Public Enemy gaat z'n albums in MP3 formaat op ZIP disk uitbrengen. Op zich interessant dat een grote groep voor het MP3 formaat kiest (Public Enemy was er al langer mee bezig), maar dat ze dat dan op een dure ZIP schijf gaan distribueren vinnik nogal onlogisch. Naja, hier heb je een stuk uit het nieuwsbericht bij C|Net's News.com:

Atomic Pop, a Web music company, said it will release rap group Public Enemy's latest album using Iomega Zip disks.

The announcement signals the first instance of a high-profile band using Iomega's Zip disks to distribute music, according to Public Enemy front man Chuck D's manager, Walter Leaphart. Chuck D has been an outspoken proponent for using new technologies, especially the Web, to change the relationship between artists, record companies, and fans.

Zip disks are portable storage devices that are added as disk drives into computers and some peripherals. Zips come in 100 MB and 250 MB versions, and have an installed base of 24 million users, the company estimated. Iomega is undergoing an initiative to secure downloads onto Zip drives, according to an Iomega spokeswoman. Users who download music onto Zips will be unable to copy or distribute the files.

"Nobody else has conceived of putting a record on a Zip disk," Leaphart said. "This stretches the limit in how we deliver music."

De prijs wordt $16,98 voor de ZIP disk, da's vrijwel even duur als een CD... Je kunt om ook zelf 'm ook zelf neer gaan halen, dan moet je er 8 dollar voor neer leggen.

Ik kwam via Slashdot bij deze press release van Ciena Corp., over een nieuwe optische netwerk technologie met een bandbreedte van 2 Terabit per sec. Dat klinkt niet vies. Hier heb je wat info uit de pr:

CIENA Corporation (Nasdaq: CIEN) today announced MultiWave CoreStream™, a next generation of dense wavelength division multiplexing (DWDM) optical transport systems that will enable carriers to expand to up to 2 terabits of transport capacity. CoreStream is designed for use in high capacity long-haul applications and is part of CIENA's new LightWorks™ architecture for building intelligent optical networks.

"CIENA CoreStream's scalable platform enables carriers to economically address today's bandwidth challenges while confidently building in network scalability to address future bandwidth requirements," said Patrick Nettles, chief executive officer and president at CIENA Corporation.

Incorporating CIENA's field proven optical technologies and scalable system architecture, CoreStream lays the foundation for the next generation of intelligent optical networks.

"CoreStream moves DWDM and optical transport beyond ultimate channel count comparisons to what carriers truly care about - forward-looking network scalability and protection of invested capital," said Steve Alexander, CIENA's chief technology officer. "Since we brought our first MultiWave system to market, we focused on giving carriers access to immediate bandwidth with the peace of mind that the equipment they install today will allow them to grow that bandwidth without major network reconstruction or "sunk" capital costs going forward. CoreStream extends CIENA's scalability philosophy to the 2 terabit per second range."

AVault heeft zes screenshots van Unreal Tournament gepost. De screenshots worden vergezeld van een omschrijving, wat soms best handig kan zijn aangezien het niet altijd duidelijk is wat ze voor moeten stellen. Hieronder heb je alvast 3 tumbnails:

Check the Adrenaline Vault voor de info.

Ja, klinkt lekker, maar wtf mag het betekenen? 3D Soundsurge heeft de press release. Check 't out:

BUENA PARK, Calif., June 3 /PRNewswire/NEWSdesk -- Yamaha Corporation of America, Consumer Products Division, announces another leap forward in greatly improving bass performance in small-format computer and multimedia speakers. With the introduction of Advanced YST, Yamaha's exclusive new patented technology, smaller-size speaker systems can now deliver unparalleled sonic performance and accuracy, superior to that of much larger and more expensive speaker packages. Yamaha's new MS50 and MS55D powered multimedia speaker systems are the first to feature this groundbreaking technology. "The MS50 and MS55D are perfect examples of how Advanced YST delivers a satisfying, full-range, audio experience from smaller speaker enclosures," noted Henio Arcangeli, Jr., vice president/general manager, Consumer Products Division, Yamaha Corporation of America. "With the introduction of this new technology, Yamaha has significantly raised the bar in the level of performance that consumers should expect from their multimedia speakers."

