Tuesday, August 17, 2010
IT News HeadLines (HardOCP) 17/08/2010
BFG Not Accepting RMAs, Fermi Blamed For Company Liquidation
Long time [H] reader "Spare-Flair" gave us a heads up yesterday that BFG is liquidating its business and no longer accepting RMAs. When we originally broke this story back in July, BFG planned to continue selling power supplies and gaming systems but, once the carpet was pulled out from under the company's GPU business, everything else seemed to follow. BFG's problems were largely graphics card related, but not related to GTX200. Sales and profit margins on that card were quite good actually. The biggest problem was GTX400 (Fermi) allocation. And the only reason they continued to sell power supplies after they got out of the graphics card business was because there were power supplies to sell. But they couldn't sell them as quickly as they had been used to because once Best Buy caught wind of BFG not being able to supply graphics cards, they dropped selling their power supply product line as well.
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Hitchhiker's Text Message Leads to DUI Arrest
Some guy got busted for DUI after the female hitchhiker he picked up sent a text message to a friend who called the police. Wait, chicks still hitchhike? The hitchhiker could smell alcohol, but it wasn't immediately clear if she noticed problems with the man's driving, troopers said. Troopers didn't release her name. She didn't want to be identified because of concerns the driver would retaliate, troopers said. Comments
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Race Is On To Make The First 3D Porn
Remember all that crap I said about 3D a couple posts ago? I didn't mean it, bring on the 3D porn. Not so sure I want to see this though: Adding to the pressure, the American company Hustler is making a pornographic spoof of 3D science fiction blockbuster Avatar, the highest-grossing movie of all time and the film that heralded the beginning of the mainstream 3D boom. Comments
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[H]appy Birthday Thanks!
I wanted to thank all of you for all the e-mail and kind words yesterday. I respond to all my e-mail, but it is taking me a while to go through the thousands of birthday messages you guys sent yesterday so I wanted to thank you all here while I finish responding to everyone personally. Again, much thanks for the well wishes, "have fun you old bastard" means a lot coming from you guys! Birthday Thread
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Fears for Future of 3D as Films Flop
Every five or ten years or so 3D movies are "all the rage" and the industry goes crazy making 3D crap, only to have 3D totally die off for another five to ten years. Seriously folks, this has been the cycle for the last 50 years, I'm not sure why they act so surprisedÂ…everyÂ…singleÂ…time...this happens. "The studios are guilty of short-term thinking," says Brandon Gray, president of Box Office Mojo, which tracks film box-office performance. "They all jumped on the 3D bandwagon but they're avoiding the real issue, which is their bankruptcy regarding storytelling." Comments
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North Korea uses Twitter for Propaganda Offensive
North Korea now using Twitter to spread propaganda? Damn, if there were only some way you could avoid having to see their tweets. Oh yeah, don't click the "follow" button. Controversy averted. North Korea's propaganda campaign has surged into the 21st century with a new Twitter account, hot on the heals of its foray into video with clips posted on YouTube. Comments
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World's First Multi-Touch 24" Full HD 3D All-in-One PC
MSI, a leading provider of technology solutions and innovations is now leading the industry in launching the world's first high-performance 3D All-in-One PC: Wind Top AE2420 3D. The dazzling new 3D All-in-One PC comes equipped with a Full HD 3D multi-touch display. The exclusive 3D All-in-One PC features the latest Core™ i-series CPU, ATI® Mobility Radeon HD discrete graphics card and a 24" Full HD multi-touch display. The 120Hz high scanning frequency LED panel and exclusive 3D Shutter Glasses offer a cinema-quality 3D video experience in the home. Comments
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SLI & CFX PCIe Bandwidth Perf. - x16/x16 vs. x16/x8
Have you wanted to space your SLI or CFX video cards farther apart on your motherboard to allow for better airflow? Do you have a motherboard that will not support a x16/x16 PCIe configuration? We put x16/x16 and x16/x8 PCIe SLI and CFX configurations head to head and show you what sacrifice there is to be made.
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Google Buys Virtual Currency Company
Google has bought another company for their upcoming social-networking/gaming site. Jambool is a start-up company with a product by the name of 'Social Gold' which lets other sites build virtual-currency infrastructures. Google sure is familiar with the phrase "Go big or go home." Social-gaming publishers brought in $490 million in revenue last year and that figure is expected to reach $835 million in 2010, according to Inside Social Games analyst Justin Smith. Comments
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Understanding Free-to-Play Monetization
Here in the western gaming world there's a stigma attached to free-to-play games with aggressive monetization practices. Most companies that try a free-to-play (F2P) business model offer either a small, roped off section and/or mostly aesthetic character augmentations. The author of this article claims that this practice usually generates $7.50 per user per month on average, but a large user base. The other type of F2P model includes a very aggressive store which sells both functional and aesthetic items, leading to a smaller, more loyal user base which spends on average of $50/month. In summary: because so few players actually pay anything for F2P games, the less aggressively you offer opportunities for paying users to support you, the less likely you are to be successful. And while it is possible to imagine a game that accomplishes this without selling functional items, progress accelerators, etc, that's a hard feat to pull off. Comments
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Apple Employee Accused of Accepting Kickbacks
A manager at Apple was arrested and charged with wire fraud, money laundering and taking kickbacks. He accepted over $1 million in exchange for providing confidential information to Apple's suppliers in Asia whom are believed to have used the information to negotiate better contracts. "Apple is committed to the highest ethical standards in the way we do business," a company spokesman, Steve Dowling, said in a statement. "We have zero tolerance for dishonest behavior inside or outside the company." Comments
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Blizzard Awarded $88M Against Private Server Company
Private Server Company Scapegaming was ordered to pay Blizzard over $88 million in damages after losing a lawsuit involving operating unauthorized World of Warcraft servers. Scapegaming had received only $3 million from the private WoW server operation, now ordered to pay $88M. Ouch! Crime definitely doesn't pay. $85 million of that settlement was for statutory damages, and surprisingly only $63,000 in attorney's fees." Comments
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New Leaked Intel Roadmaps
Here are the plans for Intel's Sandy Bridge CPUs and an expanded SSD lineup for 2011. Bring on the massive SSDs! Comments
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[H]appy Birthday, Steve!
Today is our favorite news poster's birthday! Everyone make sure and send him an e-mail wishing him happy birthday, he loves sifting through hundreds and hundreds of spam messages. Just don't forget to do it before 8pm, he's old now! Come talk about how great Steve is
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id Releases Source Code for Two Wolfenstein Games
This weekend at QuakeCon, id Software has released GPL-licensed source code for Wolfenstein: Enemy Territory and Return to Castle Wolfenstein. Carmack has also stated that after Rage ships, id will look into releasing Doom 3's source code as well. Currently, the RtCW code can be downloaded from the id software FTP site in single and multiplayer versions, alongside the full source code for the single and multi-player Wolfenstein: Enemy Territory. All three of the source code releases are licensed under version 3 of the GNU General Public License Comments
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