging on it to get someone to let me in, and sprinted to the bathroom to rinse my eyes.
HotHardware consider the state of DX11. Now that DirectX 11 hardware is readily available and compatible games are on the shelves, it's high time we took stock of what DirectX 11 has to offer to the end-user. On the following pages, we're going to take a long, hard look into the state of DirectX 11 and what it means to the community as a whole.
AM sent word that Citrix XenClient Express RC is available for a free trial. This is a bare metal hypervisor for laptops, with near native performance, and direct hardware access for things like video. Very Cool.
One comment regularly accompanying the recent Facebook privacy stories is "why can't we do it better, and open?" Well, some people are trying to, thanks Paul. Moglen says he’s not picking a favorite in the race to unseat Facebook with open source and free software. But he says the money raised by Diaspora is also a significant moment for the free software movement. “The funding is not through the capital market and not through the venture capital system, but through civil society,” said Moglen. “This is a signal to Facebook, and I am sure Facebook is getting it.”
Techgage have also been playing with EyeFinity. When AMD launched its ATI Eyefinity technology, it helped redefine high-end gaming, and effectively made 2560x1600 look like child's play. In this article, we put the technology to a good test across 18 different games and on both 3x1 (5760x1080) and 3x2 (5760x2160) display configurations to see just how worthy Eyefinity is.
A German man has been fined for having poor WiFi security, thanks Kosta. The ruling comes after a musician sued the owner of a network connection that had been used to illegally download and file-share music. The owner had proof that the householder was on holiday at the time but the court ruled that the network should have been password-protected.
Epic Games say that the impact of piracy largely drove them away from PCs and towards making console games. “If you walked into [Epic's Offices] six years ago, Epic was a PC company," Capps said in the latest issue of Edge Magazine. "We did one PS2 launch title, and everything else was PC. And now, people are saying ‘Why do you hate the PC? You’re a console-only company.’ And guess what? It’s because the money’s on console."
The Manly Fast Ferry is now offering free WiFi. Commuters on the privately-owned Manly Fast Ferry service can access free WiFi internet from today following a successful two week trial of the service. The free WiFi service gives the private operator an edge over cheaper, slower ferry services provided by the NSW State Government-owned Sydney Ferries, which cancelled a trial of a similar service last year.
Tuesday Midday Reviews
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Tuesday, 18-May-2010 12:17:23 (GMT +10) - by Agg
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Portable and Prebuilt:
AVADirect Clevo X8100 Core i7 Gaming Notebook on HotHardware.
ViewSonic VPC190 All in One Desktop Computer on Tweaktown.
Motherboard & CPU:
AMD Athlon II X4 640/X2 260 Processors and MSI 890GXM-G65 on PCPerspective.
MSI 890FXA-GD70 AM3 board on PureOC.
Gigabyte GA-890FXA-UD7 AM3 board on iXBTLabs.
ASRock 890GX Extreme3 AM3 board on Motherboards.org.
AMD Athlon II X3 440 Tri-Core Processor video review on eTeknix.
Sapphire Pure Mini 785G AM3 on InsideHW.
Video Cards:
Galaxy GeForce GTX 470 GC on Tweaktown.
AMD FirePro V4800 & FirePro V7800 on Phoronix.
Cases:
Thermaltake V3 Black Edition on HWHeaven.
Antec Sonata Proto Mid Tower on LegitReviews.
Antec ISK 310-150 Mini-ITX Desktop Case on BenchmarkReviews.
Cooling:
Coolermaster Vortex Plus Heatsink on FrostyTech.
Noctua NH-D14 CPU Cooler on Tweaknews.
Cooler Master Vortex Plus CPU Cooler on HWSecrets.
Storage:
OCZ Solid 2 60GB Solid State Drive on Pro-Clockers.
Lexar JumpDrive TwistTurn on AseLabs.
Memory:
Kingston HyperX DDR3-2000 4GB Memory Kit on Overclockers.com.
Memonex Top Series PC3 12800 2x2GB on OCClub.
Misc:
NZXT Premium Cables on DragonSteelMods.
Darwinia: A great game for notebooks on TechReport.
Internode are running a Battlefield: Bad Company 2 tournament, to celebrate their new servers. We're looking for 64 eight man teams to take part in our tournament, with the winner taking home over $4,000 worth of new hardware for its members. You need to be in it to win it, and numbers are extremely limited, so head to www.games.on.net/shockandawe to register your clan and get more information. You can read this news article in full here.
Tech Report have been playing with EyeFinity. The newest Radeon HD 5870 unifies six monitors as one giant display wall. We've played loads of games on such a rig, purely for the sake of science.
iiNet and AFACT will be back in court in August, thanks Kosta. AFACT is appealing the Federal Court's judgement in February that exonerated iiNet for alleged copyright infringing activities committed by its subscribers.
The Atlantic report on the mysterious Conficker worm. It infiltrated millions of computers around the globe. It constantly checks in with its unknown creators. It uses an encryption code so sophisticated that only a very few people could have deployed it. For the first time ever, the cyber-security elites of the world have joined forces in a high-tech game of cops and robbers, trying to find Conficker’s creators and defeat them. The cops are failing. And now the worm lies there, waiting.
If you long for the days of the IBM Model M keyboard, you can use this simulator in all its clunky goodness.
An Indian data-entry firm is planning to outsource to a prison. Mr Charyulu said 200 people would be recruited and trained for the job initially. The unit, which is expected to undertake back-office work for banks, will work round the clock with three shifts of 70 staff each. Working in the unit will also be financially rewarding for the prisoners. Prisoners and bank data, what could go wrong?
And finally, I've tweaked our site search page to allow you to separately search the main site and the forums using Google.
Monday Night Reviews
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Monday, 17-May-2010 23:18:34 (GMT +10) - by Agg
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Video Cards:
Sapphire HD5850 Toxic Edition on KitGuru.
ASUS Matrix 5870 Platinum ROG edition on Guru3D.
ASUS HD 5870 Matrix Platinum 2 GB on TechPowerUp.
Input Etc:
SteelSeries 7G Professional Gaming Keyboard on MadShrimps.
Logitech G500 Laser Mouse on APHNetworks.
Storage:
Apacer Handy Steno AH328 Flash Drive on MadShrimps.
iStarUSA BPU-2535V2 2 x 2.5" SATA Hot-Swap Drive Cage on DragonSteelMods.
Cirago CST4150 1.5TB USB 2.0 External Hard Drive on BonaFideReviews.
Vantec NexStar 3 SuperSpeed 3.5" USB 3.0 Enclosure on OCIA.
OCZ Solid 2 SSD on Bjorn3D.
OCZ Technology Solid 2 60GB Solid State Drive on BigBruin.
Audio Visual:
ViewSonic VPD400 media player on TechReviewSource.
Apple iPod Nano 8GB (5th Generation) on ThinkComputers.
Eagle Tech Arion 2.1 Soundstage Speakers on PureOC.
OCAU Hoodies Pre-Orders Now Open
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Monday, 17-May-2010 01:45:36 (GMT +10) - by Agg
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Due to a huge demand we are now accepting pre-orders for OCAU Hoodies! Orders will be taken until the end of May. For full info and ordering details, see here.
Click for more info!
The Australian Government has a new website to help people gain access to justice. Do you have a legal problem? Not sure? Access to Justice is about helping you find someone in your area who can provide information, help you understand your options, and decide what to do.
eBay Australia will no longer force members to use PayPal, largely thanks to an ACCC investigation. The move was announced yesterday and welcomed by the ACCC, which had received a "substantial number of complaints" about eBay's Accepted Payment Policy. "The ACCC considered a large amount of information as part of its investigation and considers this is an appropriate outcome," according to a statement from the Commission.
