[H]ard|OCP

Games Don't Create Killers, New Book Says

To you and I, a book that says “games don’t create killers,” is simply stating the obvious but you’d be surprised to know how many people need to see it in print to believe it.

Lawrence Kutner and Cheryl Olson, a husband-and-wife team at Harvard Medical School, detail their views in "Grand Theft Childhood: The Surprising Truth About Violent Video Games and What Parents Can Do," which came out last month and promises to reshape the debate on the effects of video games on kids.

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Middle East on Path to Digital Future

Speaking at the U.S.-Arab Economic Forum in Washington, D.C., Intel Corporation Chairman Craig Barrett shared his vision on the role of technology and education in driving a digital transformation in the Middle East. "Education and technology can expand what is possible and create opportunities for people across the Middle East," said Barrett.

Middle East on Path to Digital Future

Speaking at the U.S.-Arab Economic Forum in Washington, D.C., Intel Corporation Chairman Craig Barrett shared his vision on the role of technology and education in driving a digital transformation in the Middle East. "Education and technology can expand what is possible and create opportunities for people across the Middle East," said Barrett.

AMD Tightlipped on Company's Future

AMD’s shares rose about $0.02 today after the company’s annual shareholder meeting. Chief executive, Hector Ruiz gave a short twenty minute speech and took one question from a shareholder about sponsoring golf tournaments.

"Our plans are bold, and progress is ongoing," Ruiz said Thursday in prepared remarks about the so-called "asset smart" manufacturing strategy. "And I hope to communicate additional details of this complex undertaking in the very near future."

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FBI Backs Off The Internet Archive

The FBI served the folks at the Internet Archive (The Wayback Machine) with a national security letter demanding information relevant to an ongoing national security investigation. The Internet Archive refused and got the EFF and the ACLU to defend them. Now it looks like the FBI has backed off after reaching a deal where the Internet Archive voluntarily handed over some of the info the FBI wanted, saying it was publicly available anyway. Thanks to Lethal for the link.

As part of their settlement, the FBI agreed to drop the gag order and the archive agreed to withdraw the complaint. The case was unsealed Monday. Yesterday, redacted versions of key documents were filed, allowing the parties to discuss the case.

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Microsoft to Increase Focus on Handsets for Poor

Microsoft says it is increasing its focus on making phones for the poor? Ummm, what? I have an idea, how about nixing the laptops, TVs, cell phones and concentrate on stuff like food and how to grow it.

Even in the poorest places in the world, people have televisions, he said, and Microsoft wants to use that existing technology to spread computing.

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Steal That Style: Niko Bellic

We have seen just about every GTA IV how to there is; mission guide lines, driving FAQs, Google mapps and multiplayer how-tos but I think this is the first time I have seen a “how-to dress like Niko Bellic.”

Few are skilled enough to pull off mob hits, car jacks, and get out of 5-star wanted rating without breaking the rules of style. That distinction belongs to Grand Theft Auto IV's leading man, Niko Bellic. We break down Niko's trademark look to show just how easy it is to steal his style.

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[H]ardware Round-Up

Cases & Modding

Thermaltake M9 Mid-Tower PC Case @ DSM

Cooling

Coolermaster Z600 Heatpipe HSF (Spanish) @ ChileHardware

ETC.

AV LABS AVL337 Bluetooth Speakers @ tkArena

Video

Asus EAH3850 X2 @ I4U

VisionTek Radeon HD 3870 X2 Overclocked Edition @ Overclockers Club

Malicious Posts On Epilepsy Forum Cause Seizures

This is proof positive that some people really deserve an ass kicking. Normally hackers and their antics don’t really bother me one way or the other but this is pretty low, don’t you guys think so?

The attack happened when hackers exploited a security hole in the foundation's publishing software that allowed them to quickly make numerous posts and overwhelm the site's support forums. Within the hackers' posts were small flashing pictures and links.

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New Xbox 360 Chips This Summer?

I know, I know, this is one of those rumors that pops its head up every so often…only to be shot down later but, who knows…if you repeat something like this long enough, it is bound to come true.

However, there are other important rumours: TSMC got orders to produce the chip for code-named Valhalla Xbox 360 design, which is rumoured to combine microprocessor and graphics chip in a single piece of silicon.

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Futuristic Right Angle Radiator

Translating this page doesn’t help much but what we can tell from the picture, this is a radiator of sorts built completely from right angle tubing and it looks awesome. Imagine using something like this in a watercooled PC mod.

