16:20 Radeon Forces Nvidia GTX2XX Price Cuts

By Wolfgang Gruener - Source : Tom's Hardware US

 

Mountain House (CA) - It appears that AMD’s ATI Radeon 4800 GPU has turned out to be a much better chip than initially expected and AMD’s aggressive pricing puts enough pressure on Nvidia to prompt the company to react. If you are planning on purchasing a GTX 260 or 280 card, you may want to delay until next Monday. Price cuts are on the way.

Over the past several days we have spent some time with several Nvidia’s partners in the Silicon Valley and in Taiwan, which made it obvious that there are tensions between GPU manufacturers and add-in board companies. A raging price has put five companies on the verge of bankruptcy. We cannot disclose who almost kicked the bucket, but we were told that three vendors are still walking on very thin ice.

With the debut of GeForce GTX 200 series, Nvidia made some adjustments protecting its partners with greater margins, but the ATI Radeon 4800 series is changing that scenario again. AMD has received praise from the press for its ATI Radeon 4800 series, causing Nvidia partners to demand price adjustments. We were told that Nvidia finally stepped down from its pedestal and agreed to offer limited price protection for some products as well as price cuts.

We contacted Nvidia to get more details on this information and were provided with the following statement by Bryan Del Rizzo and Ken Brown, spokespeople for Nvidia:

"We’re working with our partners on adjusting the prices for the GTX 280 and 260. The changes are being implemented over the next few days and will take effect sometime next week. Please obtain final retail pricing from the partners, because they set them for their products."

The third sentence has to be taken with a grain of salt, as most partners complained to us about Nvidia’s Unilateral Minimum Advertised Price Policy, short UMAP, and the way it affects them. For the consumer, however, we have yet another example how well competition works. The race between the Radeon 4800 series and GTX 200 will ultimately drag prices down.

According to our sources, Nvidia cut the price of the GTX 280 by $90 and $30 for the GTX 260. Of course, that is a price cut Nvidia is handing down to its partners and does not reflect retail prices.

GeForce GTX 260 cards currently sell for $379.99 on Newegg ($399.99 minus $20 instant rebate on XFX, BFG and PNY cards), while GTX 280 cards sell for $619.99 ($649.99 minus $30 for the XFX board).

After Nvidia’s adjustment, we should see Monday prices going down to $359.99 for GTX 260 cards and to $559.99 for GTX 280 cards. Please note that we are not including the possibility for additional rebates that may be offered.

It appears that we might end up with permanent price brackets at $199, $299, $399 and $499. This would greatly simplify the search for the best possible graphics card at a certain point. Also, this opens the battlefield between single and multi-GPU setups: Could two boards for $199 provide more value than a single $399 or $499 card?

We are sure to find out soon.

 

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15:00 WWF Slaps U.S. Government Over Lack Of Energy Efficiency Progress

By Wolfgang Gruener - Source : Tom's Hardware US

 

Washington D.C. - Just in time for next week’s G8 summit in Japan, the World Wildlife Fund (WWF) has released a new report examining the progress of each of the G8 countries toward addressing climate change, a main focus of this year’s meeting. The ranking lists energy efficiency progress made in each of the G8 nations. There are very few surprises - especially the fact that the U.S. once again trails the pack.

Environmental scorecards are a rather new publicity tool that we are seeing more and more these days. Organizations such as Greenpeace or ClimateCounts.org are using scorecards to shed light on what most of us are struggling to understand - the impact of our current actions on our planet. The upcoming G8 meeting is likely to provide lots of new data, ideas, discussions, proposals and arguments on energy policies. The WWF today provided a detailed summary of the current state on energy efficiency in the G8 nations and, to a lesser degree "+5" countries.

The G8 ranking is separated in three portions - the lowest scoring countries, medium-scoring and top-scoring nations.

The U.S was ranked as "the worst of all G8 countries." The WWF described the U.S. as being the "largest emitter with the highest per capita emissions and an increasing trend in total emissions." The organization recognized that "substantial [energy efficiency] activities emerge at the state level, little substantive federal measures are in place to curb emissions in the short term."

Slightly better than the U.S. was Canada with "very high per capita emissions, a steadily increasing trend in total emissions (recently revised upwards), far away from its Kyoto target and inadequate mid to long-term greenhouse gas targets." Russia came in at #6 and "ranks a bit better due to declining absolute emissions in the early 1990s and a large share of less CO2-intensive natural gas." However, the WWF said that Russia’s emissions have increased steadily since 1999 "and there is hardly any policy in place to curb emissions."

