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OCAU News |
ITWire thinks that Dell restricting Ubuntu to the US is a big mistake. At a time when much of the world is salivating with excitement over the release of Dell's new Ubuntu Linux computers in the US, it's ironic that the market in which Ubuntu originated, Europe, still has not received word on when the new Dell boxes will be available. Likewise, here in Australia local Dell representatives confirm that they still have no word on when the Ubuntu boxes will be available.
Corsair have unveiled their DDR3 lineup. The state of play at the beginning of 2007 was defined as one where leading exponents of enthusiast-oriented memory were approaching the performance envelope of DDR2. Corsair, for example, managed to speedbin select DDR2 memories at an effective 1250MHz (PC10000) and whilst we may see limited-run SKUs go even higher, DDR2's frequency headroom and days are numbered.
According to Ars Technica the Windows Tax on Dell machines is US$50 which was determined by comparing similar Ubuntu and Vista based Dell machines. The Dell Linux XPS 410n will have the same hardware as its Windows-based brother: an Intel Core 2 Duo E4300 with 1GB of RAM and a 250GB SATA hard drive. They will come with the standard Ubuntu distribution, which includes a whole plethora of free applications such as the Firefox web browser, and OpenOffice.org productivity suite, but no "crapware."
Bigpond is defending the use of Uluru and Opera house models in Second Life. Telstra's BigPond has defended the use of virtual models of Uluru and the Sydney Opera House on its Second Life island, saying such computer-generated drawings did not breach any copyright laws.
An error in the PC version of Halo 2 which depicts partial nudity has led the ESRB to issue warnings for the game (warning, partial nudity). That's right, some dip at Microsoft Games Studio (or perhaps Bungie) thought it would be funny to moon users when Vista craps out and churns out a certain error message. Hmm, wonder if it was Steve Ballmer? Maybe he's had our pants around our ankles so long he decided to return the favor.
IGN have checked out Fury, an Australian MMORPG which has some interesting features. Late last year, we headed down to Auran's Brisbane studio to check out how work was progressing on the team's ambitious, furious MMO, Fury. We came away with wide grins and a lot of unanswered questions - would the blend of hardcore RPG elements and speedy, FPS-like rapid fire gameplay be cohesive and approachable enough to be successful?
Some technology used to combat spam is helping to digitize books and make them searchable. Carnegie Mellon researchers have launched a new service that will not only protect e-mail addresses on the web from spambots, but also help digitize a backlog of old books, magazines, and newspapers so that they can eventually be computer searchable. The service, called reCAPTCHA, hopes to use the eyeballs of millions of Internet users to identify thousands of words for the Internet Archive.
Intel is saying that software has to step up to new technology to experience performance gains that they have experienced in the past due to the introduction of multi cored processors instead of faster clock speeds. "The software has to also start following Moore's law," Intel fellow Shekhar Borkar said, referring to the notion that chips offer roughly double the performance every 18 months to two years. "Software has to double the amount of parallelism that it can support every two years."
Justin sent that Sony is being sued over Blu-Ray due to a alleged infringed patent of a special layer that is used on the discs. The suit, which names Sony Computer Entertainment America, Sony Pictures and Sony DADC, claims that products marketed under the Blu-ray name infringe on a patent Target owns for reflective-layer materials in optical discs. The patent addresses what Target called a need for specific types of silver-based alloys with the advantages (but not the price) of gold. According to the patent, the alloys are also more resistant to corrosion than pure silver.
PCMech have posted an article about fixing wireless networking issues. If you have a late-model computer, especially a laptop, it probably has wireless networking already built in. If not, just stick in a USB wireless network adapter and you are on your way. While they are easy to install, wireless networks often have performance problems.
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All original content copyright James Rolfe.
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