From DavidRa: The Dept of Broadband, Communications and the Digital Economy is soliciting feedback and assistance on the NBN Implementation Study. Register and contribute here - it might be a good way to have feedback from a community such as ours heard by the government (not that it will necessarily help if Conroy is still there post election). But if you don't have your say, don't complain about the result.
Mpot sent in this clever story about someone using Google AdWords to get a job. While Googling his favorite creative directors last summer, Brownstein noticed that there were no sponsored links attached to their names. Since Brownstein Googles himself "embarassingly frequently," he assumed that the creative directors did so as well, and thus he decided to purchase their names on Google AdWords.
BeHardware have an interesting article about PC component return rates, as gathered by a large French retailer. The returns rates given concern the products sold between April 2009 and September 2009, namely after between 6 months and a year of use. The statistics by manufacturers are based on a minimum sample of 500 sales, those by model on a minimum sample of 100 sales. Each time, we have compared manufacturer’s rates with those in our previous article on the subject published 6 months ago.
Google will be offering encrypted search soon. Allowing users to search using https - the web security system which many associate with online banking and shopping — would mark a first for a major search engine, and could begin a move by web services such as social networks to begin offering encryption for more than just log-ins. Such increased adoption would cut down on network eavesdropping and also have the added benefit of preventing some online attacks.
Ali Y sent in a page by Antec, busting some PSU myths. Some forums users and even some major companies are spreading the idea that single +12V rail power supplies power up the latest graphics cards in a better way, in order to market their products or to scare other users. This is of course total nonsense. To understand this matter better, let’s examine some different scenarios and how the actual power is being distributed to the graphics cards.
Sunday Evening Reviews
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Sunday, 16-May-2010 20:10:57 (GMT +10) - by Agg
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Input Etc:
ROCCAT Kova Gaming Mouse on MadShrimps.
Razer Imperator Gaming Mouse on XSReviews.
Cases:
Cooler Master HAF 932 AMD Edition on Tweaknews.
Sunbeamtech VentMax Gaming Chassis on HWHeaven.
Thermaltake V3 Black Edition ATX on FutureLooks.
Cooler Master CM 690 II Advanced Mid Tower on Tweaktown.
Cooling:
Spire Thermax Eclipse II SP984B1-V2 Heatsink on Frostytech.
CoolIT ALC ECO on Guru3D.
Cooler Master Vortex Plus Heatsink on Overclockers.com.
Spire TherMax Eclipse II heatsink on OCOnline.
Audio Visual:
Sony Alpha NEX-5 camera on DigitalTrends.
Dell P2210H DisplayPort Monitor on Phoronix.
Zalman ZM-M215W 3D Monitor on TechPowerUp.
Phiaton PS 210 headphones on DigitalTrends.
Hercules XPS 2.1 40 Slim Speakers on DragonSteelMods.
Memory:
Crucial Ballistix PC3-12800 (1600MHz) 6GB Kit on Tweaktown.
Mushkin Ridgeback 996902 PC3 16000 2 x 2GB on OCClub.
Misc:
ASUS Matrix 5870 Platinum on OC3D.
NETGEAR Powerline AV 200 XAVB2001 Adapter Kit on Tweaktown.
Splinter Cell: Conviction PC game performance on TechSpot.
Steam for OS X on KitGuru.
Buffalo MiniStation Lite USB 3.0 Hard Drive on TBreak.
SilverStone Strider Plus 750W on OCIA.
Performance Scaling with HD 5870
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Saturday, 15-May-2010 16:38:12 (GMT +10) - by Agg
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Dirtyd has been experimenting with overclocking a Radeon HD 5870 and a Phenom II X4 965, to see how this affects performance bottlenecks in a variety of games:
Click for the article!
Saturday Afternoon Reviews
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Saturday, 15-May-2010 13:48:34 (GMT +10) - by Agg
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Motherboard & CPU:
EVGA H55 LGA1156 board on XbitLabs.
ECS H57H-MUS LGA1156 MicroATX on PureOC.
ASUS P7P55D-E Pro Intel P55 Express LGA1156 board on PCStats.
ASRock H55DE3 LGA 1156 LGA1156 board on PCPerspective.
Storage:
Icy Box Hard Drive Docking Stations on OC3D.
Kingston SSDNow V+ 128GB SSD on TBreak.
OCZ Vertex 2 100GB SandForce SF-1200 SSD on LegitReviews.
Portable:
Fujitsu LifeBook S760 on BusinessComputingWorld.
HP EliteBook 2540p on TechReviewSource.
RichardSolo 1800 with Cable (RS1800) for iPhone/iPod batter pack on iGadgetLife.
Video Cards:
GeForce GTX 470 2 and 3-way SLI on Guru3D.
Asus GTX 480 1.5GB vs Sapphire Toxic Radeon HD 5870 2GB on ITShootOut.
XFX HD5870 Black Edition on KitGuru.
Sapphire HD5850 Toxic on Metku.
HIS Radeon HD 5570 1GB on eTeknix.
Zotac GeForce GTX-470 Fermi on BenchmarkReviews.
Atlantis Launch
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Saturday, 15-May-2010 01:32:47 (GMT +10) - by Agg
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In a little under 3 hours, the Space Shuttle Atlantis will make its last scheduled launch before retirement. "Twelve days, three [spacewalks], tons of robotics... We're putting on spares that make us feel good about the long-term sustainability of the ISS, replacing batteries that have been up there for a while, and docking a Russian-built ISS module," Shannon said. "This flight has a little bit of everything, and it's been a great preparation for the team." You can watch the launch on NASA TV, and in the meantime, there's another video here about Atlantis's accomplishments.
My flu seems to be coming back just in time for the weekend.. faaantastic.
     
     
     
And if you're after more, check out this Wiki page which lists ALL "misc pics" news posts from the archive.
Greens Senator Scott Ludlam has given a speech outlining his concerns about Australia's internet filter. The Greens support the rights of Australian children to a safe online experience and we support the effective resourcing of law enforcement agencies to intercept and prosecute traffickers of online child pornography and other illegal material on the internet. We do not, however, support the mandatory filtering of the internet in Australia. This afternoon I would like to sketch the broad reasons for taking this position and then to propose to the government some ways forward.
Tony sent word that Team Immunity, an Australian eSports team, have been selected as a candidate to attend the eStars Electronics Sports tournament in South Korea. They're asking people to vote for them - and maybe win a SteelSeries Xai Mouse in the process.
Somebody has made a model of Helsinki using old motherboards. Actually I gave away a heap of my old motherboards to a mate of mine recently - he's chopping them up and using them in artworks. These were some old classic boards I'd had lying around forever, such as NF-S 2.0, VP6, P3V4X, GA-7DXR etc. I'll never use them again and it seemed a bit pointlessly sentimental to have them collecting dust on a shelf after all these years. But I couldn't bring myself to give up my trusty old BP6. :)
There's a zombie satellite causing some concerns in orbit, thanks Kosta. An attempt to shut down the electronics payload of the out-of-control communications satellite Galaxy 15 has failed, leaving the satellite - which ceased responding to ground commands last month - still in its uncontrolled "zombiesat" drift toward orbits occupied by other spacecraft, the satellite's fleet operator Intelsat said Tuesday.
Queensland driver licenses will use biometrics soon. Produced by plastic card manufacturer Placard, the cards integrate facial recognition technology from Unisys and Dutch digital security company Gemalto's electronic driving license solution, Sealys.
HWHeaven have a GeForce GT 240 roundup. However the release of the high end cards does not mean that NVIDIA lost interest in the mainstream market where the majority of gamers and users wants to combine performance with value. Today we are going to test the performance of three NVIDIA GT 240 GFX cards, which even though they are all based on the same GT 215 core, are very different from each other.
