Round 1557 started when Dreamworks / Paramount announced post-Transformers HD-DVD release that they had the best-selling Day One and Week One high-def title on either format since their respective launches, selling over 100,000 HD-DVDs on its first day of release, and over 190,000 HD-DVDs in its first week. The Blu-ray camp of course, have come out with Round No. 1558 - more after the jump.
Read via DeadlineHollywoodDaily
Damn, if that doesn't look a hundred times better than a 360. Here was I thinking that all white consoles (Wii included) looked puny and anemic.
Read via PS3Focus.nl
EA & MTV's massive band-game-for-the-wannabes, Rock Band, is set for release worldwide on PS3 and Xbox 360 on November 20th. In case you haven't been keeping up, this virtual band simulation game is coming from Harmonix, the developers of the original Guitar Hero series. For the princely (outrageous?) price of US$169.99, gamers get a plastic guitar, drumsticks, mics and about 58 playable songs (karaoke style) straight out of the box, with more to be added later through downloadable content. Full tracklisting after the jump...
1960s
* Rolling Stones "Gimme Shelter"
1970s
* Aerosmith "Train Kept a Rollin'"*
* The Who "Won't Get Fooled Again"
* Boston "Foreplay/Long Time"
* Mountain "Mississippi Queen" (cover)
* The Police "Next to You"
* David Bowie "Suffragette City"
* Black Sabbath "Paranoid" (cover)
* Blue Oyster Cult "Don't Fear the Reaper"
* The Ramones "Blitzkrieg Bop"
* Deep Purple "Highway Star"
* KISS "Detroit Rock City"
* Molly Hatchet "Flirtin' With Disaster"
* The Outlaws "Green Grass & High Tides" (cover)
* Sweet "Ballroom Blitz" (cover)
1980s
* Rush "Tom Sawyer"*
* Bon Jovi "Wanted Dead or Alive"
* The Clash "Should I Stay or Should I Go"
* Faith No More "Epic"
* R.E.M. "Orange Crush"
* Iron Maiden "Run to the Hills" (cover)
1990s
* Foo Fighters "Learn to Fly"
* Metallica "Enter Sandman"
* Nirvana "In Bloom"
* Stone Temple Pilots "Vasoline"
* Weezer "Say It Ain't So"
* Smashing Pumpkins "Cherub Rock"
* Radiohead "Creep"
* Beastie Boys "Sabotage"
* Hole "Celebrity Skin"
* Garbage "I Think I'm Paranoid"
* Soundgarden "Black Hole Sun"
2000s
* The Hives "Main Offender"
* Queens of the Stone Age "Go With the Flow"
* The Strokes "Reptilia"
* Jet "Are You Gonna Be My Girl"
* OK Go "Here It Goes Again"
* Nine Inch Nails "The Hand That Feeds"
* Pixies "Wave of Mutilation"
* Yeah Yeah Yeahs "Maps"
* Red Hot Chili Peppers "Dani California"
* Coheed & Cambria "Welcome Home"
* Fallout Boy "Dead on Arrival"
* The Killers "When You Were Young"
* New Pornographers "Electric Version"
Unlockable Tracks
* Bang Camaro "Pleasure (Pleasure)"
* Twelve more yet to be revealed
Source
By refusing cash sales and limiting customers to just two handsets each, in a bid to control the rampant black-market exports that have made it possible for users in iPhone-less countries to pick up their own iPhones. Boo. Hiss.
Read: LA Times article
And here is the rest of it
You didn't think they were still fighting did you? Check out the rest of the videos - some of them are pretty funny. Well, bits of them are. At times.
Sonic what, now?
Vladimir thought he would finally put his mother's grumblings about staying up and playing computer games to rest by finding a real use for his $800 Geforce 8800 Ultra video card. Sadly, he's just hacked into your email account, mine and everyone else in your block in the time its taken to read this post. Doh!
Elcomsoft, a software company based in Moscow, Russia, has filed a US patent for the technique. It takes advantage of the "massively parallel processing" capabilities of a graphics processing unit (GPU) - the processor normally used to produce realistic graphics for video games.
Using an $800 graphics card from nVidia called the GeForce 8800 Ultra, Elcomsoft increased the speed of its password cracking by a factor of 25, according to the company's CEO, Vladimir Katalov.
