By TG Daily staff - Source : Tom's Hardware US

10 personal questions and 10 personal answers from Ryan Petersen, Chief Executive Officer of OCZ Technology. OCZ Technology was founded in 2000 and is best known for its performance memory devices and power supply units. The company also announced to soon release its "Neural Impulse Actuator", a device that plays in the emerging category of Brain-Computer Interface products. Ryan has been OCZ’s CEO since the company’s founding in 2000, has grown the company to about 200 people and remains the inventor or co-inventor of much of OCZ’s proprietary technology. Read on to find out how Ryan answered our questions.

I couldn’t survive without my ... Blackberry and my Paul Reed Smith guitar.

The best advice I ever got ... Never stop fighting!

A person/people I admire ... People with vision and the ability to motivate and excite others with their passion.

If I could go anywhere, or do anything, I would... do exactly what I am doing now, run a fast growing technology company, and part of that is doing the very thing that I did when I first started OCZ, spend time in the lab overclocking and designing exciting new products. When I am not in the office, I relax by playing my guitar and recording music.

A technology I have no use for ... I’ll admit I absolutely immerse myself in technology and, to be honest, I have yet to find a technology that I didn’t appreciate.

The best idea I had ... was that overclocking memory wasn’t just for a select few extreme users, but something that a wide range of consumers could benefit from. This ultimately led to the founding of OCZ (which actually stands for overclockers) which was founded by enthusiasts for enthusiasts.

Luxury is ... sleep.

I wish I had invented ... MLC NAND flash.

My tombstone should read ... Veni, Vidi, Vici or a close second would be Bigger, faster, less expensive

A person/trend/technology to watch ... Solid state drives. SSDs offer faster access to data, lower power consumption and heat generation, no noise, and increased reliability as there are no moving parts. The technology really makes sense for mobile applications, but as the price of flash memory comes down consumers will be able to take advantage of all the performance benefits at price point more in line with conventional drives.

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By Jane McEntegart - Source : Tom's Hardware

Research In Motion (RIM) has announced that the latest addition to the company’s Blackberry family will be available ‘around the world’ this summer.

The BlackBerry Bold is the first BlackBerry to support tri-band HSDPA and that’s bound to get a few BlackBerry fanboy hearts pumping, but one of the things we were most excited about was the half-VGA (480 x 320) LCD screen. We have to admit that a small part of us was worried that RIM would release another unit with a more traditional cell-phone display. More recent additions to the BlackBerry family (such as the Pearl) have had a smaller display and while they were more than adequate for sending text messages or short memos, longer emails involved entirely too much scrolling for our liking. RIM did change back to the trustier, wider screens with the Curve and we were pleased to see that that was one thing they decided not to change. Just a few of the other features you can expect with the Bold include:

- 624 MHz Marvell Tavor PXA930 processor.

- 802.11 a/b/g and GPS

- Replaceable “leather-like” backplates

- Bluetooth 2.0 with A2DP support

- microSDHC support up to 16 GB

- Quad-band EDGE, Tri-band HSDPA

- 2MP camera with flash and 5x digital zoom

- 1GB on-board memory with encryption

The press release says we can expect to see the BlackBerry Bold “this Summer” however as all too many people will be quick to point out, the 3G iPhone rumour mill has been working overtime and unless the Bold hits stores at the same time or a very short time after, it’s going to be hard to resist a 3G Jesus phone if you’re looking for an upgrade this season.

According to Boy Genis Report pricing will be in the $300-$500 range with carrier and iPhone peddler AT&T will be the first to launch. However, there is also a 1700MHz model coming, which will support T-Mobile’s 3G data network.

Click here for the full press release.

Related Links A Clamshell BlackBerry? HTC Unveils Glamorous iPhone Competitor?

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By Kevin Tu - Source : Tom's Guide

BioWare, a division of Electronic Arts, has backed down on its original plans to require users to re-authenticate Mass Effect ever ten days. The original announcement was met with hostile reaction from the gaming community. We reported last week BioWare’s producer Derek French announced that PC editions of Mass Effect and Spore would require online validation every ten days for the games to continue working. After a massive backlash, BioWare has confirmed that that the titles will include a different version of SecuROM technology. The new version will require users to validate their game only one time. "BioWare has always listened very closely to its fans and we made this decision to ensure we are delivering the best possible experience to them," said Jay Watamaniuk, Bioware community manager. “"To all the fans including our many friends in the armed services and internationally who expressed concerns that they would not be able re-authenticate as often as required, EA and BioWare want you to know that your feedback is important to us.” According to the Mass Effect FAQ posted on BioWare’s site it appears that users will still be require to re-authenticate when ever the user chooses to download new game content. This strategy runs in line with NVIDIA’s new belief that publishers will begin to treat games as services, offering post-launch content to legitimate users as a way to reduce piracy. The new solution will allow “gamers to authenticate their game on three different computers with the purchase of one disc,” and will now also allow users to play the game without needing the DVD in the drive to play. On a related note, Electronic Arts also released a statement saying Spore’s similar copy protection to will under go changes, requiring validation on patches or content updates.