On the other end of the scale are the UK, France and Germany.

According to the WWF "Germany’s emissions declined 1990 to 2000 partly due to economic downturn in Eastern Germany but also due to national measures. Since then, emissions are stable and a gap to meet the Kyoto target is expected if no immediate measures are put in place or external credits are purchased." The organizations criticized that Germany is "politically less ambitious for electricity production from fossil fuels, facing a high share of coal and lignite and announced investment plans that
would lock Germany into a high level of carbon intensiveness for the next 40 years."

Emission rates (per capita and per GDP) in France (#2) are described as "relatively low for an industrialized country, partially due to a high share of nuclear energy (which WWF does not consider as viable policy). Emissions have been roughly stable since 1990."

The UK (#1) has made the most progress, the WWF said, with emission’s already below the Kyoto target -
"largely due to a transition from coal to gas in the 1990s." the organization noted that the fall in emissions has "levelled off since 2000 and the share of coal has again increased and emissions are expected to rise further."

Overall, the WWF claims that the energy efficiency potential is not tapped. "Although large potential exists to save energy and money at the same time, all G8 countries have insufficient policies
in place to overcome barriers to energy efficiency," the organization said.

"Countries’ programs are incomplete focusing on only some aspects such as appliances or buildings. Efficiency improvements in transport are usually not sufficiently encouraged. Japan scores well on dynamic efficiency standards for appliances and cars but leaves energy performance of buildings and in the power sector uncovered. Canada, USA and Russia rank last on energy efficiency with broadly insufficient or lacking policies," the report states.

 

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15:00 Atom Shortage May Affect Low-cost Notebook Panel Shipments In July

By DigiTimes - Source : Tom's Hardware US

 

 

LCD panel makers are afraid that a shortage of Intel Atom processors may affect their July shipments of 7" to 10" panels targeted to the low-cost notebook and MID (mobile Internet device) applications, according to industry sources.The panel makers have enough capacity for the segments, but they are seeing weaker-than-expected demand from clients whose production is being impacted by shortages of components, including processors and batteries, the sources said.

More here at Digitimes.

 

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15:00 AMD Radeon HD 4870 X2 Ready By August

By DigiTimes - Source : Tom's Hardware US

 

 

Following the recent launch of the ATI Radeon HD 4850 and 4870 GPUs, AMD plans to introduce the high-end dual-GPU HD 4870 X2 by the end of July, according to sources at graphics card vendors. Evaluation samples are schedule to be available in mid-July, and AMD will begin shipping reference design boards with 2 GB GDDR5 memory at the end of the month, the sources detailed.

More here at Digitimes.

 

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14:50 Solar System A Bit Squashed, Not Nicely Round

By Reuters - Source : Tom's Hardware US

 

 

The solar system may not be a nice round shape, but rather a bit squashed and oblong, according to data from the Voyager 2 spacecraft exploring the solar system’s outer limits, scientists said on Wednesday. Launched in 1977, the Voyager 1 and Voyager 2 unmanned probes are now studying the edges of the heliosphere, the huge magnetic "bubble" around our solar system created by the solar wind as it runs up against the thin gas in interstellar space.

Read the complete story here.

 

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14:40 Networking Device Makers See Healthy Revenue Growth In Q3

By DigiTimes - Source : Tom's Guide US

 

 

Despite growing concerns of an economic slowdown worldwide, most Taiwan network-equipment makers, including Accton Technology, Alpha Networks, D-Link and Gemtek Technology, expect revenues to continue to post healthy growth in the third quarter of this year, according to sources at the makers. D-Link said that it is positive about back-to-school demand in the third quarter and the company is now building up its inventory in order to meet the projected demand.

More here at Digitimes.

 

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14:40 BenQ To Shift Focus From Handsets To MIDs

By DigiTimes - Source : Tom's Guide US

 

 

BenQ could possibly completely quit the handset market and shift focus to the Mobile Internet Device (MID) segment instead, according to industry sources. However, company sources refuted the claims, and although admitting that business focus will shift to MIDs, noted in saying that the company will not completely quit handsets.

More here at Digitimes.

 

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13:40 Mozilla Sets World Record for Most Downloads With 8 Million

By Jane McEntegart - Source : Tom's Guide

 

The results are in; the downloads have been counted and verified to bring you a result we’ve known for weeks was coming: Mozilla has successfully made the Guinness Book of World Records for the most downloads in 24 hours.