Did I mention that Portal is free for the next week or so? I played it for the first time last night and really enjoyed it, I can completely understand all the hype and cultural references about it over the last couple of years. If you like clever, funny, puzzle-based FPSs, you'd be mad not to grab it while it's free.
Grum00 sent the worrying news that Marcus from headphonic, aka snufkin from OCAU's forums, has been severely injured in a light plane crash near Perth. Marcus has been a friend of OCAU for a long time, as a sponsor, but also as a helpful and friendly forum member. All the best for a speedy recovery!
Thursday Afternoon Reviews
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Thursday, 13-May-2010 16:52:24 (GMT +10) - by Agg
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Motherboard & CPU:
ASRock H55DE3 LGA1156 on FutureLooks.
Asrock X58 Extreme3 on OC3D.
AMD Phenom II X6 1090T OC Scaling With Voltage/Cooling on MadShrimps.
Video Cards:
Zotac GeForce GTX-480 Fermi on BenchmarkReviews.
KFA2 (Galaxy) GeForce GTX 470 on Guru3D.
PowerColor Go! Green Radeon AX5670 on BenchmarkReviews.
Sparkle GTS 250 Green Power Low Profile on OCIA.
GIGABYTE Radeon HD 5870 1GB Super Overclock on Tweaktown.
Cases:
In Win Ironclad Full Tower on ThinkComputers.
NZXT Vulcan on HWSecrets.
Aerocool Qx-2000 SFF on Pro-Clockers.
Antec Fusion Remote Black HTPC case on HWLogic.
Aerocool Qx-2000 SFF on Pro-Clockers.
Cooling:
Thermaltake Frio CPU cooler on OCClub.
CoolIT Freezone Elite v2 CPU cooler on PureOC.
Scythe Kaze Master Pro KM03-BK Fan Controller on MadShrimps.
Portable:
Camangi WebStation Android Tablet PC on BigBruin.
Lenovo ThinkPad Edge 15-inch Notebook on ThinkComputers.
Intel Wireless Display on the Toshiba Satellite E205 Notebook on LegitReviews.
Misc:
Patriot Zephyr 128GB Solid State Drive on Tweaktown.
Joby Gorillamobile Flexible Tripod on CCEReviews.
Samsung SCX-5935FN Network-Ready Monochrome Laser Multifunction Printer on FutureLooks.
Sony Alpha DSLR-A550 camera on TechReviewSource.
Patriot Gamer Series DDR3 4 GB 1600MHz memory on Bjorn3D.
Thursday Afternoon
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Thursday, 13-May-2010 13:41:49 (GMT +10) - by Agg
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A zillion people sent word that Portal is free until the 24th of May. "Capital news! But the excellent puzzle adventure Portal won over 40 Game of the Year awards; Surely it must cost at least five or six hundred dollars." You'd think that, especially since it actually won over 70 Game of the Year Awards. But, like we keep saying, Portal is free. Free on the Mac. Free on the PC. But only until May 24th. Ah-hah, this is just a ploy to get people to install the new Steam for Mac client. I imagine it will be very successful. :) Discussion here.
PCPerspective report on a new SandForce firmware from OCZ, which unlocks 20% more capacity. OCZ is still working out exactly how they plan to push this unit out to the masses. A few extra models with slightly tweaked product names might appear, but the cost is expected to match that of the current 100GB models, meaning the added capacity will come for free.
They also checked out quad-velociraptors vs dual-SSDs. When comparing the world of SSDs to spindle-based storage it is easy to just dismiss the SSDs due to price and capacity or to dismiss standard drives based on performance. What if you are looking for a really high end solution for something like...a video editing machine? Do arrays of either technology make a difference worth noting?
The Space Shuttle Atlantis will make its final scheduled launch on Friday. A high-pressure system continues to dominate Florida's weather pattern, resulting in favorable weather for the rest of the week. The primary launch weather concern is a low cloud ceiling, but the forecast is good overall, calling for a 70 percent chance of favorable conditions at launch time.
Meanwhile Voyager 2 has been having some issues, thanks Tzorst. Launched in 1977 on a tour of Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune, Voyager 2 is about 8.6 billion miles from Earth as it traverses the outer regions of the heliosphere, or the furthest reaches of the sun's influence. Based on its history I'm amazed it's still working at all!
Another next-gen iPhone prototype has surfaced in Vietnam, which no doubt has Apple's legal team scrambling. We've spotted a difference from this model and the unit that Gizmodo bought. Notably, the pair of screws at the bottom of the device are gone. The cleaner design could indicate a newer prototype (closer to the actual retail model) though both the iPhone 3G and 3GS went to market with a similar pair of screws.
Bill Gates meanwhile is funding a cloud whitening technology which may have an effect on climate change, thanks Dopefish. More info here. Bill Gates, the Microsoft billionaire, is funding research into machines to suck up ten tonnes of seawater every second and spray it upwards. This would seed vast banks of white clouds to reflect the Sun’s rays away from Earth.
Apparently Google have been noting Wifi info as they map out Street View data. Google Australia will today be sent a "please explain" letter from two local privacy organisations demanding to know why the company has been collecting personal Wi-Fi network data from Australian homes alongside the images it takes with its Street View cameras. Discussion here.
EA are planning to lock out multiplayer from used games. Those who purchase the game used can buy an Online Pass for $10 or sign up for a free 7-day trial. The pass will be implemented for NCAA Football 11, NHL 11, Madden NFL 11, NBA 11, FIFA 11, and EA Sports MMA as well. The pass offers different features for each title, however, players will not have access to basic multiplayer features if purchased used.
Mike sent word that Stephen Conroy has a new job. Despite delays and cost concerns over the rollout of the National Broadband Network, Senator Conroy has been appointed as a founder member of the Broadband Commission for Digital Development at the International Telecommunication Union - the UN agency for communications. I wonder if his plan for the UN will include a filtering system.
Wednesday Afternoon Reviews
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Wednesday, 12-May-2010 13:11:42 (GMT +10) - by Agg
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Video Cards:
AXLE GeForce 210 on MadShrimps.
HIS Radeon HD 5570 on iXBTLabs.
Motherboard & CPU:
CPU Round-up: Sub-$100 Intel and AMD Processors Tested on TechSpot.
Asrock 870 Extreme3 AM3 board on LegionHW.
BIOSTAR TA890GXB HD AM3 board on Motherboards.org.
AMD Athlon II X4 640 CPU on TechWareLabs.
AMD Athlon II X4 640 Socket AM3 Processor on ExtremeOC.
Biostar TA890GXE AMD 890GX AM3 board on PCStats.
Asus Rampage III Extreme LGA1366 board on KitGuru.
AMD Athlon II X4 640 on PureOC.
Audio Visual:
Arctic Sound E352 Ear Buds on Bjorn3D.
Hands-on with Sony Bravia 3D TV on Tweaktown.
Epson PowerLite Presenter Projector/DVD Player Combo on TestFreaks.
Cooling:
Thermaltake Frio CPU cooler on PureOC.
Scythe Yasya SCYS-1000 CPU Cooler on Tweaktown.
Noctua NH-C12P SE14 CPU cooler on OC3D.
Noctua NH-D14 Heatsink on ViperLair.
Zalman VF2000 LED Hybrid Cooler on HWSecrets.
Zaward Vapor 120 CPU cooler on RBMods.
Zaward Vapor 120 Heatsink on FrostyTech.
Storage:
OCZ Solid 2 Series 60GB Solid State Drive on ThinkComputers.
Intel's X25-V solid-state drive on its own and in RAID on TechReport.
Corsair Flash Voyager GTR Flash Drive on EverythingUSB.
Patriot Torqx 128GB SSD on Pro-Clockers.
