[H]ard|OCP

Sony, McAfee, Sued Over Software Activation Patent

A lawsuit has been filed in U.S. District Court against Sony and McAfee over a patent for software activation. This is the same company that is currently tied up in a lawsuit with Microsoft over the very same thing (software activation).

The patent in question #5,490,216, awarded to Uniloc founder Ric Richardson in 1996, covers a method for registering and activating software locked to one PC. The technology was developed as a way to prevent users from freely installing or copying a single software program to multiple machines.

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Adding Temperature to Human-Computer Interaction

Researchers are working on a controller that gets hot or cold depending on what is happening in the game. Kinda neat seeing a couple old peltiers being used for something like this.

The temperature difference isn't large - less than 10 degrees heating or cooling after five seconds, but the researchers involved discovered that, as with haptics, just a little sensory nudge can be enough to convince involved participants in a virtual environment that they are experiencing something like the real thing.

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[H]ardware Round-Up

Cases & Modding

Lian Li PC-T60 ATX Test Bench @ Phoronix

Cooling

CoolIT Vantage ALC Cooler @ Hardware Heaven

Memory/ Storage

G.Skill Phoenix PRO 120GB SSD @ Guru3D

Kingston HyperX blu KHX1600C9D3B1K2/4GX @ Overclockers Club

Dell Tech Support Swiping Nudie Pics

I know I shouldn’t laugh at stories like this but I just can’t help it.

A woman in California has recently gone public with claims that she not only watched as a Dell tech support worker downloaded nude pics of her remotely, but that he also set up a website featuring the photos. Oh, and he used her Dell credit card to buy stuff for another woman.

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World's Largest Photograph is 70 Gigapixels

How come these massive, record setting gigapixel images are always pictures of towns? Can’t we get gigapixel pictures of the beach or a beauty pageant?

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Most Google Services, Including Search, Blocked in China

It looks like Google’s strategy of knuckling under to China’s demand is working out well. Just kidding, almost all Google’s services are being blocked again.

Several of Google's Web services in mainland China were fully blocked on Thursday (PDT), including Web search, YouTube, Ads, and Blogger. Other services including Google Images, News, Docs and Groups remain "partially blocked," according to Google's Mainland China service availability chart.

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80s Arcade Couch

I want this couch! You want this couch! Now all we have to do is wait until it moves from the concept stage to production and we’ll be all set.

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Join The [H] Folding Team!

This is our pre-weekend shout out to all of you out there that aren’t currently folding and could spare a bit of your PC’s resources to help a wonderful cause. Although [H]ardOCP has the #1 Folding team on the planet, we still need your help to stay there. Folding is easy, all you have to do is download and install the Folding@Home program, set your team number to TEAM #33 and you are all set.

If you still need help or have any questions, forum member "Xilikon" put all the Folding guides that a person could possibly need into one easy-to-find location. Hit the link, follow the directions and you’ll be up and folding in no time at all.

Facebook May Put Off IPO Until 2012

A new report, citing anonymous industry sources, claims that Facebook is postponing an initial public offering until at least 2012. I’m not sure how you can "put off" something that hasn’t seen announced before but there you have it.

This comes as no surprise as Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg has always been very careful on the subject. "At some point along the path, I think it’ll make sense to have an IPO. But we’re not running the company to do that. We’re running the company to serve more people," he said recently.

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Redbox Launches Blu-ray Rentals

Redbox, the popular DVD rental kiosk provider, and wholly-owned subsidiary of Coinstar, Inc., today announced it has started rolling out Blu-ray™ titles with availability at approximately 13,300 kiosks nationwide. Redbox will rent Blu-ray Discs® at $1.50 per night plus tax and the company expects to have availability across its network of approximately 23,000 kiosk locations by the fall.

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GIGABYTE On/Off Charge Works With iPhone 4

GIGABYTE TECHNOLOGY Co., Ltd, a leading manufacturer of motherboards, graphics cards and computing hardware solutions is proud to announce that GIGABYTE On/Off Charge technology also works on the iPhone 4. GIGABYTE first announced On/Off Charge in April this year by demonstrating how it speeds up iPhone, iPad and iPod Touch charging from a PC's USB port whether the PC is operational or shut down.