Mozilla announced at the end of May that the company was shooting for a Guinness World Record with its latest Firefox, version 3.0, and provided ideas on how one could encourage friends to download Firefox within those 24 hours as part of “download parties.”

Mozilla whipped us into a frenzy over the release of the updated browser, while some people raised eyebrows when the record attempt had overloaded the download servers. That’s right, so many eager souls tried to download Firefox 3 that the Mozilla servers ground to a halt and for periods of time through out the day, eager users couldn’t download the update at all.

Well, despite that little hiccup, Mozilla has “officially” announced the record via its website, stating that over 8 million people downloaded the release in the first 24 hours.

“Thanks to the support of the always amazing Mozilla community, we now hold a Guinness World Record for the most software downloaded in 24 hours. From 18:16 UTC on June 17, 2008 to 18:16 UTC on June 18, 2008, 8,002,530 people downloaded Firefox 3 and are now enjoying a safer, smarter and better Web.”

Mozilla experienced another bump in the Firefox 3 road in the form of a security vulnerability just hours after it was released. The day Mozilla shipped, Tipping Point announced that its researchers had already found a vulnerability in the browser. While the company said it would not disclose any details of the bug before Mozilla had released a patch, it rated the vulnerability as “high” and said it affected both versions 2 and 3 of Firefox. Mozilla is investigating the vulnerability and working on a patch.

 

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13:20 Sony Pulls Latest Firmware Update For PS3 Following Complaints From Users

By Jane McEntegart - Source : Tom's Guide

 

Earlier in the week Sony released the much awaited v2.40 firmware update for the PlayStation 3. While some gamers have installed the update and are living happily ever after, others got into a spot of bother when trying to install it. Sony has since pulled the update from its servers.

Reports began to trickle through just hours after the update was released. There was a whole range of problems with crashed consoles, black screens and frozen games being just a few. Posts on the PlayStation forums show that the problems are affecting various different models rather than one specific type and Sony has taken the update offline until the problems are solved.

However, while PlayStation forums and game websites across the internet are buzzing with the news of the firmware glitches (the thread on the forums alone is 81 pages long), Sony seems to be trying to play down the problems as much as possible.

In the official PS3 blog Patrick Seybold, Director of Corporate Communications and Social Media said, “As has been reported on many gaming blogs and websites, we have temporarily taken Firmware v2.40 offline. We’ve received a limited number of calls from consumers experiencing an issue with installing the system software update on their PS3."

"While our consumer services department has seen a low volume of calls on this topic, we are committed to providing the PS3 community with XMB access features delivered in the v2.40 update," Seybold continued. "We are working diligently to isolate the problem for those few consumers and to identify a solution before we put the firmware back up.”

So far there is no news on when the firmware will be back up and running but Manager of Social Media at Sony, Jeff Rubenstein, has said the company hasn’t received any complaints from users having trouble after the update has been successfully installed.

So, what can you do to fix your crashed PS3? Well, the answer is, unfortunately, not much for now. There is no news from Sony about what’s causing the problem or how to fix it and many gamers are saying the only way out is to reformat your hard drive. However, to do so would mean losing all your saved games. Backing up your hard drive is an option however many users say their console is completely dead, the only sign of life being a flashing red light. We’ll bring you more on this once Sony release details of the glitch and information on how it’s going to assist customers who have been affected.

The PS3 firmware update v2.40 included the long awaited in-game XMB, which allows users to access menus and settings during game play. Aside from XMB it also included the addition of Trophies, and similar to the PSP update released last month, Google Searching.

 

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06:40 Stolen USB Flash Drive Divulges Japanese-U.S. Troop Deployments

By Humphrey Cheung - Source : Tom's Guide US

 

Tokyo (Japan) - A USB flash drive containing valuable deployment maps of Japanese and US military forces was stolen last year and the culprit has been caught. At first, the Japanese Ground Self-Defense Force claimed the drive was merely lost, but investigators discovered a 33-year-old captain actually stole it along with 2000 yen in cash (about $20 USD) and a 10,000 yen airline coupon. After the theft the captain tried to commit suicide by swallowing a massive amount of drugs, probably in modern version of seppuku to restore his honor. Fortunately, he was found in time and taken to the hospital.

Amazingly the captain has only been suspended for 60 days.

