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OCAU News |
Saturday Afternoon
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Saturday, 7-February-2009 16:11:55 (GMT +10) - by Agg
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Some news scraps to catch up on - hopefully no duplicates with earlier posts. Speaking of which, OCAU received its 10 millionth post recently!
Acid has written more about the online games legal minefield in NSW. Basically, World of Warcraft etc are being sold without age classificiations because the industry believes they are exempt from the classification requirement, but it turns out the NSW Attorney-General John Hatzistergos does not agree. In fact, the NSW Police are enouraging people to report retailers selling WoW and similar games. Once again we seem determined to make ourselves look like the slow cousins of the online world.
Speaking of online games, players of Eve Online, the big spaceship alliance MMORPG, are reeling after a massive betrayal and shift of power within the game. So what, you say? Well, the real-world value of stuff lost by the affected guild is in the region of $8M USD apparently, so it is kind've a big deal. This event is now the most significant coup in Eve history, not because of the money lost, but because the disbanding of an alliance means that all its defensive infrastructure lies exposed.
There's now a mobile version of Google Book Search. Bizarrely enough I have the comedian Stephen Fry to thank for that info. Thanks Stephen, more QI please. And if you see John Lloyd please ask him to make another season of The Museum of Curiosity. Ta.
Bill Gates has released more bugs - this time, mosquitoes. "There is more money put into baldness drugs than into malaria," Gates quipped, triggering laughter. "Now, baldness is a terrible thing and rich men are afflicted. That is why that priority has been set."
A security expert has shown how easy it is to clone RFID passports simply by being near someone with one. During a recent 20-minute drive in downtown San Francisco, it successfully copied the RFID tags of two passport cards without the knowledge of their owners.
JimX wants the world to know there's a newish version of OCCT Perestroïka, a CPU stability testing program. Seems to specialise in heating/stressing specific things like CPU, GPU, PSU etc.
Porsche recently unveiled their new 435bhp GT3. I only mention this coz I had a birthday recently and it's not too late for gifts. For the 2010 model year, the GT3 has been given more power, better handling, and a slightly higher base price. Discussion here.
The USA are building the fastest computer on the planet.. again. For nuclear stuff.. again. IBM estimates that the computing power of the Sequoia system will be greater than that of every one of the current systems on the Top 500 supercomputer rankings combined. Crikey.
Or, you could build one yourself, like this guy. Bruce Allen is perhaps the world's best do-it-yourselfer. When he needed a supercomputer to crunch the results of gravitational-wave research, he built one with his colleagues at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee.
Matt spotted this article with the power consumption figures for 106 video cards in various configurations. The top models demand between 110 and 270 watts from the power supply; in fact, a powerful graphics card under full load requires as much power as the rest of the components of a PC system combined.
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