Deepcool GAMMAXX 400 Review
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Star Wars: The Old Republic May Soon Have a Free-to-Play Model
Star Wars: The Old Republic enjoyed a successful launch with a sizeable player base, but those numbers have dwindled considerably in the last couple of months. With the game seeming to be headed in dire straits, lead designer Emmanuel Lusinchi has commented on the possible routes The Old Republic could go. "Free-to-play games wouldn't be competitors if they weren't any good," said Lusinchi. "So we are looking at free-to-play but I can't tell you in much detail. We have to be flexible and adapt to what is going on." Tremendous competition is coming for TOR with Funcom's conspiracy-laden The Secret World, and ArenaNet's Guild Wars 2, so BioWare may need to cook up something fast to entice new (and old) players to wield lightsabers once more.
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New Teaser for Amnesia: A Machine for Pigs Appears
The upcoming Amnesia: A Machine for Pigs is the indirect sequel to one of the scariest games in recent memory, Amnesia: The Dark Descent. Frictional Games and thechineseroom have set A Machine for Pigs 60 years after the first, which means we get to explore Victorian London right before the start of the 20th century. A new teaser trailer has been released for Amnesia: A Machine for Pigs, and I have to warn you it is a little freaky. OK, so it is a lot freaky and you probably should not watch it right before going to bed, but hey, I am just a writer and cannot force you to watch the teaser late at night. There is some kind of creature, quite possibly a pig-like thing, that wants to kill you, but thankfully the trailer ends before any new nightmares can set in.
Amnesia: A Machine for Pigs is expected to ship for the PC before Halloween this year, but we are still waiting on an official release date.
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Looking for Lost Neutrons
Just like everyone else, when scientists lose something, they try to find it. Unlike most people though, scientists will propose looking in mirror universes. In some experiments, researchers have noticed neutrons disappearing from the data. As reported by Springer, some theoretical physicists are proposing that these neutrons have flipped into a mirror universe at a rate much faster than what many expected.
After careful examination of the data, the researchers found that the number of very slow free neutrons to go missing was related to the direction and strength of the magnetic field they were in. The theory these researchers put forth is that these neutrons were transitioning into their invisible mirror twin, and back. Such a transition, according to the theory, is effected by magnetic fields, which means it could be experimentally discovered.
Curiously this theory could also be used to explain dark matter, by describing it as mirror particles popping into our universe and bringing their mass with them. Until such time as an experiment proves this theory wrong, there may just be a mirror world to our own, possibly even with mirror versions of us, if science fiction has been right for all these years. I somewhat hope science fiction is wrong though, because I don't look good with a goatee.
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Humble Indie Bundle V Ends with Over $5 Million in Sales
The Humble Indie Bundle V has come to an end after a two week run, and pretty much every record from past bundles was broken. Humble Indie Bundle V sold just shy of 600,000 bundles totaling over $5 million. The average purchase price ended at $8.53, with Windows users at $7.97, Mac at $9.99, and Linux at $12.50. The exact number of bundles sold was 598,980, which is simply a staggering number. Another staggering number is the $5,106,896.23 that ended up benefiting the developers, charity, and the Humble Bundle team. I think it may take a while for those numbers to settle in, but there is no denying the generosity of the computer gaming community. More Humble Bundles will exist in the future, but perhaps none as successful as this one.
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Polarizing Polymers for Photovoltaic Power
When most people think about how semiconductors work they think in terms of electrons moving around, but this is not completely accurate. Yes electrons do move around but researchers are finding it is also important to understand positively charged hole left behind. The electron-hole pair constitutes a quasiparticle called an exciton, and researchers are working to better understand how to control them. Now those at Argonne National Laboratory are using some of this knowledge to improve polymer, or organic, solar cells.
Like any semiconductor-based solar cell, when light hits the polymer solar cell it excites electrons out of their atoms, creating excitons. The excited electrons then travel from the cell, through a circuit, and back to the cell where it recombines with the hole. At least that is what we want to happen, but sometimes the electron does not escape the pull of the positive hole and the exciton collapses, causing the energy to be lost. Fortunately though, the properties of excitons in polymer solar cells can be controlled, because the polymer can be changed, unlike silicon solar cells, that all use silicon.
The researchers determined that it should be possible to polarize the excitons within the polymer. This means the electron and hole in a single exciton start further apart. That makes it much less likely for the exciton to collapse before the electron goes through the circuit. Polymer solar cells still are not as efficient as silicon-based cells, but they remain the cheaper option.
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Ubisoft Sale at GOG.com This Weekend Only
Everyone likes a good sale and the folks at GOG.com sure know how to bring them. This weekend only GOG has select Ubisoft titles at 50% off, which means you can purchase all eight classics for a little under $37. Now is your chance to experience the first three Rayman titles, Tom Clancy's Splinter Cell, Assassin's Creed: Director's Cut, Beyond Good & Evil, Crusaders of Might and Magic, and Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time all without DRM. This sale only lasts until Monday the 18th at 11:59PM EDT, so you better act fast to pick up some classics. You really cannot go wrong with any of these games, especially Rayman Forever as it is the definitive version of the first game and includes a ton of extra content. All the games will work on 32 and 64-bit versions of Windows XP, Vista, and 7, so there really is no excuse to not pick up at least one of these games.
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Steel to be Replaced by Plastic?
Two of the most common materials in our daily lives are plastics and steel. Normally we see plastic as this light and somewhat weak thing while steel is heavy and very strong, but researchers at Tel Aviv University are looking to mix that up. Thanks to a clever rethinking of how to work with plastics, the researchers were able to make the strongest polypropylene yet.
Plastics, or polymers, are comprised of regular chains of molecules and generally the more regular and accurate the chains are the stronger and more resilient the plastic is. To create these molecular chains, catalysts have to be used, and what the Tel Aviv researchers realized is that generally the same catalysts are used by everybody. They decided to design their own catalyst, and it can grow the most accurate chains for polypropylene, which gives the plastic its great strength.
Though the strength of the plastic now reaches to that of steel, its weight has not increased as drastically. This means that a lightweight and cheap-to-make plastic could be used to replace the heavy metal in things such as cars and water pipes. This could cut the cost of cars while increasing their fuel efficiency and make replacing damaged water pipes easier, as less-heavy pipes are easier to move around. Also the strong plastic will last longer than current plastics, so there will be less waste as broken items are discarded.
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MLG Anaheim Event Shatters Viewer Records
Over the weekend, Major League Gaming's Pro Circuit Spring Championship was held in Anaheim, California. The event was at the end of E3 week and featured some of the top eSports teams competing in the likes of StarCraft II, League of Legends, Mortal Kombat, King of Fighters XIII, and Soul Calibur V. MLG has released the statistics from the weekend and has announced the Anaheim event as the largest ever in North American eSports history. More than 4.7 million viewers tuned in online to the Pro Circuit Spring Championship, while another 20,000 attended in person. The peak concurrent viewers came in at 437,000, which nearly doubled MLG's previous record of 241,000 set during last year's national championship event. All told, more than 5.4 million hours of competition was watched by the viewers over the weekend. The upcoming MLG summer season has not been detailed yet, but the Summer Championship will be held August 24th to the 26th.
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Personalized Advertising Emails Do Not Help Marketing
Dear %%OCCMemberName%%,
We are writing this email to inform you that, for the most part, people like you do not like getting personalized emails from companies. At least that is the result of a recent study from Temple University Fox School of Business.
When dealing with customers, companies do whatever they can to make the experience enjoyable, so the people return. A common way to do this is to use the customer's name to personalize communication. It turns out though that for Internet-based advertising, including email, people do not like having it personalized with their names for privacy and cyber-security concerns. When asked to rate their feelings about receiving such advertisements, the subjects either had negative feelings about them or were neutral, but neutral was as positive as it got.
Not all personalization is unwanted though. Directed advertising that sends out messages based on prior actions are well received by 98% of people. The researchers suggest this sharp contrast is because the directed advertising is not as overtly using personal information. Also there are positive emotions tied into getting an advertisement for desired products.
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Hardware Roundup: Friday Edition
We wrap up the week with a few hardware reviews. Western Digital announced its expansion into the router business with four new products and today's roundup includes a look at the My Net N900 which also sports either a 1TB or 2TB 2.5" hard drive. If you are looking for a more affordable Z77 chipset board, we have a review of the Gigabyte Z77X-UD3H that determines the board has a fair amount of features for its $145 price tag. Our third review entry today looks at a couple of Intel-powered ultrabooks to see how they stack up against the 13-inch MacBook Air.
Motherboards
Gigabyte Z77X-UD3H Motherboard @ [H]ardOCP
Networking
Western Digital My Net N900 HD Router @ PC Perspective
Notebooks
Ultrabooks vs. 13" MacBook Air: Is the Apple Tax Real? @ TechSpot
Miscellany
Podcast #206 @ PC Perspective
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Follow-up to LIMBO Known as Project 2
PlayDead, the team behind the stellar LIMBO, has announced its follow-up known simply as Project 2. This is not a direct sequel to LIMBO even though it shares some similarities, and for that I am grateful. LIMBO had a wonderful tale to tell and wrapped it up neatly (although in an ambiguous way), so there really is no need for a sequel. Project 2 has a similar graphical style, but this game has some color added in instead of black and white. It is a 2D platformer that tells "one boy's struggle against evil forces who, through questionable experiments on human bodies, are trying to take over the world." Pretty heady stuff, but until PlayDead releases more information we just have to wait and see how Project 2 plays out.
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Apparent Trailer for Thief 4 Emerges
There are some games that are talked about just a little and then vanish without a trace. Some information may appear after a year or more, but eventually we get confirmation one way or the other on the status. Thief 4 was first announced back in 2009, and aside from a sparse website, there has been little else to go on. This past April, Eidos Montreal talked about Thief 4 and how it wants to achieve a balance between the familiar and the new. The studio wants it to be more than just a stealth game and will reboot it in a similar fashion to Deus Ex: Human Revolution, but that was pretty much all that was discussed. Recently, an apparent Thief 4 video emerged that was leaked by a (possibly former) employee at Eidos Montreal, Eric Wong. The video was supposed to have been released last December, but some departures at the studio has thrown the game into limbo. It may be time to become worried about the status of Thief 4, despite Eidos Montreal's recent assertions otherwise.
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ECS Updates 99-Hour Replacement Policy
ECS has announced that it will be extending its 99-Hour Replacement Service to all motherboards and video cards sold after December 31, 2011. This service was previously available only on the Black Series products. Users simply need to register their ECS product on the website and they will then be eligible to participate. ECS will ship a replacement within 24 hours of being notified through its website, and will use three day delivery to ensure a replacement will be received within 99 hours.
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Improved Thermal Storage Developed
A problem shared by many power sources, including some environmentally friendly systems, is heat loss. Combustion is a very good way to release the chemical energy of a material but as much as half of that energy is lost as waste heat. Researchers have been constantly trying to find a way to use this heat and now many power plants actually use water tanks to capture and store the heat. Unfortunately the water will radiate the heat to the surrounding air, causing the heat to be lost anyway, and temperatures above the boiling point cannot be stored by the water. A new solution from Fraunhofer-Gesellschaft has been developed though, and it puts water to shame.
Zeolite is a material sometimes used as a water softener because of its highly porous nature. These pores are also what are needed for the material's thermal storage capability. Normally when steam encounters the pores it binds with the material in a physicochemical reaction that releases heat. Thanks to how thermodynamics work, this means that to remove the steam the system has to be fed energy, which it stores until it again binds with steam. In this case the energy being fed to the system is heat from the power plant.
A major difference between this heat storage system and the water-based method currently used is that this one has no loss. The energy is not stored by the zeolite pellets in a palpable way, so it cannot radiate out like the heat in water. The researchers are now working to improve their design by optimizing zeolite pellet size and coming up with a modular system so it can be built to any specific need.
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Logitech Introduces MMO Mouse
Logitech is one of the best known keyboard and mouse manufacturers in the world, and is also one of the best known for gaming gear. The company has keyboards and mice to suit almost any gamer, but MMO gamers have been left without a mouse. That all changes with the introduction of Logitech's G600 MMO Gaming Mouse, which features 20 buttons to suit any MMO. There are 12 buttons on the thumb panel that can be assigned any task, plus you can set the backlight from 16 million colors for the side buttons. The G600 features three primary buttons that are rated to 20 million clicks each, so you should not have any problems during an intense raid. There is a G-Shift key that will let you bind two commands to a single button to allow for even more configuration. The laser sensor can go from 200 to 8200DPI with five selectable levels for each of the three profiles.
The Logitech G600 is available to pre-order for $80. It is available in black or white and will ship in July.
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