Latest News - Page 3049

Judge Alsup, the judge presiding over the Oracle v Google lawsuit has decided that Google's disclosure, in response to his August 7 mandate, did not comply. As such, he has reissued the mandate with a few clarifications and has given Google until noon on August 24 to comply. He has also instructed Oracle to update its disclosure if the clarified mandate brings to light any new people that should be disclosed.

It will be interesting to see how Google responds to this request. Their previous disclosure made some good points, but at the same time did seem to lack any decisive names. We will be sure to keep you up to date on this legal battle as it continues.

Always chasing the latest fashion trends? A fan of 3D printing? Why not combine the two? Well, now you can. A company is offering 3D-printed shoes and they will only set you back $900. The collection is named "strvct" and "uses innovative materials to create fantasy-inspired designs." Take a look:

The shoes aren't just for decoration; they can actually be worn thanks to the durable nylon they are printed from. They also feature a synthetic rubber sole for traction and a "patent leather inner sole." They say that the "triangulated spin on the classic wedge pump...brings to mind Cinderella's glass slipper in its transparency" but I'm not convinced.

Theoretically, these shoes could be made at home on a 3D printer, all you need are the designs. But, more importantly, it puts existing technology to cool new uses. The shoes are made to order so they could take a bit of time to be delivered, not to mention $900 seems a bit high to pay for a pair of shoes. Nevertheless, they are cool.

If you're looking to buy a new AMD graphics card, the time could not be better. AMD has again dropped prices on its high-end cards so that they are more competitive with NVIDIA's latest offering. With the NVIDIA GTX 660 Ti finally outed by the company, AMD wants to position its cards in places where they can compete.

The street prices have dropped accordingly:

The 7970 does not see a price drop in this latest round, the both the 78XX and 7950 have had their prices lowered. The 3GB 7950 price drop brings its price down to a level similar to the GTX 660. In tests, a 2GB 7950 and 660 Ti were about 50/50. The 3GB version will likely pull out a couple of extra wins, and with the new pricing, should win business.

Earlier on today we visited the ASRock headquarters here in Taipei where we caught up with Chris Lee and Nick Shih who introduced to their latest motherboard, the ASRock Z77 OC Formula.

Nick Shih joined ASRock some seven months ago and joined the Taiwanese motherboard maker team with his past professional overclocking experience to help the company create a new motherboard that is designed purely for overclocking and enthusiasts and it has performance written all over it. He worked closely with ASRock engineers to create what they vision to be the best OC motherboard in the world.

In the above video Chris and Nick do a good job of telling us about the motherboard and why it's good for overclocking. Features such as premium chokes and caps that can handle various impedance frequencies are used along with a new digital PWM and more. Heck, ASRock even throw in a tube of GEIL thermal paste which is a first as far as I know and another feature I personally liked was the see-through PCB that shows each layer of the eight layer copper PCB.

It looks as though a preview of Mozilla's Firefox for Windows 8 is coming next month, which should show off the company's Modern UI styling and windowless Flash. We've known about the UI for a while, but this was before the whole Metro issue, as it was named Metro UI and has now had a makeover and unveiled as Modern UI.

New details are leaking out about the web browser for the upcoming OS, with a few screenshots to tease us with. A developer on the project, Brian R. Bondy, has posted an update on his blog that talks of Mozilla's progress with the app and their goals for its release:

Just as Samsung and Apple's lawsuit comes to a close, Google's recently-acquired Motorola is now taking a swing at the Cupertino-based company. Motorola have claimed that Apple are infringing on seven of its patents, and are seeking to block the iPhone, iPad, and Mac computers from being imported into the United States.

Google acquired the device maker back in February, and until now, Motorola have been tightly lipped on its previous problems with Apple. But, according to a piece from Bloomberg, Google's Motorola division have just filed a new patent lawsuit against the company, opening up some of those old, sore wounds that were leftover from Motorola and Apple's long history of legal disputes. Motorola's complaint over at the US International Trade Commission (ITC) named features such as location reminders, e-mail notifications, along with phone and video players as possible infringements.

These complaints are some of Apple's biggest features in their iOS-based devices, and with Google's lust of blocking US imports of Apple products, it would be a huge win for Google and an even bigger loss for Apple. Motorola Mobility have said in a statement:

Facebook are looking to go a bit exotic with their new backup plans, with their upcoming backup looking to tap some low-power deep-storage hardware that'll be housed in a 62,000 square-foot building in Prineville, Oregon.

This is situated near their Beaver State data center, with the new back up referred to "Sub-Zero". Sub-Zero will store a copy of Facebook's data in case the social network's primary servers need to be restored in the case of an emergency. Instead of continuously powering HDDs that are only occasionally used, Sub-Zero can conserve energy by lighting-up drives only when they're actually needed.

Just a single of Facebook's existing server racks chews up around 4.5 kilowatts, whilst the ones that will be found at Sub-Zero will only consume approximately 1.5 kilowatts when they're running, which is quite the power conservation. Facebook's vice president of site operations, Tom Furlong, talked to Wired that there are talks of a similar structure to be built next to the social network's North Carolina-based data center.