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Gates Says Vista is Doing Just Fine

Microsoft Chairman Bill Gates, speaking in Tokyo, said that sales of Windows Vista have surpassed the 140 million mark worldwide.

Gates, speaking in Tokyo, said the figure represented "a very rapid sales rate," according to a Wall Street Journal report on Thursday. Despite the sales figures, Microsoft has admitted to struggling with the public's perception of Vista. Windows XP, Vista's 7-year-old predecessor, is still popular among both businesses and consumers.

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Daily [H]ot Deal

Those of you looking toupgrading to a quad core processor ought to check out this exclusive deal on a quad core Q6700 + EVGA 780i SLI motherboard bundle. [H] readers get a total of $39.99 off, for a final price of $449.99. Get in on the deal while the getting is good, no telling how long this will last.

Xbox 360 Sponsors First Ever National Family Fitness Day

Microsoft Corp.’s Xbox 360 is teaming up with Boys & Girls Clubs of America (BGCA) to celebrate the inaugural National Family Fitness Day on May 12. National Family Fitness Day is a free, fun-filled event designed to promote healthy and active lifestyles for children and families. The key fitness activity will be playing “DanceDanceRevolution UNIVERSE 2” on Xbox 360. To help encourage families to get involved, supermodel, health guru and mother of three Christie Brinkley and health expert and physician Dr. Carlon Colker will commence the activities at the Children’s Aid Society’s Dunlevy Milbank Center Boys & Girls Club in New York.

OpenOffice.org 3.0 Beta Released

I know all you fans of OpenOffice will be thrilled to know that the new 3.0 Beta is now out.

OpenOffice.org 3.0 integrates ODF 1.2 support, Microsoft Office 2007 Import Filters, charting enhancements, improved note capabilities in Writer, new icons, enhanced pdf export, multi-monitor support for impress, and a start center. For Mac OS X users, OpenOffice.org 3.0 will now run without the need for X11 to be installed. In addition, there are bug-fixes and other minor features that make up this beta release.

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The Only Way To Play

We know you can play GTA IV on a high-def projector and get similar results but there is just something so cool about seeing it played on this system.

Researchers (and gamers, obviously) down at UC San Diego have re-engineered their middleware to enable such masterpieces as this to be played on the big monolithic HIPerSpace screen, and needless to say, we can't imagine much real work getting done with this new functionality coming to light.

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State Department Laptops Missing

You are not going to believe this but according to a report in the Congressional Quarterly, hundreds of laptops used by the U.S. Department of State are all missing.

Given the sensitive and often secret nature of data the State Department workers deal with, officials are bracing for repercussions like congressional hearings, according to CQ. That's what happened when a Veterans Administration official had a laptop stolen in 2006, IRS laptops went missing in 2001, and a State Department laptop containing the names of foreign agents working for the U.S. government was stolen in 1999.

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Sub-$100 8800 GT 256MB

While this is not exactly an “enthusiast” card given it has a meager 256MB of RAM, it would still give you a hell of a gaming experience if you are not yet at 1600 lines of resolution while provided plenty of memory for AA. When an 8800 GT video card is at the sub-US$100 mark (after MIR), at leaset for Newegg email subscribers, you know things are pretty damn good in the world of the GPU from a consumer perspective.

More Hot Deals

Torrentspy Ordered To Pay MPAA $111 Million

A U.S. District Judge in Los Angeles has ruled in favor of the Motion Picture Association of America. The courts ordered TorrentSpy to pay $111 million and to permanently close up shop.

U.S. District Judge Florence -Marie Cooper in Los Angeles, ruling in a case brought by the Motion Picture Association of America, said site operator Justin Bunnell and associates must pay the maximum $30,000 for "each of the 3,699 infringements shown." The case, producing what is among the largest fines in copyright history, was bolstered after the MPAA allegedly paid a hacker $15,000 for internal TorrentSpy e-mails and correspondence.

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Mozilla: Firefox Plugin Shipped With Malicious Code

What is the world coming to when people are crafting Firefox plug-ins with malicious code. Yes, some of the blame is on Mozilla for not catching stuff like this but the real blame should go to the scumbags that screw it up for everyone.

Because of a virus infection, the Vietnamese language pack for Firefox 2 was polluted with adware, Mozilla security chief Window Snyder said in a blog posting. "Everyone who downloaded the most recent Vietnamese language pack since February 18, 2008 got an infected copy," she wrote. "Mozilla does virus scans at upload time but the virus scanner did not catch this issue until several months after the upload."

