![[H]ardOCP](/images/blank.gif){kind=small}
A lighted pool table with built in speakers, MP3 player support and LED lighting for under seven hundred and fifty bucks? Now that sounds like a deal to me…and not just because the color matches my car. Hopefully this thing makes it to the market, it’d be a shame of it didn’t.
Uh oh, the experts are all saying we will run out of bandwidth by the end of t…
Experts predict that consumer demand, already growing at 60 percent a year, will start to exceed supply as early as 2010 because of more people working online and the soaring popularity of bandwidth-hungry Web sites such as YouTube and services such as the BBC's iPlayer.
You know your site is popular when you get hit with phishing attacks…two days in a row. No worries though, Facebook is poking back…the situation is under control and the offenders have been unfriended from Facebook.
Unsuspecting Facebook users get a message from a friend urging them to "check this out" and including a link to a Web page that appears to be a Facebook log-in page, but it is a fake site that steals their information when they type in their username and password. The worm also sends a copy of the message to the infected Facebook member's contacts.
It looks as though Valve has filed suit against Activision in U.S. District Court in Seattle. Valve claims that Activision is not honoring an agreement made earlier this month to pay the game designer almost $2.4M. Activision claims it had overpaid Valve in the past and has simply subracted that amount from the $2.4M agreement. Thanks to Ray Wilson for the link.
The arbitrator in that case awarded Valve $2,391,932, an amount that Valve says is less than it sought, but which it will accept because both parties agreed to be bound by the arbitration process. Activision, however, challenged the award, claiming that Valve had been overpaid by $424,136 in years past. For its part Valve alleges that Activision failed to properly raise this issue before the abitrator whom, the suit claims, refused to consider it for procedural reasons.
ETC.
AMD Phenom II X4 955 Black Edition 3.2 GHz @ PCStats
Motherboards
Asus Rampage II Gene @ Neoseeker
Foxconn G31MV-K Motherboard @ Hardware Secrets
Video
ATI Radeon HD 4770 Overclocking @ Bit-Tech
You guys should watch this video of Google’s policy analyst talking about actually owning the internet connection that runs to your house. I’m not sure how feasible it is but it sure makes you think.
Using a video game to quit your job? Although it is funny, quitting a good paying job in times like these probably isn’t the smartest thing to do. Follow the link to play the game (without quitting your job).
Combining elements of his own creation, Polychromatic Funk Monkey, and the iconic Nintendo game Super Mario Bros, Woods' resignation game gave six weeks' notice and a simple farewell message.
Attention [H] Folders! Chimp Challenge 2009 is less than a week away and we want you to participate! How? It is as simple as changing your folding name to [H]ardApe for the duration of the challenge and that’s it. The first team to hit 20 million points wins the Chimp Challenge and it is all for a good cause. Hit the link above for ALL the info!
On may 5th (cinco de mayo) at 12:00, the Chimp Challenge will officially start with each team folding under a single name. The official [H]orde name will be [H]ardApe and each team will still fold for their own team. The goal of the challenge is to reach the 20 millions milestone in the shortest time before others do.
Game Developer magazine has posted the results of its game developer salary survey and found that salaries are up by 7% in spite of the economy. Salaries for designers and artists were just under $70k a year while the folks in business & marketing were pulling down over $100k a year. Overall the average salary in the game industry in 2008 was $79,000.
The results of its eighth annual Game Developer Salary Survey, calculating an average American game industry salary in 2008 of $79,000, a 7% increase from 2007’s figure of nearly $74,000. While the recession is, anecdotally, significantly impacting the amount of jobs available in the U.S., the income of still-employed game industry professionals in 2008 continues to edge up.
Gizmodo ran Windows 7 RC1 through a handful of benchmarks against Windows Vista today and the results are a bit of a mixed bag. Something I find very interesting is the authors comments on Windows 7 "feeling" so much faster, regardless what the benchmarks say.
The overall takeaway sounds like a mixed message: Windows 7 RC1 consistently beat Vista in raw benchmarks by a small margin, and lagged slightly behind Vista in some very real world measures. What's really interesting is that in regular usage, Windows 7 still feels faster and more responsive than Vista, even though the objective numbers say otherwise.
So my question is this…if it is a "slicker, more refined user experience" that "feels faster" then who cares about a few back and forth benchmarks? What do you think?
Card trick meets augmented reality. Overall a very neat presentation, I can see this type of trick / show becoming very popular.