Apple's sixth-generation 'new iPhone' will be announced next month, hopefully, and until then I think we're going to see, and hear, more and more rumors of the smartphone. The latest thing to hit the Internet are some leaked shots of the front panel of the new iPhone.

I've taken a stance of calling it the 'new iPhone', because I just can't see Apple naming it with a number, I really think we're going to see the same naming scheme as the third-generation iPad. The 'new iPad' was known as just that. Apple's new iPhone is looking to be a 4-inch device, up from the 3.5-inch screen on every single iPhone to date.

It should also sport 4G LTE connectivity, NFC, and a 7.6mm-thin case. All of this should be unveiled, and confirmed, at Apple's press conference which is being held on September 12th. Until then, most of these posts will be designated as "LeakedTT" or "RumorTT".

Google have announced the second Pwnium hacking competition after widthdrawning from this TippingPoint's annual Pwn2Own which was previously held back in February. Google have thrown $2 million in rewards for anyone who can find bugs in their popular Chrome browser, exploit them and detail how they achieved the hack.

The first Pwnium that was held in March, in Vancouver, only had $1 million up for grabs, and only a slice of that was handed out. This was because there were only two submissions, requiring Google to sign over just $120,000 of the $1 million they had up for grabs. So, what are Google offering? $60,000 for a full Chrome exploit using only bugs found in the web browser itself. $50,000 for a partial Chrome exploit using Chrome itself, or other browser, or Windows flaws such as Webkit or kernel-level flaws.

Finally, $40,000 for a non-Chrome exploit for a bug found in Flash, Windows or a driver. In addition incomplete or unreliable exploits may be eligible for a prize, where Google have said "our rewards panel will judge any such works as generously as we can". Sounds like Google just want to give money away! Rules have changed from the annual Pwn2Own hacking competition, with TippingPoint no longer requiring entrants to reveal all the details about exploits used to compromise security. Google has said that this change is "worrisome" and decided to leave the competition, promoting their own Pwnium challenge instead.

I still remember getting a Nintendo 64 for Christmas as a young gamer, I was unbelievably excited. Gaming back in the 90s was just another thing compared to gaming now, and it seems that a brand new Nintendo 64 emulator has been developed by Paul Holden.

Holden's new emulator uses JavaScript and is still in its early stages, as it only works with a handful of titles, one of which is Super Mario 64. If you want to use the emulator, you'll need to be rocking Google Chrome or a Firefox Nightly build, as they are the only browsers that have the features required to run the emulator. You'll also need to have your own ROMs on hand.

The video above shows off the emulator, and of course whilst not perfect, it runs. Early days yet, and you can see it runs pretty slow, but that's probably because of a software issue, as today's computers have enough horsepower to run something from the mid-90s without a problem.

It looks as though OnLive has gone through quite the headache over the weekend, where it was first reported that the entire staff of the streaming gaming company had been laid off. But, the official word is that OnLive's assets were acquired by a "newly-formed company" that has "substantial funding".

As the story continued, it looks as though a single investor has come in who was interested in the company and decided they've like to own it. Some of the freshly-unemployed ex-OnLive staffers were re-hired to join the new business that the investor had purchased, OnLive Reloaded, maybe? There would still be some that were cut, but with the remaining employees, they've said that OnLive's IP would be moved over to the new company, but this leaves the ex-staffers' shares to be wondered about.

This then lead to news of their shares in the company, those shares would not be transferred to the new company as the original is closing. CEO of Tiswaz Entertainment who is also an advisor to game developers and publishers, Kevin Dent has had quite a lot to say of the matter, but on the matter of the employees shares:

There's a juicy rumor making the rounds, but it is being reported by the New York Post, and not by some vague blog. But, it looks like KKR and Providence Equity Partners have been in discussions with EA, with the talks at "very early stages".

We've seen EA's share prices drop 37% this year, but the rumors have spiked their stock prices by close to 5.5% ,or 72 cents, seeing them hit $13.81 thanks to the talks. EA's market cap sits at around $4 billion with one source saying they would be willing to cut a deal if it were at $20 per share.

One of the weirder things going on with EA, is that they've been slowly buying back stock from investors, which could be a preemptive move if they were considering putting up a 'for sale' sign. EA hasn't only been watching their share prices tank, they've not been able to make success in the market lately. This comes down to gamers not willing to part their hard-earned cash for a new game at the current $60-or-so pricing, instead, they're jumping on mobile and casual games which can be played for free.

Weekend news ahoy! ASUS have taken to their Facebook page to notify users of their Transformer Pad TF300 that they should expect quite the over-the-air (OTA) update. The update in question is to the OS itself, upgrading it to Android 4.1 Jelly Bean.

It has seemingly come out of nowhere, as we didn't really hear much from ASUS before this. But, you can't really complain about an upgrade to Google's latest and greatest mobile OS. ASUS said on their Facebook page:

The Oatmeal, a popular web comic site, seems to be drawing on its success in dealing with that 9gag lawyer. In that campaign, he raised over $200,000 for charity, more than 10 times what the lawyer was demanding from him. This campaign appears to be a similar idea, using his audience to spread the message far and wide.

