Enermax Liberty Eco 620W Power SupplyEnermax has been one of our favorite computer Power Supply Unit builders for many years. It has constantly driven quality products into the market place. Today we kick the tires on the Liberty to celebrate the upcoming 4th of July.
Ghostbusters Gameplay Performance and IQWho ya gonna call? Ghostbusters! That’s right; a brand new video game marks the re-release of the feature film on Blu-ray. We’ll take this game, which pays homage to the feature films perfectly, through our gauntlet of video cards to see what kind of value and gameplay experience you can get. We’ll also see if the stories are true about this being a multi-core CPU aware game using CPU-based Physics. 
DFI UT X58-T3eH8The UT X58-T3eH8 is DFI’s answer to the current onslaught of Intel X58 chipset based motherboards. The board is part of DFI’s much vaunted LanParty line of boards, squarely aimed at the gaming and hardware enthusiast. It looks to be strong contender in this highly competitive space.
PowerColor PCS+ HD4890 1GBToday we are evaluating the PowerColor PCS+ HD4890 1GB. Based on the Radeon HD 4890 it comes with a 950MHz GPU clock speed and a unique cooling solution out of the box. We see how well it does against a reference HD 4890 and a GeForce GTX 275 in some new games such as Ghostbusters and Demigod with plenty of testing.FREE Guide - Avoiding 7 Common Mistakes of IT Security Compliance
This guide covers seven typical IT security compliance errors and outlines the best practices you can immediately apply to your environment to help your company achieve compliance.
And did anyone notice? On 6/30, CompuServe Classic pulled the plug and went dark, leaving loyal customers with only the CompuServe 2000 service to use. This blog took a look at the venerable service (which went online for consumers in 1979) and, as a result, took me on a little trip down memory lane.
Online shopping? Stock quotes? Worldwide weather forecasts? CompuServe was providing all of that in the 1980s. Who needs color graphics, music and streaming videos? CompuServe could provide users with what they needed with plain text on a slow dial-up connection.
The European Space Agency’s Planck telescope has a High Frequency Instrument (HFI) that will be used to detect Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB). In order to see CMB, the HFI has to be cooled with a combination of active and passive coolers to get it down to 0.1°C degree above absolute zero. I bet you could even overclock a Prescott with that cooling solution. 
The detectors will look for variations in the temperature of the CMB that are about a million times smaller than one degree – this is comparable to measuring from Earth the heat produced by a rabbit sitting on the Moon. This is why the detectors must be cooled to temperatures close to absolute zero (–273.15°C, or zero Kelvin, 0K).
Cases
Lian Li PC-8 @ OCaholic
In Win X-Fighter @ Bjorn3D
Cooling
Koolance CPU-LN2 liquid nitrogen evaporator @ Legit Reviews
Scythe Katana 3 CPU cooler @ SPCR
Motherboards
ASUS P6T SE (Intel X58 Express chipset) @ PCShopTalk
Gigabyte MA790FXT-UD5P (AMD 790FX chipset) @ TweakTown
Storage
Promise SmartStor NS4600 NAS @ Xbit Labs
OCZ Throttle eSATA 32GB flash drive @ TrustedReviews
Video
Sapphire Radeon HD 4870 Vapor-X 2GB @ Motherboards
Sapphire Radeon HD 4890 Toxic Vapor-X @ Guru3D
Can you say "sentence disparity?" While US courts hammered Jammie Thomas with a $1.9 million fine for pirating 24 songs, a French court recently sentenced a man to a suspended 2 month jail sentence and a $46K fine for downloading 12,591 songs, 426 movies, and 16 seasons of various TV shows. RIAA argued for $80K per song in the Thomas case while the 19 plaintiffs in the French case wanted 1-2 euros per song and 7-12.50 euros per movie. WTF?
During the April hearing the retired IT expert said in his defense that it took him a whole year to accumulate the collection by using eMule on the eD2k network, but it was intended for private, not commercial use. He also told the court that he believed he had been acting within the law.
