News

Spire 5E32B3 CPU Cooler @ Modthebox.
Cooler Master ATC-101-SX2 @ OCmodshop.
Intuos 2 Graphics Tablet @ Ascully.com.
Epox 8K5A3+ @ 3DGM.
KoolPCMods Laser Etched Window Kit & Custom Case Badges @ Modthebox.
Antec Hard Drive Cooler @ Ascully.com.

Going back to college today, on the plus I got all my homework done!

Check out the Xabre 400 card from Jaton.

Pretty nice for a budget card.

Well someone hacked the RIAA site yet again in what seems to be an escalating war between the hackers and the hackees. I guess someone took offense to the RIAA's maneuvers to take down P2P sites and deliberate planting of bogus files on the sites. I don't condone the site hacking, but still...... it is kinda funny. Take a look at the hacked site for a laugh.

Thanks to The Inquirer for the linky-

Hacked RIAA

RIAA against music sharing? Not anymore!

RIAA to sue music sharers? Not Anymore

With the legal file sharing service kazaa still online, the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) today announced that it intends to offer the latest albums for download from riaa.org.

As you are probably aware, the RIAA has been pursuing a policy of preventing this activity in recent months

We have recently become aware that this approach is yielding only limited results and in some cases may in fact be harming sales and the artists' revenue stream.

The RIAA wishes to apologise for the heavy-handed manner in which the popular chinese site Listen4Ever was closed down, and would like to present the following items for free download as a token of its goodwill.

Of course the list is relatively small, but please be patient - we expect to offer over 300 next week. We also intend to offer pre-released movies in the coming months.

If what you want isn't on the list, then please try Kazaa Lite

According to this DigiTimes.com article, Intel chipsets make up for nearly 60% of all chipsets sold in the world during the second quarter, gaining 2.7% from the first quarter.

ECS announced their KT400 chipset board with the model name L7VTA Friday. Well, my pc is officially obsolete :-/ Read OCWorkbench's article on the board including full board specs.

This is what I consider a major, minor upgrade to the code. Most of it is updated, more polish is needed. If anything doesn't work, please tell me.

Update: The code facelift has been done on the server. How do you like it?

And you thought Microsoft was the bug king! Intel has it's own contributions to the PC world with all things buggy too. Or as it's referred to in the cpu world - erratum. Same difference. Intel has finally gotten around to fixing what would appear to be some serious bugs in the Pentium 4 and it's sibling Xeon P4. It's not unusual to have erratum on a cpu, especially ones as complicated as today's. The errata involved affect the P4's caches causing a performance hit. The Intel documents are quite technical but still and interesting read. It's worrisome though as I never expected the P4 to have 66 known bugs and many of which depend on the various motherboard manufacturers to implement fixes by way of a bios update.

Intel's hidden Xeon, Pentium 4 bugs - The Inquirer

As far as a refund or replacement cpu from Intel to replace all those hobbled cpu's, I think the masses can forget about it.

This is a nice budget card, althought there are better cards for a bit more money.Next Page »

Epox 4BEAV @ Techwarelabs.
Radeon 9000 Pro @ Overclockers Online.
Ti 4200 shootout @ tech-report.
Triplex Ti 4400 @ OC NZ.
Jaton Xabre 400 @ 3Dxtreme. (Mine is coming out today ).

Yeah, I'm finishing up that review and touching up the pics. I'll get it up by tonight.

Mandrake 9.0 RC1 is out. Maybe I should upgrade my test box...

It seems that the popular Windows XP will get its first SP on the 9th.

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The changes supporting Windows Media Center PCs and the Tablet PC will be available only to PC manufacturers. Hewlett-Packard and some other computer makers are prepping Windows Media PCs for holiday release. These systems will include a second user interface for accessing Windows XP's digital media features via a remote control.

The Tablet PC, slated for Nov. 7 release, is a notebook hybrid that allows people to input text by writing on the display with a stylus. Microsoft sees big potential for the devices among businesses and schools. Microsoft Research, for example, has produced a short film demonstrating the benefits of the Tablet PC for in-classroom and remote-access teaching.

w00t! Nov 7th now! Different from what I saw at PC Expo.

This looks pretty interesting right?

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OTES stands for Outside Thermal Exhaust System. It is ABIT’s new and patent pending VGA Cooling system.

ABIT claim it will be able to lower temperatures by around 15% comparing to standard cooling system. This includes GPU temperatures only I belive. The fan on the GPU is spinning @ 7200rpm!

ABIT believes their new Geforce4 TI4200 will be able to offer TI4600 performance because of the overclocking possibilities. That means you'll be getting Geforce4 Ti4600 performance at the price of Ti4200 card!

[H] has the scoop on the real gaming deal that the Mobile Radeon 9000 offers.

