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Mac users beware: Porn Trojans have arrived By Martin J Young
and 80GB hard drive would struggle under Vista but is ample for GOS, what's
more the unit retails at only $200 (excluding monitor).
Hardware
Memory manufacturer Micron has been sampling double DRAM density chips,
resulting in the assembly of 4GB modules for desktops and 16GB modules for
servers. The chipmaker claims that the next generation of DRAM is on the way
with the start of
low-level production for 2GB DDR3 components. They will effectively double the
capacity of today's DRAM modules and the 78 nm chips will run at speeds of upto
1333MHz. Mainstream production and commercial availability is expected to start
in the first quarter of next year.
Intel
are currently working on their first consumer dual socket motherboard. The
board has been dubbed "Skulltrail" and it employs two 771 pin Xeon sockets
which when overclocked can reach a stable 5GHz. Intel chose to use Nvidia
nForce 100 chips which provide bandwidth to drive four graphics cards. The
board will not be limited to Nvidia graphics cards but will also enable users
to connect ATI Crossfire cards. It also has the regular components including
SATA, Firewire, Ethernet, USB, S-video, Sound and 4 PCIx16 slots. The
enthusiast-level motherboard will be aimed at overclockers and is not expected
to come cheap!
Internet Tech giants are now getting together to jump on the bandwagon as
social networking becomes the wave of the future for online communications.
Google is among the players that is striving to develop a standard for web
developers to write software for social networks. The strategy called
OpenSocial allows anyone to improve a system, such as Facebook, instead of
tasking the job to their own in-house programmers.
Facebook has had over 6,000 applications written for it since it opened the
doors to developers in May, they add life to the community and enhance the
users' social experience. This is what the likes of Google are trying to tap
into, "in just three years, social networks have attracted 400 million-plus
users", said Joe Kraus, Google's director of product management.
The technology aims to standardize software development by having a set of
common application programming interfaces (APIs) . However, Facebook will not
be included in the program following its decision to choose Microsoft over
Google for a $240 million investment. Not just limiting the project to its own
social-networking property, Orkut, Google has invited other sites for
participation, including LinkedIn, Hi5, Plaxo, Ning and Friendster.
Gaming
This week graphics card giant Nvidia released its latest offering, the 8800 GT,
aimed at the mid-range gamers market. The card sits below the GTS, GTX and
Ultimate models and retails at around $240, bringing high performance and
DirectX 10 compatibility to the budget-conscious gamer. Benchmark tests showed
it to be a contender with the top cards, even outperforming AMD's HD 2900 XT in
many tests. Not to be outdone, AMD retaliated with news of the launch of their
DirectX 10.1 ATI HD 3800 series graphics processors on about November 15.
PC
gamers also got their hands on the long-awaited Crysis demo last week, Crytek's
PC shooter and followup to Far Cry will be released in full on November 16 and
will be one of the most demanding games on the market in terms of hardware
requirements. That said, gamers will be rewarded with some spectacular graphics
and imagery.
Nintendo
revels in the success of Wii with game sales exceeding those of rivals Sony in
the third quarter. The PlayStation maker looks likely to revise its initial
forecast to reflect a higher than expected loss in its games division for its
current financial year. Video game sales for Nintendo's handheld DS have been
outpacing sales for competing platforms consistently. Wii software sales have
reached almost half a billion dollars in the third quarter ($461.8 million).
Now it seems Nintendo has plans to further enhance its DS with non-gaming
features, according to president Satoru Iwata.
A
record-breaking gaming competition has been scheduled for December 18-22 with
the Cyberathlete Professional League announcing the million-dollar Halo 3 Xbox
360 competition. The shootout is to take place during the Extreme Winter
Championships at the Hyatt Regency in Dallas, Texas. Following a rigorous
marketing campaign by Microsoft, the sci-fi shooter Halo 3 became the
highest-grossing launch in American entertainment history after recording sales
of $170 million in its first day.
Martin J Young is an Asia Times Online correspondent based in Thailand.
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Hardware
