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December 2010 |
It's good that New Years Eve is on a Friday.. makes me think that 2011 will be like one long weekend? :) Maybe not. But thanks to Shawn, Marty and Timbot this week, and thanks to you all for a great year! See you in 2011.
     
     
     
     
And if you're after more, check out this Wiki page which lists ALL "misc pics" news posts from the archive.
Looks like Vodafone is in hot water this holiday season, with Australian law firm Piper Alderman calling for angry customers to register their interest in participating in a class action law suit against Vodafone, following the mobile telco’s recent spate of outages and technical glitches.
SemiAccurate have a sneak peak at MSI's upcoming GeForce GTX 580 and Radeon HD 6970 Lightning video cards. Both boards use a much larger PCB than you normally get on a graphics card, akin to the N480GTX Lightning, but MSI has come up with a new cooling solution called Twin Frozr III which aesthetically looks much better than the older card.
X-bit Labs preview Intel's Sandy Bridge microarchitecture. In a few weeks we will start posting reviews of Intel processors based on the new Sandy Bridge microarchitecture. But while we are still bound by the NDA, we decided to sum up all the information we know about these promising new products, which doesn’t fall under the NDA.
For AMD Radeon HD 6950 users that may have missed it, your AMD Radeon HD 6950 can be unlocked to HD 6970 with only a few easy steps. Looks like Santa brought an extra present for us hardware enthusiasts this year. Thanks to a less secure locking method AMD's new Radeon HD 6950 can be unlocked to a full blown HD 6970 with a few mouse clicks.
HardwareCanucks review Western Digital's Caviar Green 3TB hard drive. This combination of size and a low price per GB is why Western Digital’s Green line has been so popular. The latest addition to this product range pushes things to the next level. With a massive amount of capacity on tap, the new Green 3TB seems to fit the bill perfectly but with increased space comes a unique set of challenges as well.
IBM has announced its fifth annual Next Five in Five – a list of five technologies that the company believes that have the potential to change the way people work, live and play over the next five years.
Tom's Hardware round-up twelve of the latest gamer-centric power supplies. Gamers demand a lot from their computers, starting with the PSU. Therefore, almost every PSU manufacturer sells products optimised for gaming PCs. We introduce ripple and noise testing in this round-up to further improve our power supply evaluations.
They also take a look at Thermalright's Shaman VGA cooler. Thermalright's Shaman is the largest VGA cooler we've ever seen. Having recently reviewed three competing aftermarket graphics cooling solutions, we're eager to find out if size really matters when it comes to overclocking the ultra-hot GeForce GTX 480.
Wednesday Afternoon Reviews
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Wednesday, 29-December-2010 15:26:07 (GMT +10) - by Agg
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Cooling:
Vantage Advanced Liquid Cooling by CoolIT Systems on Bjorn3D.
Thermalright Silver Arrow heatsink on Frostytech.
Corsair A70 CPU Cooler on Tweaknews.
Deepcool Ice Matrix 600 heatsink on OCClub.
Sunbeamtech Twister 120 Heatsink on Frostytech.
Cooler Master Storm SF-19 Notebook Cooler on Virtual-Hideout.
Coolage X120TF Heatsink on FrostyTech.
Video Cards:
ATI Radeon 6870 on RBMods.
Sapphire HD 6850 1GB on XSReviews.
ZOTAC GeForce GTX 580 1546MB on FutureLooks.
AMD Radeon HD 6950 on TechSpot.
ASUS EAH6970 2GB on Vortez.
AMD Radeon HD 6950 & HD 6970 CrossFireX on Techgage.
Nvidia GeForce GTX 460 768 MB on XbitLabs.
NVIDIA GT 430 on MissingRemote.
Storage:
OCZ Technology 120GB Vertex 2 3.5" SSD on OCIA.
Akasa noir S 2.5" USB 3.0 enclosure on TechPowerUp.
IcyDock MB973SP-B Tray-less 3-Bay SATA Hard Drive Bay Module on PCStats.
Zalman S Series 128GB SSD on OCClub.
Silverstone FP36 USB 3.0 kit on TechReaction.
OCZ Technology Vertex 2 3.5-inch 120GB Solid State Drive on Tweaktown.
Western Digital SiliconEdge Blue 256GB Solid State Drive on ThinkComputers.
Kingston HyperX MAX USB 3.0 128GB External SSD on LegitReviews.
Motherboard & CPU:
Intel Core i5 Processor Series on iXBTLabs.
GIGABYTE GA-P67A-UD4 LGA1155 board on Bjorn3D.
ECS P67H2-A Black Extreme LGA1155 on LegitReviews.
Foxconn P67A-S Sandy Bridge LGA1155 on Vortez.
Gigabyte H55N-USB3 LGA1156 board on HWSecrets.
Biostar TH67XE LGA1155 board on HWSecrets.
ASUS M4A88TD-M/USB3 AMD 880G mATX on ThinkComputers.
Gigabyte GA-H55N-USB3 Mini-ITX on OCIA.
ECS H55H-I Mini-ITX LGA1156 on XbitLabs.
AMD 1100T BE & 1075T & X4 970BE on Metku.
Audio Visual:
Edifier MP250 USB Laptop/Computer Speakers on TechWareLabs.
ASUS Xonar Xense PCI-E Sound Card Kit on BenchmarkReviews.
Arctic Sound E361-BM earbuds on TechReaction.
EMP Tek Impression Series E55Ti speakers DigitalTrends.
Denon Mobile Elite AH-C560R In-Ear Headphones on TestFreaks.
NEC MultiSync EX231W 23 Inch LED LCD Monitor on FutureLooks.
GlideTV Navigator HTPC Remote on LegitReviews.
V-moda Remix Remote iPhone Earbuds on Virtual-Hideout.
Sound Blaster X-Fi Titanium HD on Guru3D.
Arctic Cooling P531 Headphones on ViperLair.
Canon VIXIA HF S21 camcorder on TechReviewSource.
Nanovision MIMO UM740 - 7" touchscreen USB monitor on FunkyKit.
Western Digital WD TV Live Hub on HotHardware.
dBLogic Headphones on TestFreaks.
Portable & Prebuilt:
Asus EeeBox PC EB1501P on HotHardware.
Acer Aspire 7551G Laptop on LegitReviews.
ViewSonic ViewPad 7 Tablet PC on HotHardware.
Sony VAIO VPCZ137GX/S on TechReviewSource.
Acer Aspire 5551G-4591 15.6-in AMD Turion II Notebook on PCPerspective.
ARCTIC NC laptop cooler on TechReaction.
Apple MacBook Air 11" on TBreak.
Samsung RF510-S01 notebook on TechReviewSource.
Input Etc:
Thermaltake Tt eSPORTS Challenger Pro Gaming Keyboard on ThinkComputers.
Swiftpoint Mouse on MadShrimps.
Logitech K800 Keyboard on HWSecrets.
Zowie EC1 Mouse on HWSecrets.
Penguin United Eagle Eye Converter 2.0 console controller adapter on BenchmarkReviews.
GIGABYTE Aivia K8100 keyboard on Bjorn3D.
Memory:
Corsair Vengeance 8gb (2X4 GB) PC3-12800 Cas9 on OCClub.
OCZ Technology 4GB PC3-12800 Reaper ULV Dual Channel Kit on BigBruin.
Cases:
Antec DF-85 and Corsair 600T: First System Cases with USB 3.0 Ports on XbitLabs.
Lian Li PC-T60 Test Bench on PureOC.
Thermaltake Lanbox-Lite on TechWareLabs.
NZXT Hades MidTower on DragonSteelMods.
In-Win Dragon Rider on TechReaction.
Misc:
Ultra LSX 750 Power Supply on HWSecrets.
Aerocool Strike-X Front Panel Display on Pro-Clockers.
NZXT Sleeved LED Kit on APHNetworks.
NZXT Sleeved LED Kit on OCOnline.
mpot sent in this amusing video where a geek got his computer back two years after it was stolen, thanks to his own poor security. Normally we advise you to secure your computer to prevent people from accessing it remotely. After all, you don't want them to see what you're doing, accessing your files or installing keylogging malware. But maybe things are different if it's your computer you're trying to break into - two years after it was stolen from your apartment.
Rezin spotted a look at the National Tally Room in 1983, including the technology used for ABC's election coverage. In 1983 there were no computers on desks, you needed to read the tallyboard to know what was going on. There were no mobile phones either. Behind the tallyboard the numbers were put up, and carbon copies of the totals were also provided to a team of ABC data entry operators. It was these data entry operators that provided the numbers that drove the election coverage.
Tesladownunder has been busy over Christmas, thanks petercr. Terren's Christmas projects are some of his favourites - last year he created a nine-metre high Christmas tree using lightning-like sparks from a tesla coil and long-exposure photography; this year he's strapped a Christmas tree to a bicycle with a front light that is so powerful it could be seen from the International Space Station with the same intensity as a bright star (when pointed at the sky).
There's a huge new telescope under the South Pole. The massive telescope, which is the size of a cubic kilometer and located 1400 meters underground, took a decade to build and cost approximately $271 million. Oh, and if you lined up the world's three tallest skyscrapers, their collective height would be shorter than this telescope.
The ACCC have declared those hologram wrist-band things to be bogus, to nobody's surprise. Power Balance has admitted that there is no credible scientific basis for the claims and therefore no reasonable grounds for making representations about the benefits of the product. Power Balance has acknowledged that its conduct may have contravened the misleading and deceptive conduct section of the Trade Practices Act 1974. More here, here and here.
Microsoft are offering $10,000 for a better spell-checker. Microsoft Research and Bing are sponsoring a contest called the Speller Challenge. The goal: create a spell checker that delivers "the most plausible spelling alternatives for each search query" and deliver the service over a RESTful API. The first prize is $10,000. Registration opens on January 17th 2011. Sounds graet!
Apparently a prequel is planned for the film Alien, with Ridely Scott and H. R. Giger already onboard. The new prequel, apparently titled Alien Paradise, focuses strongly on the 'space jockey' race featured in one famous and rather archeological sequence from Ridley Scott's SF horror masterpiece.
Monday Afternoon Reviews
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Monday, 27-December-2010 15:56:36 (GMT +10) - by Agg
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Input Etc:
ARCTIC M551 Gaming Mouse on TechReaction.
Qpad 5K Pro Gaming Laser Mouse on eTeknix.
QPad HeatoN Gaming Mouse Pad on FunkyKit.
Audio Visual:
Creative Tactic3D Sigma Gaming Headphones on TBreak.
Canon PowerShot SD1400 IS on TechReviewSource.
MP4Nation Brainwavz M2 In-ears headphones on TechPowerUp.
Roku XD|S Digital Video Player on MissingRemote.
Denon AH-D510R Over-Ear Headphones on TestFreaks.
Creative Sound Blaster X-Fi Titanium HD Sound Card on HWHeaven.
Corsair HS1 and Sharkoon XStatic SP headphones on Guru3D.
QNAP NMP-1000P Media Player on MissingRemote.