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By Jane McEntegart - Source : Tom's Guide

This year’s JavaOne conference was everywhere. If you weren’t at it, you could catch the live webcasts, watch the repearts or, failing that, catch it in virtual world, Second Life. Usually we wouldn’t suggest you substitute the Second Life version of an event for the real one however, it looks like this year, those who did just that, may have been better off. Because putting up with Second Life’s server lag is probably a hell of a lot better than catching a stomach flu at the real thing.

Sun Microsystems and Java are proud to be virus-free however several staff and attendees at the JavaOne conference at the Moscone Convention Center in San Fransico managed to catch norovirus that caused vomiting, nausea, abdominal pain and diarrhea.

70 people in total were affected by the virus, which the San Fransico Department of Public Health first got wind of on Wednesday, three days after the conference commenced. 63 staff and 3 attendees picked up the virus that is apparently contracted and most commonly spread by food contaminated with vomit or fecal matter or contact with an infected individual. Norovirus usually lasts between 24 and 48 hours however, in some cases, it can last for up to five days.

Tickets for JavaOne can cost anywhere up to $2,350 and that’s not including what you’d have to shell out for travel and hotels if you’re from the East coast.

The conference has been running for the last 12 years and since it began in 1996, the venue hasn’t changed. While we can make all the jokes we want about Sun Microsystems and viruses it’s more likely to be the conference centre that suffers for this little episode.

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By Humphrey Cheung - Source : Tom's Guide US

Redmond (WA) - Electronista is reporting that Microsoft has sold its two millionth Zune since the product’s launch back in November 2006. The figures were tallied by the NPD Group and it appears Zune sales cut slightly into Creative’s market share, bringing it from four percent to two percent.

As you can imagine, Apple still remains the top dog in the portable media player market and sold 10.6 million units in the last quarter. Any way you do the math, Microsoft is getting clobbered in this market.

Read more ... Electronista.

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By Jane McEntegart - Source : Tom's Guide

Reports that the iPhone has sold out completely have begun to circulate

Last week reports began to emerge regarding iPhone stocks in the UK. Mid-April saw British iPhone network provider, 02UK announce a price cut of £100 on the 8GB iPod. O2 stores and retailer Carphone Warehouse both saw a huge increase in sales in the days following the price slash with O2 branches in Newcastle, London and Birmingham selling out on the day the price cut was announced.

This morning similar rumours regarding US stores started cropping up with sales representatives from Apple saying the iPhone is out of stock “company-wide”. Computerworld contacted four US Apple stores and was told that the iPhone was out of stock and not only could they not give a delivery date for more stock but they also said they had no ideas as to why the Apple website was showing a “currently unavailable” message when customers tried to purchase online.

While the iPhone is still fairly readily available in Germany and France the reported shortage in both the UK and US is just more kindling for the 3G iPhone campfire.

AT&T last week sent an email around the sales staff letting them know that vacation time scheduled between June 15th and July 15th, which had not already been approved, could not and would not be granted. A similar email was sent last summer in the lead up to the launch of the original iPhone.

At the time of print an Apple spokesperson had yet to get back to us regarding the sold out iPhone rumours and we know better than to ask about the 3G iPhone. We’ll keep you posted.

Related Links Leaked AT&T Memo Hints At Mid-June Launch For 3G iPhone
AT&T Pulls Information Regarding Free WiFi For iPhone Users From Website
VoIP On iPhone Using EDGE Now Possible
AT&T To Subsidize 3G iPhone By $200: Is Apple Changing Its iPhone Pricing Strategy?

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By Kevin Tu - Source : Tom's Guide

Security software vendor, PC Tools Software, has issued a report stating Microsoft Windows Vista is more susceptible to malware than Windows 2000, an operating system over eight-years-old. However, PC Tools Software reckons that Windows Vista is 37-percent more secure than previous generation Windows XP.

Data gathered from users of PC Tools’ ThreatFire security service indicated Vista allowed 639 threats per thousand computers, compared to 586 for Windows 2000 and 1,021 for Windows XP. According to PC Tools, with an infection rate of 639 per 1,000 PCs means 64-percent of Vista PCs have already been compromised.

"Ironically, the new operating system has been hailed by Microsoft as the most secure version of Windows to date," Simon Clausen, CEO of PC Tools, said in a prepared statement. "However, recent research conducted with statistics from over 1.4 million computers within the ThreatFire community has shown that Windows Vista is more susceptible to malware than the eight-year-old Windows 2000 operating system and only 37-percent more secure than Windows XP."

Despite the claims, PC Tools does not clearly indicate its methodology in its research. What constitutes as a threat is not defined, how threats were chosen, and whether the same threats were applied to all participating PCs. Since PC Tools gathered its data from its own crop of users, it is assumed the company only gathered statistics – something that is easily manipulated.

Microsoft fired back with their statistics and findings saying, “we appreciate independent studies and encourage researchers to help us make our products more secure; however, this is a study by a vendor of anti-malware products. ThreatFire vulnerability comparison numbers certainly don’t reflect our vulnerability findings from the malicious software removal tool, which ran on over 400 million machines in December 2007. From June 2007 through December 2007, the MSRT found malware on 2.8% of the Windows Vista machines it ran on, vs. 7.2% of Windows XP SP2 machines. It found malware on 5% of Windows 2000 SP4 machines and 12.2% of Windows 2000 SP3 machines. Note that for Windows 2000 this spans both client and server machines.”

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By Humphrey Cheung - Source : Tom's Guide US

Mountain View (CA) - Dozens of civil rights and rural advocacy groups have asked the Justice Department to scrutinize any future Google and Yahoo partnership for anti-trust violations - even though no definitive deal has been announced. The groups argue that both companies would have a combined 90% of the online search advertising market and this could drive up prices and prevent competition.

The Justice Department is examining an earlier partnership between Google and Yahoo back in April. Since there is no official word about any future merger or partnership, the Justice Department is holding off on any further investigation.

Read more ... BBC.

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By Wolfgang Gruener - Source : Tom's Hardware US

Sunnyvale (CA) - AMD’s B3 stepping Barcelona processors appear to be finally on track as the company continues to announce new design wins and new models joining the existing line-up. The company is now offering ’HE’ of its dual- as well as 4P and 8P socket versions of its processors, offering an alternative to six competing Intel quad-core CPUs.

The new processors include three 2P versions (2344HE, 1.7 GHz; 2346He, 1.8 GHz and 2347 HE, 1.9 GHz) as well as two 4P and 8P models (8346HE, 1.8 GHz and 8347HE, 1.9 GHz) and expand AMD’s portfolio into a market in which the company needs to regain market share from Intel in order to achieve its profitability goals.

The fact that the TLB bug delayed the launch of these processors by about 8 months has turned out to be a major problem for AMD, as Intel has been the only option for companies that transitioned their servers to faster or energy-efficient quad-core processors. Even if AMD claims that these new HE-series CPUs are the first power-efficient quad-core server processors with an integrated memory controller, there is no denying that Intel shipped millions of quad-core CPUs before and had "power-efficient" quad-core processors available for several months: Intel currently offers the Xeon MP L7345 (65 nm, 1.86 GHz, 50 watt) as well as five 50 watt DP models (1.6 to 2.5 GHz), two of them being 45 nm versions.

AMD rates its new HE Opterons at a power consumption of 55 watts. However, this value is described as "ACP" (Average CPU Power), which is AMD’s way to describe the power consumption of its processors and which is different from the "TDP" (Thermal Design Power) that Intel uses to come up with a value for its processors. Server vendors told TG Daily that there is virtually no way to reliably predict which processor will be more power efficient in different application environments. The only way to reliably measure the power consumption of server systems is to actually put test systems in place and evaluate them in a real-world scenario.

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By Humphrey Cheung - Source : Tom's Guide US

White Plains (NY) - Two bumbling burglars have been arrested after one of the laptops they stole ’phoned home’ and transmitted webcam pictures to the victims. Edmon Shahikian, 23, and Ian Frias, 20, broke into a White Plains NY apartment and took several thousand dollars worth of electronics which included an Apple MacBook. One of the victims activated the MacBook’s ’Back to My Mac’ security software and took several pictures of the burglars.

Lieutenant Eric Fischer told The Journal News that the victims did a "phenomenal job" in helping catch the thieves. Back on April 27th, the burglars took approximately $5000 in electronics from the apartment which included two laptop computers, flat-screen televisions, two iPods and several game consoles.

Fortunately, one of the victims works at a nearby Apple store and was clever enough to activate the ’Back to My Mac’ software and the built-in webcam. At first, she saw just an empty chair, but was eventually able to remotely photograph both Shahikian and Frias as they used the MacBook to do some online shopping. One of the roommates recognized the pair from a recent party held at the apartment and notified police who then arrested Shahikian and Frias at their home.

