Tech News
-
Want to Run Linux on Your Microsoft Surface? @ TechGage
Published: Monday, December 31, 2012 | By: DennisI have spoke many times on the Ninjalane Podcast about how much I love my Asus Slate tablet PC and thus far have not tried reloading the OS or tweaking the system in any way, mostly because it just works.
Well, one of the other reasons for this is that to reload the OS you have to rely on the USB ports to give you keyboard access and provide external storage for the OS. Not exactly an easy thing to do.
It would seem that running Linux on my Slate might be possible but on a Windows8 Slate that simply isn't the case.
Microsoft’s Surface tablet is an interesting specimen for a couple of reasons, but one of the biggest is that it’s a tablet that features a desktop OS (although the RT edition is very scaled-down). Because of this, some had hoped that installing another OS on it would be fairly simple. After all, we’re all familiar with Windows’ boot-loaders at this point. As it turns out, however, accomplishing this is easier said than done. The reason? You guessed it: SecureBoot.
Darn that SecureBoot, but if you think about it, SecureBoot is a good thing for most everyone since it does make the OS a little less susceptible to bad hacking. I guess Linux falls into that category.
-
ECS to see decrease in self-brand motherboard shipments in 2012
Published: Friday, December 28, 2012 | By: DennisNot good when the "budget" guys are reporting a loss in sales.
Elitegroup Computer Systems (ECS) is expected to ship about four million motherboards for own-brand sale in 2012, decreasing from six million units shipped in 2011, but its ODM shipments of 12 million in 2012 will remain unchanged from 2011, according to supply chain makers.
ECS will come back to the Taiwan retail market with own-brand motherboards by launching several models, including Thin Mini-ITX, Q77H2-TI and B75H2-TI, in January 2013, the sources noted.
ECS has had decreasing notebook ODM orders but is likely to receive increasing orders from Intel for Classmate PCs and StudyBooks, the sources indicated, because Intel has obtained orders from emerging markets including China, Turkey, Thailand, India and countries in Eastern Europe and Latin America for shipments in 2013. ECS is a major ODM for the products, the sources said.Check the article for the whole scoop but it looks like the downturn claimed another victim.
-
The Excat Date When Our Digital World Ends
Published: Thursday, December 27, 2012 | By: DennisDecember 4th of the Year of Our Lord 292,277,026,596
That is when the Unix date field will reach its limit and it will all come crashing down, or start over.
btw that is about 7,900,000,000 years from now.So the Y292,277,026K will be real at one point. I'm almost certain that, by then, we would have abandoned Unix at that point—but you never know. This mother was invented 43 years ago and it's still the best, most solid operating system ever created. Good enough to survive the entire Universe according to the Big Rip theory, which predicts everything will be over when the Universe reaches an infinite scale 20 billion years from now.
Can you imagine a world without Unix? Microsoft can, according to inside sources this was in a recent memo. "I want everyone on Windows 8 by the end of the year or the bunny gets it."
Of course if you believe that, you have watched way too much South Park.
-
Just how big are porn sites? @ ExtremeTech
Published: Thursday, December 27, 2012 | By: DennisSome of the biggest websites are not tech related but rather entertainment based with the sole purpose of serving up our human need for, sex. Many in the hardware industry may argue that shopping and news sites are bigger but when it comes to making money on the web there is no substitute to pr0n.
This article describes what it takes to run a pr0n site, from a hardware standpoint. Overclockers may want to overt their eyes.
While it’s difficult domain to penetrate — hard numbers are few and far between — we know for a fact that porn sites are some of the most trafficked parts of the internet. According to Google’s DoubleClick Ad Planner, which tracks users across the web with a cookie, dozens of adult destinations populate the top 500 websites. Xvideos, the largest porn site on the web with 4.4 billion page views per month, is three times the size of CNN or ESPN, and twice the size of Reddit. LiveJasmin isn’t much smaller. YouPorn, Tube8, and Pornhub — they’re all vast, vast sites that dwarf almost everything except the Googles and Facebooks of the internet.
Consider this, Sony gets railroaded for rebooting a popular movie series with the sole purpose of making millions "overseas". In the pr0n industry they re-make movies all the time and we all know how they will end but yet nobody complains.
I wonder why that is. Oh wait.
-
The 5 biggest tech failures of 2012 @ ExtremeTech
Published: Thursday, December 27, 2012 | By: DennisThis article seems to be spot on when it comes to identifying failures.
Technology marches onward with unrelenting determination year after year. The gadgets that run our lives get cheaper, faster, and more beautiful without fail. However, that doesn’t mean that individual companies can’t pull a boner from time to time, and 2012 was no exception. Let’s take a look at the five biggest technology fails of the past year.
