IT-Code-News: IT News Head Lines (TweakTown) 4/3/2012

Total Recall trailer - looks impressive, where can I jack in?
The trailer to Total Recall is now out, and if you haven't seen the original which starred Arnold Schwarzenegger, I suggest you do - it's a great film. This new Total Recall is based on the 1990 film, but unlike the original film, the new one has strong political influences, as mentioned in the 1966 novel. Check out the trailer below:

Well, doesn't that look awesome? I think so anyway. I actually yelled out "f*** yes!" when Colin Farrell's character took out the room of guards, while the camera swung around the room in one shot. Very nicely done, Les Wiseman. The movie has a reported $200 million budget, so that would be why the special effects look impressive.

total_recall_trailer_looks_impressive_where_can_i_jack_in

Total Recall hits on August 3, 2012 and stars Colin Farrell, Kate Beckinsale, Jessica Biel and a favorite of mine: Bryan Cranston of Breaking Bad fame.

GAME receives 1UP, OpCapita buys 333 stores
We only reported a few weeks ago that GAME had gone into administration, with share prices tanking and job losses on the chopping board. But, in a reverse April Fools Day joke, OpCapita scooped up 333 GAME stores across the UK.

This new agreement secures nearly 3,200 jobs, which is a great thing in this shaky economy. There were also a few employees from head office who were made redundant, that may be re-employed. OpCapita is a private investment firm specializing in retail, they have set up a company called Baker Acquisitions to buy the GAME stores.

Financial terms of the deal haven't been disclosed, but it's being reported that OpCapita will not have to pay much up-front for the business, but will have to absorb a considerable amount of their debt. BBS business editor Robert Peston said on Saturday that the deal had been approved by six banks, led by the Royal Bank of Scotland, who are owed £85m between them.

Managing partner of OpCapita, Henry Jackson, has said:

We strongly believe there is a place on the high street for a video gaming specialist and Game is the leading brand in a £2.8bn market in the UK. We have assembled a strong team of experienced industry operators to implement the programme of operational change that is needed.

Apple lands key decision in lawsuit against Motorola over touch patents
Apple vs. Motorola, is has been going on in the U.S. for a while now, but Judge Richard Posner has upheld the majority of a patent central to the case this week. Judge Posner mostly agreed with Apple's interpretation of its touchscreen heuristics patent, limiting complaints mostly to the lack of specificity for certain gestures.

Motorola countered with arguments to invalidate the patent, but were unpersuasive, including an odd insistence that a patent construction claim was only valid at a 27-degree angle of touch that had only been used as an example. Judge Posner wrote:

I reject Motorola's argument (this is the third time they've made it and the third time I reject it) that the structure must be limited to the 27-degree angle used as an example by the specification.

This decision will most likely see Motorola violating the patent. Motorola will most likely be found infringing and face the threats of damages and product bans for some of its Android-based devices. Apple hold the patent until 2028, which could mean more problems down the road for other touchscreen-based smart devices.

Creator of Minecraft, Notch, says "The more we don't do what [EA] would do, the happier I am"
Gamasutra recently talked with EA's chief creative director Rich Hilleman on the history of the company, and how its approach to the game-making business has affected the industry. The topic of Minecraft popped up, with Hilleman suggesting that the independent developer could be doing better financially with someone like EA on their side.

We have seen indie developers recently see the dollar signs and quickly let themselves get scooped up, or invested in, but Notch is standing by his guns. First up, this is what Hilleman said:

As somebody who has had to reinstall Windows on my son's computer after he attempted to install Mod Manager on that machine, there's a lot of value to be provided for the customer in making Minecraft and its mods and installations something that's a more commercial and predictable product.
And those are the kinds of things that Notch needs help with, and that without the help of a publisher or other support, he's probably not going to get there completely by himself. Now maybe his community will, and I'd love to see that happen. It's a great experiment; I'm really anxious to see what happens.

Hilleman also admits he'd like to "learn" from Notch, but that kinda doesn't make sense. I'm guessing this is more of a "let me learn how you made a game so successful with just basic graphics and a basic team, so we can replicate this to infinity". Anyway, Notch replied through Twitter to Hilleman's appraisal of his business approach:

I'm sure EA is very successful at monetizing games, but the more we don't do what they would do, the happier I am. #nooffense

PlayStation Orbis features teased through sketches
Design firm Coque Design have reportedly worked on illustrations for certain features of the PlayStation 4 (or whatever they call it). The pictures have since been removed, but were labelled 'Illustrations & Sketches for new PlayStation Orbis features".

If you haven't yet read about it, Orbis is the codename for Sony's next-generation PlayStation console. The photos show several people moving around in front of a motion-sensing device, like Sony's EyeToy or Microsoft's Kinect, that rests on a television. It shows a person using what seems to be a smart device to control music that may be linked to the game system also.

Not much info apart from the picture itself and an explanation is available, but this news is just adding to the collection pile that is PS4-based news. More as it comes.

AMD Catalyst 12.3 Windows 7 Driver Analysis

Introduction

Catalyst 11.12 Windows 7 Driver Analysis

I think the first thing we can say is that it's nice to see that AMD got the Catalyst out on time this month and it did indeed come out during March unlike the Catalyst 12.2 which fell into March.

The second thing is that this is a weird driver release. The Catalyst 12.2 was labeled as 12.3 and it made us wonder a bit. Was AMD just throwing an earlier version of the 12.3 drivers out there to keep up with the monthly schedule? In the end we'll probably never know the truth.

Before we cover the performance side of things, though, with the new drivers let's quickly just look at some of the release note highlights below.

Once that we'll quickly cover our test system and get into our typical Catalyst benchmark line up.

Release Note Highlights

NEW FEATURES

Full Support for AMD Radeon HD 7000 series of products

Catalyst 12.3 now fully supports the AMD Radeon HD 7900, AMD Radeon HD 7800 and AMD Radeon HD 7700 series of products

Resolved Issues for the Windows 7 Operating System

This section provides information on resolved known issues in this release of the AMD Catalyst 12.3 software suite for Windows 7. These include:

AMD Catalyst Control Center startup issues/ delays have been resolved

Tom Clancy HAWX: No longer crashes after task switching with MLAA (Morphological Anti-Aliasing) and Anti-Aliasing enabled

Furmark Benchmark: No longer crashes when launched in High Performance mode.

Quake 4: No longer display corruption after task switching when run in High Performance mode

XPlane: Textures no longer exhibit flicker and corruption

Skyrim: No longer displays flickering and texture corruption.

Alan Wake: A system crash is no longer experienced when running the game in DirectX 9 mode with Crossfire enabled

Far Cry 2: A random system hang is no longer experienced when running the game at high in game setting
... Read the rest in your browser!

Available Tags:Apple , Motorola , Windows 7 , AMD , Catalyst , Windows , Driver ,

Tuesday, April 3, 2012

IT News Head Lines (TweakTown) 4/3/2012

Introduction

Release Note Highlights

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