Cooling:
Xigmatek HDT-S963F CPU cooler on eTeknix.
Zalman CNPS9900 Max Heatsink on FrostyTech.
Titan Hati TTC-NC15TZ/KU(RB) CPU Cooler on Tweaktown.
Swiftech H2O-320 Edge Water Cooling Kit on PureOC.
Motherboard & CPU:
Intel LGA 1156 Motherboard 6-Way Roundup on NeoSeeker.
Foxconn P67A-S Intel P67 on TechPowerUp.
ASUS Rampage III Formula LGA1366 board on OCClub.
Cases:
BitFenix Colossus Venom Edition on Vortez.
Danger Den Black Series Tower 21 on PCPerspective.
Cooler Master HAF X Full-Tower on TweakNews.
SilverStone SG05-450 SFF Chassis on OCIA.
In Win Track mid-tower on HWSecrets.
Super Talent USB 3.0 Express RAM Cache 32GB on TechWareLabs.
Lian-Li PC-Q08B Aluminum Mini Tower on BenchmarkReviews.
Video Cards:
Gigabyte GeForce GTX 480 Super Over Clock on BenchmarkReviews.
MSI Radeon 6850 Cyclone Power on Guru3D.
Diamond Radeon HD 6970 XOC 2GB on Tweaktown.
MSI N480GTX Lightning on TechReaction.
Gainward GeForce GTX 570 GLH Golden Sample on HWHeaven.
Sapphire Radeon HD 6950 2GB on ThinkComputers.
Power Supply:
Cougar A450 on RBMods.
Adata HM 850W on FunkyKit.
SilverStone 850 Watt Strider Gold on Pro-Clockers.
Portable & Prebuilt:
Skooba Design Techlife Netbook Messenger bag on OCOnline.
HP Pavilion Elite HPE-430me PC on TBreak.
Asus N53JF-XE1 notebook on TechReviewSource.
HP Photosmart eStation C510 on TechReviewSource.
Some recent photos from our Photography Gallery forum:
You didn't think I'd leave you hanging just because it's Xmas Eve, did you? :)
     
     
     
     
And if you're after more, check out this Wiki page which lists ALL "misc pics" news posts from the archive.
Friday Morning Reviews
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Friday, 24-December-2010 02:09:21 (GMT +10) - by Agg
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Cooling:
Deepcool Ice Matrix 400 CPU cooler on OCClub.
GELID Tranquillo CPU Cooler on PureOC.
Thermalright Shaman 140mm Fan GPU Cooler on SilentPCReview.
Akasa Venom CPU cooler on TechPowerUp.
Input Etc:
Das Keyboard Model S Professional on ReviewStash.
Mad Catz Call of Duty: Black Ops PrecisionAIM Controller on GamingNexus.
Motherboard & CPU:
MSI P67A-GD65 Sandy bridge mobo preview on Guru3D.
Gigabyte X58-USB3 LGA1366 board on NeoSeeker.
Portable & Prebuilt:
Dell Vostro V130 laptop on BusinessComputingWorld.
Creative ZiiO Tablets and Zen Touch 2 hands on on TBreak.
Lenovo ThinkPad T410s with NVIDIA Optimus on HotHardware.
Storage:
Kingston SSDNow V100 on Bjorn3D.
Seagate FreeAgent GoFlex 500GB on TBreak.
Corsair Force F40 RAID0 on TechReaction.
A-DATA S599 128 GB SSD on TechPowerUp.
Seagate BlackArmor NAS 420 on Tweaktown.
Misc:
TechwareLabs Review: Epson WorkForce 635 All-in-One Printer on TechWareLabs.
OCZ DDR3 PC3-12800/ 1600MHz Reaper Edition Ultra Low Voltage CL7 4GB memory on TestFreaks.
Hanns-G HZ281HPB WideScreen LCD Monitor on BenchmarkReviews.
Thursday Morning
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Thursday, 23-December-2010 03:47:49 (GMT +10) - by Agg
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Well, as usual things will get pretty quiet here on the news page over the next few days. This year has been a bit less eventful (touch wood!) than last year for OCAU, but really seemed to fly by. I hope you're all well, and have a great break, and I look forward to seeing what crazy stuff we all get up to in 2011. :)
Games.on.Net have their Game of the Year award voting going on at the moment, and you can win stuff by voting. Remember, to win the PC and projector, you must fill in the 25 words or less section for your choice of Game of the Year. Entries close at 11:59pm, on the 25th of January, 2011.
Actually they've got another contest as well, where you can win a supercar track day. Thanks to games.on.net and Namco Bandai, one very lucky winner will live the TDU2 life for a night, flying from any capital city in Australia to Sydney for a night in a five star hotel, followed by a day on the track with some of the most expensive supercars in Australia: Ferraris, Lamborghinis and more. Yeah, rad.
TonyR sent in this Digital Story of the Nativity video. Christmas story told through Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Google, Wikipedia, Google Maps, GMail, Foursquare, Amazon.
Also amusing is this fruity technology video starring Ronnie Corbett. My Blackberry is not working!
OCAU member Darkness (who co-created our current website design many years ago, among other things) is in the running to get one of his photographs on a stamp! So check it out and if you like it, vote for it. Discussion here.
Lonely Planet are giving away 13 free iPhone city guides, but only until 1pm today! The promotion is designed to help travellers stuck due to the severe weather conditions across Europe, according to Lonely Planet. The travel guide company gave away European city guides previously when airborne volcanic ash shut down much of Europe's airspace.
Today's timewaster is Isle of Tune, from Quan-Time. I suspect there'll be some serious time-suckage if you get hooked on it. Actually given it's pretty quiet out there, here's two more timewasters: Wikileaks the Game and Unprotected Waters, from Charg3r.
Last but not least, some interesting NBN info from JD: You may have read that the NBN in Tassie has begun connecting businesses and homes, recently a friend connected to a 100mbps plan and thought he would see what it could actually do. This being the real world we know that 100mbps was theoretical max, I thought I’d share the results as I’m sure some are interested. :) It’s a 100/10 plan… Prior to the NBN, the best on offer to him was a 20mbps plan that netted us an actual maximum of 6.4 mbps… So needless to say he is very pleased!
Click to enlarge!
von Stalhein sent these pics in, which have probably been doing the email rounds. I've seen similar things before, but never done quite so effectively! Next time I buy paint, it's definitely going in a bag or a plastic tub on the way home.
   
Palit GeForce GTX 570 Sonic Platinum
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Wednesday, 22-December-2010 13:36:34 (GMT +10) - by Agg
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Our second review of the day, and probably the last one for the year, is of Palit's GeForce GTX 570 Sonic Platinum. If the all-guns-blazing GTX 580 is a bit out of your grasp, this might be the go, and it doesn't look too shabby either:
Click for the review!
ZOTAC GeForce GTX 580 AMP!
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Wednesday, 22-December-2010 03:38:20 (GMT +10) - by Agg
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DiGiTaL MoNkEY has checked out another video card - this time it's the ZOTAC GeForce GTX 580 AMP!, a factory-overclocked version of NVIDIA's high-end card. As you might expect, it's no slouch:
Click for the review!
Wednesday Morning Reviews
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Wednesday, 22-December-2010 03:25:21 (GMT +10) - by Agg
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Storage:
OCZ RevoDrive X2 240GB PCI-Express SSD on TechSpot.
Samsung 470 Series 256GB SSD on PCPerspective.
Synology DS211 Network Application Server on ASELabs.
Super Talent Express RAM Cache USB 3.0 Flash Drive on EverythingUSB.
Video Cards:
Zotac Geforce GTX 570 AMP! on FunkyKit.
EVGA GeForce GTX 570 Superclocked on HWSecrets.
First Look at AMD Radeon HD 6950 and HD 6970 2 GB on XbitLabs.
Nvidia GeForce GTX 570: Modern Remake of an Existing Fairy-Tale on XbitLabs.
Palit GTX 570 Sonic Platinum on TBreak.
PowerColor PCS+ HD 5870 on Tweaknews.
ASUS EAH6970 on OC3D.
HIS Radeon HD 6950 2GB Video Card in Crossfire on Tweaktown.
Cooling:
Zalman CNPS9900 MAX CPU cooler on TechPowerUp.
Dynatron Evo-11 Heatsink on Frostytech.
Forum Projects
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Tuesday, 21-December-2010 20:24:47 (GMT +10) - by Agg
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Here's a few interesting things from the forums:
Tuesday Morning
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Tuesday, 21-December-2010 02:17:21 (GMT +10) - by Agg
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Engadget have a detailed look at the new Google CR-48 Chrome laptop. The Cr-48 may look like just any other laptop, but we can tell you right off the bat that it feels considerably better than most of those plastic netbooks sitting on store shelves right now. The entire body (that means the lid, edges, and the underside) is made of a soft, rubber-like matte black plastic -- in fact, it feels a lot like the back of the Droid, though it feels a bit less rubbery.
Here's a cool video of Word Lens, a visual translator app, thanks Darkness. Word Lens instantly translates printed words from one language to another using the video camera on your iPhone. No network delay, no roaming fees, and no reception problems. Amazing!
Also amazing, here's what has to be the mother of all stop-motion videos. Lots of coins, a projector, and lots of spare time..
Google Labs have an interesting new thing which lets you see how often words appeared in books over time. Kinda wondering what happened around 1800 and 1870 there. More info here.
Slashdot report on an internet filter in France. French ministers have passed a bill allowing the government to add any website to a black list, which access providers will have to enforce. This black list will be defined by the government only, without requiring the intervention of the legal system.
Meanwhile in the USA a judge has ruled that you can't sue thousands of alleged file-sharers at once but must sue them individually. The mere allegation that the defendants used the same P2P software and infringed the same movie does not mean they can be can be joined into a single lawsuit. Everyone being targeted might well have a totally different defense, and the judge approvingly cites a 2004 ruling against the music industry.
Apparently Microsoft's Kinect and Apple's iPad are the two fastest-selling gadgets ever. Which I personally find bizarre because I don't really want either of them much myself. Somebody's obviously buying them, though.
Maybe it's cats buying them, with Epi spotting this iPad game for cats. I don't really have a lot more to say about that one. :)
Did Apple miss a trick? From IntelInside, word that the iPod Nano Watch Kit is attracting huge support - and pledges of money. The all-or-nothing funding site Kickstarter has another big hit on its hands — and an iPod nano watch on its wrist. In just 72 hours, nearly $200,000 have been pledged to support a set of kits that turn the latest iPod nano into a multitouch time piece.
Also raising a tonne of cash is the Humble Indie Bundle #2 we linked recently. Pay whatever you like for 5 games and support charities - to the tune of $1.1M USD so far, thanks Matt.
Monday Night Reviews
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Monday, 20-December-2010 22:24:08 (GMT +10) - by Agg
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Motherboard & CPU:
ECS Elitegroup and ASUS P67 Preview on Tweak.dk.
Intel Core I7 950 3.06GHz Quad Core Processor on LegitPR.