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ATi's advanced method of anisotropic filtering is almost "free of charge" when coupled with AA, being that if you're going to be running AA, you might as well turn on the AF, as the frame hit is extremely minimal. The 16XAF makes all the difference in the world when playing a game like MOHAA. For that matter, even games like Jedi Knight with many indoor scenes benefit hugely as well. Without AF, MOHAA can get very bad looking very quickly. When you and your troops are walking up a dirt road that turns into nothing but a dirt blur, you can be left disappointed with your equipment. The Mobility Radeon 9000 took care of all of that and delivered to us the most beautiful gaming environments we've ever seen on a laptop system.

I have some updates planned for this weekend. I am back home and will be coding/reviewing stuff. The Jaton Xabre card review is nearly finished, the card is okay, but it is perfect for hard budget people. It will give you enough power to play some good games.

Modification to site:
Editorials are being phased out, in place will come something...
Moving a bunch of stuff into the database and more minor edits

If there are any features or things missing or broken that you want fixed, better tell me now.

Guru3D has posted some new nVidia drivers version 31.00 that were ripped from a set of WHQL nForce drivers. Guru3D has fixed the .ini file to add support for the stand alone cards and they say they work just fine. Win2K/XP drivers only as yet.

nVidia Detonators v31.00 2K/XP

Open the floodgates! ABIT has announced 2 motherboards with support for the new crop of Athlon's due out that with be sporting the upgraded 333Mhz FSB and they are based on the new VIA KT400 chipset. They'll be based on the MAX series motherboard and will come with a slew of nice features including the new serial ATA interface and AGP 8X support.

ABIT Launches KT400-based AT7-MAX2 and KD7-RAID with AthlonXP 333FSB Support

Found this article by way of VIA Hardware that was put up by Slate, about the RIAA. I'm glad to see someone is trying to expose them for what they really are and I myself agree. Personally I think they should leave the P2P community alone over music swaps. I myself hate to buy an album when all I have to go on is the a portoin of a couple of songs to listen to only to find that the rest of the CD is garbage. I feel very ripped off and I have stopped buying CD's for the most part. When Napster was in it's heyday, I tended to buy a lot more CD's since I had the opportunity to listen to a whole song as well be exposed to those new artists that were trying to get a break. Guess what? I bought more CD's! Helps spur sales for something other than Britney Spears. Piracy can be a detriment as the RIAA puts it, but I believe it can also be a great help over the long term.

Hit Charade - The music industry's self-inflicted wounds

For some heated discussion over the issue check out the VIA Hardware Forum on the issue. They have an artist who weighed in on the issue. Or feel free to weigh in here in our own forums.

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Powered by VIA's KT400 chipset, SOYO's new SY-KT400 DRAGONTM Ultra supports high speed DDR333/400 up to 3GB, an 8X AGP Pro slot for the ultimate graphics experience, and serial ATA (optional). Echoing the recent trend in see-through computer cases, KT400 DRAGONTM Ultra (Platinum Edition) continues to make a fashion statement with its distinctive platinum PCB finish.

PR From Soyo sent by email... For more, head to Soyo.

I still didn't get a net connection here, I'm using another room for temp access...

Iris DVD review @ Ascully.
Telex EV SonicXS Speakers @ Gaming Illustrated.
Cool Neon blacklight paint @ Monster-Hardware.
Chaintech 7AJA2E @ RipNet-UK.

Microsoft has once again released another spurt of Window's code because of the pending settlement of the trial.

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Microsoft began making the technical disclosure in mid-August, through the MSDN Web site, and released the full list of 272 APIs on Tuesday. After the release of Windows XP Service Pack 1, Microsoft plans to make available a software-development kit (SDK) for taking advantage of the technical information.

MSDN page here.

Finally some news, well, reviews...

Xoxide X300 @ Reviewnation.
Antec Trueblue 480W PSU @ Ascully.com.
ATA133 cables @ PCAbursers.
Lian-Li PC7 @ RipNet-UK.
LM 317 Based 4-way BayBus @ ReviewNation.
MagicCard @ 3DGM.
Antec PLUS660AMG @ PCAbuser.
Enermax CSX305ILS case @ OCModShop.
Titan TTC-ALC2 Fan Control @ Casetest.

It feels good to post some news. I have no net connection at the place I'm staying at

Straight from AMD.com

I'm at school now, so expect news to be slow over the next week or so. Hopefully Warlock or Subj will pick up some slack.

According to Page 6 of the firingsquad's QuakeCon coverage, Doom 3 is maxed at 4 players now. AND! It'll be using a P2P system for multiplayer!

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After 2 hours of talking up at the podium, sometimes you leave a few details out. Doom 3 multiplayer will be fully scalable. It will be a peer to peer system. We haven't started working on it yet. Tell everyone not to panic - it will be fine. John just forgot to mention it'll be scalable past four players. It's hard to give a hard number because we haven't started working on it yet. Right now we're focused on making Doom 3 a kickass, over the top single player game.

I figure I'll empty my inbox and stuff...