Shahikian and Frias are now out on bail and will return to court on May 15th to face second-degree burglary and possession of stolen property charges. In a separate incident, the pair is also charged with possession and transportation of three pounds of marijuana.

Looks like a slam dunk for the good guys, you don’t see that too often.

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By Jane McEntegart - Source : Tom's Guide

Earlier in the week HTC announced the launch of the HTC Touch Diamond phone, which was quickly dubbed the iPhone’s biggest competitor. Now it has been announced that European service provider Vodafone will offer the Touch Diamond as well as the iPhone.

Vodafone announced earlier in the week that it had signed a deal with Apple to distribute the iPhone in 10 countries; Australia, the Czech Republic, Egypt, Greece, Italy, India, Portugal, New Zealand, South Africa and Turkey. It also emerged that it would not be the only network provider to offer the iPhone in Italy with Telecom Italia also selling the fruity phone.

Florian Seiche, vice president of HTC Europe said that the HTC brand is becoming increasingly popular with European operators choosing to sell HTC-branded phones, rather than offering them as own-name handsets.

Vodafone will join Orange in selling the phone throughout Europe and T-Mobile will be selling it as the T-Mobile MDA Compact IV.

The Taiwanese company’s latest release will hit European stores in June. In a few months, the phone will become available in Asia and the Middle East and by the second half of 2008, it will be available in North America and Latin America. Pricing information for the iPhone rival has yet to be announced.

The launch of the original Touch in June of last year was significant for HTC who, in the past, largely focused on building handsets for other companies. The Touch handset proved popular selling 3 million units however that figure can’t hold a candle to the iPhone which reportedly sold 1 million units just 74 days after it’s release.

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By Humphrey Cheung - Source : Tom's Hardware US

Los Angeles (CA) - AWS Truewind will release a 200-meter resolution wind map of the United States. The 9 million square kilometer map is the highest resolution map ever created of the US, according to the company and will be released on June 1st. Unfortunately you’ll need to purchase access to the Truewind online app windNavigator to see the full-resolution map.

Read more ... AWS Truewind.

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By Theo Valich - Source : Tom's Hardware US

Zagreb (Croatia) - Two screenshots posted to a popular Internet forum claim to show two upcoming NVIDIA graphics cards: The 9900GTX and 9900 GTS, based on the GT200 chip.

If you have been waiting for more details about Nvidia’s next-gen products, then this is likely the juiciest information yet. The poster of the thread on Xtreme Systems claims that the screenhots show the upcoming "D10U" products, one board codenamed P651 and the other P65x. If these pictures display an engineering drawing of the actual product, then we now know that both the GTX and GTS versions have support for triple-SLI. This featurerequires one 8-pin power connector to work, translating into a maximum power consumption of 225 watts for the 9900 GTS (75 watts + 150 watts). According to these drawings, the 9900 GTX could be looking at up 300 watts (75 watts + 75 watts + 150 watts). Of course, we don’t expect either card to actually consume quite so much, but we believe that the engineers have created enough headroom simply to ensure a stable operation of the card.

An 8-pin PCIe power connector can deliver 12.5 Amps at 12V, which ends up at 150 watts. A 6-pin PCIe connector can deliver 6.25 Amps at 12V, or 75 watts.

The angled picture does not change much; The third power connector on the left board comes from a card that was not shown

Looking at the drawing from another angle, we see that there are subtle differences between the two parts, but some things just do not add up. There are eight memory chips on front, and possible eight memory chips on the back, which would confirm the rumored 512-bit memory controller. Possible memory sizes are 512 MB, 1024 MB and 2048 MB. But the alleged 9900 GTS features eight memory chips as well, so the rumors of a 448-bit memory controller and 896 MB of memory would be incorrect. Or are they true and these pictures are a dud?

What looks rather strange is the presence of NVIO chip. After the "we do not support HDCP at 2560x1600" fiasco, would indicate that these pictures are fake.

NordicHardware ran two stories (here) disclosing alleged details of the cards. Reading over those details, we would agree that these pictures fit the bill, at least as far as power consumption and most specs go.

Your guess is as good as ours. It is an interesting topic for weekend discussions on forums around the Internet. And in our comments section, of course.

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By Theo Valich - Source : Tom's Guide US

Mountain View (CA) - Mozilla announced on Saturday that it has put the finishing touches on the Release Candidate 1 code of Firefox 3. The developers are optimistic that RC1 is pretty much the final code of the new browser: If there are no unexpected bugs, RC1 will turn into Firefox 3.