Memory:
Kingston HyperX KHX11000D3K2/4G Dual Channel DDR3 on eTeknix.
Kingston HyperX LoVo on InsideHW.
Some more yummy things from our Geek Recipes forum:
AMD have launched six new Athlon II processors today, perhaps the most noteworthy being the Athlon II X4 640. It's a 3GHz 4-core CPU on the cheap, with coverage on HotHardware, LegitReviews, NeoSeeker, BenchMarkReviews, Tech Report and OCClub.
Microsoft are ending support for Win2k and Win XP SP2 on July 13th. If you're using Windows 2000, you'll need to migrate to a more recent version of Windows -- or live with the lack of support from Microsoft. Microsoft has a Windows 2000 End-of-Support Center with advice on migrating to Windows 7 (for desktops) or Windows Server 2003, 2008, or 2008 R2 (for servers). If you're using Windows XP SP2 or earlier, there's a free and easy way to continue to get Microsoft support: Simply upgrade to SP3, which you can do via Internet Explorer's Windows Update utility.
Apple have listed iPad pricing for Australia, with availability from May 28, thanks Kosta. Apple fanbois rejoice: the iPad will be available in shops from May 28 starting at $629 inc GST - about 11 percent more than its US retail price but cheaper than in some of the other eight countries where it will be released that day. Tweaktown meanwhile have a guide to getting more from your iPad using virtual servers.
TheRegister have a scathing review of the australian internet firewall process to date, thanks Simon. As if one embarrassment were not enough, at the end of April, Electronic Frontiers Australia (EFA) revealed that it had in its possession screenshots of a secret forum hosting discussions between the Department of Communications and various ISPs. Despite assurances from Conroy in December 2009 that legislation would be before the Australian parliament by March of this year, one post on the forum from mid-April acknowledged that the Department had not yet assembled even draft legislation.
Cyeca sent word that the ABC's Four Corners had a story on the filter recently which I missed, but you should be able to watch it online. MARK NEWTON, ISP NETWORK ENGINEER: The idea that the Internet is this scary place that parents don't understand, that everybody needs protection from, isn't a view that's held by most of society. What it actually is is a scary place that politicians don't understand, that politicians need protection from and that's why we're having this debate now.
Phoronix have compared Mac OS X 10.6.3 vs. Windows 7 vs. Ubuntu 10.04 performance. In the first part of that Windows 7 vs. Ubuntu Linux performance examination, we looked closely at the OpenGL gaming performance across six different systems and a whole slew of tests. More articles are on the way looking at the performance and later in the week we already delivered some initial disk benchmarks. However, now it is time to see how Microsoft Windows 7 Professional x64, Ubuntu 10.04 LTS, and Apple Mac OS X 10.6.3 compete with one another.
ArsTechnica report on serious studies of virtual worlds. When you realize that WoW has twice as many worldwide subscribers as Scotland has people, it suddenly makes more sense to spend resources trying to understand a group this large—and the federal government has been doing exactly that.
A major rebadged hardware scam has been tackled by the FBI. The FBI has announced that it has wrapped up an investigation into fake Cisco networking hardware that that resulted in 30 felony convictions and the recovery of US$143m in equipment. The investigation was into Chinese computer networking hardware that was being rebadged as Cisco equipment. To date the FBI and Customs have seized more than 94,000 counterfeit Cisco network components and labels.
Tuesday Afternoon Reviews
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Tuesday, 11-May-2010 13:21:04 (GMT +10) - by Agg
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Motherboard & CPU:
Intel Core i7 980X Extreme Edition CPU on TBreak.
Intel Core i7 980X CPU on InsideHW.
Phenom II 960T unlock to 6 core put to the test on OCWorkbench.
GIGABYTE GA-890FXA-UD7 (Rev 2.0) AM3 board on FutureLooks.
Audio Visual:
Dell SP2309W Monitor on KitGuru.
NextBase SDV1102-BY portable media center on InsideHW.
Sony Bloggie MHS-CM5 pocket camcorder on TechReviewSource.
Sound Blaster World of Warcraft Wireless Headset on HWHeaven.
Cases:
Microcool Banchetto 101 testbench case on OCOnline.
Thermaltake Element Q mITX on APHNetworks.
NZXT Crafted Series Vulcan Micro-ATX Case on LegitReviews.
Video Cards:
Sparkle Computer Corp GeForce GT240 512MB GDDR5 w/ Native HDMI Port on DragonSteelMods.
Sapphire Radeon HD 5550 Ultimate on Techgage.
Gigabyte HD5870 Super Overclock on Bjorn3D.
GTX 470 Mini Review on OC.com.
Power Supply:
Sparkle Gold Class 1250W on OCIA.
Kingwin Lazer Gold 1000W on PureOC.
Thermaltake ToughPower XT 775W on OC3D.
Cooling:
Coolit ECO A.L.C. CPU cooler on KitGuru.
Noctua NH-D14 CPU Cooler on HWLook.
Scythe Yasya CPU Cooler on Pro-Clockers.
GeForce GTX 480 liquid cooling Danger Den on Guru3D.
Thermalright Spitfire, VRM-R5 & X-Silent 140 on OCClub.
Storage:
Team Group Diamond 4GB flash drive on TechPowerUp.
OCZ Vertex 2 100GB Performance Preview on Techgage.
QNAP TS-459 Pro 4-Bay TurboNAS on Tweaktown.
Misc:
Gateway ZX4800-06 All in One Desktop Computer on Tweaktown.
TRENDnet TEW-648UB and TEW-649UB USB Wireless LAN Adapters on MadShrimps.
G.Skill ECO 4GB DDR3-1333 Memory Kit on BenchmarkReviews.
Some more interesting things from the forums:
Super-Flower SF-800 Case & Crystal Plus 600W PSU
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Monday, 10-May-2010 14:16:26 (GMT +10) - by Agg
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Sciby has emerged from the wilderness with a quick look at a case and PSU from Super Flower. The case has a huge fan on the side and the PSU has glowing modular plugs - what's not to like?
Click for the review!
Urgh, some kind of horrible flu ate my weekend.
Nokia is suing Apple for patent infringements in the iPad range. This is just the latest in a series of escalating lawsuits between the two companies regarding their respective mobile and consumer electronic devices. This lawsuit -- which unlike the others was filed in the Federal District Court in the Western District of Wisconsin -- is about technologies related to enhanced speech and data transmission.
Apparently the National Broadband Network will deliver faster and cheaper than first thought. THE Federal Government has been told the National Broadband Network can be rolled out for at least $5 billion less than the original $43 billion earmarked for the project and that it could be built without Telstra. The long-awaited implementation study into the viability of the NBN, released today, makes 84 recommendations, including that plans for it to cover 90 per cent of the population should be boosted to 93 per cent.
Mpot sent in this interactive diagram on how Facebook's attitude to privacy has changed. Wired wonder if we should be working on an open alternative. The relationship is simple: Facebook thinks that your notions of privacy — meaning your ability to control information about yourself — are just plain old-fashioned. Head honcho Zuckerberg told a live audience in January that Facebook is simply responding to changes in privacy mores, not changing them — a convenient, but frankly untrue, statement.
Here's a high-tech one-man band. What can you do when no one's got a phone to jam with you? Why, you can be a geeky one-man band, of course! Web developer Steffest (just one name, like Sting or Madonna) managed to do just that by strapping a couple of Android devices (possibly an Archos 5 and a HTC Desire), a couple of WinMo handhelds (looks like a HP iPAQ h1940 and a HTC Touch Diamond), and an iPod touch on top of a portable speaker.
