[H]ot Deals

There are some pretty damn good video card deals in our [H]ot Deals forums today. First up, we this $50 off deal that comes with free shipping on an EVGA GeForce GTX 470 768MB GDDR5 video card. There is also a Galaxy GeForce GTX 460 GC Edition card that is $25 off and comes with free shipping (both video cards come with a free Starcraft II game trial offer). Want an ATI based card? Take $20 off the top of this XFX Radeon 5850 1GB and get free shipping with it. What’s that you say? You are just looking for a plain ol’ PCI-Express video card, then snag this EVGA GeForce GT220 1GB card for just $34.99 with free shipping. Hit the link for more bargains but, as always, you’d better hurry because theses deals are only good through Monday.

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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