Input Etc:
Speedlink CUE Multitouch Mouse on Metku.
Razer Lachesis 5600DPI Gaming Mouse on TBreak.
Microsoft Arc Touch Mouse on TechReviewSource.
ARCTIC K381 Keyboard on TechReaction.
Memory:
Corsair Vengeance DDR3-1600 8GB Dual Channel on ThinkComputers.
Patriot Viper Xtreme PC3 16000 CAS 9 2X2GB on OCClub.
Video Cards:
AMD Radeon HD 6950 & HD 6970 2GB on Techgage.
AMD HD6950 and HD6970 on Bjorn3D.
Sapphire HD 6950 on Bjorn3D.
Audio Visual:
Ozone Spark and Attack Headset on OCClub.
Arctic Sound P531 5.1 Headset on OCOnline.
Asus O!Play HD2 HD Media Player on Futurelooks.
Cooling:
Noctua NH-C12P SE14 CPU cooler on TechReaction.
Noctua NH-C14 Lower Noise Heatsink on Frostytech.
Storage:
Adata S599 128GB SSD on FunkyKit.
OCZ RevoDrive X2 240GB on Guru3D.
Mach Xtreme FX USB 3.0 Flash Drive 64 GB on TechPowerUp.
ineo Technology I-NA215U Plus USB 3.0 Storage Enclosure on Tweaktown.
Patriot Xporter Rage 32GB USB Flash Drive on TestFreaks.
Western Digital My Passport Studio 640 GB Portable Hard Disk Drive on TechARP.
Patriot Xporter XT Rage 32GB on PureOC.
Prebuilt & Portable:
ASRock ION 3D Blu-ray HTPC on PureOC.
Sky Electronics "Expeditor" 3D Gaming PC on TBreak.
Maylong's $99 M-150 Tablet on HotHardware.
Lenovo T410s 14-in Core i5 Optimus Notebook on PCPerspective.
Maingear Shift PC on DigitalTrends.
Misc:
HP Photosmart Premium C309G All-in-One Printer on HWSecrets.
Antec Lanboy Air Open-Frame Case on BenchmarkReviews.
Innergie mCube Mini power adapter on XSReviews.
Gainward GeForce GTX 570 Phantom
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Monday, 20-December-2010 02:34:42 (GMT +10) - by Agg
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DiGiTaL MoNkEY has something a little special for us today - it's apparently a world exclusive first hands-on look at Gainward's new, non-reference design GTX 570. They're calling it the Phantom and it certainly looks the business with its dark, stealthy appearance and enormous cooler - but is it any good?
Click for the review!
Some recent photos from our Photography Gallery forum:
Saturday Afternoon Reviews
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Saturday, 18-December-2010 17:40:53 (GMT +10) - by Agg
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Input Etc:
Cooler Master Choiix Cruiser Mouse and Power Fort Charger on Tweaktown.
Razer BlackWidow Ultimate keyboard on TBreak.
GrowUp Japan Artisan Mousepads on TechWareLabs.
Thermaltake Challenger Pro gaming keyboard on PureOC.
Arctic M571 Budget Gaming Mouse on OCIA.
ROCCAT Kone+ Gaming Mouse on Metku.
Arctic Cooling K381 keyboard on DVHardware.
Razer Lachesis 5600 DPI Gaming Mouse on TechPowerUp.
GIGABYTE Aivia K8100 Gaming Keyboard on Tweaktown.
Video Cards:
ASUS HD 6870 DirectCU on HWHeaven.
Zotac GeForce GTX 580 on eTeknix.
AMD Radeon HD 6970 2GB Video Card in Crossfire on Tweaktown.
Audio Visual:
Sharp AQUOS Quattron LC-60LE925UN 3D HDTV on DigitalTrends.
Arctic Sound P531 Surround Sound Headset on ComputingOnDemand.
Gunnar Optiks Midnight 3D Eyeglasses on LegitReviews.
Sanyo Xacti PD2 Pocket Camcorder on EverythingUSB.
Cases:
Lian Li Pitstop T60 ATX / M-ATX Test Bench on RBMods.
In Win Griffin on Tweaknews.
Lian Li PC-V354 Aluminum SFF Case on Pro-Clockers.
Cubitek XL-Tank on TechPowerUp.
Lian Li PC-Q08 Mini-ITX Cube on ThinkComputers.
Cooling:
Titan Hati TTC-NC15TZ Heatsink on FrostyTech.
CoolIT Vantage A.L.C. CPU Water Cooler on LegitReviews.
Zalman CNPS 9900 MAX on Guru3D.
Sunbeam Rheosmart 6 fan controller on TechReaction.
NZXT Sentry LXE Fan Controller on Vortez.
Nexus VCT-9000 Heatsink on Frostytech.
Arctic Cooling Freezer 11LP Heatsink on Frostytech.
Saturday Afternoon
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Saturday, 18-December-2010 15:46:55 (GMT +10) - by Agg
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Our 2011 Motorsport Calendar is up now, and worth bookmarking if you're eagerly waiting for the various seasons to start up again next year.
TPG are in hot water with the ACCC, being their latest target for advertising unlimited plans. The ACCC has instituted legal proceedings against the company in the Federal Court in Melbourne, alleging contraventions of the Trade Practices Act.
The State Library of Queensland has donated 50,000 images to Wikimedia Australia. The images – a mix of people and places from urban, regional and rural Queensland – provide a unique pictorial record of the state. Over the coming months these images will be uploaded to Wikimedia Commons, tagged, enriched, commented on and used to improve Wikipedia.
GameTrailers have an interesting video about the complexities of character modelling in video games. Raising the bar of video game realism, facial expressions, motion capture, and 3-D rendering all come together in the immersive effect of the L.A. Noire story.
The Australian Federal Police have officially stated that Wikileaks have not broken the law. "The AFP has completed its evaluation of the material available and has not established the existence of any criminal offences where Australia would have jurisdiction," the force said in a statement released today.
Dasuperham spotted something odd about the 6970 / 6950 cards that have appeared lately. If you unmount the cooler of a reference card, you could notice an obvious abrasion over the corner of the inner 6/8-pin power connector socket. No, it ain't by chance you've got a bad pick. It's common among all the popular review sites. Anyone out there with a retail card who can confirm if it's the same on the shipping products?
Opera 11 has been released. Opera Software debuted the newest version of its award-winning browser today. Opera 11 combines elegant design, smart updates to some of our most popular features and new ways to customize Opera to your preferences.
Commodore USA have unveiled the new Commodore 64. It houses a modern mini-ITX PC motherboard featuring a Dual Core 525 Atom processor and the latest Nvidia Ion2 graphics chipset. It comes in the original taupe brown/beige color, with other colors to follow. The new Commodore 64 features genuine Cherry brand key switches, which provide a feel much better than the original, with a lovely IBM classic mechanism and click sound.
KingKrapp sent in this article on the new Android phone from Google. There has been a steady stream of flagship Android devices since the Nexus One, and it’s finally time to update that hardware. This time around the marketing message mirrors what the Nexus One morphed into - buy this handset, and you’re getting the stock Google Android experience with no carrier branding, fast software updates without vendor overhead, and a few new things such as near field communication hardware support.
A week and a day until Christmas!
     
     
     
     
And if you're after more, check out this Wiki page which lists ALL "misc pics" news posts from the archive.
Friday Afternoon Reviews
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Friday, 17-December-2010 14:05:43 (GMT +10) - by Agg
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Cases:
SilverStone Grandia GD05 on OCOnline.
Corsair Graphite 600T on PureOC.
Thermaltake Armor A60 on NeoSeeker.
Silverstone SG07B-W Gaming SFF Case on Pro-Clockers.
Thermaltake Armor A30 Mini-ATX on FunkyKit.
Spire Savit 6003 on RBMods.
Audio Visual:
Samsung SyncMaster BX2450 monitor on DigitalTrends.
iHome iA100 iPod dock/clock/radio on TechReviewSource.
FaceVsion TouchCam N1 720p on Vortez.
Canon IXUS 1000 HS digicam on TBreak.
ASUS Xonar Essence STX PCI-E Sound Card on BenchmarkReviews.
Psyko 5.1 PC Gaming Headset on OCOnline.
Storage:
Archgon MD-9102 Mobile Optical Disk Drive on TechArkade.
Western Digital Caviar Black 1TB (WD1002FAEX) SATA 6GB/s Hard Drive on ThinkComputers.
LiteON iHAS524 DVD-DL Writer on PCStats.
Kingston Data Traveller Mini Fun G2 Roundup on XSReviews.
Western Digital AV-GP 2 TB Hard Disk Drive on MissingRemote.
Verbatim Store`n´Go 320 GB on TechPowerUp.
Vantec Nexstar NST-D400S3 SuperSpeed USB 3.0 Dual Bay Hard Drive Dock on Tweaknews.
Video Cards:
Powercolor HD6970 Crossfire on OC3D.
Gigabyte GTX 570 vs Sapphire Radeon 6970 / 6950 vs Radeon 5870 on HWHeaven.
Sparkle Nvidia Geforce GTX465 on TestFreaks.
AMD Radeon HD 6950 and 6970 on HWSecrets.
Inno3D GeForce GTX 460 OC 1GB on eTeknix.
AMD Radeon HD 6950 CrossfireX on Guru3D.
ASUS ENGTX460 Direct Cu on LostCircuits.
HIS HD 5450 Silence 1GB PCIe x1 Eyefinity on Tweaktown.
Power Supply:
Thermaltake Toughpower XT 875W on Tweaktown.
PowerColor Extreme PX 1000W on PureOC.
Thortech Thunderbolt Plus 800W on TechWareLabs.
NVIDIA GeForce GTX 580 vs GTX 480
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Thursday, 16-December-2010 16:45:50 (GMT +10) - by Agg
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DiGiTaL MoNkEY's second article today compares NVIDIA's GTX 580 with the earlier GTX 480. Today we take a look at NVIDIA's new flagship GTX 580 graphics processor and see how it compares to the previous GTX 480 in the usual gauntlet of benchmarks, plus some new inclusions like Just Cause 2 by developer Eidos and BitSquid's Stone Giant benchmark.
Click for the article!
Thursday Afternoon
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Thursday, 16-December-2010 16:36:18 (GMT +10) - by Agg
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Facebook's Mark Zuckerberg is Time's Person of the Year for 2010. Time says it chose Zuckerberg "for connecting more than half a billion people and mapping the social relations among them; for creating a new system of exchanging information; and for changing how we all live our lives". Discussion here.
Some people are surprised that Julian Assange didn't win that award, while closer to home the feeling is that he did not break the law in Australia. Media law experts, including Holding Redlich managing partner Ian Robertson, have said it appears to him that Mr Assange had operated as many other media outlet would by releasing the cables. It was clear a crime was committed when someone took the material without authorisation from a US military computer system, he said. But it was most unlikely any offence had been committed by those who published the material online or in newspapers.