Read more ... Mainichi Daily News

 

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06:40 More Than 600,000 Laptops Lost Each Year At US Airports

By Humphrey Cheung - Source : Tom's Guide US

 

Washington DC - Travellers lose nearly 637,000 laptops a year at U.S. airports every year, according to a new survey by the Ponemon Institute. At 36 of the largest airports, a staggering 10,278 laptops are lost/stolen every week. Medium-sized airports have approximately 2000 lost or stolen laptops at week. Amazingly, the survey showed that 65% to 69% of the missing laptops are never reclaimed, but that’s probably because 77% of the victims say they have no hope in recovering the laptop.

That’s A LOT of missing laptops, but here in the office were asking ourselves how do you lose a laptop in the airport? Ponemon analysts say most of the laptops go missing at security checkpoints and I can understand the highly stressful situation of taking off all your belongings while nervously waiting for your upcoming flight, but when you pop your laptop on the conveyor belt, it has to come out the other side right?

Read more ... PC World

 

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06:30 Study Claims Windows Usage Market Share Could Soon Fall Below 90%

By Christian Zibreg - Source : Tom's Hardware US

 

Chicago (IL) - A new study released by Net Applications indicates that a decreasing percentage of the Internet population is using Windows as their operating system. It appears that Mac OS X could soon be listed in the double digit-range, while Windows could fall below the 90% mark.

Net Applications’ most recent operating system survey is pointing to continued market share gains of Mac OS X at the expense of Windows, echoing similar figures in a recently published browser market share survey. The research firm measures market share by recording which operating systems are used to browse a set of hand-picked web sites that are described to be representative for the overall market - which means that the Net Applications survey does not provide precise market share figures in terms of sales or unit shipments, but provide trends in terms of usage. According to the research firm, the data is collected from a base of "approximately 160 million visitors per month."

The survey lists Apple’s Mac OS X operating system market share in June with a record 7.94%, which is a 0.11 point increase over the previous month. This figure makes OS X the best-selling UNIX variant ever with the largest overall share of the market. Linux currently stands at 0.80% market share in this survey, a slight improvement over the 0.68% recorded last month. Windows machines still dominate the market and came in at 90.89%, down from 91.13 percent in the month ago. Although the lead of Windows remains unquestioned, its share has been dropping slowly but steadily over the past two years.

At the current pace, Windows could drop below the 90% in the fourth quarter of this year.

Apple’s iPhone OS X variant held steady at 0.16% market share in June. "Apple has confirmed that its online inventories for the original version of the iPhone are sold out in the US and UK," Net Applications said. "Apple appears to be clearing out its inventories in preparation for the iPhone 2.0 release. This, in conjunction with customers holding off purchasing until 2.0 is released has temporarily leveled off the iPhone usage share."

 

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06:30 Teenager Jailed After Posting YouTube Vid Of Airborne Baby

By Humphrey Cheung - Source : Tom's Hardware US

 

Atlanta (GA) - A 16-year-old is behind bars today after he posted a stomach-churning YouTube video of a baby being launched in the air. The teen placed the eight-month-old baby on an inflatable pillow which he then jumped on. The baby flew several feet and was crying after hitting the ground.

Sheriff’s deputies arrested the teenager after his high school teenager saw the video. He is being charged with felony cruelty to a child, but could face more serious charges if the baby has any permanent damage. The teenager’s friend who filmed the act was not charged.

Read more ... WALB

If you have a strong stomach, you can watch MSNBC’s video report here

 

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06:00 Nvidia's Stock Bloodbath - Company Admits Faulty Chips

By Humphrey Cheung - Source : Tom's Hardware US

 

Santa Clara (CA) - NVIDIA is admitting that some of its notebook chips are failing at "higher than normal rates" in a new filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission. The chip failures will cause Nvidia to take a $150 to $200 million charge this quarter to cover what it calls "warranty, repair and return and replacement" for laptops with unspecified NVIDIA graphics chips and chipsets. In after hours NASDAQ trading, NVIDIA (NVDA) plunged 21.94% or $3.95 to $14.08 a share. The stock had been down as much as 25% after the close of regular trading on Wednesday July 2nd 2008.

While it’s a bit too early for NVIDIA to do any conclusive finger pointing, NVIDIA does say that "significant quantities" of chips are experiencing thermal issues caused by possibly weak die and packaging - in essence, the parts are overheating and failing. NVIDIA isn’t publicly saying which laptop brands and models are affected by the faulty chips, but it has issued an emergency driver that increases cooling by powering up fans immediately after the system starts (boy, that’s going to be noisy).