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Quote of the Day

The funny quote of the day is brought to you by Steve Ballmer. Speaking to a group of financial analysts, Microsoft's CEO made this comment about iPad sales:

As for Apple and the iPad, Ballmer said, "they've sold certainly more than I'd like them to have sold."

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[H]ardware Round-Up II

Cases & Modding

Lian Li PC-7FNWX Case (German) @ Hardware-Mag

Cooling

Gelid Solutions Tranquillo @ Overclockers Club

ETC.

PCPer Podcast #115 PC Perspective

ZFS Benchmarking On FreeBSD vs. EXT4 & Btrfs On Linux @ Phoronix

Memory/ Storage

RunCore Pro-V 200GB SSD @ LanOC

Vantec NexStar SATA to USB 3.0 Adapter @ OCIA

Google, CIA Invest in ‘Future’ of Web Monitoring

I knew it! I knew it! Google is spying on us...in real time!

The company is called Recorded Future, and it scours tens of thousands of websites, blogs and Twitter accounts to find the relationships between people, organizations, actions and incidents — both present and still-to-come. In a white paper, the company says its temporal analytics engine "goes beyond search" by "looking at the ‘invisible links’ between documents that talk about the same, or related, entities and events."

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Scientist Create Room Temperature Ice

Room temperature ice? The next thing you are going to tell me is that sex boosts brain growth! Whatever.

Researchers at Spain's Centre d'Investigació en Nanociència i Nanotecnologia (CIN2) have studied the underlying mechanisms of water condensation in the troposphere and found a way to make artificial materials to control water condensation and trigger ice formation at room temperature.

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Intel Wins Most Innovative Process Awards

Analyst firm, UBM TechInsights announced that Intel has won two of its top awards, including the Most Innovative Logic Process Award for the 32-nm Intel® Core™ processor and the Most Innovative Memory Process for the Intel-Micron Flash Technologies 25nm Manufacturing Process. The 25nm NAND flash memory was recognized as the most advanced process in terms of feature size and for breaking technology scaling barriers.

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Amazon Offers $139 Wireless Kindle

It looks like Amazon is rolling out a new $139 wireless Kindle. Aside from the smaller design and lower price, the new Kindle will feature also feature the company’s new e-ink technology.

Amazon on Thursday also introduced the third generation of the original Kindle, which has Wi-Fi and 3G wireless technologies. The latter makes it possible to buy digital books from Amazon and download them in less than a minute. Amazon kept the price for the device at $189.

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Most Amazing Gun/Puzzle Anywhere!

This 125 piece puzzle is actually a muzzle loading .45 cal pistol. Seriously.

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YouTube Ups Video Limit to 15 Minutes

Great news! You can now upload 15 minute videos to YouTube. Time to start making director’s cut YouTube videos with added content you left out of your original 10 minute videos.

YouTube, which was bought by Google in 2006 for 1.65 billion dollars, said in March that 24 hours worth of video are being uploaded to the video-sharing site every minute. YouTube has been gradually adding professional content such as full-length television shows and movies to its vast trove of amateur video offerings in a bid to attract advertisers.

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Gaming [H]eadlines

Clash of the Titans @ Shacknews

Halo Reach Campaign Trailer Debuts @ Kotaku

Sony Hardware and Software Sales Increase @ Shacknews

Capcom Profits Plummet @ Blue’s News

Best Buy to Offer Free invisibleSHIELD

It looks like Best Buy is offering a free invisibleSHIELD to all iPhone 4 owners, regardless whether you bought the phone there or not. Thanks to everyone that sent this one in.

It's hard to say for certain what exactly this flyer means, but it sure looks as if at least some iPhone 4 owners will be able to snatch a free invisibleSHIELD 4fix (valued at $9.99 or so) from their local Best Buy. Based on a number of tips that we've received, we're getting the impression that the yellow-tagged retailer could be handing out (and installing) completely free side coverings for any iPhone 4 owner that waltzes into a store.