And it appears to be working. In under 48 hours since the campaign went live, The Oatmeal's IndieGoGo campaign has raised more than $500,000 towards its goal of $850,000. The money is being raised to purchase the land where Nikola Tesla's laboratory, which was supposed to provide free power to the masses, was constructed.

Once the land is built, it will be cleaned up and a museum will be built on top. The Oatmeal is not actually the one behind this plan. Instead, they are just helping raise funds for the 501(c)3 charity Tesla Science Center at Wardenclyffe. The charity has received a matching grant from the state of New York of up to $850,000.

"With less than two months until Dishonored's release, we want players to prepare their weapons of revenge. No, I'm not talking about our website, I'm talking about the rig PC players intend to play the game on." -Bethesda Blog. What they're really saying is they want to make sure your computer can play the game so that you'll buy it!

The game comes with some fairly demanding specifications--minimum NVIDIA GeForce GTX 460 / ATI Radeon HD 5850 for the GPU--so it's nice that Bethesda is giving users a chance to upgrade their rigs before the game officially launches. Ironically, the only difference between minimum and recommended specifications for the GPU come in the form of memory.

Minimum Spec:

Lithium Ion batteries are the best battery technology we currently have in mass production. It's used in everything from laptop computers to hybrid car batteries. Despite this wide spread use, it still has some major drawbacks. The biggest one that comes to mind is the fact that they take so darn long to charge.

Well, that could all be about to change. New research has shown that a modification in the way Lithium Ion batteries are constructed could reduce the charging time from hours to minutes. Current batteries charge from the outside in. This means the center part of the battery isn't receiving any current until the end of charging.

By putting "a dense network of conductors throughout the electrodes of the battery," researchers were able to charge the entire battery at once. This resulted in charging times that were 30 to 120 times faster than a standard Lithium Ion cell. The only issue is that filling the battery with conductors lowers the capacity or increases the size, albeit only slightly.

While Microsoft Surface may not retail at the rumored $199, Lenovo's David Schmoock has provided a bit more information about pricing for Windows 8 and Windows 8 RT devices at launch. Speaking to Bloomberg, he said new devices based upon Windows RT (ARM tablets) will cost $200-300 less than those using Windows 8 (x86 tablets).

"RT will play in consumer and retail at very aggressive price points," said David Schmoock, head of Lenovo's North America operations. "It will do well but it's going to be more of a consumer price point play to begin with," he said. Windows 8 tablets are going to cost $600-$700, he said, a price that is slightly cheaper than most current Ultrabooks.

Using these two pieces of information, we can deduce that Windows RT tablets will debut at somewhere around $300-$500, likely closer to the $300 number than the $500 number, though it could be $500 if the lower and higher numbers are chosen, respectively. $300 is close to the rumored $199 and still beats the current iPad 3. It could have trouble, however, competing with the latest round of $199 Android tablets released recently.

ASRock makes quality motherboards that are often priced with budget boards. The latest edition to the ASRock lineup has been exclusively designed by Nick Shih, a leading overclocker. The board is designed for the high-end enthusiast market, and is "full to the brim with features" and is sure to perform beautifully.

"My vision for the OC Formula Brand is to allow overclockers to smash the overclocking limits effortlessly." said Nick Shih, OC Mater of ASRock. "Z77 OC Formula is just the one you've always expected. I live for challenges and welcome OC rockers to take my OC crown!"

James Lee, V.P. of ASRock Sales and Marketing:

Apple and Google are probably rolling in piles and piles of cash right now, thanks to their ever-so-popular and cash-generating iTunes and Play Stores, respectively. But, portable game console makers (among other things) Sony and Nintendo aren't too happy with Android and iOS devices, as they're more than powerful enough to play high-quality games these days.

Considering that high-end tablets such as Apple's iPad, ASUS' Transformer range, or Samsung's Galaxy range, are more powerful than most of Sony or Nintendo's portable gaming systems, I don't see the complaint. Stay stagnant, and this is what happens. Fortune reports from the latest research of Flurry Analytics, which shows that Android and iOS-based devices accounting for 58% of all mobile gaming revenue in the US.

This left Sony's PlayStation Vita and Nintendo's 3DS for just 36% of the mobile gaming revenue in the US. If we rewind the clock back to 2009, Nintendo were enjoying 70% of that, all to themselves. How times have changed. Are you surprised? I'm not. This is why I've been so heavy-hearted on the next-gen consoles. Microsoft, Sony and Nintendo have to hit the ball out of the park, hardware-wise, to stay current and on top of things against the onslaught of tablets and mobile devices.

It was only back in April that we reported that Apple were investing heavily into an Oregon-based datacenter, putting up $250 million for the site. Well, now it seems that the Cupertino-based company has filed their plans with the city of Prineville, where its goal has been revealed for the datacenter.

The Oregon datacenter is to take up 500,000 square feet of datacenter space, which is around the same as Apple's Maiden, North Carolina facility. The Associated Press reports: