r1Pped.com

Retailer Amazon.com on Thurs. began the Amazon Customers Vote promotion where customers can vote to be eligible to purchase a bundle that includes Sony Corp.'s Playstation 3, a Blu-ray movie, and a game title for as low as $199.

Softpedia writes: "Santa Clara, California-based graphics manufacturer NVIDIA has just updated its GeForce drivers with the release of the 180.48 version. The new WHQL-certified driver has been designed for the company's GeForce 200-series, 9-series and 8800-series of desktop graphics processors. With the new release, NVIDIA enables several performance improvements in numerous 3D applications, including some of the latest gaming titles on the market. In addition, the new GeForce drivers will also provide users with support for the company's multi-graphics SLI technology, enabled on the latest X58 platforms from Intel."

Yellow Dog Linux v6.1 offers an updated Firefox and OpenOffice.org, a vastly improved graphical wireless configuration tool, and the introduction of ps3vram functionality which enables use of PS3 video RAM for temporary storage or swap."

This is the first release of Yellow Dog Linux by new owners, Fixstars. Fixstars acquired Terra Soft Solutions (and their Yellow Dog Linux product) last month.

"All of the supplemental features from the previously released HD DVD will be ported to Blu-ray and, in an unexpected surprise, a few new features have been tacked on. BD-Live will be utilized to access all-new features including a strategy videogame that pits two players against each other in hand-to-hand combat."

Full specs and box art included.

This morning, addons.mozilla.org reached a huge milestone: we served our 1 billionth add-on download since we started keeping track of downloads in 2005.

This number only includes downloads from addons.mozilla.org, but as many add-ons are hosted elsewhere, we can be sure the actual number is even higher. This is a very exciting week for Firefox add-ons, with the launch of Fashion Your Firefox yesterday, offering a new way for first-time add-on users to customize their browser.

This amazing feat was made possible by the huge community of add-on users, developers, and enthusiasts, as well as non-Firefox applications that embrace Mozilla add-ons like Thunderbird, SeaMonkey, Sunbird, Komodo, Flock, and Songbird, to name a few.

At 1.5 million add-on downloads per day and increasing, I'm confident our next billion will arrive even more quickly than the 3.5 years it took for the first. If you're not using an add-on yet, try one out:
http://www.fashionyourfirefox.com/
They're pretty popular.

Today on Sessler's Soapbox, Adam talks about little bit about the glory days of TechTV, and then goes on to offer his thoughts on the New Xbox Experience and celebrate the arrival of technological convergence.

Good news for Firefox users who have lusted over Chrome and Safari's option that lets you "tear" away tabs from an open window. The latest build of 3.1 offers it as a standard feature--and it works marvelously.

As in Google's Chrome and Apple's Safari browsers you simply pull away a tab from the interface and it turns into its own window. Likewise you can drag it back into an already opened window, just like you'd do to re-order your existing tabs.

Below is a quick video demo of how the new tear-away feature works, both with dragging tabs and choosing to open them via contextual menu.

Games Are Evil writes, "An article today from the Natural Resource Defense Council discusses the cost of leaving your console online when not actively playing. According to the report, a staggering fifty percent of all gamers leave their consoles on when not in use. This can lead to some pretty extreme costs, as you can see from the chart at right.

Those of you who are folding at home on your PlayStation 3 are taking the worst hit, swallowing an extra $145 worth of energy costs every year..."

The computer-melting first-person shooter Crysis can be run at sixty frames per second with the graphics settings turned way up. Yes, it's actually possible. It takes only one easy step: "Buy an $8,000 computer." See? Simple!

Taken directly from the article ~

"Gran Turismo in 4 times the resolution of Full HD

Polyphony Digital also presented two technological trials for the next generation at this event. Both of the presentations, were founded on the philosophy of "achieving the highest possible quality" held over the years by Gran Turismo.

One of these, was a time trial competition using Sony's newest digital cinema projector, the "SRX-S110". Gran Turismo 5 prologue is already in Full HD resolution at 1920 x 1080 pixels, providing the highest resolution possible in today's TV content. However in this time trial, the Full HD image was increased to twice the resolution both vertically and horizontally (4x the surface area), enabling game play at an ultra high resolution of 3840 x 2160 pixels. This was performed by connecting and synchronizing four Playstation 3's outputting a quarter of the image each at 1920x1080 pixels, but you must remember this demands an extremely high quality image from the source that can withstand the ultra high resolution. It can be said that this demonstration was only made possible, because the source image was Gran Turismo......

The crowd was simply amazed by the clarity of the image displayed on the massive 220 inch screen, and the players who participated in the time trial expressed their excitement of how perfectly in focus the screen is even close up, and at the quality of Gran Turismo......