3DGM review a Lian-Li PC6089a case.
RipNet-UK reviews an Everglide Cyborg Gaming Mat.
TecCentral review the TT Volcano 9 (translated).
Modthebox has an 80mm Vantec fan, also a contest.
There are some P4 2.8ghz benches at Akiba.
Viperlair reviews a PNY Ti4600.
PCreviewspot reviews the Abit IT7.

By the way, the Athlon will go to 333FSB on the 2700+ chip, funny as the bandwith for 333Mhz is 2.7Gb/s or PC2700 . Just thought you'd like to know.

I am very interested in time travel. Ever since I've read about the possiblity of traversing the seemingly constant of time, I would have never thought it would have been possible. Perhaps it isn't, but just what if it is?

Here is an article on how wormholes and such other singularities can make time jumps possible.

If you have ever seen sci-fi shows such as Star Trek, they do delve on some time jumping in some episodes. The problem, or solution, to what they do in the episodes is that casual loops are usually the point of the episode. Let me explain, in one episode of Voyager, a ship from the 29th Century was thrown into the 20th century, and then Voyager (24th I believe) was thrown back in time as well, though like 20 years after the other ship was. The crew found out that it was the 20th Centurity peoples' understanding of 29th century technology that created the computer industry. Now, if the computer was created from 29th century technology, but 29th century technology was evolved from the computer technology of the 20th, then where did the technology originally come from? It didn't, it is reasonableless because it never existed, but it does because of a casual loop.

So many paradoxes can be caused from time travel. If I went ahead into the future and saw that I was going to be shot by someone, I would avoid it. But how could I avoid it if I seen it happen? Perhaps what I saw caused me to get shot because I tried to avoid the place but I went there by accident (or so I thought).

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Even if time travel isn't strictly paradoxical, it is certainly weird. Consider the time traveler who leaps ahead a year and reads about a new mathematical theorem in a future edition of Scientific American. He notes the details, returns to his own time and teaches the theorem to a student, who then writes it up for Scientific American. The article is, of course, the very one that the time traveler read. The question then arises: Where did the information about the theorem come from? Not from the time traveler, because he read it, but not from the student either, who learned it from the time traveler. The information seemingly came into existence from nowhere, reasonlessly.

Okay, so we got all the weirdness of time travel out of the way, but what about actually doing it?

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Speed is one way to jump ahead in time. Gravity is another. In his general theory of relativity, Einstein predicted that gravity slows time. Clocks run a bit faster in the attic than in the basement, which is closer to the center of Earth and therefore deeper down in a gravitational field. Similarly, clocks run faster in space than on the ground. Once again the effect is minuscule, but it has been directly measured using accurate clocks. Indeed, these time-warping effects have to be taken into account in the Global Positioning System. If they weren't, sailors, taxi drivers and cruise missiles could find themselves many kilometers off course.

At the surface of a neutron star, gravity is so strong that time is slowed by about 30 percent relative to Earth time. Viewed from such a star, events here would resemble a fast-forwarded video. A black hole represents the ultimate time warp; at the surface of the hole, time stands still relative to Earth. This means that if you fell into a black hole from nearby, in the brief interval it took you to reach the surface, all of eternity would pass by in the wider universe. The region within the black hole is therefore beyond the end of time, as far as the outside universe is concerned. If an astronaut could zoom very close to a black hole and return unscathed--admittedly a fanciful, not to mention foolhardy, prospect--he could leap far into the future.

This is all food for thought, but what are your thoughts? Hit discuss this to talk about this issue. Perhaps something like Minority Report or something worse may actually be possible.

Some things may be crazy, just tell me if you find any bugs.

UPDATE: Code has been updated, mostly changes internally you prob won't notice anything different except the coming group control panel... I'm finishing it up now...

UPDATE 2: The Group CP is stable, but there are no features right now. Soon, I'll get to making it so you can request to get in a group, remove yourself from a group, and request that another group is created. All automated of course.

File this under stupidity. When I first heard about this suit, I didn't think they would really persue it that long.

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BT had contacted Prodigy and 16 other ISPs, including America Online, in June 2000, asking them to buy a hyperlink license. When they refused, the British telecommunications giant pursued Prodigy as a test case.

AOpen AX4G Pro @ OCmodshop.
LIS LCD Display @ Ascully.com.
80mm Spiderman Fan Grill @ ReviewNation.
Cooler Master ATC 410 SX1 Case @ MODTHEBOX.COM.
Guide on Audigy and WinXP @ RipNet.
Ti4600 mod @ Monster-hardware.
Internal/External Multi Adapter Panel @ Voidedwarrenty.

Have you signed up for our watercooling giveaway yet?

HWZ reviews an ECS Xabre 400.
PureOC reviews a DangerDen water Block.
tBreak has a review of the KT4 Ultra from MSI.
Minervatech has a review of the VIA Eden platform.
EXHardware reviews an Albatron Ti4400.

I have some news in my inbox, I'll empty it when I go downstairs. Yes, I'm lazy.