Is there a technology war brewing between India and China? The Indian government has blocked local firms from buying Chinese mobile networking hardware over fears of embedded malware. The ban comes over fears that the Chinese intelligence services could be embedding malware in networking equipment and using it to monitor phone conversations and possibly bring down the network. In addition, installation and operation of the Indian mobile backbone must be carried out by local engineering according to the new rules. Thanks Kosta.
Gamepron report on R18+ video game rating support from the Australian Catholic Bishops. The Australian Catholic Bishops (ACB) state that their preferred position is that R 18+ material would not be available in Australia. However, as material is currently available despite its illegality, it would be preferable to introduce an R18+ classification category for computer games so that access to such material, particularly by children, can be restricted.
Interesting Forum Threads:
Stone Giant DX11 Showoff Thread in Video Cards & Monitors.
Death of retail photography stores in Photography.
Humanoid Aliens in Science.
Top 5 Perfect Meals in Geek Food.
Show us what you're growing at home in Other Toys.
Laptop stolen 2 years ago is sending SETI units back in Distributed Computing.
HTPC + DAC = The Future in Audio Visual.
Electric Sitar in Musicians.
Crows figure out traffic, master tool use in Science.
Saturday Night Reviews #2
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Saturday, 8-May-2010 21:59:06 (GMT +10) - by Agg
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Power Supply:
Enermax Modu87+ 500W 80Plus Gold on SilentPCReview.
SilverStone Strider Plus 750W on Pro-Clockers.
Cases:
Antec Sonata Proto on HWSecrets.
CaseAppeal AV8 Custom Computer Case on Modders-Inc.
Microcool Banchetto 101 Tech-Bench on Tweaktown.
Antec P193 Advanced Super Mid Tower on ThinkComputers.
Thermaltake Luxa2 LM200 HTPC case on TechPowerUp.
Corsair Obsidian Series 700D Full Tower on LegitReviews.
Cooler Master CM 690 II Advanced Mid-Tower on HWHeaven.
In Win Dragon Slayer on HWSecrets.
Cooler Master 690 II on InsideHW.
Memory:
Kingston HyperX LoVo 1866MHz DDR3 4GB Memory Kit on LegitReviews.
12GB Crucial DDR3 Memory Kit on BenchmarkReviews.
Gskill F3-12800Cl7T Tri channel kit on RBMods.
Portable:
Camangi WebStation tablet PC on Hi-TechReviews.
Toshiba Satellite L555D-S7930 17.3-inch Notebook on Tweaktown.
Apple iPad on KitGuru.
Input Etc:
Livescribe Pulse Smartpen on BusinessComputingWorld.
SteelSeries NP+ Rough Gaming Surface Mouse Pad on BenchmarkReviews.
Misc:
iHome iA5 App-Enhanced Alarm Clock on DigitalTrends.
ASUS MS236H Monitor on OC3D.
Saturday Night Reviews
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Saturday, 8-May-2010 20:57:54 (GMT +10) - by Agg
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Motherboard and CPU:
Athlon II X2 250u CPU and Sapphire IPC-AM3DD785G Mainboard on XbitLabs.
Gigabyte GA-H55M-USB3 and GA-H57M-USB3 MicroATX LGA1156 boards on XbitLabs.
ASUS Crosshair IV Formula AM3 board on PureOC.
AMD Phenom II X2 555 BE CPU on Bjorn3D.
ASUS Crosshair IV Extreme First Look on OC3D.
ASRock P55 Deluxe LGA1156 on PCPerpective.
Video Cards:
PowerColor RADEON HD 5870 PCS+ on LostCircuits.
Sapphire Radeon 5550 Ultimate on PureOC.
Sapphire HD5550 Ultimate on OCClub.
Gigabyte HD 5870 Super Overclock on NeoSeeker.
Gigabyte Radeon 5870 SOC edition on Guru3D.
Cooling:
Zalman CNPS10X Performa Cooler on Tweaknews.
Thermaltake Frio Heatsink on NinjaLane.
CoolIT ECO A.L.C. CPU cooler on HWHeaven.
Thermalright Ultra 120 eXtreme Rev.C CPU cooler on OCClub.
Evercool Turbo2 VGA Cooler on HWSecrets.
Zaward Vapor120 CPU Cooler on DragonSteelMods.
Audio Visual:
StarTech USB 2.0 DisplayPort KVM Switch on HWLook.
Creative World of Warcraft Headset on Tweaknews.
Storage:
A-DATA S599 SSD RAID Report - SandForce SF-1200 x2 on Tweaktown.
Sunbeamtech USB 3.0 Airbox External Enclosure on OCIA.
Patriot Zephyr 128GB JMicron Solid-State Drive on LegitReviews.
Iomega iConnect wireless USB hub on DigitalTrends.
Patriot Memory 16GB Bolt USB Flash Drive on CCEReviews.
Scythe KamaConnect Plus Muliti-Purpose HDD Adapter on Pro-Clockers.
Computer Geeks 2.5" USB 3.0 Drive Kit on OCIA.
Kingwin EZ-CONNECT USI-2535 USB HDD cable on CoD.
Hitachi CinemaStar 7K1000.C (500 GB) Hard Disk Drive on TechARP.
Thanks to Michael, Simon, mpot and Sniper this week. The last one might conceivably be NSFW. :)
     
     
     
And if you're after more, check out this Wiki page which lists ALL "misc pics" news posts from the archive.
An American gamer has won $1 million for a perfect game in Major League Baseball 2K10. The promotion certainly sparked an industry, but now the question for 2K Sports will be, was it worth it? Because insurance companies couldn't possibly come up with the odds of throwing a perfect game, 2K Sports didn't take out insurance and now will pay McGilberry a lump sum of $1 million out of its own pocket.
Oh Smeg sent in this Humble Bundle of indie games which are available DRM-free on a "you name the price" basis. That's another unusual thing about this sale: customers can choose exactly how much of their money goes where. According to Rosen, "this promo has no middle man (other than your choice of PayPal, Google, or Amazon to process the payment) and you can choose exactly where you want the donation to go. You could snub all the developers - and the EFF - and just give to Child's Play; we would still happily give you all of our games for all three platforms, DRM-free."
Google have a clever video showing how fast Chrome renders webpages. Who doesn't love a potato cannon? There's a behind the scenes video too.
Speaking of Google, their search results have a new look now. GOOGLE is taking a gamble with its first major redesign of search results in three years, which will give experienced users more control but risks baffling casual visitors. The internet giant has tweaked its search results page to reflect a greater diversity of content on the web, such as videos, shopping deals and updates on social networking sites. Can't really see how anyone would be baffled by them.
HotHardware checked out some factory overclocked Radeon HD 5870 video cards. Factory overclocked Radeon HD 5870 graphics cards from HIS, MSI, and Gigabyte have landed in our lab and its time for another round up.
News.com.au have published the results of their online piracy survey. MOST people who illegally download movies, music and TV shows would pay for them if there was a cheap and legal service as convenient as file-sharing tools like BitTorrent. That's the finding of the most comprehensive look yet at people who illegally download TV shows, movies and music in Australia, conducted by news.com.au and market research firm CoreData.
XbitLabs rounded up some 500GB HDDs. Far not everyone out there needs enormous hard disk drives. Many users out there feel quite happy with smaller HDDs for their systems storing most of their data on external media. And quite a few users do not really have that much data to store anyway. We hope our roundup of 3.5-inch 500 GB HDDs will be helpful for these particular users. Heh, 500GB drives are "smaller HDDs" now. Crazy.
Kosta spotted some hidden features in the HTC Desire smartphone. After some tinkering, HTC Desire owners have found they can copy installation files from Android phones sold in the USA onto their HTC Desire with relative ease, thereby enabling Voice Dictation, Turn by Turn GPS navigation and installing Google Earth for Android - all of which are not officially available for download within Australia at present.
