[H]ardNews

Half Life 2 Done!

Well, done downloading the pre-load that is... Check out Steam for yours.

[H]ardNews 3rd Edition - Saw it on Slashdot Edition

Microsoft Sued Again

Several cities and counties in California filed suit against Microsoft on Friday. More people are getting on the "sue Microsoft for anti-competitive practices bandwagon." Well it's not hard to see why considering the amounts to be won out there.

Last month, a San Francisco Superior Court judge granted final approval to a $1.1 billion settlement between Microsoft and California consumers who accused the company of violating state antitrust and unfair competition laws - nearly the same accusation made in the suit filed Friday.

RIAA and MPAA Fight Court Decisions

The court decisions earlier this week saying that P2P networks like Grokster and Streamcast aren't responsible for copyright violoations isn't sitting too well with the folks at RIAA and the MPAA. It looks like they're not planning on stopping this fight anytime soon.

The industry promises that a U.S. Court of Appeals ruling -- which found that the operators of Grokster and StreamCast are not liable for copyright infringement -- does not mark the end of its litigation against the file-sharing services.

Big Screen Video Gaming

Those of you in our Forums know about my past in the movie theater business. Well some guys in Utah did something that I always wanted to try, but never had the equipment for. They took some projectors and threw an XBox up onto the big screen for a night of tournament gaming.

"Tonight blew our minds," theater co-owner Calvin Timothy said afterward. "We're definitely going to keep doing this."

Halo on a movie theater screen. *Drool*

[H]ardNews 2nd Edition

Asus V9999GE and Sapphire X800Pro

Driverheaven takes a look at these two cards today. Both cards make an excellent choice as far as performance goes, but considering the price of the Asus card and it only being a 12 pipe solution, the 6800GT would be a better choice if Nvidia is your thing.

Around the same time the 6800 arrived we also received Sapphire’s take on the X800Pro, a competitively priced product to the Asus 6800 so it makes sense to look at them both in the same article.

Chaintech SK8T800

It just amazes me how much prices have dropped on Athlon64 motherboards. Take the Chaintech SK8T800 over at Cluboverclocker for example. With a MSRP of only $64 it's getting cheaper and cheaper to get into 64 bit computing. This isn't really a board for overclockers, though, so keep that in mind before purchasing.

The Chaintech SK8T800 will make a very rock solid foundation to any performance oriented system build with 100% stability in mind.

Dual Opteron Synthesizer

Man, I start to feel bad when I see musical instruments with more computing power than my main box. That's just the case with the OpenSynth neKo 64 that Paul sent me a link to. Not only does it have support for Dual Opterons, but it even has a 15" LCD built into it.

64 bit Processing: neKo 64™ is equipped with the state-of-the-art Opteron 64 bit processor from AMD, providing unsurpassed performance in a single or dual processor configuration.

[H]ardNews 1st Edition

Etc.:

MSI XA52P SATA Internal Combo @ Hardware Zone

Cases &Modding:

Thermaltake SilverRiver External Enclosure @ A True Review - Beantech BT85 @ Overclockers Online - Silverstone Temjin III (TJ-03) @ Hexus.net

[H]ardNews 6th Edition

Radeon 9250

The theme of this post is "cards that should never be put into a gamer's box." That pretty much describes the Radeon 9250 in a nutshell. Nevertheless, we all have that cheap relative that refuses to spend any money on their computer, and this card isn't that bad for less than 50 bucks.

Now, let's be completely honest-- the framerates we got with this card, and its nearest NVIDIA competitor, sucked.

Opteron Blade Server

AMDBoard has pictures of the first Blade Server based on the Opteron Platform. Wow, all that computing power in a blade.

"the Low power AMD Opteron processor with its Direct Connect architecture is an ideal solution for high performance server Blades.

I think I have to go take a shower again.

Update on Half-Life 2

Yes, I was fully aware that there was no way that "Gabe's" post on the HL2Fallout forum was in any way true when I made the post earlier, but the plot thickens and gets funnier as the day goes on. CS-Nation has the goods on the gone gold announcement.

In a twist of hilarity, it seems that Gabe Newell's account password was set to 'gaben'. Person x guessed this and made the "going gold on Monday" post which we've heard so much about.

[H]ardNews 5th Edition

Cooling:

Three-way Cooling Showdown @ LAN Addict

Etc.:

Wire Weights @ XYZ Computing - Neuros II MP3 Digital Audio Computer Review @ Buddha's LAN Room

Caes &Modding:

Antec iLuminate Light Kit Review @ Mikhailtech - Ahanix D.vine 4 Home Theater Series PC Case Review @ MODTHEBOX.COM - Antec ARIA Barebone case @ Dark][Tweaker English

[H]ardNews 4th Edition

Ways to Get Your Voice Heard

CNN put up an article about ways that technology is helpling protesters get their voice out in the shadow of the Republican National Convention. It ranges from simple websites to more interesting ones like the Cell Phone/First Amendment protest.

Activists are using the Internet to arrange housing for out-of-towners, organize a mass-flash of underwear emblazoned with anti-Bush messages and tell protesters what to say if they're arrested ("I am going to remain silent. I would like to speak with a lawyer.").