A Rigid Speaker Cone Means Enhanced Bass Performance
At the heart of Yamaha's patented Advanced YST Technology is a high- performance Adjustable Negative Impedance Converter (A.N.I.C.). This device automatically regulates the level of negative impedance in the current, controlling the motion of the speaker cone, and forcing it to maintain a stiff, rigid shape. This increased and maintained rigidity greatly improves the speaker cone's ability to move air while also helping to channel and contain low-frequency waves inside the speaker cabinet. The accuracy and detail of the resulting sound is greatly improved over non-Advanced YST systems, while the better regulation of sound pressure levels maximizes the performance of the speaker's bass port.

An additional benefit provided by Advanced YST is the more efficient use of power from a system's amplifier. This allows Advanced YST systems to deliver better performance at lower wattage levels than similarly powered systems.

Er is een nieuwe movie van Tiberian Sun uit. Je kon hem ook al vinden op een demo CD van het Duitse blad Gamestar, maar nu staat hij ook op het web. De demo is ongeveer 6 minuten en weegt 60Mb. Ik heb hem zelf nog niet binnen, maar de kwaliteit schijnt erg goed te zijn. Je ziet naast gameplay ook stukjes van cut-scenes.

Download hem hier!

Bij Gamewire hebben ze een review van de Teac 6x/24x SCSI CD-Recorder op hun site geparkeerd. Hier heb je een stuk info over de performance van het ding:

So, does the Teac meet the two criteria - reliability and speed - that was mentioned in the intro? The answer - yes and yes. First, I will deal with reliability. Since getting my drive 2 weeks ago, I have burned 26 successful CDs and 0 bad CDs. If that isn’t reliability, then I do not know what is. Remember, SCSI devices offer a better throughput ratio so as to transfer data to the CD with a bigger cushion for possible errors. The throughput is larger and more stable, which allows for the perfect burning that I have witnessed so far. Along with the ratio, the drive comes with a 2 MB buffer that again allows for more accurate and faster burning. As for speed, the Teac suffers a little. In the age of the 8x writer, this 6x drive seems a little under powered.

U-Games heeft een preview gepost van Soldier of Fortune. Wéér een fps-er, maar wel met vette graphics. Ok, dat hebben ze tegenwoordig allemaal. Dit zo is wel leuk: eindelijk ventjes die er niet allemaal hetzelfde uit zien (zoals bij Half-Life):

No more generic skins for the baddies, there will be small distinguishable differences in clothing and this goes as far as eyewear! Imagine a gang of youths, each with a completely different look; one wears a leather jacket and Doc Martins and the next is in a trenchcoat, and Fluevogs, etc. etc. Mix that in with the scripting Raven has added and the possibilities become next to endless. Baddies will actually use more effectively the environment to stay alive. Hostages, other baddies, dead bodies, etc. will actually be used as shields to save their own lives, and to be honest that probably is just the tip of the iceberg. On this, John Scott, a Programmer chap at Raven said that Soldier of Fortune will include "A completely new modelling system, lots of new deathmatch options, a completely configurable menuing system and lots of tweaks to the existing engine. I'm afraid I can't go into much more detail."

In navolging van Riva3D en Riva Station heeft ook Planet Riva benchmarks gepost waarmee de performance van patch 224 vergeleken wordt met de nieuwe 225 server patch. De info vind je hier.

Het is nog niet bevestigd door Intel, maar het schijnt dat de Pentium III ook in een Socket-370 versie komt! Het gaat om de 550, 600 en de 650MHz processors. Ze gebruiken wel een FSB van 100MHz in plaats van 133MHz de de P3 zal gaan gebruiken.