An OCAU member has appeared on A Current Affair in a story about his dramatic weight-loss success. 170+KG to 83KG in 12 months is a pretty good effort - congratulations, Mal! Discussion here.
iiNet have a Top Geek competition. At iiNet we've always known that geeks are awesome but now that 'geek is chic' is mainstream, we want you to help us prove that not all geeks are created equal. That there can be only one Top Geek. There's some interesting entries already.
If you're in Newcastle and you've been having internet problems lately, this guy might be to blame. A 50-year-old Newcastle man has been charged with allegedly unearthing over $110,000 of Telstra's copper cables from pits and manholes over a two month period.
Back to Facebook, and they've produced an image showing the global connections between their users, thanks Adam. When the data is the social graph of 500 million people, there are a lot of lenses through which you can view it. One that piqued my curiosity was the locality of friendship. I was interested in seeing how geography and political borders affected where people lived relative to their friends. I wanted a visualization that would show which cities had a lot of friendships between them. More here and a big version here if you want to make it your desktop.
Telstra have lost their appeal to copyright White/Yellow Pages info, thanks Sniper. Although Genesis took more than five years to develop, costing more than $300 million, computer-aided creation of the directories required no "creative spark", nor "the exercise of the requisite skill and judgment", the Court found.
There's a worrying claim of FBI backdoors in OpenBSD, thanks Callan. OpenBSD's Theo de Raadt has received an email in which it was revealed to him that ten years ago, the FBI paid several open source developers to implement hidden backdoors in OpenBSD's IPSEC stack. De Raadt decided to publish the email for all to see, so that the code in question can be reviewed. Insane stuff. Discussion here.
ASUS Crosshair IV Extreme
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Thursday, 16-December-2010 12:18:20 (GMT +10) - by Agg
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DiGiTaL MoNkEY has checked out the ASUS Crosshair IV Extreme motherboard, their current flagship board for AMD CPUs:
Click for the review!
The Overclocker Issue 12
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Thursday, 16-December-2010 11:52:42 (GMT +10) - by Agg
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The latest issue of The Overclocker magazine is out now. There's some reviews, a complete report on this year's Gigabyte Open Overclocking Championship from Taiwan, and a few other interesting things. Check it out online here.
The NDA has been lifted on AMD's long awaited HD 6900-series of video cards. The AMD Radeon HD 6900 series features the industry’s only second-generation DirectX 11 architecture, new image quality improvements and 2GB of graphics frame buffer, making it the intelligent choice for gamers and enthusiasts, said Matt Skynner, corporate vice president and general manager, GPU Division, AMD. Delivering DirectX 11 performance with intelligent tessellation, image quality improvements with new anti-aliasing modes and even intelligent power consumption with AMD PowerTune, the AMD Radeon HD 6900 series will top gamers’ wish lists this holiday season.
Coverage on AnandTech, Benchmark Reviews, Bit-tech, Eteknix, FudZilla, Guru3D, HardOCP, Hardware Canucks, Hardware Heaven, Hardware Zone, Hexus, HiTechLegion, HotHardware, Legion Hardware, Modders-Inc, PC Perspective, PC World, Pure Overclock, T-Break, TechPowerUp, TechSpot, Tom's Hardware, TweakTown, Vortez and VR-Zone.
A more detailed list of reviews can be found here.
Click to join the forum discussion!
Mate, did you hear a knocking sound?
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Wednesday, 15-December-2010 13:15:42 (GMT +10) - by Agg
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JohnC sent in these pictures which are a little worrying:
  
  
This is Canadian National locomotive number 2699. It is a 212 ton machine powered by a 183 litre 4400 hp V16 4 stroke diesel. Shortly before this picture was taken, whilst working under load, 2699 experienced what is known in the trade as a catastrophic uncontained engine failure. The train was passing the town of Independence, La at the time. The first picture shows that one of the 16 cylinder packs that form the engine was ejected through the engine bay body side and thrown clear of the locomotive. In addition to this the piston from that cylinder was thrown free by the force of the failure. It was ejected so violently that it travelled through the air and crashed through the roof of a nearby home where it imbedded itself in an interior wall.
Wednesday Afternoon
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Wednesday, 15-December-2010 12:56:22 (GMT +10) - by Agg
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There's a bit more analysis of the Gawker security issue here on Forbes and here on CNET. Anybody who registered with any of Gawker's sites--Gawker, Gizmodo, Jezebel, Lifehacker, io9, Jalopnik, Kotaku, Deadspin and Fleshbot--is at risk, unless they logged in using Facebook Connect, according to an FAQ on Lifehacker. The exposed data includes a bunch of e-mail addresses of workers at federal, state, and local government agencies, that PBS Newshour reports appear to have been separated out for possible future attacks.
IntelInside sends word that the inventor of the USB thumb drive has another trick up his sleeve. The FluCard - a postage stamp-size storage device that can also transmit data wirelessly - is Tan's new baby, and he hopes to see it used by millions of people; just like the USB drive.
An interesting court decision in the USA has protected email privacy. In a landmark decision issued today in the criminal appeal of U.S. v. Warshak, the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals has ruled that the government must have a search warrant before it can secretly seize and search emails stored by email service providers.
We haven't heard much from Dan's Data lately, but here's a couple of interesting recent articles on hardware piracy and artificial intelligence, thanks sabz. Atoms are not really "the new bits", if only because you can't duplicate atoms for free or distribute them with wires. But there are still definite similarities between fabbing atoms and manipulating data. So a surprising amount of manufacturing capability may, soon, be sitting on ordinary consumers' desks.
Richard Stallman has some concerns about ChromeOS. Google's new cloud computing ChromeOS looks like a plan "to push people into careless computing" by forcing them to store their data in the cloud rather than on machines directly under their control, warns Richard Stallman, founder of the Free Software Foundation and creator of the operating system GNU.
metamorphosis spotted another Humble Indie Bundle game pack where you choose how much you want to pay, and support Child's Play and the EFF. Pay what you want. If you bought these five games separately, it would cost around $85 but we're letting you set the price! All of the games work great on Mac, Windows, and Linux.
A Chinese anti-virus war has ended with a suspended death sentence, thanks dasuperham. Yu Bing, former director of the Beijing Municipal Public Security Bureau, has reportedly been given a two year suspended death sentence for using state systems to fraudulently trump up business for antivirus vendor, Rising Antivirus.
JC sent in these easter eggs in albums. Well, it turns out some of the most popular musicians of the past 50 years have been getting in on the action too, and just not telling anyone. It's almost like they knew the internet would be invented, and that the music fans who hang out there would have way too much time on our hands.
Today's timewaster is our traditional Christmas favourite, winterbells. Thanks for the reminder, Charg3r!
Wednesday Morning Reviews
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Wednesday, 15-December-2010 02:40:27 (GMT +10) - by Agg
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Motherboard & CPU:
Intel Core i7-800 Processor Series on iXBTLabs.
ASUS ROG Crosshair IV Extreme AM3 board on Pro-Clockers.
Cooling:
Zalman ZM-F3-FDB & ZM-SF3 120mm Cooling Fan on LegitReviews.
Corsair A50 CPU Cooler on Tweaknews.
Storage:
ioSafe SoloPRO 1TB USB 3.0 External Hard Drive on OCIA.
Thermaltake BlacX Duet HDD Docking Station on Tweaktown.
Western Digital VelociRaptor 600GB on TBreak.
Akasa Baymaster AK-ICR-10 on TechPowerUp.
Samsung's 470 Series solid-state drive on TechReport.
Cases:
Thermaltake Armor A60 Mid-Tower on BigBruin.
Antec LanBoy Air Gamer Case on Tweak.dk.
CoolerMaster 690 II Advanced on eTeknix.
In-Win Ironclad Full Tower on Bjorn3D.
Thermaltake Element Q Mini-ITX Chassis w/ 220W Power Supply on Tweaktown.
Lian Li PC-V1020R Full Tower on BenchmarkReviews.
Audio Visual:
Samsung BD-C6500 Blu-Ray player on TechReviewSource.
Veebeam HD Wireless Stream to your TV on MissingRemote.
Memory:
Corsair Vengeance DDR3 1600MHz 12GB Kits on HWHeaven.
Corsair Vengeance Series PC3-12800 12GB Kit on Tweaktown.
Input Etc:
SteelSeries 6Gv2 Mechanical Gaming Keyboard on BenchMarkReviews.
Arctic Cooling K381 Ultra-slim USB keyboard on FunkyKit.
Video Cards:
Palit GeForce GTX 570 Sonic Platinum on Guru3D.
Zotac GeForce GTX 580 1536MB on ThinkComputers.
ECS GeForce GTX 460 Black on MadShrimps.
Point of View GTX 570 TGT Ultra Charged on Guru3D.
ASUS GeForce GTX 570 on PureOC.
Portable & Prebuilt:
HTC Desire Z Smartphone on TBreak.
V3 Avenger Core i7 930 Gaming Desktop PC on Tweaktown.
Gateway One ZX4300 all-in-one PC.
Power Supplies:
Seasonic X-series 850W on PureOC.
AXP SuperNova 1000W on Pro-Clockers.
Arctic Cooling's Power Charger Plus on DVHardware.
Software:
Marking Time: 3DMark 11 Performance Explored on HotHardware.
AMD Catalyst 10.12 Windows 7 Driver Analysis on Tweaktown.
A Detailed Look At Apple iOS 4.2 on HotHardware.
AMD Catalyst Control Center Update: Catalyst 10.12 Preview on PCPerspective.
3DMark 11 Advanced Edition on TestFreaks.
Tuesday Morning
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Tuesday, 14-December-2010 02:16:13 (GMT +10) - by Agg
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Google launched their Chrome OS recently. Sundar Pichai, the head of Google's Chrome project, said: "People on their computers live on their browsers within the web. But if you look at computers today...they have nothing to do with the browser or the web. Most personal computers were designed before the web existed." William sent in Anandtech's take on it, and there's more coverage on TBreak.
They also unveiled their first Chrome OS laptop, the CR-48, thanks soulblade64. The first Google Chrome OS laptop is about to go into a pilot program. The program apparently runs for US people only, but in the application form they allow you to select Australia for the country, but you can only select US states. I didn't have my application rejected selecting Australia though, so I might have a chance. More on engadget and Techi.
Apparently tap and go cards are increasing in popularity.. but this is the first I've heard of them, thanks Sniper. The type of retailers who have installed the new card machines include fast-food outlets, hardware stores, taxis, newsagents, supermarkets, pharmacies and a growing number of vending machine operators are also installing the card readers. MasterCard's Mr Cartwright says the average customer transaction is about $25.
The European Commission has imposed an $876M fine on Taiwanese and South Korean LCD makers, thanks MoJoMaN. Europe's competition watchdog accused the firms of running a cartel between October 2001 and February 2006 that fixed prices, harming European buyers of televisions and computers equipped with the liquid crystal display component.
Kotaku report on a Kinect hack that sets up a Minority Report like interface. Using Kinect drivers for Linux, some kids from the Robot Locomotion Group and Learning Intelligent Systems teams at MIT have come up with a system that has Kinect detecting all ten of your fingers, along with your palms, and using them to allow interaction with a display.