Bill on Longhorn

C|Net has an interview up with Bill Gates concerning the recent decisions disclosed by Microsoft in order to get Longhorn out the door in 2006. It's got some good info there, especially concerning MS's decision not to include WinFS in the initial release of Longhorn.

That's professional engineering on its part, to stand up and say, "No, if you want us to have those features, we're an '07 deliverable."

Hooters and Controversy?

Everyone knows that we love boobies here at the [H]. Well some boobies are trying to give back, but are running into some problems from locals.

Doubling as a charity fund=raiser, the get-together in Jesup for pals named Donnie and Marie, of all things, will feature four clothing-challenged waitresses from the national restaurant chain Hooters (search) selling raffle tickets

Be sure to check out the video on Foxnews as well.

[H]ardNews 3rd Edition - Weekend Week-In Recap

I really do pick the links at random

So another week gone by and you know what time it is, time for me to take a nice long nap. Well, as soon as I recap the happenings of the week, starting with the capture of a DDoS for hire group that was nabbed by authorities. At least they caught real criminals, instead of people like RIAA who sued 896 of their own customers. Hopefully all that work with IP tracking will lead to people being able to catch crackers, like the ones that created the Porn Worm, to be caught faster.

Speaking of legal issues, Verisign lost its lawsuit against ICANN, and MS was found guilty of misleading consumers concerning cost differentials between Linux and Windows. There are reasons behind that, what with AMD’s no execute bug in Service Pack 2. At least problems like that should alleviate the AMD shortage that has occurred, well that and Intel’s price cuts as well.

Intel is the world largest supplier of chipsets in the world, but Nvidia hopes to bite into that even further with the release of their nForce4 chipset in the future. Maybe it will have some good stuff on it like hidden Easter eggs containing game girls in Playboy. Well, women might end up less “overtly sexy” in future games, if the gaming scholarship for women takes off, so we better enjoy it while we can.

Alright, we talked about Nvidia, so now it’s time for the mention of ATI. It looks like they cut some of their business from Compeq because of impurities. Hey at least they are getting some return on other investments, seeing as how the Half-Life 2 PreLoad occurred this week. Maybe it’ll have some dual disc action in there when it finally goes gold.

[H]ardNews 1st Edition

Cooling:

Cooler Master PNC-U51 CoolPad Notebook Cooler @ Adrian's Rojak Pot - Scythe Samurai CPU Cooler @ TrustedReviews

Etc.:

Sandisk Review @ NVmax.com - Edifier S5.1 240W Speaker System @ TheTechLounge - Ideazon Zboard @ Bjorn3D - Pioneer DVR-108 16x DVD Recorder @ CDRInfo - TEAC DV-W512G 12X DVD+R, 8X DVD-R @ CDRInfo - Plextor ConvertX PX-M402U @ CDRInfo - Primera Signature Z6 CD/DVD Printer @ CDRInfo

[H]ardNews 11th Edition

Winamp Updated:

Winamp has responded with lightning speed releasing Winamp version 5.05 that fixes the Winamp skin exploit we mentioned in our 8th Edition earlier today. You can’t get much better than that. Go grab the 5.05 version, the full download weighs in at a mere 4.35MB. Thanks to Jeff Morton for the heads up.

[H]ardNews 10th Edition

X800XT PCI-Express & AGP:

Gamers Depot is looking at both the PCI-Express & AGP versions of the Radeon X800XT. Which one is best for you? I guess that will depend on what platform you are running, now doesn’t it?

We have high praise for both of the cards and feel that either one would make a great solution for any core gamer out there. The games coming out really can use the additional boost from a 16-pipeline setup and will only get more intense.

ABIT AA8-DuraMAXX:

The ABIT AA8-DuraMAXX LGA775 mainboard is reviewed by the folks at Legit Reviews today. You can see our review f the AA8-DuraMAXX here for comparison.

This is a motherboard that we have used both on the test bench and on our gaming system over the past several weeks. When using the ABIT AA8-DuraMAX motherboard we never once saw a BSOD or noticed any weird issues about the board.

[H]ardNews 9th Edition

Shader Model 3.0 Speculation:

The crew at The Tech Report have a short analysis of recent web reports on Shader Model 3.0 as well as future products from NVIDIA and ATi. Very interesting reading.

Some intriguing things have been bubbling to the surface in the murky cauldron of graphics rumors over the past week or so. Perhaps because of delays to Microsoft's Longhorn OS, the next generation of graphics chips from ATI and NVIDIA may limit their GPUs' shader capabilities essentially to what we have now in the GeForce 6 series and DirectX 9's Shader Model 3.0.

CoolerMaster Aquagate:

Ninja Lane has the CoolerMaster Aquagate water cooler kit under the microscope in their latest review. These units are neat because they can be used internally as well as externally.

When I first saw the Cooler Master Aquagate I thought to myself, "this thing is cool," and having installed quite a few watercoolers before, I really liked how compact the system was. Of course, the obvious drawback is how the system doesn't really address many of the reasons that drive users to watercool.

Ideazon ZBoard:

We normally cover stuff like the Ideazon ZBoard PC gaming keyboard reviewed by 3Dxtreme in our daily Mods & Ends posts but I think most of you should read this review before spending $70 on a gimmicky product like the ZBoard.

I found that after I gave it some time everything was enjoyable to use, the gaming keysets were tough to crack at first.