A reader sent this in yesterday and I thought it was wicked cool. Glenn Donnellan, a violinist with the National Symphony Orchestra, created an electric violin using a Louisville Slugger baseball bat. I embedded the video below for you to check out and yes, it’s real. Thanks jon8rfc!
According to Apple’s own product comparison page, the iPhone 3GS is supposed to have a slightly increased battery life in certain areas. However, owners interviewed in this LA Times article are finding a much different reality, paying a premium for phones that can’t even last through a workday without being plugged in.
It's proving to be something of an Achilles' heel on Apple Inc.'s flagship device, more than 1 million of which were sold in the first weekend. Even the company suggests on its website that users disable some of the phone's most vaunted features, including the faster 3G network itself, to keep it from shutting down during the day.
BLORGE spoke with a product manager at Symantec, David Hall, and got some very interesting quotes from the guy. According to Hall, free anti-virus software isn’t "able to keep up" with products you pay for. He specifically calls out the upcoming Microsoft Security Essentials product, saying it’s incomplete. What say you?
"People tell me, oh well look I use free antivirus because it is free and it protects me from everything in those areas, but when you compare that with what’s really going on in the threat landscape, there is a very, very big gap between what antivirus does and the threats that are being delivered today."
We’ve all heard the stories of people getting fired, denied insurance claims, and other self-inflicted stupidity enabled by Facebook. How about revealing family details and photos to the FB world about Britain’s new MI6 chief, John Sawers? Oops! Granted, it was his wife and it was on her FB site but one would hope that the leader of a powerful intelligence agency would know to teach his wife how to set the privacy settings in FB.
The paper said the information was posted by Sawers' wife on her Facebook page. It included vacation photos, details about the couple's three children and the location of their London home. Shelley Sawers' page has been removed from the site, although a cached page can still be viewed that shows a picture of the spy chief's wife.
An enterprising (and apparently successful) owner of a ramen shop spent 20 million yen (just over $208K) on a robotic ramen chef. Customers place their orders on a computer in the shop, choosing their flavors, and the robot prepares the order in about two minutes. Pretty cool.
Uchida began to develop the robot at his home in around 2003, asking an iron foundry to produce the specialist parts he needed. He finally completed the robot in November last year, but suffered teething problems: ramen with no taste, and computer crashes caused by spilled soup. After repeated repairs, however, Uchida finally managed to iron out the bugs.
Sony Ericsson’s first Android-based mobile phone is apparently code-named "Rachael" and is pictured over at Engadget. Go check it out if you’re curious. Details are sparse at this time, though they do tell you what CPU the handset is running. Nifty.
nder the hood is a 1GHz Qualcomm Snapdragon processor, HSPA and an 8 megapixel camera. It's unclear how big the touchscreen is, and other details are scarce -- there is a 3.5mm headphone jack, so that's nice, but unless we're severely misguided, there doesn't seem to be a slide-out keyboard tucked away inside this thin chassis.
NASA’s Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO) sent back the first high-res images of the moon’s surface at the night/day boundary. Check out the Wired article for the pics and more about the orbiter and its mission.
One of the goals of the LRO mission is to scout potential landing sites for future missions. It will also look for resources and characterize the lunar environment. … The LRO will get as close as 19 miles above the surface, but will spend most of its mission 31 miles up. These pictures were taken to calibrate the cameras.
I can get behind that. Sony’s Walkman was such a revolutionary device at the time: a cassette player that can fit in your (very large) pocket? Sign me up! I was able to listen to Soulsonic Force and break-dancing mixtapes back in the day with this bad boy. Plus, I don’t see any iPods transforming into one of the best Decepticons ever, Soundwave.
Never before had consumers been able to listen to music as they walked down the street, without balancing a tape player on their shoulder. Within two years of its launch, it had become the must-have gadget around the world, confounding early critics who said it would never take off without a record button.