ASUS have a competition for Australia and New Zealand only. Today ASUS announced the launch of a brand new competition, PRIDE, offering users the opportunity to share their motherboard stories with the world. PRIDE stands for Performance, Reliability, Innovation, Design and Efficiency. PC aficionados from across the world can reveal their PRIDE starting 7th December, 2010 and compete against others to win an impressive array of prizes.
Today's timewaster is Slap a Pollie, from VooDoo. Not particularly difficult, but oddly satisfying. :)
Gawker Security Issue
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Monday, 13-December-2010 22:42:01 (GMT +10) - by Agg
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If you have a commenter account on any of Gawker's online properties, you probably want to change your password. This weekend we discovered that Gawker Media's servers were compromised, resulting in a security breach at Lifehacker, Gizmodo, Gawker, Jezebel, io9, Jalopnik, Kotaku, Deadspin, and Fleshbot. There's a FAQ here and more info here.
Monday Afternoon
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Monday, 13-December-2010 15:21:05 (GMT +10) - by Agg
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Brains spotted this article (translated from French) about SSD and HDD reliability. The text is a bit mangled but the numbers tell the story. All in all, the failure rates recorded are bad. That does not give really desire for entrusting 2 To of data to these discs alone: a mirroring will not be too much to make safe the data. Logically the discs 7200 tpm are less reliable than the 5400/5900 tpm, with nearly 10% for the Western model!
If, like me, you're considering a NAS, jtsmorris spotted a NAS comparison site which is quite handy.
Milk sent word of a new NASA video commemorating the Space Shuttle program, now it's almost finished. This compilation of film and video presents the best of the best ground-based Shuttle motion imagery from STS-114, STS-117, and STS-124 missions. Rendered in the highest definition possible, this production is a tribute to the dozens of men and women of the Shuttle imaging team and the 30yrs of achievement of the Space Shuttle Program. Some more here on Engadget.
Apparently a CE mark is sometimes not a CE mark. Unfortunately, there exists a very similar mark which the majority of consumers and even sellers may see as the CE mark of the European Union but actually is something completely different. This “CE” mark means “China Export” and only means that the product was manufactured in China!! Discussion here.
JC sent in this article about computer calamities. Here, we look at ten IT disasters that highlight the precariously fickle nature of computers. Although our top ten mistakes may have caused lasting damage to the finances or reputations of those involved, nobody was physically harmed in the making of this list.
GamePron have an odd one: Rockstar Games are no strangers to legal action, but it doesn’t come stranger than this. An American model, Michael Washington (known as “Shagg”) is suing the publisher – as well as parent company Take Two Interactive – because they based Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas on his life.
AMD have spoken to XbitLabs about Fusion. As we approach the launch of the first Fusion APU, the company starts to reveal more details about the architecture of Fusion and its technical aspects. Find out how AMD plans to tweak performance of Llano, why it decided to use TSMC fabs for Ontario, why did it take more than four years to fuse CPU with GPU and more insights about the AMD Fusion program.
Today's timewaster is GunBlood, a quick-draw shootout from Matt.
Monday Afternoon Reviews
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Monday, 13-December-2010 14:03:21 (GMT +10) - by Agg
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Video Cards:
Sparkle GTS450 on DragonSteelMods.
VTX3D Radeon HD 6850 X-Edition 1GB GDDR5 on Tweak.dk.
The Shader Difference - GeForce GTX 580 at GTX 480 Clocks on Tweaktown.
Input Etc:
Logitech's K800 wireless and lighted Keyboard on Metku.
HKS PS3 Racing Dual Shock Controller on Tweaktown.
Misc:
Need for Speed: Hot Pursuit (PC) Game on APHNetworks.
ProlimaTech Armageddon CPU HSF on OverclockersOnline.
Plantronics Gamecom 777 7.1 Surround Headset on OCModShop.
Corsair F40 40GB SSD on OCModShop.
ThermalTake Element Q Mini-ITX case on OCModShop.
Crucial 4GB Ballistix Tracer DDR2 PC2-6400 Memory Kit on TechArkade.
Sunday Afternoon
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Sunday, 12-December-2010 17:16:41 (GMT +10) - by Agg
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Scorptec have a contest next weekend where you can take on Team Immunity in Call of Duty: Black Ops and win prizes. Register here.
The Department of Broadband, Communications and the Digital Economy has released their Cyber Safety Help Button software as a free download. It provides help and advice on a range of online risks including cyberbullying, unwanted contact, scams and fraud, and offensive or inappropriate material. All you need do is download it from this page and install it on your computer desktop. You can leave the button icon on your desktop or place it on the taskbar. Then just click it twice if you ever need help or advice about something unsafe or upsetting that you have encountered on the internet. More here.
Meanwhile there's a new site with info for business NBN users. Communications minister Stephen Conroy has released a new website featuring tools to help businesses go online, as part of the Government's campaign to convince businesses of the economic benefits of the National Broadband Network.
TonyR spotted a new world's hottest chili. But the new pepper is actually the handiwork of Gerald Fowler, a British chili farmer and pub owner, who crossed three of the hottest peppers known to man -- including the Bhut Jolokia -- to create his Frankenstein-monster chili. "It's painful to eat," Fowler told the Daily Mail. "It's hot enough to strip paint." Indeed, the Daily Mail reports that defense researchers are already investigating the pepper's potential uses as a weapon.
Intel have announced they and other major tech companies will abandon analogue displays soon. Intel and AMD expect that analog display outputs such as Video Graphics Array (VGA) and the low voltage differential signaling technology (LVDS) panel interface would no longer be supported in their product lines by 2015. HDMI has increasingly been included in new PCs for easy connection to consumer electronics devices. DisplayPort is expected to become the single PC digital display output for embedded flat panels, PC monitors and projectors.
Timbot sent in this Lego Antikythera Mechanism. Lost for 2000 years, it was recovered from a shipwreck in 1901. But not until a century later was its purpose understood: an astronomical clock that determines the positions of celestial bodies with extraordinary precision. In 2010, we built a fully-functional replica out of Lego.
Today's timewaster is this annoyingly difficult Spongebob Boat-O-Cross.
Level Twelve
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Sunday, 12-December-2010 13:06:23 (GMT +10) - by Agg
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slipperyskip has finished his "Level Twelve" project - you can check out the full worklog below:
Click for the worklog!
Also, he's entered it into a contest. There is no sign-up or registration involved in voting otherwise I wouldn't ask. It is being put on by Lenovo and Intel with the winner going to CES next month. I am the only OCAU member in the contest. The voting page is here.
Sunday Morning Reviews
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Sunday, 12-December-2010 02:21:35 (GMT +10) - by Agg
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Power Supply:
SilverStone Strider Plus ST50F-P 500W on Tweaktown.
Thermaltake ToughPower XT 875W on FunkyKit.
Input Etc:
SteelSeries 7G Mechanical Gaming Keyboard on BenchmarkReviews.
Razer StarCraft II: Marauder Keyboard, Banshee Headset, Spectre Mouse on HWHeaven.
Nexus SM-7000B Silent Mouse on RBMods.
Video Cards:
EVGA GTX570 on OC3D.
NVIDIA GeForce GTX 570 on Techgage.
HIS Radeon 6850 1GB on eTeknix.
Overclocked GeForce GTX 480 Shoot-Out: MSI vs. Gigabyte on HotHardware.
Gainward GeForce GTX 570 1280MB Goes Like Hell on Tweaktown.
Nvidia GeForce GT 430 on XbitLabs.
Storage:
ASUS SBW-06C1S-U External Slim Blu-ray Writer on PureOC.
Iomega eGo 1TB USB 3.0 Portable Hard Drive on TechSpot.
SMART Modular XceedIOPS SF-1500 Powered SAS SSD on Tweaktown.
Cooling:
Arctic Cooling Accelero Xtreme Plus GPU cooler on OCClub.
Arctic Cooling Arctic MX-4 Thermal Paste on ThinkComputers.
Noctua NH-C14 CPU cooler on ViperLair.
Logitech Lapdesk N700 USB Speaker Cooler on EverythingUSB.
Xigmatek Aegir SD128264 CPU cooler on TechPowerUp.
Thermalright Archon CPU cooler on XbitLabs.
Misc:
Bigfoot Networks Killer 2100 Gaming Network Card on LegitReviews.
Joby GorillaPod Magnetic tripod on Tweaktown.
Kingston HyperX H2O 6GB 2000MHz DDR3 Triple Channel Memory Kit on FutureLooks.
Gigabyte P67A-UD4 LGA1155 motherboard on HWSecrets.
BitFenix Survivor Mid Tower Case on LegitReviews.
Epson EX7200 Projector on TechWareLabs.
R18+ Rating Rejected
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Friday, 10-December-2010 19:47:14 (GMT +10) - by Agg
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Not this time, it seems. Federal Home Affairs Minister Brendan O'Connor has been backing calls from gaming industry stakeholders to introduce the new R18+ category and hoped to win endorsement from state attorney generals at the SCAG meeting. However, the ministers asked for more time to consider the issue.
Discussion continues here.
Thanks to timbot, Sarah and archie this week!
     
     
     
     
And if you're after more, check out this Wiki page which lists ALL "misc pics" news posts from the archive.
Friday Afternoon Reviews
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Friday, 10-December-2010 13:34:18 (GMT +10) - by Agg
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Storage:
Samsung's Hot, New 470 Series 256GB SSD Burned In on HotHardware.
OCZ Enyo USB 3.0 Portable Solid State Drive on ThinkComputers.
Audio Visual:
WD's TV Live Hub media box on Tech Report.
USB Portable Media Player w/Card Reader on iGadgetLife.
Memory:
Patriot Viper Extreme 12GB (3x4GB) DDR3 2000Mhz on Overclockers.com.
Crucial Ballistix DDR3-2133 (PC3-17000) 4Gb Kit on FunkyKit.
Cooling:
Cooler Master V6 GT Cooler on Tweaknews.
Antec Notebook Cooler Designer on Pro-Clockers.
ZEROtherm ZT-560D and ZT-570D CPU Coolers on Tweaktown.
Evercool Royal NP-901 Notebook Cooler on ASELabs.
Thermaltake USB Powered Mobile Fan 12 on LegitReviews.
Prolimatech Super Mega CPU Cooler on MadShrimps.
XIGMATEK Aegir SD128264 CPU Cooler on MadShrimps.
Evercool HPKC-10025EA Cooler on OCOnline.
XSPC Rasa 750 RS240 Water Cooling Kit on PureOC.
Arctic Cooling Freezer 13 CPU Cooler on APHNetworks.
Apack Zerotherm ZT-10D Heatsink on FrostyTech.
Input Etc:
SteelSeries StarCraft II Shift/ZBoard Keyset on HWHeaven.
Gigabyte Aivia K8100 Keyboard on HWSecrets.
Razer Imperayor 5600dpi Gaming Mouse on OCModShop.
Logitech G700 Wireless Mouse on OCModShop.