Intel Corp. is planning to introduce a socketed version of its microprocessors to enable new, innovative PC form factors, according to customers briefed by the Santa Clara, Calif., company earlier this week.

Essentially, the new "FC-PGA 370" configuration is nothing more than a Pentium III in a low-cost socket, similar to the 370-pin pin grid array (PGA) socket used by Intel's low-cost Celeron microprocessor, according to sources close to Intel. Intel will use "flip-chip" technology to bond the die to the package.

Sources said the flip-chip design will allow new, thinner PCs to be developed, allowing for more creativity in designing a PC chassis. By contrast, a Pentium III will usually ship inside Intel's single-edge cartridge module, whose physical dimensions are considerably larger than the microprocessor inside it. In addition, the module is mounted vertically, perpendicular to the motherboard.

A 370-pin flip-chip version of Intel's 550- and 600-MHz Pentium III MPUs will be added in the fourth quarter, and a 650-MHz flip-chip Pentium III will be shipped in the first quarter of 2000, sources said. A 418-pin option is under consideration to handle faster speeds and multiprocessor capabilities, according to confidential roadmap documentation obtained by EBN. All flip-chip Pentium III microprocessors will use a 100-MHz system bus, at least at the outset.

While the socketed Celeron and socketed flip-chip Pentium III may look similar, the Celeron will run at a slower speed and will also use a slower 66-MHz microprocessor bus. In the first quarter of 2000, for example, a flip-chip Pentium III will be released at 650-MHz, while a Celeron microprocessor will be released shortly thereafter at 533 MHz, according to the roadmap.

Pricing for the new flip-chip Pentium IIIs was not immediately available. A spokesman for Intel Corp., Santa Clara, Calif., declined to comment on unannounced products.

Hier kan je het nalezen.

Ik zag bij AMD Zone een nieuwsposting afkomstig van The Micropressor Report, waarin wordt gesproken over een aantal zwakheden in het design van de K7:

The K7 has a surprisingly simple branch predictor for a cpu with such a long pipeline, where a mis-branch prediction is much more costly than a shorter pipelined CPU such as the K6. The K7 uses a 2048-entry branch prediction table (BHT) while the K6 has a large 8192-entry BHT. The 2 bit Smith prediction algorithm is also much weaker than the exotic 2 level GAs predictor used in the K6. Also the L2 tag ondie only supports up to 512KB 2way set associative L2 cache not 4way like PII/III do with much slower off die tags.

Also, K7 only has 24 32 bit internal integer registers, which is very small when you realize that most modern RISC architecture have 32 or 40 logical integer registers and EPIC has even more. Also, to save die space and shorten speed path, AMD did not implement bypass circuitry, so that a write has to occur before a read. This is so in both floating point and integer registers, just that the integer registers have to delay the read access until write and tag comparisons complete. The 36-entry scheduler space in the FPU unit is split into three groups of 12 entries, one group for each excution pipeline, so if one's code isn't evenly using the 3 pipelines, the reorder space will appear to be a bit smaller than 36 entries.

Also, from the pics from firingsquad and projections from MPR. K7 might have a power consumption approach 40W, the thermo limitation for SLOT1 type design. Since the stress limit of the gate oxide is only 1.6V, the working internal voltage for K7, and it may not like the added juice too much. This would disappoint many overclockers that like to increase voltage.

Hmm...minder. Nog een paar weken en dat weten we het echt...

Ik kwam via Hardware One bij deze mistige japanse site waar ze foto's hebben van o.a. de Abit BP6 en een QDI dual socket370 riser card. Echt dual, dus 2 sockets op de riser card en die prik je dan in je bestaande Slot1 plank. Kan dat werken?

Tja, als dit gaat werken dan kan Abit ook wel weer afperen met z'n BP6, waarvan je hier een plaatje hebt:

AGN 3D heeft een op z'n news page een interview gepost met een ventje van Matrox, over de slechte OpenGL performance van de G400. Zit de hardware aan z'n limiet, of is het een driver issue?