So, the Air Force Cyberspace Command has a new badge. The new badge is equal in precedence to the Aeronautical and Space Badges. Those awarded multiples of the Cyberspace, Aeronautical and Space Badges must wear the Cyberspace Badge above the others while serving in a cyberspace billet. Wow, I would have killed for something that cool-sounding when I was 14. :)
Interesting Forum Threads
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Thursday, 6-May-2010 14:05:42 (GMT +10) - by Agg
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Here's a catch-up of what's going on in some of the forums. You can also find new interesting things you might have missed via the Who's Online page, the New Posts page and the Live forum view. Also try the Today's Posts link (find it on the Quick Links menu) and the handy Who Quoted Me? feature.
SSD Roundup - Corsair X vs G.Skill Falcon II vs OCZ Vertex in Storage & Backup.
Long-term Storage Options in Storage & Backup.
Where are the 3TB HDDs? in Storage and Backup.
Toolfree motherboard mounting? in Modding.
AMD PHENOM II X6 OVERCLOCKING and RANKING THREAD in AMD Hardware.
Sparkfun got lumbered with counterfeit ATmega328s in Electronics.
Very interesting article on hacking (literally) PIC microprocessors in Electronics.
I feel as if I'm getting 'too old' for I.T? Or is it just normal? in Business & Enterprise Computing.
Travelling to China in Business & Enterprise Computing.
McAfee EPO Admins - Update 5958 nails svchost.exe in Business & Enterprise Computing.
Enthusiasts; Convince me! in PC Audio.
Music player for windows that handles 60000+ songs in PC Audio.
Be alert but not alarmed, DNSSEC rollout completes 6am tomorrow! in Networking, Telephony & Internet.
download interception in Networking, Telephony & Internet.
Skyrocketing complaints spark telco inquiry in Networking, Telephony & Internet.
ATI Catalyst 10.4 Software Suite Available Now in Video Cards & Monitors.
EVGA, k|ngp|n and Shamino Break World Records with Four GTX 480, Classified SR-2 in Video Cards & Monitors.
BrewMate, Free Beer Recipe Designer! in Geek Grog & Homebrew.
Red Bull Air Race - nice and personal, lots of pics in Motoring.
Hot new Golf R spotted - with video in Motoring.
Designing a supercar in Motoring.
The Folding@Home Chimp Challenge is underway! More info here.
Intel have demonstrated Light Peak on a laptop. According to Justin Rattner, Intel's CTO, the current 10Gb / second speeds are just the beginning. "We expect to increase that speed dramatically. You'll see multiple displays being served by a single Light Peak connection. There's almost no limit to the bandwidth -- fibers can carry trillions of bits per second."
It seems nVidia have dropped support for stand-alone PhysX hardware in their drivers. The current PhysX driver unfortunately does not support Aegia PPU hardware which you're already aware. Support for Aegia PPU ended after the 8.xx.xx driver but like you we've receive other users asking to include support in current PhysX releases. There are discussions to release a stand-along PhysX driver that will support Aegia PPU but that is still in discussion and I'm unable to get any confirmation or schedule.
Kosta noticed that Mechwarrior 4: Mercenaries can be had for free. Studio MekTek, in association with Smith and Tinker, INC., Virtual World Entertainment, LLC, Catalyst Game Labs, and Microsoft Games, is happy to announce the release of Mechwarrior4 Free. Getting started is easy. Just download and install MTX, MekTek's free content delivery and updating system. Once installed, simply click the Games Available tab, select Mechwarrior4: Mercenaries and click install. The game will download and install, all within MTX, and as updates become available, MTX will help you keep your game up to date.
More from Kosta, with Senator Conroy saying the internet filter will be reviewed at 10,000 URLs. While Conroy did not reveal the cost of the review, each item of online content that was referred to ACMA cost the agency between $173 and $685 to investigate and classify last year. However, bypassing the mandatory filter is apparently fine. Although Enex expected "technically competent" users to be able to circumvent the filter, Conroy said monitoring circumvention attempts would not be required by the Government.
Intel have unveiled their Moorestown platform, which is the new Atom processor and associated gubbins. Coverage on HotHardware and Tech Report. It's the new Z-Series that is the foundation of the Moorestown platform, and its intended for smartphones. Unlike previous Atom iterations, however, which were designed to scale down into different market segment, Intel designed the Z-Series with smartphones in mind specifically, but obviously the platform can be scaled up into different market segments.
I don't know if this is me specifically or if other people will be in the same boat, but anyway, I got a reminder to re-register for the Do Not Call list. You can register up to three telephone numbers used primarily for private or domestic purposes. It still doesn't appear to apply to faxes though, if the discount-holiday-spamming jerks are anything to go by.
Sniper spotted this impressive video about the next stage of the Apple vs PC war. :)
Thursday Morning Reviews
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Thursday, 6-May-2010 01:53:25 (GMT +10) - by Agg
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Motherboard & CPU:
Gigabyte 890GPA-UD3H AM3 board on LegionHW.
ASRock 890GX Extreme3 AM3 board on MadShrimps.
ASUS Z8PE-D12 Server Motherboard on Motherboards.
Asrock 890GX Extreme3 Socket AM3 on Pro-Clockers.
Storage:
Thecus N4200 4-Bay NAS Server on Tweaktown.
QNAP TS-259 Pro Turbo NAS Server on BenchmarkReviews.
Kingston SSDNow V Series SNV425 128GB on Techgage.
Cases:
Dimastech Test Bench Table Easy V2.5 on PCPerspective.
NZXT Cases Storming In: Lexa S & Gamma on InsideHW.
DimasTech Bench Test/Table Easy V2.5 on OCClub.
Video Cards:
HIS Radeon 5850 iCooler V Turbo on Guru3D.
AMD Radeon HD 4290 On Linux onboard graphics on Phoronix.
Cooling:
Battle of the Titan Water Blocks on Bjorn3D.
Core i7 CPU Water Block Roundup on PureOC.
AeroCool V12XT Touch LCD Fan Controller on ThinkComputers.
Scythe Samurai ZZ CPU Cooler on Tweaktown.
Misc:
Microsoft Docs.com online office suite on TechReviewSource.
Arctic Sound E352 earphones on XSReviews.
Nexus RX-1.1K PSU on RBMods.
Dell Adamo XPS Laptop on HWHeaven.
STUdog posted about a home-built server project he and a mate have recently completed. Four PSUs powering up to SIXTY hard drives?!
Click for the thread!
Wednesday Midday Reviews
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Wednesday, 5-May-2010 12:34:14 (GMT +10) - by Agg
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Power Supply:
Thermaltake Purepower 500W on HWSecrets.
Sparkle 1250 Watt Modular on TechWareLabs.
Sparkle Computer Corp 80Plus 1250W on DragonSteelMods.
Audio Visual:
Compro IP-70 IP Security Camera on Pro-Clockers.
Boston Acoustics Tvee Model 20 soundbar on DigitalTrends.
Altec Lansing Expressionist Ultra 2.1 Speakers on PureOC.
Halo Headphones in a Headband on Tweaktown.
Canon VIXIA HF R10 Camcorder on TestFreaks.
Arctic Cooling E352 earphones on TechPowerUp.
Cooling:
CoolIT ECO A.L.C. CPU Water Cooler on LegitReviews.
Thermaltake Frio Heatpipe CPU Cooler on BigBruin.
Cogage Arrow CPU Cooler on Pro-Clockers.
CoolIT Systems ECO A.L.C. CPU Cooler on FutureLooks.
Input Etc:
Logitech G500 Gaming Mouse on APHNetworks.
Roccat Arvo and Apuri keyboard and mouse bungee on OC3D.
Video Cards:
ASUS EAH5850 DirectCu Top/2DIS/1GD5 Radeon HD 5850 on PCStats.