Cases:
Xigmatek Asgard II on Tweaknews.
Fractal Design Define R3 on TechPowerUp.
Storage:
Patriot Convoy 425XL 4 x 2.5? Drive Enclosure on TechWareLabs.
Kingston SSDNow V Series 30G Twin-Pack on Motherboards.org.
Thermaltake BlacX 5G USB 3.0 HDD Docking Station on Tweaktown.
New high areal density 3-and-2 TB Greens from WD on SilentPCReview.
Portable & Prebuilt:
ZaReason MediaBox 4220 nettop HTPC on Phoronix.
Alienware M11x 11-in Core i7-640UM Gaming Notebook on PCPerspective.
Cooler Master USNA95 Notebook Charger on NeoSeeker.
Thursday Night Reviews
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Thursday, 9-December-2010 23:39:50 (GMT +10) - by Agg
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Motherboard & CPU:
MSI 880GMA-E45: Compact Integration AM3 board on InsideHW.
Gigabyte H67MA-UD2H (Intel H67 Chipset) Video Preview on FunkyKit.
Asus Sabertooth X58 LGA1366 board on XbitLabs.
Gigabyte GA-X58A-UD3R (rev. 2.0) LGA1366 board on XbitLabs.
Phenom II X6 1100T Black Edition CPU on HWSecrets.
GIGABYTE GA-H55N-USB3 Mini-ITX LGA1156 board on FutureLooks.
Video Cards:
MSI N430GT MD1GD3/OC/LP on HWSecrets.
Sparkle GeForce GTS 450 1GB on ThinkComputers.
NVIDIA GeForce GTX 460 1GB Roundup on iXBTLabs.
Asus ENGT430 Geforce GT 430 on Tweaknews.
Gigabyte GeForce GTX 570 on LegionHW.
PowerColor Radeon 6870 PCS+ on Guru3D.
Audio Visual:
Sony KDL-55NX810 LED TV on DigitalTrends.
Mad Catz CoD:Black Ops 5.1 ProGaming Headset on BenchmarkReviews.
Monster Diddybeats In-Ear Headphones on TBreak.
Sony SMP-N100 media centre on TechReviewSource.
ASRock ION 3D 152B Intel Atom D525 HTPC with NVIDIA 3DTV Play on Tweaktown.
LG Flatron W2340VG 23-inch Widescreen LCD Monitor on BigBruin.
Misc:
Sony Reader Touch Edition (PRS-650) e-book reader on TechReviewSource.
Geeks Infrared Thermometer on Monster-Hardware.
BigFoot Network's Killer 2100 NIC on XSReviews.
FutureMark 3DMark11
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Wednesday, 8-December-2010 22:52:55 (GMT +10) - by Agg
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Futuremark have released 3DMark11, the latest version of their eye-candy gaming benchmark. Designed to measure your PC’s gaming performance 3DMark 11 makes extensive use of all the new features in DirectX 11 including tessellation, compute shaders and multi-threading. Trusted by gamers worldwide to give accurate and unbiased results, 3DMark 11 is the best way to consistently and reliably test DirectX 11 under game-like loads.
Coverage on TBreak, XbitLabs, Tweaktown, NinjaLane and Techgage.
Discussion continues in this thread.
Here's some yummy things from our Geek Food forum:
Wednesday Afternoon
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Wednesday, 8-December-2010 14:56:54 (GMT +10) - by Agg
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I'm sure you've been kept up to date on the current Wikileaks situation by, well, every media outlet in the universe, but in case you've missed the last couple of days Julian Assange has turned himself in to Police in the UK in response to sexual assault claims in Sweden. He's been refused bail. His bank account was closed, and in response the Bank's website was taken down by hackers. Mr Assange has written an article defending the importance of Wikileaks, but not everyone is a fan. Keep up with the story via their twitter feed and this unofficial news page, thanks "CAPS LOCK". There's also of course lots of discussion in our Current Events and Politics & Policies forums.
Rambus is back on the patent warpath again. Rambus also demands ITC to bar importation and sales of products based on chips that it believes infringe its patents. Apparently, the company wants to stop sales of almost all electronics available today, including personal computers, workstations, servers, routers, mobile phones and other handheld devices, set-top boxes, Blu-ray players, motherboards, plug-in cards, hard drives and modems.
There's a Sydney Apache Unconference this weekend, thanks Jurgen. his is an event where the theme is set in advance, but the sessions to be presented are only decided on at the event, based on those who come along (sometimes also known as a BarCamp). They provide an excellent opportunity to learn, present and discuss, and offer a chance for everyone to participate. The main themes for the Sydney Unconference will be Open Source, Open Development and the software produced by the Apache Software Foundation.
The Australian Golden Joystick Awards are still open for voting, and Spike TV will broadcast their Video Game Awards this weekend.
The final report on the R18+ classification submissions has been released, showing strong support. In the lead up to the SCAG meeting this Friday, Brendan O’ Connor has released the final report on the submission process and revealed that 98.4% of submissions were in favour of an R18+ rating.
Gabe sent word of a free C64-esque retro game, Rocky Memphis & the temple of Ophuxoff, and an interview with the creators. Discussion here.
Or if you'd prefer a web-based timewaster, here's one, but you only get one crack at it.. (unless you delete your cookies, presumably).
AMD Athlon II X3 455, Phenom II X2 565 and Phenom II X6 1100T Round-up
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Wednesday, 8-December-2010 13:43:21 (GMT +10) - by DiGiTaL MoNkEY
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AMD is showcasing three new processors for the holiday season, including a new flagship model, the AMD Phenom II X6 1100T Black Edition. The other two processors are a Phenom II X2 565 Black Edition, and an Athlon II X3 455. All three of these processors are simply 100 MHz speed-bumps over previous top-end models adding even more value for consumers.
Coverage on AnandTech, Benchmark Reviews, Bit-tech, Bjorn3D, Extreme Overclocking, Guru3D, Hardware Canucks, Hardware Heaven, Hexus, HotHardware, KitGuru, Legion Hardware, LegitReviews, Overclock3D, Overclockers Club, PC Perspective, PCStats, PureOverclock, Rage3D, TechSpot, Techware Labs and TweakTown.
Click to join the forum discussion!
Hot on the heels of last month's launch of the GeForce GTX 580 graphics processing unit (GPU), NVIDIA today announced the immediate availability of the GeForce GTX 570 - the newest addition to its GTX 500 Series of DirectX 11 (DX11) GPUs designed for PC gaming enthusiast platforms. The GeForce GTX 570 brings a new level of DX11 price/performance to the enthusiast PC gaming market while maintaining quiet acoustics and is available starting today from the world's leading add-in card partners.
Coverage on AnandTech, BenchmarkReviews, Bit-tech, Bjorn3D, FudZilla, Guru3D, HardOCP, HardwareCanucks, Hardware Heaven, HardwareZone, Hexus, HotHardware, LegitReviews, NeoSeeker, OverclockersClub, Overclock3D, PC Perspective, T-Break, TechARP, TechPowerUp, TechReport, Tom's Hardware, TweakTown and VR-Zone.
Click to join the forum discussion!
Tuesday Night Reviews
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Tuesday, 7-December-2010 23:37:53 (GMT +10) - by Agg
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Audio Visual:
BenQ XL2410T Monitor on TBreak.
Asrock Vision 3D HTPC on TechSpot.
Panasonic Lumix DMC-FX700 digicam on TechReviewSource.
ASUS O!Play HD2 HD Media Player on LegitReviews.
Corsair HS1 Headset on HWSecrets.
LG W2340 23" Monitor on RBMods.
Input Etc:
Logitech K750 Wireless Solar Keyboard on LegitReviews.
Razer BlackWidow Mechanical Gaming Keyboard on BenchmarkReviews.
SteelSeries WoW Cataclysm MMO Gaming Mouse on HWHeaven.
Cooler Master Storm Inferno gaming mouse on InsideHW.
Video Cards:
Asus DirectCU EA6850 on SilentPCReview.
MSI N470GTX TWIN FROZR II on Motherboards.org.
Cases:
AZZA Hurrican 2000 on OCOnline.
Cooler Master 690 II Advanced White Edition Video Review on OC3D.
Silverstone Grandia GD02-MT on Overclockers.com.
Antec LanBoy Air Modular Case on ThinkComputers.
Cooling:
Kingston HyperX Fan on BonaFideReviews.
Corsair H70 CPU Liquid/Water Cooling System on Tweaknews.
Spire Slimod 282 VGA Cooler on TechArkade.
Memory:
Corsair Vengeance DDR3 12GB 1600MHz on Vortez.
Silicon Power XPower DDR3 2000 2 x 2GB Dual Channel on Bjorn3D.
Motherboard & CPU:
Gigabyte P67A-UD4 Sandy bridge mobo Sneak Peek on Guru3D.
Gigabyte X58-USB3 KGA1366 board on PureOC.
ASUS P6X58D-E LGA1366 board on OCIA.
Misc:
Microsoft Windows Phone 7 Smartphone OS on FutureLooks.
Silverstone TOB01 Blu-Ray drive on TechReaction.
Forum Projects
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Monday, 6-December-2010 21:17:02 (GMT +10) - by Agg
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Here's a few interesting things from the forums:
The CSIRO are looking into broadband via TV antenna, to bring fast internet to the outback. Australia began switching off its analogue TV signals in June and the transition to digital-only transmission is expected to be complete by the end of 2013, five years before the rollout finishes for the NBN. The spectrum is then expected to be auctioned off for communications purposes and this low-frequency analogue television spectrum could be the perfect solution.
With the Federal Government's recent support for an R18+ classification for video games, all eyes are on the state Attorney Generals who would have to unanimously approve it. GamePron have some comments from Michael Atkinson's replacement in the role of South Australia's AG. I don’t necessarily believe that having an R18+ classification is inconsistent with protecting children, but exactly what formulation could deliver both of those things, I’m not entirely sure yet.
From Darkness: This guy is unreal! He takes characters from movies, tv, games etc and draws them 'simpsons' style. A quick flick through gave me Robocop, Batman, Spiderman, the X-men, characters from Street Fighter, The Dark Knight, Half-life, Ghostbusters, Braveheart and so on. Very cool.
PC Perspective have info on process delays affecting AMD and NVIDIA's chip fabs. Several years back TSMC promised 32 nm to its customers in an early 2010 timeframe. Unfortunately, TSMC was unable to deliver adequate volume of 40 nm production until Q1 2010. TSMC knew this was going to be a problem several years ago, and in 2008 they changed their plans. There was not going to be a 32 nm process, and it was going to go directly to 28 nm.
HWSecrets have more info on PSUs claiming bogus efficiency certifications. So now you should not only check whether a power supply has an 80 Plus certification, but also verify if it is legit! You can check whether an 80 Plus certification is legit by seeing if a power supply is listed at the 80 Plus website.
Dasuperham spotted more info on the Net Neutrality issue brewing in the USA. You like the idea of Internet data caps and overage charges, right? And the prospect of paying your ISP separate fees for "the Internet" and for "managed" IP services like voice, video, VPN, telehealth, and smart grid applications, even when these directly compete with similar Internet-delivered services?