Q: Even as good as the G400 Max looks like with dozen of sites reviewing them, there is only one major drawback: low OpenGL performance is lower resolutions in games like Quake2 or Quake3 Test. The question is, is this due to hardware limitations or still-to-be-optimized OpenGL driver?

A: This seems to be a limitation of the OpenGL. We are working on improving the performance on this. In my opinion, it should go up fairly quick... If we compare the speed at high resolution we clearly see that the card is capable of handling what we throw at it! :

Uiteraard zijn er meer vragen, die vind je hier.

EA Sports domineert de sports game industrie met spellen als FIFA 99, NBA Live 99 en NHL 99. FiringSquad heeft o.a. de "2000" edities van FIFA, NBA Live, NHL en Madden opgenomen in hun EA Sports Preview, compleet met mooie screenshots:

Er komt altijd een tijd dat je poeter oud en traag zal zijn. FiringSquad heeft daarom voor ons een guide geschreven om hem weer op snelheid te krijgen, de Pricing and Upgrade Guide.

It seems like just a few months ago that you laid down $5,000 for that state of the art Pentium MMX 233, with 128MB of RAM and an unheard of 12GB of storage. For some reason though, the world has decided to specifically target your for obsolescence, and now everyone and their grandma are sporting Celerons, K6-3s, and Pentium III powerhouses.

Er zijn ook weer nieuwe Unified Drivers voor Creative Labs kaarten. Haal ze hier.

Met Unified Drivers drivers is het mogelijk om met je TNT / TNT2 kaart gebruik te maken van Glide API van 3dfx. Let wel op: de drivers zijn alleen voor Creative Labs kaarten!

Ik lees bij Voodoo Extreme dat nVidia nieuwe reference drivers voor TNT en TNT2 heeft gereleased. Volgens de info op VE ondersteunen de nieuwe drivers resoluties van 1280x960 en 1600x900. Hier heb je de download locaties:

Detonator Win9x AGP - 02/17/99 Size: 1080 KB
Detonator WinNT 4.x - 02/17/99 Size: 554 KB
Detonator Win9x PCI - 02/17/99 Size: 1070 KB

GA-Sports heeft 3 screenshots van Electronic Arts' Formula One Championship gepost. Hier heb je de tumbnails:

Wow, dat is definately een stap vooruit ten opzichte van F1RS / Monaco Grandprix. F1 Race fanaten checken de 1:1 shots bij hier.

Ars Technica heeft op de frontpage wat zooi geplaatst over de plannen van de Australische regering om een wet aan te nemen die bedoelt is om een vorm van Internet censuur toe te gaan passen:

When I read about this I was absolutely stunned. The Australian federal government is trying to pass a Broadcasting Services Amendment (Online Services) Bill, intended to shield Australians from "objectionable Internet content." It's already passed in the Senate, and it's going up for debate in the other house. The bill is based on the concept of an Internet Content Host (ICH), which is basically anyone who hosts internet content in Australia. "Internet content" is defined as anything that is "kept" on a computer and available to access via an Internet carriage service. The word "kept" is left suitably undefined so that pretty much everything including email is, prima facie, "Internet content." Any Internet content that is "R rated" must be put behind some sort of access control mechanism that keeps out minors-and this includes content held by private individuals in Australia. If the above isn't fascist enough for you, here's where it gets really bad.

The bill proposes a notify-and-take-down scheme, where anyone can file a complaint against an ICH, and the ICH has 24 hours to take down the objectionable content. The government must investigate the complaint and notify the complainant of the outcome. The government, however, is not required to notify the ICH that there has been a complaint filed, nor are they allowed to disclose the identity of the complainant. To make matters worse, if the ICH takes the content down and someone else later uploads or emails them some more "objectionable material", they'll be found in violation and be subject to penalties.