McAfee users are blowing up about an apparent glitch in McAfee’s most recent virus signature update. This glitch causes McAfee to attack core system files, sometimes causing BSODs. I don’t think these were the fireworks that sysadmins were expecting today.
Based on anecdotes, the glitch appears to be caused when older VirusScan engines install DAT 5664, which McAfee seems to have pushed out in the past 24 hours. Affected systems then begin identifying a wide variety of legitimate - and frequently crucial - system files as malware. Files belonging to Microsoft Internet Explorer, drivers for Compaq computers, and even the McAfee-associated McScript.exe were being identified as a trojan called PWS!hv.aq, according to the posts and interviews.
Many of you are vehement anti-Twitter/anti-social network people. I get that. However, if you’re a frequent traveler, you might be interested to see how others are using Twitter to get fast results for disputes. If you’re not having luck with your CS call, maybe a complaint tweet to the company is your answer.
As hotels, airlines and other travel companies line up on Twitter to promote their brands, customers who voice their grievances in the form of tweets are getting surprisingly fast responses for everything from bad airplane seats to poor room service.
U.S. troops serving overseas can call home for free on July 4th thanks to a pair of Camp Hovey soldiers. Larry Thorpe, 28, Army 1st-15th Field Artillery and Patrick Ayers, 25, an Army Medic with the 4th-7th Cavalry, are giving away 1 million minutes of free talk time to celebrate Independence Day and the launch of their Web-based company, www.JoeOnTheMove.com.
Competition began yesterday in Cairo for 444 students from 124 countries and regions at the Imagine Cup 2009 Worldwide Finals. Now in its seventh year, Imagine Cup is an annual Microsoft Corp. competition that challenges students around the globe to use their creative genius to build technology solutions that can help address some of the world’s toughest challenges.
All of us here at [H]ard|OCP wish all of our USA readers a very Happy Independence Day today. Have fun and stay safe while you celebrate our country's freedom with BBQ, beer, and fireworks with your friends and family. USA.gov has a handy collection of 4th of July facts, trivia, and even safety tips to help you enjoy today.
Independence Day honors the birthday of the United States of America and the signing of the Declaration of Independence on July 4, 1776. It's a day of picnics and patriotic parades, a night of concerts and fireworks, and a reason to fly the American flag.
According to this article, Windows 7 release to manufacturing is reportedly on track for July 13th. Thanks to everyone that sent this one in.
Get out your Bill Gates commemorative calendars folks, 'cause it looks like we now have a few more dates to mark off on the road to Windows 7 availability. While Microsoft still isn't saying anything official itself just yet, a number of different sources are reporting that the company has set July 10th as the date for the final gold build of Windows 7, while the big release to manufacturing date is apparently on track for July 13th.
Proof positive that owning an Apple computer is far more dangerous than a PC. Alright, alright, all joking aside, I’m glad the lady that was shot is okay and let us all hope the suspect is caught and gets what he has coming.
An employee of an Apple store in Arlington was shot and wounded this morning during an attempted armed robbery in a back storeroom as more than three-dozen shoppers and other employees milled about the showroom.
After months of speculation, the U.S. Department of Justice has finally confirmed that it is investigating a settlement involving Google Book Search for possible antitrust violations.
In a filing to the judge overseeing the settlement of a lawsuit filed by The Authors Guild against Google, the DOJ informed the court that it has opened an investigation into the proposed settlement after reviewing public comments of concern. Those comments suggest that the agreement might violate the Sherman Act, a U.S. antitrust law, the DOJ said.
Apparently the fireworks have started early in Seattle, a fire has interrupted service at Microsoft's Bing Travel and other major web sites.
It's a little unclear exactly when the fire at the Fisher Plaza data center started--some reports say Thursday night, others say just after midnight Friday. A message on Bing Travel pins the problems on a blown transformer. "The blown transformer knocked out power to the entire building, which is home to the Bing Travel servers," a message on the site says. "This is isolated to Bing Travel only, and there is no impact to any other aspect of Bing."