You can see the shocking difference of this high frame rate Gran Turismo immediately when you see the screen. It is as though you are following a real world event happening right in front of your face with your own eyes. Any and all flickering in the movement of the vehicle, in the smoke from the tires, etc. are completely gone, and you are almost tricked into believing you are watching something in real life. The guests at the event were baffled by the quality of the image, and stared in amazement at the screen.

The event merging cars, art, design and music, reached its finale with great success, and through two revolutionary demonstrations, Gran Turismo has also succeeded in producing a clear image of the future, and the road to get there."

Massively: "When you think of a rapidly developing Asian nation, fast becoming a global superpower and now harnessing the potential of supercomputing, what's the first purpose for this supercomputer that comes to mind? Hint: think video games, not war games. Regardless of your first thought, we're betting you wouldn't have guessed "World of Warcraft"... but it's true.

China's World of Warcraft servers are run by The9, who own Blizzard's distribution rights in the country. "Earlier this year, The9 boasted of hosting more than one million World of Warcraft players online at the same time.To support the complex calculations required to create the game's graphics, The9 owns more than 10 supercomputer systems," Ashlee Vance reports for The New York Times."

A new crop of supercomputers is breaking down the petaflop speed barrier, pushing high-performance computing into a new realm that could change science more profoundly than at any time since Galileo, leading researchers say.

Enter the ultimate social entertainment experience. Connect with your favorite people and enjoy more games and entertainment online than with any other device connected to your TV. Welcome to the New Xbox Experience. Jump in.

Gameplayer has gone live with an in-depth feature that chronicles the history of the graphics card, highlighting the very best and worst examples and detailing how each acted to influence the paths of both technology and gaming.

"So we're going to present you with a list that encompasses not only newcomers and powerhouses of the present day, but the cards that started it all, the ones that existed back in the chaotic technology fray of the 90s. We won't get through every single one because there's just too many, and although we'd like to take time out at length to pay homage to the GLINT or Number Nine's woefully expensive 'Imagine 128', we've had to cherry pick some of the highlights (and a couple of lowlights) from the evolution of 3D graphics that are worth celebrating and respecting geek style."

Microsoft on Tuesday said it is changing its strategy for offering PC antivirus software, with plans to discontinue its subscription-based consumer security suite and instead offer individuals free software to protect their PCs.

Code-named Morro, the new offering will be available in the second half of 2009 and will protect against viruses, spyware, rootkits, and Trojans, the company said in a statement.

The impending New Xbox Experience will require 128MB of storage when you download it. So Microsoft's launched a storage upgrade offer to ensure gamers without HDD-equipped consoles can still join in.

In a recent interview with Autodesk (developers of Maya), Sam Sharit talks about Insomniac's proprietary game engine, the technology that went into Resistance 2 and other very interesting topics.

"For Resistance 2 we hovered around 5 to 10 thousand triangles. We actually count in quads at insomniac so that would be 2500 to 5000 quads. This is an average, but for things like bosses we go as high as 60,000 tris. However, as I said, it depends on the game, so a game like GTA is going to have lower counts due to the sheer number of assets in the game."

"Insomniac uses its own in house engine. The PlayStation 3 engine was developed for Resistance: Fall of Man, then iterated on for Ratchet and Clank Future: Tools of Destruction, and even further iterated on for Resistance 2. Insomniac has been my first experience working with an in-house engine and I really like the level of control of working with one. One major reason is that it is made to take full advantage of the PS3 hardware, and I have been able to really push some key assets, like the 300-foot tall Leviathan, much further than I would have been able to using some of the other commercial engines on the market. It also allows the artists to dictate to the tech and tools programmers what tools and interfaces we want, and how we want to use them. I find with most commercially available engines the tools are dictated by the company creating the engine, and this may or may not be good for what type of game you're making or your company's established pipeline."

Kombo writes, "It looks like Nintendo is going to be cracking down on homebrew development in a big way. This adjustment to the terms of service will allow Nintendo to not only remove full channels from the Wii memory, this could also put your saved games in jeopardy. No word yet on if this will result in your Twilight Princess saved game getting pooched.

In further terms of service updates, Nintendo changed the terms of services on their website to reflect the new found ability to modify/update the Wii's firmware without the user's permission or notification...."

"For the week ended November 9, Blu-ray Disc sales accounted for only 8% of home video sales versus 92% for DVD per numbers released by Home Media Retailing today. In the past several months, Blu-ray had accounted for anywhere from 10 to 15 percent of all sales..."

New version of the backup launcher released!

Backup Launcher 0.3 gamma

What is included:
- cIOS Installer
- Backup Launcher 0.3 with banner

Changelog:
0.3 gamma
- Optimised speed
- Higher compatibilty
- Support loading 1:1 backups from disc channel

Note: This version is faster, but some videos will play a little bit too slow. This also depends on the quality of your DVD media.

Install instructions:
http://www.iol.ie/~taz/WiiHowToGamma.html