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OCZ Introduces New Additions to the Reaper HPC Series

OCZ Technology Group, a worldwide leader in innovative, ultra-high performance and high reliability memory, today announced two new Reaper HPC solutions for enthusiasts upgrading to next generation of cutting-edge platforms. The PC3-14400 and PC3-12800 Reaper HPC Series are now available in both 2GB and 4GB dual channel kits to meet the specific needs of customized gaming systems or workstations, offering perfect compatibility with the latest platforms and chipsets at the height of DDR3 performance.

Xbox LIVE GTA IV Numbers

Major Nelson has posted some Xbox Live statistics following the launch of GTA IV and they are indeed impressive. The number that really stood out for me was the fact that the Xbox Live service saw 1 million concurrent users over the GTA IV launch weekend and 2.3 million people playing the game on Xbox Live.

Over the weekend, we saw the Xbox LIVE service reach 1 million concurrent users. Actual MS sales data from last week shows Xbox 360 console sales at retail went up 54% week-over-week as a result of GTA's success. According to retailers more than 60% of all GTA games sold in the first week were the Xbox 360 version.

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NASA, Intel, SGI Plan to 'Soup Up' Supercomputer

NASA, Intel Corp., and SGI today announced the signing of an agreement establishing intentions to collaborate on significantly increasing the space agency's supercomputer performance and capacity. Under the terms of a Space Act Agreement, NASA will work closely with Intel and SGI to increase computational capabilities for modeling and simulation at the NASA Advanced Supercomputing (NAS) facility at NASA's Ames Research Center, Moffett Field, Calif.

What Can You Do With a Second Ethernet Port?

If you are running Linux, and I know a lot of you guys are, and you have a motherboard with dual Ethernet ports, why not put them both to use? This article explains everything from bonding to bridging and which one is right for you.

The big distinction between your options lies in the effect each has on the other devices on your network (computers, routers, and other appliances) -- intelligently routing network traffic between them, linking them together transparently, and so on. In some cases, the simplest end result is not the easiest to set up, so it pays to read through all of the alternatives before you decide which to tackle.

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[H]ardware Round-Up II

Cooling

Intel FCLGA4-S Core 2 Extreme Thermal Chamber HSF @ FrostyTech

ETC.

Hades Gaming Ares H1 Optical Gaming Mouse @ DSM

Memory

OCZ ReaperX HPC DDR3-1333 2GB Memory Kit @ ThinkComputers

Video

NVIDIA Hybrid SLI & HybridPower Benchmarked & Explained @ Legit Reviews

Sapphire Radeon HD 3870 Toxic (German) @ Hardware-Mag

Ultimate Geek Scooter

Think you are “too cool” for a scooter? Well then, you ain’t seen the Ultimate Geek Scooter. It has a built in PC with 8” LCD touch screen, system monitor, laser keyboard, high-res webcam, 30db gain wireless antenna, GPS, wireless access point and much, much more. I might look like Donkey Kong riding that damn thing but ride it I would!

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Geek Fight Clubs

Even though we’ve seen stuff like this before, I am a sucker for nerd fight club videos. They are like car wrecks, you know you shouldn't look. You don’t want to look. But you have to. Since this video has popped up again, we wanna know...you guys would do this, wouldn’t you?

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GTA IV Sales Change Nothing For EA’s Take-Two Bid

It seems that some analyst don’t think GTA IV’s sales figures will change anything for EA’s Take-Two bid. Matter o’ fact, the analyst went as far as to say he thinks the deal is 80/20 in favor of going through. Oh really? What do you guys think?

"Take-Two's self-imposed moratorium [on negotiations] is over," said Creutz. "We haven't heard anything out of either company in the last week. They could be talking... I still think the odds that the deal happens that are very high... I don't think GTA changes that at all."

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Self Learning Robot Chef

Check out this little countertop robot that, after a few short instructions, can whip up an omelet with the best of them. If you look closely, you’ll also see a Wii remote being used too. Hell, cross this robot with one of those fembots and we’ll be all set. Thanks to TerryT for the link.

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Gaming News

EA Announced E3 Plans @ Kotaku

GTA 4 PS3 Patch Released @ Wired Blogs

Key Nintendo Programmer Defects to Microsoft @ Shacknews

Zune 2.5 Now Available @ Major Nelson