Alpha Protocol Dev Diary Explores Its Options @ Shacknews
L4D2 Pre-Order Sales Already Double The Original @ Joystiq
Left 4 Dead 2 Interview @ VE3D
Sesame Street Says Video Games Are OK @ Kotaku
In the [H]ot deal section today we have this RaidMax ARES ATX case for only $49.99. Make sure you use the exclusive [H] promo code to get the instant rebate and free shipping. You can also get $20 off and free shipping on this SAPPHIRE Radeon HD 4850 1GB as well. Also, we still have that deal on RatPadz GS or RatPadz XT for $5 off with free shipping (in North America). Show your [H] pride and grab one today!
What is the true cost of online privacy? Any time an article asks what is the "true" amount of something, you know for a fact the answer isn’t going to be what you want to hear. 
Do you like your privacy? I bet you do. What about being able to read all kinds of stuff on the internet without having to hand over your credit card number -- do you like that, too? I bet that's another yes. But which do you like more? You'd better figure that out quickly, because, if you don't, Congress just might decide for you.
Researchers at ESET have issued a warning against opening e-mail or video attachments that have a 4th of July theme. As always, I know you guys wouldn't open attachments or click links to "fireworks show" but we all know friends and relatives that would. Pass the word.
Researchers at ESET have reliable intelligence that the Waledac botnet is currently being prepared for a spam campaign around the Independence Day theme. They have registered at least 18 domain names all related to the theme of video, fireworks, and Independence Day.
Cooling
Thermaltake ISGC-400 CPU Cooler @ HiTech Legion
Motherboards
ASUS Maximus II GENE P45 mATX @ Hardware Canucks
Video
Asus GeForce ENGTX275 @ Neoseeker
ASUS Radeon EAH 4770 @ Overclockers Club
Sapphire Radeon HD 4890 Atomic @ PCG&H
While the rest of the world is worrying about fireworks, large pyrotechnic shows and generally just setting stuff on fire tomorrow, Legit Reviews went the total. other. direction.
The CPU-LN2 operates on heat exchange with cold substances like dry ice and liquid nitrogen and the nickle plated copper evaporator. For reference, dry ice sublimates at -78.5 Celsius and liquid nitrogen evaporates at -195.7 Celsius. By pouring liquid nitrogen or dry ice and a solvent into the CPU-LN2 the end-user can achieve base temperatures that permit substantial overclocks.
I wish the new owners of the Pirate Bay well but I just don’t know how they are going to do any of the stuff they say they are going to do. Paying people cash for seeding paid content they download? Really?
"Some file-sharers don’t like all this money talk, and they’re leaving," acknowledged Hans Pandeya, chief executive of the Global Gaming Factory, in a telephone interview with Wired.com on Wednesday. But "the user experience is going to be the same. From the user’s point of view, they’re doing a search, they’re finding the song or the movie, and they’re downloading it."
I’ll bet you didn’t know all these things about fireworks! If you follow the link there is also a bonus slideshow with handy little nuggets of info as well.
A typical pyrotechnics display incorporates elements of chemistry, physics, aerospace engineering, materials science, fire science, psychology, neuroscience, and risk management. The fact that millions of people across America celebrate the political independence of our nation by watching a choreographed multidisciplinary collaboration of basic scientific and engineering principles that result in pleasing visual, auditory, and olfactory stimulation is nothing short of revolutionary (pun intended).
It looks like Mozilla has set July 7 as a community "bug day" to address the problems in Firefox 3.5. There have been more than 55 known issues / bugs found in the last two days so it looks like the Firefox team has its work cut out for it.
Mozilla is scrambling to fix bugs in its just-released Firefox 3.5 browser. Users are posting complaints about problems across the Web. Those problems include longer load times and crashes linked to the TraceMonkey JavaScript engine. The browser also reportedly has problems with Windows XP.