It's all pretty shocking, and I find it hard to imagine how a "democratic" government could pull something like this. I'm actually hoping the articles I read on it were hyped-up or in error, because if this sort of thing can happen in Australia, it can happen anywhere. Here are some links so you can learn more about it:

There's a great summary of the legislation and its impact here. Here's a link to Electronic Frontiers Australia, a group that's been covering this whole fiasco. -Hannibal

Hmm...erg vies. Is dit het begin van het einde? Check Ars Technica voor meer info.

De nieuwe Logitech v8.4 mouse drivers maken het gebruik van PS/2 Rate overbodig. Met de nieuwe drivers kun je nu zelf de sampling rate instellen! Hier is de info van Stomped.com:

The Logitech Mouse Drivers v8.4 are out and they have a really cool new feature. Those using Logitech PS/2 mice no longer need to run PS2rate to get their Quake games to be smooth. Logitech has built adjustable sampling rates into their driver! Now we just need somebody at Microsoft to do that to their driver. This shows that there Logitech definitely has some gamers in their midst. Thanks Maddes.

Drivers haal je dus hier.

Ik kwam via Ars Technica bij artikel op het engelse deel van de (duitse) c't site. Tests van c't hebben aangetoond dat er een vette kever in MacOS X zit:

A fatal bug in MacOS X Server renders Apple's new operating system practically useless as a web server. The problem is particularly critical since it affects MacOS Server X release 1.0 in one of its key features.

During a server load test at c't Labs, the Apache web server built into the OS caused the machine to halt with a fatal "System Panic" error following successive CGI script queries.

CGI scripts (Common Gateway Interface) are a common server extension, frequently used for web queries. The test stopped the system cold whenever 32 or more processes repeatedly requested CGI scripts from the server -- this corresponds to the activity usually caused by several hundred surfers. It was always necessary to do a hard reboot via the reset switch. Neither the restart feature ("press R to Reboot") nor the low-level debugger ("press M to Monitor") built into MacOS X would work at this point.

Ach, het idee dat je een server kunt draaien op een Mac is zo revolutionair dat niemand het aan zal durven om het uit te proberen...

Het is op dit moment nogal triest gesteld met het hardware nieuws, er valt absoluut niets te vinden. Daarom maar een rijtje met game reviews, previews e.d.:

ION Storm feature (Storm Troopers)
Half-Life: Opposing Force interview (Gamespot UK)
Erik Bethke / Starfleet Command interview (Intelligamer)
Tim Williams / Giants interview (GA-Source)
Ultima Ascension preview (Gamesdomain)
Homeworld preview (U-Games)
Giants preview (Gamers Central)
Phantom Menace screensaver download (3DFiles)

Alienware heeft twee foto's gepost van een systeem in PCG configuratie. Hier heb je de stof:

We shagged 'em rotten, baby! Our alien spies snagged us these secret screenshots of PGC in action baby! Yeah! These twin boards of terror handle Quake 3 in 1600 x 1200 like it was 320 x 240! It's MADNESS!

Bij PC Gamer Online hebben ze een preview gepost van Interstatie '82:

Interstate ‘82 uses Activision's new hardware-only "Dark Side" 3D engine, and will be one of the first games to introduce an effect called bump mapping, which is used to highlight cracks and potholes in the road. The engine also supports layers of fog that, according to programmer Malcom Lansell, let mountain peaks rise up out of misty valleys. Additionally, more liberty with polygons has allowed the developers to expand the desert Interstate landscape. Says Zack Norman, "Imagine driving in internal, more immersive environments like Las Vegas sewers or an 80s shopping mall. Keep in mind though--the game needs large open environments to do combat in as well. The desert provides a great place to perform 150mph auto-jousts. Both types of environments add different and exciting types of gameplay for single- and multi-player."

Bumpmapping! Screenshots zijn toch al redelijk tof, ook zonder bumpmapping: