Zowie EC2 Review
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Apple Set to Release iOS 5 in Late September, iPhone 5 in Mid October
According to an analyst, Apple is set to send the final version of iOS 5 to its iPhone assemblers late this month. A note obtained by MacRumors reports that Foxconn and Pegatron are going to receive the golden master version of iOS 5 between September 23rd and 30th, which will then be flashed onto iPhone 5 units that have started to be produced. This means that the next generation of Apple’s popular mobile phone will be ready by mid-October, lining up with some previous release timeline reports. The same analyst also stated that his supply chain checks haven’t revealed any evidence of a new form factor, suggesting the next gen iPhone is simply an update to the iPhone 4, much like the iPhone 3GS was to the 3G model.
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HTC May Purchase its Own Mobile OS
Mobile device manufacturer HTC has made some interesting remarks this week, indicating that the company may be interested in purchasing a mobile operating system to call its own. HTC makes devices using both Android and Windows Phone operating systems, but chairwoman Cher Wang told several reporters that the company has indeed held internal meetings about the possibility of obtaining an operating system to run exclusively on HTC devices. She said her company’s understanding of how a mobile OS works was one of its greatest strengths, but was also quick to say that didn’t mean it had to build its own. This report happens to coincide with HP looking for buyers or licensees for its mobile platform, webOS, causing many to speculate that HTC may take that burden off of HP’s hands.
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Nintendo's Pre-TGS Conference Covers All Things 3DS
Last month Nintendo announced it would be holding a conference before the Tokyo Game Show started. Well, the Tokyo Game Show is nearly upon us so now the Nintendo pre-TGS conference is under way. It started off with a CGI trailer of The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword. Shigeru Miyamoto, creator of Mario, Zelda, and countless other franchises, spoke in length about Skyward Sword and the new controls being implemented for the Wii version, many of which have Link's arms mirroring your own when holding the Wiimote and Nunchuk. Skyward Sword will feature between 50 and 100 hours of game time, and Miyamoto said it is the culmination of 25 years of ideas.
Next up, Satoru Iwata, President of Nintendo, came on stage, a rare appearance, and spoke in length about the new games coming out for the Nintendo 3DS. It looks like some classic franchises will get a revival on the 3DS, with games like Super Mario 3D Land, Mario Kart 7, Paper Mario, and Luigi's Mansion 2 all scheduled to be released. Mario Kart 7 will feature underwater levels, car customization, air foils to glide through the air, and international multiplayer, meaning you can race against someone in Japan or the UK while you play in the US. Super Mario 3D Land and Mario Kart 7 will be out this year, while Paper Mario and Luigi's Mansion 2 will be out next year.
More games were also shown, like Animal Crossing, Dynasty Warriors VS, Resident Evil Revelations, Ace Combat 3D, Fire Emblem, Tekken, and a new RPG from Square Enix called Bravely Default: Flying Fairy. One of the biggest franchises, Metal Gear Solid, is getting a release on the 3DS with Metal Gear Solid 3D: Snake Eater. The fun doesn't stop there, as Nintendo will release Kid Icarus on the 3DS, with perhaps the biggest release being Monster Hunter Tri 3G. Monster Hunter Tri 3G looks like it will be an amazing game, but that is just a teaser for the upcoming Monster Hunter 4. Yes, the fourth game in the series is coming and it will be on the 3DS.
Overall, it seems like Nintendo decided to hold this conference to keep people's interest alive in the 3DS, and to show that even with a price cut, Nintendo will not stop getting huge releases out for the handheld. Iwata said that at first he knows Nintendo did not meet expectations with the 3DS, but hopes that all of these titles will help win more people over. I have to say, with all these storied franchises coming out on the 3DS and Skyward Sword on the Wii, it is looking like a very good time to be a Nintendo fan.
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GameStop to Launch Android Gaming Tablet?
GameStop seems to be keeping an eye towards the ever expanding gaming landscape. The retail game giant is already accepting trade-ins on Apple devices, and now it seems it has plans to launch an Android gaming tablet. The details are fairly scarce except that GameStop intends to launch an Android tablet dedicated to gaming. It will be a "GameStop certified gaming platform," perhaps meaning easy access to Kongregate and even its upcoming streaming service. It seems the tablet will be an existing model with certain games preloaded on it, but if it proves to be a success then perhaps GameStop will seek to build something of its own. The Android gaming tablet will launch in GameStop stores next year, though an exact date and price are still to be determined. If this tablet does come out, it will be interesting to see which existing model is used.
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Modders Band Together to Fix PC Version of Dead Island
Dead Island launched last Tuesday for the PC and console crowd. However, the PC version released to Steam was the developer's version instead of the retail version. Developer Techland issued a massive patch to correct the issue, but still others remain. Co-op is still broken on the PC, eliminating the biggest draw to the game by some. Thankfully, the PC market has a very active modding community, so some modders are banding together to correct issues still plaguing Dead Island. You can find the list of mods in a regularly updated Steam forum thread, and many of them should help improve your game if you are experiencing issues. One modder even released a mod that allows Vsync to be enabled to help get rid of the screen tearing issues some players are experiencing. The game may still need some official patching, but at least we have an active modding community working to fix the problems in the mean time.
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Tax Breaks for the Video Game Industry Questioned
You may not know it, but the video game industry in the US receives some pretty nice tax breaks. President Obama hopes to finance his upcoming $447 billion jobs plan by eliminating tax breaks for oil and gas companies. Those companines are now questioning why the video game industry does not have its tax breaks eliminated as well. You see, the video game industry straddles the line between the software development, entertainment, and online retail industries. This means the video game industry as a whole won't be subjected to the elimination of tax breaks, unlike other big industries. The corporate tax rate is 35%, but since tax return forms are not publicly disclosed, it is nearly impossible to determine how taxed the video game industry is. Some believe it to be highly subsidized, perhaps the most highly subsidized industry in the US.
One example is that over the past five years, EA has reported that it has brought in $1.2 billion in operating profit worldwide. Due to some perfectly legal accounting techniques, like deferred revenue and executive stock options deductions, EA has reported a loss over those five years. EA only paid $98 million in taxes over those five years, which equates to an eight percent tax rate. Eight percent versus 35 percent for corporations. That is a tremendous gap, and is one reason why the tax breaks for the video game industry are now being questioned by some. EA does say that over 50% of its revenue is generated outside the US, but still, EA is an American company. The Entertainment Software Association has spent roughly four million dollars a year to maintain and increase tax breaks for the games industry, something that I'm sure sits very well with the industry as a whole.
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GameStop Now Accepting Apple Devices
GameStop already accepts your trade-ins of old games and console hardware. The company is now looking to gets its hands on your used Apple devices. It is taking all types of Apple devices, including all flavors of iPods, iPads, and iPhones. The only requirements are that the devices work and don't have any cosmetic damages. This fits into the used gaming equipment philosophy of GameStop, if you believe the Apple devices are gaming devices. Either way, it definitely seems to be a great potential new revenue stream.
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Angelbird Releases PCIe SSD
Angelbird, a European company focused on high speed storage devices, has unveiled its new PCIe based SSD. The Wing PCIe card is based on the PCIe x4 standard, and works with all of the popular operating systems. Each model of the Wing card can hold up to four SSDs, with higher end models also featuring up to 32GB of onboard storage. The company recommends the use of its Crest SSD cartridges, based on the SF-1222 SandForce controller, but any standard SSD will also work. The Crest SSDs come in capacities of 60GB, 115GB, and 240GB. With four 240GB cartridges installed, the Wing card was able to achieve read and write speeds of 800MB/s and 750MB/s, respectively.
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Google Working on New Programming Language
Rumor has it that a new and not yet released programming language called Dart will be developed by Google. The language will be presented in an opening keynote presentation at GoTo, a software development conference, in Århus, Denmark, on October 10. The two presenters are Lars Bak, known for his work on Google Chrome’s V8 JavaScript engine, and Gilad Bracha, known for creating the programming language Newspeak. Both of them are currently working for Google as engineers. Rumor has it that the language will be more of a Java-like language (object-oriented language) than, say, C. Part of that rumor comes from the fact that both Bak and Bracha have a history in object-oriented languages.
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NVIDIA Releases GPUDirect
NVIDIA has just introduced what it calls GPUDirect for Video. It’s a technology that makes it possible for application developers to provide on-air broadcast graphics in higher quality and with added realism. The technology takes advantage of the parallel processing power of GPUs when it comes to image processing. GPUDirect allows industry-standard video I/O devices to communicate with NVIDIA’s professional Quadro and Tesla graphics cards at very low latency. NVIDIA claims that the technology is the fastest and most deterministic way to get video to the GPU for processing. In the past, video production professionals and broadcasters have struggled with delays of as many as ten frames per second, which can easily be seen by the naked eye. That’s because the GPU and the video I/O device couldn’t communicate directly to ensure synchronization. This new technology might not affect you much on a day-to-day basis, since the production companies do what they can to compensate for the delay. But in the not too distant future, it should be possible to notice the benefits of the technology.
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Perception of Parents Linked to Child’s Videogame Playing
Children playing videogames have been a focus of many research studies for some time, often focusing on the child’s violent tendencies. According to a study from Michigan State University, the amount of time children spend playing videogames may be linked to their perceived relationship with their parents. The middle school students who viewed the relationship as negative (parents nagging a lot) played more videogames. The reason for this link is not yet known, but there are theories. The negative interactions could drive the children to the videogame worlds for escape or the playing of videogames may make the relationship seem negative to the child. Also, there is the possibility the perception of a negative relationship and amount of videogame playing are both products of a different characteristic. It is important to note the negativity of the relationships was only reported by the children and not empirically observed, so the perception of negativity may not accurately portray the relationship.
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Holographic Lithography Used to Make Nanogap Arrays
Nanotechnology is a very promising field of science which impacts medicine, electronics, and more has made an important step. From Stevens Institute of Technology comes a new technique of creating plasmonic nanogap arrays using holographic lithography. This new technique is both cheaper and faster as it uses light instead of electrons or ions to carve out the material, and does not need a clean room to be performed in. Plasmonic nanogap arrays are used for the miniaturization of photonic circuits, sensing systems capable of detecting single molecules of a chemical, and high-resolution microscopy.
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Superconducting Cable 40 Times More Efficient Than Copper
Resistance is the horrible thing that causes electronics to produce heat and waste energy in that way, but researchers at Tel Aviv University may have found a way around it. Superconductivity is a phenomenon whereby a material conducts electricity without resistance. This allows massive currents to be sent along a single cable, but even high-temperature superconductors require temperatures too low for commercial use. With sapphire fibers at their core, the researchers created a cable with a self-contained cooling system using liquid nitrogen. This keeps the sapphire in a superconducting state which makes the cable forty times more efficient than a copper wire and carrying a current. The potential uses for these cables are powering cities and retrieving the energy from some renewable energy resources.
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Curious Combination of Properties: Superconductivity and Magnetism
Superconductivity is a phenomenon found in some materials that allows an electric current to flow with zero resistance. Researchers at the Stanford Institute of Materials and Energy Science (SIMES), a part of both the DOE’s SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory and Stanford University, have found superconductivity and magnetism co-existing, something previously thought impossible. The team found this between two nonmagnetic insulators they had sandwiched together. While unexpected, scientists have been hoping to find a way to combine these two properties for developments in computer memory.
With these results already verified by another team of researchers, the next step is to determine how this pairing has come to be. Is this an exotic form of superconductivity or an odd couple?
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