Here's a cool Kinect hack to give you Predator-like camouflage, thanks (to the oddly-appropriately named) Shadowman. Yup, a Japanese coder by the name of Takayuki Fukatsu has exploited the versatile openFrameworks to give Kinect a mode where it tracks your movement and position, but turns the dull details of your visage into an almost perfectly transparent outline.
The USAF have built a PS3-powered supercomputer. Using PS3s for the supercomputer's core allowed AFRL to construct the system for a total cost of $2 million, which Barnell estimates is five to 10 percent of an equivalent system built entirely with off-the-shelf computer parts. It will also consume one-tenth the power of other comparably powered supercomputers, officials said.
Oracle meanwhile have a new SPARC Supercluster, thanks dasuperham. More info here on ArsTechnica. The hardware configuration used to achieve the record was a single SPARC Supercluster with 108 SPARC T3 chips, for a total of 1,728 processor cores. The system also has 13TB of memory, 246TB of flash storage, and 1.7 petabytes of total storage capacity. Ellison, who giggled with excitement (seriously) during the presentation, giddily told the audience that the test involved pumping a quadrillion records into an Oracle database.
Today's timewaster is The Company of Myself, from Sam.
Interesting Forum Threads
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Monday, 6-December-2010 03:09:35 (GMT +10) - by Agg
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Here's a quick snapshot of what people are up to in the forums:
AVG Users: beware of latest update! in General Software.
Is it normal to be scared of games? in Games.
OCAU GT5 Club in Sony Consoles.
Gran Turismo 5 Photomode Thread in Sony Consoles.
New Blu-Ray anti-piracy message in Audio Visual.
HT display calibration thread in Audio Visual.
[review] Sony E340 (16GB mp3 player) in Audio Visual.
Intelligent Fan Controller Project in Electronics.
why dont i get electrocuted? in Electronics.
Take a look at this: Horrible Wiring Job 240V in Electronics.
Adobe Flash 10.2 Beta: GPU accelerated Flash video on Linux? in Other Operating Systems.
Amstrad MEGAPC in Retro & Arcade.
Big bee hive being removed from our back tree in Pets & Animals.
A new model of the universe in Science.
NASA Sets Astrobiology News Conference in Science.
Which cooks do you follow on YouTube? in Geek Food.
Another Aussie Tech Gets Traction Overseas in Current Events.
Bored? Read some recent Court Reports! in The Pub.
Did we really lose a war to Emus? Or is this some kind of joke? in The Pub.
Big Toys in The Pub.
Lots of people sent word that the Federal Government has backed the introduction of an R18+ rating for computer games. Minister for Home Affairs and Justice Brendan O’Connor today announced that the Gillard Government will advocate for the introduction of an adult only classification for video games. "We want to provide better guidance for parents and remove unsuitable material from children and teenagers. The introduction of an R18+ classification will help achieve that." The announcement comes ahead of Friday’s Standing Committee of Attorneys-General meeting, where Classification Ministers will be asked to make a decision on the issue. More here, here and here, with discussion continuing here.
Some Aussie "web gurus" have sold their retailmenot.com website for a hefty sum although the specifics have not been revealed. WHAT started as a weekend hobby has led to a multi-million dollar payday for two Melbourne men, after a private US firm backed by a group of powerful venture capital firms purchased their coupon website.
Dasuperham spotted this great idea, replacing capslock with search on Google's ChromeOS laptops. "The Caps key is an abomination," Hintjens writes on his blog. "It's a huge key, stuck right there where the Ctrl used to be, and as far as I know, it's only used by 419 scammers and Fortran programmers."
PC World have released the results of a Laptop Reliability and Service survey. Overall, laptop reliability is improving gradually: 25.9 percent of respondents report experiencing at least one significant problem with their notebook, down from 30.9 percent last year and 31.8 percent two years ago.
I think we've seen this before but I don't know if it was available to Australia then - it is now. Anyway, LEGO have a design your own system now, thanks dasuperham. Now you can make, shape & even order the toy you wish in a box you design yourself.
Large retailers are responding to the growth of overseas online sales, threatening to move themselves offshore to compete better. Mr Brookes said Myer's China-based website could be up and running by February, attracting a significant portion of the company's estimated $5 million a year in existing internet sales. Goods ordered from the site, such as dresses, jeans or coats, would be packed and shipped from its hub in Shenzhen, southern China, and avoid GST charges. Discussion here.
Sunday Morning Reviews
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Sunday, 5-December-2010 01:53:24 (GMT +10) - by Agg
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Audio Visual:
Zalman ZM-M240W Stereoscopic monitor on Guru3D.
Creative Sound Blaster X-Fi Titanium HD on MadShrimps.
TDK WR700 Headphones on TBreak.
Cooling:
Zalman CNPS9900 MAX CPU cooler on Bjorn3D.
Scythe SCRT-1000 Rasetsu Heatsink on Frostytech.
Video Cards:
ATI Radeon 6850 on RBMods.
XFX Radeon 6850 Black Edition (Dual Fans) on HWHeaven.
Radeon HD 5550 v. GeForce GT 430 on InsideHW.
Motherboard & CPU:
GIGABYTE GA-X58-USB3 LGA1366 board on LegitReviews.
MSI P67A-GD65 LGA1155 board on HWSecrets.
Gigabyte GA-X58A-UD5 (rev. 2.0) LGA1366 board on XbitLabs.
AMD Phenom II X6 1075T 6-Core Processor Performance Review on LegitReviews.
AMD Phenom II X6 1090T 3.2GHz Socket AM3 6-Core Processor on PCStats.
Gigabyte GA-P67A-UD7 Intel P67 LGA1155 board on PCStats.
Storage:
Zalman N Series 128GB SSD on Bjorn3D.
Silverstone TS03 hotswap bay on TechReaction.
OCZ Vertex 2 120GB SSD on Overclockers.com.
Input Etc:
Razer Nostromo Game Board on XSReviews.
Motion-Sensing Controller for PC: Gyration Air Mouse Elite on XbitLabs.
Mad Catz Call of Duty: Black Ops Stealth Mouse on BenchmarkReviews.
Mionix Naos 3200dpi Laser Gaming Mouse on OCModShop.
Power Supply:
Corsair Gaming Series GS800 Power Supply on OCOnline.
Memory:
PNY XLR8 6GB DDR3-1600 on PureOC.
Mushkin Radioactive 996958 PC3 12800 2X2GB on OCClub.
G.Skill Trident DDR3-2500 4GB on OC3D.
Portable & Prebuilt:
Dell XPS 15 (L501X) Laptop on HWHeaven.
Lenovo IdeaPad S10-3t Convertible Tablet Netbook on FutureLooks.
Dell Vostro V130 laptop on TechReviewSource.
Thanks to g00nster and mistergrister this week!
     
     
     
     
And if you're after more, check out this Wiki page which lists ALL "misc pics" news posts from the archive.
Friday Afternoon
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Friday, 3-December-2010 14:36:24 (GMT +10) - by Agg
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From Amfibius: OCAU's Iron Chef Christmas is open for entries between the 4th and 12th of December! Show off your tasty creations. Whose cuisine will reign supreme? Discussion thread here.
NASA's big news conference was about a new form of life based on Arsenic instead of Phosophorus. It's still here on Earth though, and not the "Alien Life" everyone was expecting. But it does mean a much broader scope for our understanding of what life needs to exist. Some commentary here on Gizmodo and discussion here.
NBN Co has refined its product range after consulting with ISPs. She described in detail the NBN Co's thinking on the fibre products, which would launch with "eight key speed tiers" and four traffic classes. The starting point for fibre services would be 12 Mbps down/1 Mbps uplink. Other speed tiers included 25/10, 50/20, 100/40 and eventually 1 Gbps/400 Mbps.
Tech-Report checked out four 7200rpm notebook drives. SSDs may be the new hotness, but 7,200-RPM notebook drives are a more realistic option for most laptop users. We round up four of the best.
Sniper spotted this Tron Light Cycle you can ride around in real life. Until you reach a corner. Jeff Halverson of Parker Brothers Choppers states that each bike is wonderfully constructed with a steel frame, fiberglass bodywork and a V-twin engine from a Suzuki TLR1000. Braking power comes from custom made friction drums which help keep the bike true to the latest Light Cycle designs to appear in the film.
IBM have had another chip breakthrough, thanks dasuperham. The new technology, called CMOS Integrated Silicon Nanophotonics, is the result of a decade of development at IBM's global Research laboratories. The patented technology will change and improve the way computer chips communicate – by integrating optical devices and functions directly onto a silicon chip, enabling over 10X improvement in integration density than is feasible with current manufacturing techniques.
Dasuperham also sent in this article on AnandTech about Micron's ClearNAND. The idea is simple. Instead of placing the burden of dealing with increasing error rates on the controller, Micron will internalize the problem and equip each NAND device with an ECC controller.
BnH also pointed out that Google Maps Navigation for Android was launched recently. To get the latest release of Google Maps with Navigation, search for 'Google Maps' in Android Market.
Today's timewaster is Snow Storm from BnH. Didn't really grab me but you might like it. We don't have many timewaster sent in, so if you've got a favourite web game, send it in to news@overclockers.com.au!
Farewell to the Pig
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Thursday, 2-December-2010 22:01:22 (GMT +10) - by Agg
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Tomorrow marks the official retirement of Australia's F-111 fleet. In case you're unable to attend the events at RAAF Amberley in QLD, OCAU member reax and RAAF SQNLDR McCreath sent along some photos:
   
   
   
The unusual swing-wing F-111 entered Australian service in 1973 and has been an iconic part of national celebrations since. Australia Day, the New Years celebrations and Riverfire just won't be the same without an F-111 roaring past doing a "dump and burn".
I don't have a definitive answer for whether any will be kept in service for ceremonial duties. It seems like a perfect opportunity for a billionaire Australian aviation enthusiast to buy one and keep it flying for special occasions. I'm looking at you, Dick Smith. ;)
All photos courtesy RAAF SQNLDR McCreath - thanks! There's more photos and discussion in this thread.
Thursday Night Reviews
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Thursday, 2-December-2010 21:30:34 (GMT +10) - by Agg
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Audio Visual:
A.C. Ryan Playon!HD Essential Media Player on HWHeaven.
Arctic Sound S111 Portable Speakers on FunkyKit.
Samsung NX100 Micro 4/3 Digital Camera on EverythingUSB.
Corsair HS1 USB Gaming Headset on ThinkComputers.
Roku XD Media Player on TechGage.
Microsoft LifeCam Studio HD Webcam on FutureLooks.
Motherboard & CPU:
ECS H67H2-M Intel H67 LGA1155 motherboard on PCStats.
ASUS P8P67 Deluxe Sandy bridge mobo preview on Guru3D.
AMD Athlon II X4 645 3.1GHz Socket AM3 Quad-Core Processor on FrostyTech.
