DRAM Makers Say Vista Hurting Business

Am I reading this right? I could swear this article makes it sound like many of the big name memory makers are blaming Windows Vista for their problems. How does that work exactly?

DRAM bit growth rate expanded aggressively during 2007, driven by major industry players' overambitious expansion plans to support Windows Vista. Among the players, Hynix' capacity jumped 159% on year in 2007, followed by Taiwan's Inotera with 112%, Japan's Elpida with 103% and Samsung's 86%. However, since the new operating system failed to take off as strongly as expected, DRAM makers have faced worsening oversupply and are turning more cautious about capital spending for 2009.

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2008 Vaporware List

When Wired put out this year’s Vaporware of the Year list the tag line read “Crushing Disappointments, False Promises and Plain Old BS.” Catchy, ain’t it? It adds that something special to earning a spot on the list don’t you think? Here’s the first entry on the list (#10):

Home doesn't even succeed as a Second Life rip-off, owing to the fact that there simply isn't much to do. You can walk around in the mall and spend real money on virtual clothes branded with advertisements, or you can hang out at the bowling alley and play crappy video games. That's about it. Even the avatar creation system is incredibly scaled-down.

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Gaming News

Brawl Over Wii For A Christmas Gift @ Shacknews

Composers Making Big Bucks In Video Games @ Seattle Times

Disturbing Art From Nintendo Powers Past @ Kotaku

Space Empires V 1.77 Patch @ FileShack

ASUS P6T6 WS Revolution

What has six DDR 3 slots, 6 PCIe x16 slots and supports Intel’s new LGA1366 Core i7 processors? Read our evaluation of the ASUS P6T6 WS Revolution to find out.

The ASUS P6T6 WS Revolution looks to be a great motherboard both in terms of stability and performance. Its “legacy free” approach will be appreciated by many and scorned by others. Sadly if you are looking at buying this board for its true x16 bandwidth for 3-Way SLI or CrossFireX beyond two slots, I would in no way suggest buying one yet.

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Websites Could Get Cinema-Style Ratings

Cinema style ratings for websites? Are we talking “PG-13” or “two thumbs up” style ratings? Who would do the rating? Come to think of it, what rating would the [H] get?

The kind of ratings used for films could be applied to websites in a bid to better police the Internet and protect children from harmful and offensive material, Britain's minister for culture has said.

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Funny Tech Story Of The Day

Not everyone’s parents are tech savvy, matter o’ fact, I’d venture to say most older parents out there are a lot like this. Thank to the folks at Gizmodo for the laugh, this one is just priceless.

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[H]ardware Round-Up

Cases & Modding

Silverstone Fortress FT01 Case (German) @ TweakPC

Silverstone Sugo SG04 Case @ NinjaLane

Memory

Kingston HyperX T1 Series DDR2-8500 4GB @ Overclockers Club

ETC.

AMD Athlon X2 7750 Black Edition @ InsideHW

Intel Core i7 920 @ 4200 MHz OC Guide HardwareOverclock

Intel Core i7 920 Overclocking @ HotHardware

Rivatuner 2.22 Released

A new version of Rivatuner is out today. The new version (2.22) adds support for the latest GeForce and Catalyst drivers as well as the ability to use skins. The program weighs in at just 2.6MB so grab it if you want it, try it if you haven’t.

RivaTuner is a complete powerful tweaking environment, providing you everything you may need to tune NVIDIA GPU based display adapters. The widest driver-level Direct3D / OpenGL and system tuning options, flexible profiling system allowing to make custom settings on per-application basis, both driver-level and low-level hardware access modes, unique diagnostic and real-time hardware monitoring features and exclusive power user oriented tools like built-in registry editor and patch script engine.

Microsoft Outlines Pay-Per-Use PC Vision

Microsoft has filed for a patent on a pay-per-use system where people would pay to use a computer based on the length of time used and the performance levels utilized. Does this sound like a good idea to anyone? I could maybe see UMPCs going this route but a full sized desktop PC?

"The scalable performance level components may include a processor, memory, graphics controller, etc. Software and services may include word processing, email, browsing, database access, etc. To support a pay-per-use business model, each selectable item may have a cost associated with it, allowing a user to pay for the services actually selected and that presumably correspond to the task or tasks being performed."

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Country Bans YouTube, Facebook In Public Offices

Sitting around on YouTube and Facebook all day at work definitely cuts down on productivity and some countries have started banning those sites as a result.

The former Yugoslav republic of Montenegro has banned public sector staff from accessing the popular Internet websites Facebook and YouTube at work, the government said Wednesday. Employees at state-run institutions who attempt to log in to Facebook and YouTube, the social networking and video sharing sites, would be greeted by the message "access denied" during working hours.

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Intel Holiday Giveaways

Time is running out, you only have two days left to enter Intel's “What’s Inside You” contest...but wait that’s not all, you can also enter another Intel contest just by guess the number of reinvented transistors Intel has shipped since the beginning of the year. The closest guess wins a $500 Amazon gift certificate. The last contest is a collaboration with Ubisoft. The two companies have teamed up to give you the chance to win one of 50 Far Cry 2 PC games and one CoreTM i7-965 Extreme Edition each day from now until December 31st.

MP5 + Wii Remote = WeeP5

Modding a Wii remote is nothing new but modding one into a semi-realistic looking MP5 9mm submachine gun is pretty damn cool. Instructables has a nice “how-to” posted today that shows you how to play shooters on a Wii and not look like a wuss.

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