Corsair Graphite Series 600T Review
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Net Neutrality Proposal is No More
The Net Neutrality bill authored by Henry Waxman of California, which was seen as a temporary fix, has been effectively killed in Congress. Lack of support from the Republican party members has been deemed the cause of the collapse, but Waxman may put it before Congress again after mid-term elections. The bill was aimed at protecting consumers and creating an open internet. The FCC would gain authority over internet service providers, and could impose fines up to $2 million.
“If our efforts to find bipartisan consensus fail, the FCC should move forward under Title II,” Waxman said. “The bottom line is that we must protect the open Internet. If Congress can’t act, the FCC must.”It seems as if this legislation could help to curb some of the practices of both wired and wireless providers that hurt consumers and competition. Whether it be blocking of apps on smartphones, or the high prices compared to some other countries.
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Google Street View Now on All Continents
Google Street View is a great, and yet controversial service offered by the search giant. It allows users to see what an area is like before going there, whether it be a new restaurant or a new neighborhood. As of today, Street View is now present on all seven continents, with the additions of Brazil, Antarctica, and Ireland. Those that are interested can see the view on Half Moon Island in Antarctica, an area inhabited by Penguins. Not everyone is excited about Street View, however, as some feel it is an invasion of privacy. Google has been banned from further documenting the view in the Czech Republic, and German officials want more notice for its citizens to opt-out of being featured in Street View.
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NVIDIA Reaches Settlement in Class Action Suit for Mobile GPUs
I'm not sure how many of you remember, but a few years ago there was a problem with NVIDIA's mobile GPUs and a lovely overheating issue they had. This affected HP, Dell, and Apple laptops and the companies filed a class action lawsuit against NVIDIA for the problems. Well, now that settlement is finally drawing to a close as NVIDIA has reached a settlement with those companies. For Dell and Apple laptop owners who had the problem, a GPU or MCP replacement will be the compensation. For HP laptop owners, a new laptop is in the order though it has to be comparable to the affected unit. Also, if anyone paid to get a replacement or repair on the laptop, then you will be entitled to reimbursement provided you still have the documentation for the fix. However, you cannot file a claim right away as the final hearing is scheduled for December 20th, but any time after that you should be able to. For a list of all affected models, you can find that here.
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Loud TV Commercials May Soon be a Thing of the Past
If you're like me, odds are you have hit the mute button on your TV remote whenever an extremely loud TV commercial pops up. It's quite annoying to have something so much louder than the rest of the programming and now it seems that Congress is going to take a measure to prevent that. That is, if a new bill passes through the House of Representatives before being signed by the President. The bill is called the Commercial Advertisement Loudness Mitigation (CALM) Act and asks the FCC to come up with regulations so that commercials can't be so much louder than the rest of the programming. It has already passed the Senate and now just needs the approval from the House and President before it comes to pass, which will ensure that commercials cannot be at a higher level than the accompanying programming. Basically, if your TV is at a decent volume then a commercial can't come on that is several degrees higher than the volume you are listening at. The bill was first introduced by Representative Anna Eshoo (D-CA) back in 2009 and now it is in the final legs before hopefully coming to pass.
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Nintendo 3DS Gets a Launch Date
Nintendo's newest handheld, the 3DS, has finally gotten a launch date. The system will be launching in Japan on February 26, 2011 while the US will get it sometime in March. The price will be ¥25,000 which comes out to about $300 so the 3DS will be one of the most expensive handhelds at launch. What is interesting to note is that it seems you can move downloaded DSiWare titles from a DSi or DSi XL to a new 3DS. That should surely make the purchase of the new handheld a little easier to swallow for current DSi or DSi XL owners. The Nintendo 3DS will ship with a charging stand, a stylus, a 2GB SD card for storage, and some cards that become augmented reality images when viewed through the front facing camera. The 3DS will also have backlit buttons as well as the new Home button which will enable you to bring up an in-game menu to browse the web, enable or disable Wi-Fi, and modify other settings. This should be a welcome change since on previous DS systems you had to exit any game to change a setting on the system.
No word on an official date for US soil, just sometime in March, but the $300 price should be about what to expect when it does launch.
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OCZ Ibis SSD Shows Off 2GBps Bandwidth
Now, I know what you're thinking. That 2GBps is clearly a typo and should be 2Gbps for a two gigabit per second speed. Well, it is actually 2GBps for two gigabytes per second which is what OCZ claims its new Ibis solid state drive can achieve. These new SSDs use a high-quality SAS cable to connect to a PCI Express host card to deliver the 2GBps bandwidth which is one gigabyte down and one gigabyte up every single second. In order to achieve that, OCZ has shoved in four SandForce SF-1200 controllers in a RAID configuration. The increased speed is being called High Speed Data Link which is pretty astonishing if you really think about it. Read speeds are 373MB/second and write speeds are 323MB/s for desktop users, while enterprise users with longer queues will have speeds up to 804MB/s for read and 675MB/s for write. Not too shabby at all.
The OCZ Ibis SSD will be available in sizes ranging from 100GB to 960GB, with prices starting at $529 for the 100GB. Expensive for sure, but the speeds are pretty incredible.
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Amazon Working on Android App Store
Amazon is rumored to be making its own app store for the Android OS. Amazon already has a large presence on Android phones, as its MP3 store is the default for Android and the Kindle store brings e-books as well. With the app store would come a payment method that has received more praise than its Google Checkout counterpart. Some feel that having two app stores could be counter productive, but being backed by Amazon could push it in the right direction and help Android better compete with the iPhone in apps. It would also help Android reach users in more countries as Amazon has a larger worldwide presence. The Amazon store would also offer developers 70% of the purchase price for their apps.
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