At this time, Firefox 3 RC1 has been released into a closed beta testing phase to a group of about 1.2 million users. There is no information when RC1 will be made available to the general public, but we would expect the software to its download servers.

According to a post on the developer blog, Mozilla expects RC1 to become Firefox 3 final "if no new showstoppers are found". In case new bugs are surfacing, Mozilla intends to release further release candidates "until [Firefox 3] is ready to ship".

There is no information on the possible availability of Firefox 3, but given the optimism of the developer team, we believe that June is a realistic timeframe for the launch and boost of Firefox downloads - which stand at about 549.7 million as of this morning.

The release of Firefox 3 rings in another round in the browser battle between Mozilla and Microsoft. At least from today’s view, Mozilla seems to have a huge time advantage over Microsoft, whose IE8 is still in an early beta phase. You can read learn more about the differences between the two new browsers in our previously published story Firefox 3 Beta 4 reveals difference in design philosophy to IE8.

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By Theo Valich - Source : Tom's Hardware US

Taipei (Taiwan) - News about refreshed Xbox 360 consoles are trickling, which is about time given the fact that the console will celebrate its third birthday later this year. The Taiwan Economic News is reporting that first wafers with 65 nm GPUs are leaving the production lines, joining the 65 nm Xenon CPU. Rumors about a Blu-ray Xbox 360 remain alive and we are hearing first information about a possible mid-cycle refresh for the console, which will include the ’Valhalla’ SoC.

It has been almost a year since Chartered has begun taking the Xbox 360 Xenon CPU from 90 nm to 65 nm and it really was just a matter of time until other hardware would follow. According to the Taiwan Economic News, TSMC has initiated first wafer starts of the 65 nm Xenos GPU and Northbridge. Microsoft apparently has ordered 10,000 300 mm wafers from TSMC at this time.

As it is the case with any die-shrink, Microsoft should see substantial economic advantages from this move, supporting the company’s ongoing strategy to reduce the production cost of the console (the reduction of the Xbox 360 production cost has been one of the key reasons why Microsoft’s entertainment division has been able to notably increase its profits over the past seven quarters). If the 65 nm Xenos "v2" scales down linearly from 90 nm, the new die size should be around 125 mm2, while the eDRAM chip will remain at 70 mm2. The new production process should yield about 35% more GPUs per wafer than before.

TSMC will continue to be in charge of the wafers, while Nanya will be delivering the flip-chip packaging substrates. ASE combines the silicon and substrate and is responsible for QA.

Quite honestly, we were a bit surprised to hear that Microsoft did not decide to die-shrink both the CPU and GPU at the same time, especially because two different foundries are manufacturing the chips. However, our sources at TSMC explained that Microsoft has the same production philosophy as Nvidia: Wait for a manufacturing process to mature and then run the initial wafer order. Apparently, the transition was simulated in detail by ATI and the tapeout happened without problems, at least according to our sources close to ATI. Keep in mind that ATI is only a contracted partner for Microsoft: Both the CPU and GPU are officially Microsoft parts, and the Ballmer-Gates company is the only one in the console segment following through with such a strategy.

The Xbox 360 is scheduled to ship in an "all 65 nm" package (Jasper platform) this August. Consumers won’t notice the refresh, unless Microsoft decides to put a Blu-ray drive into the Xbox 360. We were not able to receive a confirmation either way, and we keep digging to find out if the Asustek subsidiary Pegatron will manufacture regular Xbox 360’s or units with an integrated Blu-ray drive. In any case, Celestica, Pegatron and Wistron will have a busy summer cranking out millions of refreshed Xbox 360 consoles.

A more dramatic and perhaps visible change will happen next year: TSMC plans to begin producing the Valhalla chip, which will be the foundation of the mid-cycle refresh of the Xbox 360, thus called ’Xbox 2.5’ or simply ’Xbox 540’ (360+180), in fall of 2009. We learned that this new chip is apparently much more than a die-shrink and end up as a system-on-a-chip design. This change is likely to enable to redesign the Xbox 360 casing and go towards a slim-design, much like what Sony did with the Gen1 and Gen2 PS2. We believe that TSMC will use a 45 nm process for this Multi-Chip-Module package (CPU+GPU+eDRAM).

There are also some interesting pieces of information that Microsoft is shopping for a more efficient cooling solution - efficient in more ways than just one: Several people close to the cooling industry told us that Microsoft approached them and asked for better and cheaper cooling than what is used in the Xbox 360 right now. Some may claim that the current Xbox 360 cooler design is already as cheap as it gets, but we have no doubts that Microsoft will find a way to drop the cost once again.

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