HIS HD 5830 iCooler V Turbo on OCOnline.
A few interesting things from the forums:
Tuesday Evening Reviews
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Tuesday, 4-May-2010 20:07:42 (GMT +10) - by Agg
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Power Supply:
Sparkle Gold Class 1250W Modular on ThinkComputers.
Huntkey Jumper 550W on HWSecrets.
NesteQ ASM Xzero 600W on HWHeaven.
Cases:
NZXT Gamma on XSReviews.
Corsair Obsidian 700D Full Tower on Tweaktown.
In Win IronClad on OCClub.
Portable:
Toshiba Satellite T135D-S1324 Ultra-Portable Notebook on HotHardware.
Acer Ferrari One 200 on PCPerspective.
Storage:
Synology DS410j NAS Network Storage Server on HWLook.
A-DATA AS592S-32GM-C 32GB SSD on Motherboards.org.
Two 3.5" USB 3.0 Hard Drive Enclosures on BonaFideReviews.
SandForce SF1200 RAID-0 SSD Performance on BenchmarkReviews.
Here's some more yummy stuff from our Geek Food forum:
Remember to keep an eye on our Sponsor Specials Forum if you're shopping around. In there our various sponsors have specials and info on geology & camping supplies, fitness supplements, media players, camera bags, hard drives, cooling gear, bedding and mattresses, video cards, office chairs, internet access and a range of other goodies. Worth a look!
A few people sent word of an issue with Ubuntu 10.04 LTS. Bug #570765 came up earlier this week and it's bringing up the fact that when installing Ubuntu 10.04 LTS on a system with another operating system present, GRUB2 will not show the other operating system once installed for the dual/multi-boot system. It doesn't matter whether the other operating system is Microsoft Windows or another Linux installation, but the GRUB2 boot-loader doesn't offer you the option to boot that OS, just Ubuntu.
Paul meanwhile sent in this post-installation guide for Ubuntu 10.04. The new version loads faster than Ubuntu 9.10 Karmic Koala, is more social, allows you to easily manage and edit your photos, videos and documents and of course has a lot of bug fixes and software updates. This Post Installation Guide of Lucid Lynx deals with the necessary and essential tools that must be loaded after the installation for a power user.
If your internet connection flakes out on May 5th, it could be because of DNSSEC, thanks Shawn. On May 5, the world's top domain authorities (led by ICANN, the US Government and Verisign) will complete the first phase of the roll-out of DNSSEC (Domain Name System Security Extensions) across the 13 root servers that direct user requests to the relevant websites on the internet.
From Tzortst, a cheesy video from the 80's saying hacking is easy!
NEC have a new cooling technology. Taking a page from conventional refrigeration techniques, NEC has developed a new cooling system the company claims uses 60 percent less energy than a water cooling loop, and up to 80 percent less than an air cooling system. The description doesn't sound too different to existing heatpipe technology to me.
Asteroid noticed that there's an update to AmigaOS 4.1 available! Seems to be some newish mini Amiga motherboards and things I hadn't noticed before.. interesting.
TechRadar have videos of 10 tech demos going wrong, but they seem to have missed that some of them are fake videos. :)
Tedric sent a reminder about Zero Punctuation, in case you haven't visited there in a while or haven't heard of it. If fast-talking game review videos dripping with sarcasm are your thing, prepare for a major productivity loss.
Virgin Blue are getting into the whole Avatar thing by painting a plane and their crewmembers, and their passengers, in blue, thanks Morsolo. Virgin Blue decided to celebrate Avatar's release down under by painting an entire Boeing 737 in partial Avatar promo colours, along with painting its entire crew, staff and PASSENGERS too. All passengers on the flight were winners of a previous Avatar-related competition Virgin held; and they all got free, professional make up done to look like Na'vi... Promotion at its finest. More photos on Facebook here.
Monday Night Reviews
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Monday, 3-May-2010 23:14:37 (GMT +10) - by Agg
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Motherboard & CPU:
ASUS P6X58D Premium on Techgage.
AMD Phenom II X6 1090T on VR-Zone.
Audio Visual:
23" HP De-Branded HDMI 1080p LCD Monitor w/Speakers on iGadgetLife.
Auzentech X-Fi Bravura sound card on APHNetworks.
Cases:
Microcool Banchetto 101 on ViperLair.
Silverstone Fortress Series FT02 on Bjorm3D.
Storage:
NZXT IU01 USB 2.0 Internal Expansion Hub on LegitReviews.
Clickfree C2N Automatic Home Network Backup on TestFreaks.
OCZ Technology Solid 2 Solid State Drive on OCIA.
OWC Mercury Extreme SandForce SF-1200 100GB SSD on Tweaktown.
Storage device showdown: Kingston SSDNow V Series on VR-Zone.
OCZ Vertex 2 SSD on Guru3D.
Cooling:
Luxa2 M1-Pro Laptop cooler on RBMods.
EKWB FC-5870 GPU Water Block on PureOC.
Coolink Corator DS CPU cooler on OCClub.
Misc:
ASUS RT-N16 Wireless-N Gigabit Router on BenchmarkReviews.
Speck PortPack Notebook Shoulder Bag on ThinkComputers.
PowerColor HD 5770 PCS++ 1024M video card on TechPowerUp.
Kingston Hyper X 2000MHz memory on OC3D.
Microsoft Bluetooth Mobile Keyboard 6000 on HWPacers.
Diskeeper 2010 Professional Edition on DragonSteelMods.
Belkin Play Max 802.11n wireless router on TechReviewSource.
ZOTAC ZBOX HD-ID11-U Nettop Quick Look and Undressing Video on Tweaktown.
While some may not believe in the Folding@Home cause or can't dedicate PC's to folding 24/7 which is understandable, I ask YOU to at least help out during this Chimp Challenge and show that team spirit OCAU is renowned for.
We are competing against teams from the USA, Great Britain and even Russia. If you won't do it for folding, and not for OCAU, do it for Australia! Lets show them what we're capable of!
After we reach a goal of 20 million points, you can choose to continue folding under your own name and help the Folding@home cause, or stop folding after you're finished helping us win this year's Chimp Challenge.
So if you can spare a CPU, GPU or Playstation 3 for the challenge, please check this thread for the official details and links to the appropriate clients. You'll also find a few handy setup guides located in the Distributed Computing section and lots of friendly people, happy to help regarding any issues or questions.
Want to start straight away? Then just click the CPU or GPU links below to download the client you want. Insert the username as Monkey_Bollocks and team as 24, and away you go.
 
Good luck to all the teams participating in this year's Chimp Challenge!
Photography Gallery
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Sunday, 2-May-2010 16:31:09 (GMT +10) - by Agg
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Here's some recent photos from our Photography Gallery forum. The last one isn't for the squeamish. :)
The R18+ games petition to Australia's Attorney-Generals has broken records for the number of signatories. The previous record was set by a petition against WorkChoices in 2005 which attracted 85,000 signatures. As of yesterday, more than 89,000 people had signed the R18+ video game petition. It opened eight weeks ago.
Australia's Attorney-General has announced Australia will join an International Cybercrime Convention. The Convention promotes a coordinated approach to cybercrime by requiring countries to criminalise four types of offences, including: 1. offences against the confidentiality, integrity and availability of computer data and systems, including illegal access to computer systems, illegal interception, data interference, systems interference and the misuse of devices; 2. computer-related offences, including forgery and fraud; 3. content-related offences, including child pornography; and 4. offences related to the infringement of copyright and other related rights.
Wired have found and interviewed the iPhone 4 prototype's finder, who sold it on to Gizmodo. "He regrets his mistake in not doing more to return the phone," said attorney Jeffrey Bornstein in a statement. "Even though he did obtain some compensation from Gizmodo, Brian thought that it was so that they could review the phone."