More after the jump below
* 12:27 24 October 2007
* NewScientist.com news service
* Andrew Brandt
A technique for cracking computer passwords using inexpensive off-the-shelf computer graphics hardware is causing a stir in the computer security community.
Elcomsoft, a software company based in Moscow, Russia, has filed a US patent for the technique. It takes advantage of the "massively parallel processing" capabilities of a graphics processing unit (GPU) - the processor normally used to produce realistic graphics for video games.
Using an $800 graphics card from nVidia called the GeForce 8800 Ultra, Elcomsoft increased the speed of its password cracking by a factor of 25, according to the company's CEO, Vladimir Katalov.
The toughest passwords, including those used to log in to a Windows Vista computer, would normally take months of continuous computer processing time to crack using a computer's central processing unit (CPU). By harnessing a $150 GPU - less powerful than the nVidia 8800 card - Elcomsoft says they can cracked in just three to five days. Less complex passwords can be retrieved in minutes, rather than hours or days.
It is the way a GPU processes data that provides the speed increase. NVidia spokesman Andrew Humber describes the process using the analogy of searching for words in a book. "A [normal computer processor] would read the book, starting at page 1 and finishing at page 500," he says. "A GPU would take the book, tear it into a 100,000 pieces, and read all of those pieces at the same time."
Benjamin Jun, of Cryptography Research based in San Francisco, US, says massively parallel processing is ideally suited to the task of breaking passwords. And, while concerned about the development, Jun also pays tribute to the achievement: "A number of us have been following advances in those platforms, and there's a lot of elegant, intelligent design."
Password cracking can be used to unlock data on a computer, but will not usually work on a banking or commercial website. This is because is takes too long to run through multiple passwords, and because a site will normally block a user after several failed attempts.
Jun adds that the trend towards encrypting whole hard drives with increasingly long cryptographic keys still means it is becoming more difficult to access sensitive data. "Should I throw away my web server and run for the hills?" he says. "I don't think so."
NVidia released a software development kit for its graphics hardware in February 2007. Known as CUDA, the kit lets programmers access the computing power of the GPU directly. It has gained a following among those with a need for high-performance computing, particularly in fields such as science and engineering.
"[CUDA] is a huge thing for the oil and gas industry, for the financial sector, and for scientists," Humber says. He adds that CUDA is also be being used by a company called Evolved Machines to simulate the way the human brain wires itself.
Elcomsoft says it took three months to develop code to take advantage of a GPU, and the company plans to introduce the feature into some of its password cracking products over time.
New Scientist Technology
And looking better than ever - I was kinda expecting to be disappointed with the year-too-late PC version of last year's 360 hit, but everything thats been shown so far looks like Gears of War for the PC will be another hit for Epic Games. Pro-G UK has a fairly in-depth preview of it here.
In keeping with the propensity for big Korean / Japanese manufacturers to try and out-do each other in the realm of slimmest / largest / longest / widest, Samsung has unveiled the world's slimmest 40" 1080p LCD at just 10mm. No doubt Panasonic, Sony, Sharp or someone else will come out with a 8.88mm panel in a few months. Or weeks. Scratch that, make it days.
And here is the rest of it
With the release of the $399 40Gb PS3 last week, and rumors of an upcoming Xbox 360 with integrated HD-DVD drive, is it really time for us all to abandon the ol' faithful DVD for the new HD-wunderkids that are appearing now?
In short, no. $400 for an HD drive is still simply too expensive for the masses to take up - give us a $99 HD-DVD / Blu-Ray player and then we'll start to see the death of the DVD by way of that other ol' faithful, the VHS. Till then, there's a distinct lack of 1080p LCDs in people's homes and upscaling DVD players to get past.
Sci-Fi.com has more on this, with an in-depth analysis of the state of the HD "war".
Loot Ninja has a guide to setting up your PSP on a PS3 - to play those crappy PS1 games you downloaded, remember?
Link
The BBC is reporting current security measures designed to protect users while surfing on Wi-Fi internet connections have been comprehensively broken open. But with compatibility issues with the new measures, users are left with no choice but to continue using the existing and "wide-open" protection system. (source)