ASUS Sabertooth X58 LGA1366 board on PureOC.
ASUS P7H55-M/USB3 Motherboard LGA1156 Micro-ATX board on HWHeaven.
Asus Crosshair IV Extreme Review: Lucid HydraLogix inside AM3 board on TechSpot.
Video Cards:
Inno3D GeForce GTX 580 OC on LegionHW.
VisionTek Killer HD 5770 First Look on OCModShop.
Sapphire HD6850 TOXIC Edition on OC3D.
GIGABYTE Radeon HD 5670 on MadShrimps.
Cooling:
Arctic Cooling Freezer 13 CPU Cooler on OCIA.
Arctic Cooling Freezer 11 LP CPU Cooler on ThinkComputers.
Coolink Corator DS Heatsink on Frostytech.
Akasa Venom Heatsink on Frostytech.
Storage:
Patriot Convoy 425XL SAS/SATA RAID Enclosure on BenchmarkReviews.
MUKii TransImp MD Dual 2.5" Internal Dock on Pro-Clockers.
Synology DiskStation DS211j on TestFreaks.
Vantec NexStar SE Dual 2.5" HDD Internal Enclosure on Pro-Clockers.
Portable & Prebuilt:
Acer Aspire 1551 11.6-inch Notebook on LegitReviews.
Lenovo Edge 11" Notebook on TBreak.
Cases:
Cooler Master Centurion 5 II on TechReaction.
CM HAF 912: Minor Package, Major Airflow on InsideHW.
BitFenix Survivor Gaming Case on Tweaknews.
Power Supply:
Ultra LSX 750W on OCClub.
GIGABYTE Aivia K8100 gaming keyboard on Vortez.
Patriot Viper Xtreme DDR3 2000MHz Kit on NeoSeeker.
Thursday Afternoon
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Thursday, 2-December-2010 13:48:17 (GMT +10) - by Agg
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The voting is open in November's Iron Photographer contest, thanks NismoR31.
If you're one of the people eagerly awaiting D-Link's Boxee Box Atom-powered HTPC widget, it's now available in Australia - there's even a Sponsor Special for it. The striking black box allows users to watch available movies and TV programs from the Internet, stream videos from nearly any website, exchange recommendations with friends using social media sites like Facebook, organise and enjoy personal music, photos and videos, and browse the Internet, all from a simple to use remote.
TechReport tackle the old question of whether two cheap GPUs is better than one expensive one. Can a pair of sub-$200 video cards outperform a $500+ monster? What happens if two $500+ monsters team up? And which solution has the best value proposition? We have a look.
Australian ISPs have accepted an anti-zombie code of practise. The IIA was concerned that zombied computers could capture and forward passwords in session, send information to others without the knowledge of users, wipe information stored on machines or cause personal computers to attack other computer systems worldwide. "Harnessing many thousands of zombied computers gives vast, hidden computing power to cybercriminals who are preying on internet users' inexperience or inertia," IIA chief Peter Coroneos said.
Meanwhile Exetel are suing the TIO. Exetel has issued a detail customer communiqué detailing why it had decided to sue the Telecommunications Industry Ombudsman (TIO), a government agency it describes as a “rogue organization.”
I didn't even know this existed, but timbot sent word that Microsoft's Fix It site has been updated. Could be good for those endless tech support calls from friends.
Here's a little puzzle timewaster from MT: 8 Queens of Death.
Gainward GTX 460 1GB GS-GLH
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Thursday, 2-December-2010 02:10:36 (GMT +10) - by Agg
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DiGiTaL MoNkEY has another GTX 460 review for us today. This time it's Gainward's offering, the wordily-named "Golden Sample - Goes Like Hell" edition:
Click for the review!
Wednesday Evening Reviews
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Wednesday, 1-December-2010 20:31:43 (GMT +10) - by Agg
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Memory:
OCZ Reaper R2 1600MHz 6GB DDR3 Ram Kit on TechWareLabs.
8GB G.Skill Ripjaws 2000MHz DDR3 on BenchmarkReviews.
Portable & Prebuilt:
Asus Eee PC 1215N on TechReviewSource.
Dell Vostro V130 13.3-inch Notebook on Tweaktown.
Apple 13" MacBook Air on HotHardware.
Chillblast Fusion Challenger System on HWHeaven.
Input Etc:
Tt eSPORTS Challenger Pro gaming keyboard on Techgage.
Gigabyte M6900 Gaming Mouse on TBreak.
Gigabyte Aivia K8100 Gaming Keyboard on BenchmarkReviews.
Video Cards:
ASUS EAH 6850 DC and 6870 DC on LostCircuits.
PowerColor Radeon HD 6870 PCS+ Call Of Duty Edition on OCClub.
PowerColor Radeon PCS+ 6870 on PureOC.
Intel Core i7 CPU Scaling with HD 6850 in Crossfire on Tweaktown.
ASUS EAH6870 on TBreak.
ASUS ENGTX580 Voltage Tweak - SLI on Bjorn3D.
NVIDIA GeForce GTX 580 SLI Benchmarking w/ ASUS ENGTX580 on LegitReviews.
AMD Radeon HD 6850 & HD 6870 on Metku.
PowerColor Radeon HD 6850 PCS+ on NeoSeeker.
ASUS GeForce GTX 580 Voltage Tweak on TechReaction.
Power Supply:
Choiix Power Fort 5.5 Portable Power Adapter on Pro-Clockers.
Golden Silence: Seasonic and SilverStone Fanless PSUs on XbitLabs.
Antec High Current Gamer 750 on HWSecrets.
Misc:
Nesteq RubberScrew Magnets on FunkyKit.
NZXT Sleeved LED Kit on ThinkComputers.
Nero 10 Multimedia Suite Platinum HD on TestFreaks.
Violent Video Games
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Wednesday, 1-December-2010 14:52:06 (GMT +10) - by Agg
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The Attorney-General’s Department has released their review of research into whether violent computer games and violent behaviour are linked.
This analysis of the available literature shows that:- there is no conclusive evidence that violent computer games have a greater impact on players than other violent media, such as movies or music videos
- there is stronger evidence of short-term effects from violent computer games, than long-term effects
- some research finds that violent computer games are a small risk factor in aggressive behaviour over the short term, but these studies do not thoroughly explore other factors such as aggressive personality, family and peer influence and socio-economic status.
The introduction of an R18+ classification for video games will be discussed at the Standing Committee of Attorneys-General meeting in Canberra on Friday 10 December.
More info and the full review here. Discussion continues in this thread.
Wednesday Morning
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Wednesday, 1-December-2010 03:46:25 (GMT +10) - by Agg
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NASA win today's award for most intriguing press-release: WASHINGTON -- NASA will hold a news conference at 2 p.m. EST on Thursday, Dec. 2, to discuss an astrobiology finding that will impact the search for evidence of extraterrestrial life. Astrobiology is the study of the origin, evolution, distribution and future of life in the universe.
Here's an interesting video of a mobile phone concept from Mozilla, called Seabird. The Mozilla Seabird, part of the Mozilla Labs’ Concept Series, is an experiment in how users might interact with their mobile content as devices and technology advances. Drawing on insights culled from the Mozilla community through the project’s blog, a focus quickly developed around frustrating physical interactions. Sooo.. it's not likely to be a real product anytime soon.
Dasuperham sent in these horrifyingly dusty PCs over on TheReg. Good work by all those readers who sent in evidence demonstrating that it really is a good idea to keep your computer spick and span. The consequences of poor PC hygiene can, as we shall see, be quite terrifying.
Net Neutrality has reared its head again with Comcast charging a fee for specific traffic. “This action by Comcast threatens the open Internet and is a clear abuse of the dominant control that Comcast exerts in broadband access,” Thomas Stortz, Level 3’s chief legal officer, said in the statement. “With this action, Comcast is preventing competing content from ever being delivered to Comcast’s subscribers at all, unless Comcast’s unilaterally determined toll is paid.” More here and here.
We haven't heard much about the mysterious "stuxnet" worm for a while, but FoxNews have an article that details how it attacked Iran's nuclear program. At Natanz, for almost 17 months, Stuxnet quietly worked its way into the system and targeted a specific component -- the frequency converters made by the German equipment manufacturer Siemens that regulated the speed of the spinning centrifuges used to create nuclear fuel. The worm then took control of the speed at which the centrifuges spun, making them turn so fast in a quick burst that they would be damaged but not destroyed. And at the same time, the worm masked that change in speed from being discovered at the centrifuges' control panel.
mpot noticed an article comparing shipping companies. Not directly relevant to us, but an interesting idea. I called up a contact at National Instruments—an innovative manufacturer of industrial control equipment and software, based in Austin, Texas—and presented a challenge: Could the company help me disguise vibration sensors inside a package that I could secretly ship around the country?
A 64-bit ARM processor is rumoured to be in the works, thanks dasuperham. ARM, the developer of microprocessor technologies that power chips inside various low power consumer electronics, is secretly developing a 64-bit core that will allow the company's partners to design truly server multi-core solutions that support 4GB and more memory and can theoretically compete against AMD Opteron and Intel Xeon processors.
Trekkies, check out this LCARS-inspired computer. This is what I built in my home and this video is my own work. Both the computer and the software is self made. The interface is inspired by the LCARS interface from Star Trek.
Also from mpot is this board game gift guide, if you want to flash back to the days before MyTweetBook and NaziZombieFarm. A board game is one of the best presents you can give, because it brings friends and family together and can provide more hours of fun than any book, DVD, or pair of socks you can find. There's a game on this page that's right for anyone on your list!
Wednesday Morning Reviews
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Wednesday, 1-December-2010 00:13:06 (GMT +10) - by Agg
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Audio Visual:
ROCCAT Kave Headset on Vortez.
Panasonic DMP-BD655 Blu-ray Disc Player on TestFreaks.
Psyko Audio Labs 5.1 Gaming Headset on OCIA.
Arctic Sound P531 USB Gaming Headset on ASELabs.
Cases:
Lian Li PC-8FI Aluminum on Tweaknews.
Lian Li PC-V352 B HTPC Chassis on Tweaktown.
Motherboard & CPU:
ECS H67H2-M LGA1155 board on HWSecrets.
Gigabyte P67A-UD7 LGA1155 board on HotHardware.
Gigabyte P67A-UD7 LGA1155 board on TechReport.
GIGABYTE P67A-UD7 (Intel P67 Express) LGA1155 board on Tweaktown.
Cooling:
Noctua NH-C14 CPU Cooler on Vortez.
Silverstone Technology NT07-1156 HSF on OCOnline.
NZXT Sentry LXE Digital Fan Controller on BenchmarkReviews.
Storage:
Chaintech Apogee FlashSSD A-series 64GB on RBMods.
Thermaltake BlacX 5G USB 3.0 Hard Drive Docking Station on ThinkComputers.
Seagate FreeAgent GoFlex 1.5TB Portable USB 3.0 HDD on SilentPCReview.
Zalman N Series 128GB SandForce SF-1222 SSD on LegitReviews.
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