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(Kyle's note: Zagg invisibleSHIELD sucks on a touch screen device, at least that is my experience. I sent my two Zaggs back for a refund yesterday.)

Porn Industry Sees Potential In iPhone 4

You know Steve Jobs probably isn’t too thrilled about this. Not because it is the porn industry…it’s because someone beside Apple is making money off the iPhone.

Invent the newest gadget and the porn industry will find a way to cash in. So when Apple Inc. launched the iPhone 4 and its FaceTime videoconference feature, it didn't take long for adult-entertainment companies to develop video-sex chat services and start hiring workers through Craigslist.

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[H]ardware Round-Up

Cases & Modding

Antec DF-30 Dark Fleet Computer Case @ BmR

Cooling

Sharkoon Silent Eagle SE 120mm & 80mm Fans @ HardwareLogic

ETC.

Choiix Comforter Lapdesk @ Pro-Clockers

Choiix Cruiser @ LanOC

Choiix Cruiser @ PureOC

Video

PowerColor PCS+ HD 5770 Vortex @ Neoseeker

AMD Wrestles Discrete Graphics Crown from NVIDIA

The numbers are in and, according to a 2Q market share report from Mercury Research, AMD is once again the king of the discrete graphics card market. While the full report isn’t available just yet, highlights include:

• For the first time in four years, AMD has taken control of the discrete graphics market from Nvidia, with 51.1% market share, up 10.4 points from Q2 2009. In that same period, Nvidia lost 10.4 points.
• In the lucrative Desktop discrete market, AMD gained 11 points in the year, standing at 44.5% market share. This was a direct loss for Nvidia, who fell 10.9 points in the same period.
• In the fast growing mobile discrete market, AMD gained another 2.4 points, now standing at 56.3% market share.

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Libraries Beat Netflix, Redbox in DVD Rentals

Somebody better tell Nextflix and Redbox to step up their game, the old lady at the library is kicking their ass in DVD rentals. Wow, who knew libraries rented DVDs?

The nation’s public libraries are loaning more DVDs each day than Netflix rents to its by-mail subscribers. So says a new survey from the OCLC Online Computer Library Center, a nonprofit national library cooperative, which found that public library branches in the U.S. lend out a whopping 2.1 million DVDs a day, topping the two million discs rented daily by Netflix and the 1.4 million DVD rented each day by Redbox.

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Stupid "Payment Demand" Letter of the Day

Getting a letter threatening to turn of your internet service for non-payment isn’t surprising….unless of course the amount in question is $0.00. Uh-oh, you'd better cut a check before you are sent to collections! Thanks to "Insert" for the image.

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NVIDIA Warns of 2nd Quarter Revenue Shortfall

The hits just keep coming for NVIDIA. First the company was named as the worst performing stock of 2010, then they lose their case to RAMBUS and now the company is warning of a 2Q revenue shortfall. Ouch. Thanks to R. Groenestein for the heads up.

The Santa Clara, Calif.-based graphics chip supplier said it expects revenue for its second quarter ending August 1 to be lower than the guidance provided with the company's financial results for the first quarter. Nvidia supplies graphics processing units, or GPUs, to all major computer makers, including Hewlett-Packard, Dell, and Apple.

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100M Facebook Users' Info Published Online

Interested in a little light reading? Then hit up the torrent sites and download the personal details of 100M Facebook users. Don't tell anybody but rumor has it that you can get 5X that info if you go here.

The personal details of 100 million Facebook users have been collected and published online in a downloadable file, meaning they will now be unable to make their publicly available information private.

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AT&T: We Don't Intend to Stop Black Hat Demo

A spokesman for AT&T says the company has no plans to interfere with an upcoming Black Hat demonstration that shows how to set up a fake cell tower to intercept phone calls. Then again, the guy behind this demo has probably already intercepted the call so he already knows this.

"If you're in the room, need to dial 911 and you have a GSM phone, you can just raise your hand and shout. In the extremely unlikely situation that someone near the room with a GSM phone connects to my demo network and also needs to dial 911, I am taking the extra precaution of ensuring that that person will be connected to someone local who can call for or send help," he said in his blog post.

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