Karlston spotted an Australian liquor price comparison engine incurring the wrath of Google. Groggle Pty Ltd is a startup based in Brisbane founded by Cameron Collie and Alec Doughty and is planning to offer a location-driven alcohol price comparison service online. Currently in beta, the Groggle project is over two years in the making and the founders had hoped to launch in a few months, with a look at launching a similar website in the US within the year.
The student who accessed and publicised Sarah Palin's email has been found guilty. After four days of deliberations, a federal jury found David Kernell, the 22-year-old son of a Democratic Tennessee state legislator, guilty of obstruction of justice, a felony, and unauthorized access of a computer, a misdemeanor.
Microsoft has cancelled their Courier Tablet project. It appeared from the leaked information last year that a Courier prototype was probably near to completion. The combination of both touch- and pen-based computing was compelling. Perhaps the strong launch of Apple's iPad, currently the only available "mobile tablet" from a major vendor, caused Ballmer to reassess the commitment of Microsoft in a soon-to-be-crowded market.
Kosta reports that the Australian internet filter debate has been delayed beyond June. The Australian reported earlier today that a spokeswoman for Communications Minister Stephen Conroy had said the legislation "would not be introduced [in] next month's or the June sittings of parliament." A spokeswoman for Conroy confirmed with iTnews that introduction of the legislation is "unlikely during the May sitting" - being that it is Federal Budget week.
Check out this perching drone which can hang on a wall for surveillance. "They communicate as they search for places to land, not on streets or rooftops but on the sides of buildings and under the eaves, where they can cling, bat- or insect-like, in relative safety and obscurity," they wrote.
IKT sends word that Ubuntu 10.04 LTS has been released: Announcement here, Press release here, Overview here, Forum thread here. Download: Official here, Internode Mirror here. There is also an ubuntu manual here. Getting Started with Ubuntu 10.04 is a comprehensive beginners guide for the Ubuntu operating system. It is written under an open source license and is free for you to download, read, modify and share.
Michael sent in this two part high-def video worklog of "Black Dwarf", a scratch-built machine with 14TB in RAID. Here's part 1 and Part 2. Impressive workmanship and filming. All those metal filings near the HDDs and mobo are a worry tho, hrm.
Sunday Morning Reviews
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Sunday, 2-May-2010 01:12:30 (GMT +10) - by Agg
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Portable:
Apple iPad Tablet on HWSecrets.
Apple's iPad: Not A Smartphone, Not a Netbook on HotHardware.
HP Mini Executive 5102 Netbook on TestFreaks.
HTC Incredible vs. HTC HD2 smartphones on DigitalTrends.
HTC Droid Incredible smartphone on DigitalTrends.
Storage:
Western Digital SiliconEdge Blue 256 GB Solid State Drive on TechARP.
Super Talent SuperCrypt USB 3.0 32GB Thumb Drive on PCPerspective.
OCZ Vertex 2 100GB SSD on TechSpot.
HP StorageWorks Ultrium 3000 SAS Tape Drive on BusinessComputing.
QNAP TS-459 Pro NAS on PCReview.
Intel X25-M G2 80GB Solid State Drive on ITShootOut.
Software:
Metro 2033 (PC) on YouGamers.
Adobe Photoshop CS5 Free Trial on NGOHQ.
Motherboard & CPU:
Asus, Gigabyte, and MSI tackle AMD's 890FX chipset on TechReport.
AMD Phenom II X6 "Thuban" 1090T 6-core Black Edition Processor on FutureLooks.
ASRock 890GX Extreme3 AM3 board on LegitReviews.
AMD Phenom II X6 1090T BE on InsideHW.
ASUS P7P55 WS SuperComputer (P55 Express) LGA1156 board on Tweaktown.
AMD Athlon II X3 425 on Linux on Phoronix.
Asrock X58 Extreme3 Socket 1366 on Pro-Clockers.
ASUS Crosshair IV Formula AM3 board on HWSecrets.
Power Supply:
Be Quiet Dark Power Pro P8 1000W on OC3D.
Thermaltake Toughpower XT 775W on HWHeaven.
Thermaltake Toughpower XT 775W on OCIA.
Misc:
SteelSeries 4HD Gaming Surface Mouse Pad on BenchmarkReviews.
Fractal Design Define R2 on TechPowerUp.
Saturday Afternoon Reviews
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Saturday, 1-May-2010 17:30:08 (GMT +10) - by Agg
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Audio Visual:
ASUS Cine5 Compact Speaker on HWHeaven.
Nikon Coolpix S8000 digicam on DigitalTrends.
Samsung SyncMaster P2770HD monitor on DigitalTrends.
Samsung CLP-770ND Color Laser Printer on CCEReviews.
21.5-inch Samsung SyncMaster 2233SW DVI Widescreen LCD Monitor on BonaFideReviews.
HornetTek Phantom: 2.5" Multimedia Player on Bjorn3D.
Sennheiser PC 360 G4ME Headset on HWHeaven.
Olympus PEN E-PL1 digicam on DigitalTrends.
Cooling:
Corsair Hydro Series H50 CPU Cooler on Tweaktown.
Noctua NH-D14 Heatsink on NinjaLane.
Zalman ZM-MFC1 Combo Fan Controller on HWSecrets.
Low Noise Socket 1156 Heatpipe Cooler Shootout on BigBruin.
CoolIT ECO Liquid Cooling System on HWSecrets.
Memory:
G.Skill ECO 4GB DDR3 1600MHz CL7 Low Voltage Memory Kit on LegitReviews.
G.Skill PIS Series DDR3-2400 4GB Dual Channel Memory Kit on ThinkComputers.
Kingmax PC3-12800 (1600MHz) 6GB Kit on Tweaktown.
Video Cards:
GeForce GTX 480 3-way SLI on Guru3D.
MSI R5670 Cyclone 1G on OCIA.
Asus ENGTX-470 Voltage Tweak Edition on Bjorn3D.
Sapphire Radeon HD 5970 TOXIC Overclocked with GTX 480 PhysX on Tweaktown.
NVIDIA GeForce GTX 470 Overclocking with Voltage Adjustment on Tweaktown.
ASUS GeForce GTX 480 on PureOC.
Saturday Morning
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Saturday, 1-May-2010 03:00:20 (GMT +10) - by Agg
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AMD have an interesting video (and apparently a live streaming thing starting soon) of using not just liquid nitrogen, but also 500 litres of liquid helium to push a Phenom II X4 to 6.5GHz, breaking various world overclocking records.
I guess that overshadows this recent effort, but it's still an interesing read with lots of photos. Peter "Shamino" Tan met up with Vince "k|ngp|n" Lucido in Detroit for some extreme benchmarks, here are the fruits of their labor, new world records for all levels of 3DMark Vantage!
Terry Childs, the sysadmin who was widely reported as "taking a network hostage" by refusing to disclose passwords, has been found guilty, thanks depresso. More here. Was he insubordinate? Yes. A bit of a control freak? Probably. Did he deserve a $5 million bail reserved for the most dangerous of criminals in society for not giving over passwords for 12 days? Probably not. The man has been sitting in jail for two years and could now get another three... That is a very loud message in a technology-centric city that employs a ton of technology workers in the Bay Area.
A scientific balloon launch has gone wrong in Alice Springs, destroying its payload and a nearby car. There's a video on that page.
Jonsey32 spotted this clean internet video which unfortunately is so clever I think a lot of people won't spot the sarcasm. Cleanternet is a campaign to support European Commissioner Cecilia Malmström in her plans to introduce a website blocking system in Europe. All European countries must be forced to fight for a cleaner and safer Internet.
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