Presumably, the bulk of the $150 to $200 million will go towards reimbursing laptop companies for any customer repairs and replacements and this is supported by NVIDIA’s words. "We intend to fully support our customers in their repair and replacement of these impacted MCP and GPU products that fail," NVIDIA stated in the filing.

NVIDIA is also predicting that its sales for the quarter ending July 27 will be approximately $875 million to $950 million, which is a bit lower than analysts’ expectations of nearly $1 billion. Who knows if the stock will continuing tanking in the morning, but it’s definitely going to be an interesting trading day.

 

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21:00 Internet Explorer 8 Beefed Up Against Hackers And Phishers

By Humphrey Cheung - Source : Tom's Guide US

 

Redmond (WA) - Microsoft is beefing up its upcoming Internet Explorer 8 browser with several security improvements against hackers and phishers. Eric Lawrence, Microsoft’s program manager of Internet Explorer security, says IE 8 Beta 1 will have more defenses against cross-site scripting, malware protection and URL highlighting. File upload paths will also be changed to read only. This will prevent hackers from reading direct paths to important files.

Perhaps the most important addition will be the cross-site scripting or XSS Filter that will provide defense against exploits that can steal cookies, credentials and even keystrokes. Despite this protection, Lawrence warns that web developers shouldn’t get too complacent about letting IE take care of security. He adds, "because this feature is only available in IE8, it’s important that web developers provide additional defense-in-depth and work to eliminate XSS vulnerabilities in their sites. Preventing XSS on the server-side is much easier that catching it at the browser"

IE 8 will also include beefed up malware protection thanks to third-party reporting sites. When you visit a site, the URL will be checked against a database of websites known to contain malware. Suspicious sites will come up with a red background and a very large and noticeable warning box. This is designed to replace the rather innocuous warning box we currently see in IE 7 - the one that most people just ignore. URL highlighting will further protect users by highlighting good web addresses in black, while suspicious ones will be in gray.

You’ve probably had to upload files from your browser at some point in your life and usually a nice dialog box or window pops up asking for the path to the file. Lawrence says skillful hackers could trick users into sending the complete file path to valuable documents and files. In order to counteract this threat, IE 8 now has file upload control. When uploading a file, you can type/select the file name, but the directory path will now be read-only. Lawrence adds that IE 8 will now only submit the filename and not the full file-path.

You can download IE 8 Beta version one on Microsoft’s website here. The download weighs in at approximately 14.5 megabytes. Lawrence promises version two should be available sometime in August.

 

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19:50 T-Mobile Raises Text Messaging Rates To 20 Cents

By Humphrey Cheung - Source : Tom's Guide US

 

New York (NY) - Deutsche Telekom subsidiary T-Mobile has announced that it will raise text messaging rates from 15 to 20 cents each. Consumers will be charged for both sent and received messages and the new price puts T-Mobile in line with other mobile phone service providers like AT&T, Verizon and Sprint. Those companies have been charging 20 cents a message for at least a few months.

The new rates take effect on August 29, but customers have a couple ways to alleviate the pain. For those who can endure long hold times and cranky customer service employees, they can call up T-Mobile customer service and try to get reduced or free text messaging rates. On many online phone forums, customers are reporting decent success rates in convincing company personnel to lower or eliminate the rates - this is especially true when the employees think the customer may leave for another provider.

T-Mobile is also offering a bulk message plan that could lower costs for customers. Some may argue that steering people towards these plans was the company’s intention all along. For $4.99 a month customers can send/receive up to 400 messages while $9.99 gets you 1000 messages. Very prolific texters should probably opt for the $15.00 unlimited domestic messaging plan.

Obviously, T-Mobile and the other companies wouldn’t raise the rates if they didn’t believe the public would pay for it. The phone companies have a monopoly on the medium and can practically charge anything they want. Furthermore, when you sign up for phone service, you agree to only accept text messages through your phone provider - there’s no decent way to decouple the voice and data. Competition in the data space would be great and would likely lower text messaging rates, but there’s no way to do this at this time.

Just a few years ago, text messages used to cost 10 cents each and customers were only charged when they received them. Now customers are charged for both sent and received messages, which is quite annoying because you can be easily be bombarded with messages from friends, businesses and even spammers. There’s also no decent way of opting out of receiving text messages, so you are basically forced to accept and pay for messages of dubious quality and importance.

 

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