I may not have included HP into the list since it wasn't really a technology failure but rather a failure in "tech". All of the others, yes!
-
MSI Z77 Mpower Motherboard review @ Rbmods
Published: Wednesday, December 26, 2012 | By: DennisSome think you need the most expensive motherboard to get the best performance and in some regards that is correct but, usually only when it comes to LN2 overclocking and other extreme electrical sports.
Z77 Mpower is one of the most powerful Z77 boards MSI has, it comes loaded with features and also a bit more expensive price than other motherboards. Are expensive boards any better than cheaper boards? Lets find out how well this unit performs.
MSI Power edition products offer step down performance from their top-teir counterparts and often with better overclocking results when you consider a "Stock" baseline.
Personally I'm not sold on the MPower line but could be convenced to give one a spin, assuming one was provided.
-
New CPU Overclock, Video Card Overclock, Diagnostic, Benchmark and Backup Tools Roundup @ OCinside
Published: Wednesday, December 26, 2012 | By: DennisThe title to this article sounds more interesting than it "really" is.
Today, OCinside.de updated the overclocking software page with dozens of small tools to tune, benchmark and test the PC components. If you like to overclock, backup, or monitor your PC hardware or if you just like to check your components, this is the right place for you. There are useful older Shareware and Freeware tools, as well as the latest tweakting tools to change the CPU multiplier or FSB and to overclock current nVidia or AMD video cards. Additionally, the latest SiSoftware Sandra, Futuremark 3DMark and PCMark benchmark programs are hosted in the most current version on the ocinside.de Servers. The overview contains direct downloads, links to the developers, a small description and the size of the respective software.
Funny thing, one of the forum members suggested I create a downloads section similar to the one at TechPowerUp and Guru3D. The traffic infusion should be astounding but would require too much time on my part to keep it updated.
Or would it.,,
-
Radeon HD 7970 and GeForce GTX 680 tested with 10 CPU @ HWGroup
Published: Wednesday, December 26, 2012 | By: DennisThe results of this article are what you would expect and split between AMD and Intel, No cross testing was done (in the same chart) which might be my biggest issue with the results and negates the purpose of the article.
Of course, IMO.
To get the most out of a high-end single-GPU graphics card, you need an Intel Core i5 3570K or higher. It's also interesting to note that AMD's low-end processors score better than Intel's cheap processors in combination with high-end graphics cards. The last conclusion we can draw is that the AMD Radeon HD 7970 GHz edition suffers less from CPU scaling than the Nvidia GeForce GTX 680. That means that the AMD card performs better with slower processors compared to the Nvidia card.
Maybe the best part of this article is the comments. Be sure to read a few of them with a good bowl of popcorn.
-
What the Future Looked Like 100 Years Ago (And 5 Predictions That Came True) @ gizmodo
Published: Monday, December 24, 2012 | By: DennisThis seems pretty accurate, now to find the rest of the list.
In the early 1900s, Ladies Home Journal thought the future would bring a lot of things. The predictions sound funny and old timey, sure, but you know what? Even though we haven't eradicated flies and mosquitos (yet!), a lot of them came true. Including these five:
1) Hot and cold air from spigots: Suck it, past. Warm baths are a thing now.Check out the site for the other four.
You can also find the source of this story over at reddit.
-
Assassin's Creed 3 @ LanOC Reviews
Published: Monday, December 24, 2012 | By: DennisI rarely pay much attention to game reviews and rely on inital impressions when I decide to purchase. So why post a link to a game review on a hardware review site??
I dunno
Innovation is a tough thing in the gaming industry. Not just coming up with something new and exciting that will get fans of all ages to line up to play, but once you have those fans you must innovate to keep them. This is something that the Assassin’s Creed franchise has had great success with. With the original release of Assassin’s Creed, it was something that gamers had never seen before and it was awesome. The gameplay got a bit repetitive and bland at times, but Ubisoft quickly improved on it with the next installment in the series giving gamers more things to do and a more in depth storyline. After that followed multiplayer and countless hours of online fun. I am extremely excited for this review of Assassin’s Creed 3 because it is set around the American Revolution, a time that has not been looked at before in the franchise and an interesting piece of history in my eyes. Sit back and grab your muskets because “The British and coming, the British are coming!”
I was actually given a code to download the game, much like what occured with LanOC, but the ubisoft website snubbed me and wouldn't accept the code. As I wasn't about to buy the game myself it was decided so simply, let it go.
