Betanews weet ons te vertellen dat Allaire een nieuwe beta versie van Homesite, mijn favoriete HTML / PHP / Javascript / Stylesheet editor (eigenlijk doe ik er alles mee, zelfs tekstverwerken ), op het net heeft gegooid:

Allaire has released the third beta of HomeSite 4.5, codenamed Arizona. HomeSite is the top full featured HTML editor on the market today. This next version of HomeSite is targeted for release in the Fall of 1999. The full list of changes and new features implemented to date is in the Beta 3 release notes. To download this new version, create an Allaire beta account and you are set to go. What are you waiting for? Go stamp out some bugs!

Beta 3 kun je hier naar binnen trekken.

Het 'hack m'n Linux of NT doos' contest dat PC Week 4 dagen geleden uit schreef (zie deze nieuwsposting) is gekraakt. De Linux bak werd als eerste open gelegd, wat op zich niet de schuld was van Linux, maar van een exploit in een commercieel (closed source) cgi script:

I suppose it's not Linux who should get blamed but the company that _sells_ CGI scripts with improper security checks. This applies to Unix, NT or whatever other operating system you are running.

The problem here, IMHO, is that the CGIs used were not open source. I'm sure that if they had been open source somebody out there will have done a security audit on them and patched the holes.

De bedoeling was oorspronkelijk om de beveiliging van Linux en WinNT te testen, maar dat is nu dus duidelijk niet gelukt...

The Register heeft navraag gedaan bij een aantal engelse PC bouwers over fluctuaties in de DRAM prijzen. Prijzen blijken nog steeds asociaal hard omhoog te gaan, alleen gisteren al 20%:

Colin Collier, Carrera MD, yesterday afternoon said: "DRAM prices seem to be going up by the minute." Richard Goddard, MD of memory distributor GSI, told a similar story yesterday.

"We've had a small influx of orders, but next week is when the really busy period will start," he said. "The problem is actually pinning down the extent of how production has been affected by the earthquake.

And rumours of shortages were rife, with Goddard saying manufacturers in the Far East had warned of a $16 price hike on 128MB DIMMs over the weekend. But he said that Europe was largely not willing to take on these price rises, seeming to think that prices would stabilise or drop over the weekend.

"But I'm not so sure about this," said Goddard.

"There's only one thing for certain at the moment," said Stanley. "Prices certainly aren't going to go down."

Na het disaster met het 'derde RIMM slot probleem' (zie deze nieuwsposting) heeft Intel besloten om de geplande introductie van de i820 chipset op 27 september uit te stellen:

The chip giant today told systems builders that it would not start shipping the i820 on Monday – the planned launch date.

The i820 chipset – called "Camino" - is needed for the use of Rambus memory, which also suffered a set back to its launch date earlier this year.

No new shipping date was given for the i820 chipset, but one source was told by Intel that it could be a matter of months.

Fiets richting The Register voor het complete verhaaltje...

The Register heeft een nieuw artikel gepost over de aardbeving in Taiwan, met info over de gevolgen voor o.a. moederkoek bakkers. Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC) en United Microelectronics Corp. (UMC), de twee belangrijkste chip bakkers van Taiwan en beide gevestigd in Hsinchu science park, kunnen voorlopig nog niet aan de slag. TSMC en UMC produceren veel chips voor bijv. moederbord en videokaart fabrikanten zoals Asus. Als deze fabrikanten geen chippies meer krijgen en droog komen te staan als gevolg van de stilstaande produktielijnen, dan begint het hele zaakje vast te lopen...

End user prices for graphics cards and other products will probably rise, said Mr. Li, but he was unable to estimate the size of the increase. "That depends on the new prices quoted by our supplier."

There are no problems with production lines at major motherboard and notebook computer maker Asustek, said a company representative, but supply of some components, in particular, chipsets is a potential problem.

Motherboard and PC makers may find it harder to get chipsets, said Don Floyd, of Credit Lyonnais Securities Asia in Taipei.

Independent chipset vendors like VIA Technologies, Silicon Integrated Systems, and Acer Labs source almost all their chips from companies in Hsinchu, and may have no second source, he said. There is also an continuing shortage of Intel chipsets, such as the 440BX, and Intel's new 810 chipset has proved unpopular with motherboard and system designers.

The government's National Science Council has intervened with the state-owned power company on behalf of chip makers. Taipower will be providing 80 to 85 per cent of power requirements by Monday, and possibly as soon as Saturday, said representatives of TSMC and UMC.

JC heeft wat info gepost over de Freeway FW-K7VM Athlon plank (schijnt geOEMde Asus te zijn). Het ding blijkt erg goed te zijn voor Athlon overclocking:

According to Daiki, certain folks have tried -- and succeeded -- to overclock the K7/Athlon without using resistors. They merely altered the bus speed on the Freeway FW-K7VM motherboard and experienced no troubles. Much to my distaste, though, it appears that memory is acting synchronously, increasing proportionally to bus speed. A pox on those responsible! Anyway, the Freeway board offers bus clocks (bus speed is twice the clock) of 90, 95, 100, 101, 102, 103, 104, 105, 106, 107, 108, 109, 110, 111, 112, 113, 114, 115, 116, 117, 118, 119, 120, 121, 122, 123, 124, 125, 133, 140, and 150MHz. Core voltage selections are 1.3 to 2.0 in increments of 0.1v, it seems. Pretty standard, and I think this is sufficient to hold the future 180nm Athlons. The board has 5 PCI slots (the minimum for me) and lots of pretty colors.

Epic heeft een changelog gepost met alle veranderingen die zij sinds de release van de 3dfx UT demo hebben uitgevoerd. Het ding is ietsie te heftig om hier volledig te posten, daarom pik ik er alleen de belangrijkste items uit:

Gameplay
- player no longer hear own footsteps walking
- reduce falling damage w/ jumpboots
- fixed problem with instant hit weapons at point blank range
- louder pain sounds
- startup message fades faster
- fixed difficulty level displayed on scoreboard
- translocator target no longer bounces off triggers and control points
- players drop flag if feign death
- Fixed some sudden death overtime problems (fraglimit + timelimit, tied player suicides, etc.)
- included nopowerups mutator in botpack.int
- Added frags per hour readout to the scoreboard.
- Added various stats features to the game. Game now tracks "Frags per Hour" and the top 3 deathmatchers on a server.

Graphics/Effects/Text
- improved minigun impact effect in software
- better blood hit effect for bullet hits in software
- bodies gib if they land on a player's head
- improved blood splat positioning on walls
- added grenade and shockrifle combo move decal effects
- adjusted first person weapon position at high FOV
- updated disconnect symbol
- support > 16 players on team scoreboards
- fixed "live feed from" font size changes
- Bigger/brighter disruption effect for translocator target
- removed girly death scream
- improved bloodsplats trying to avoid popping out while player is looking at them
- fixed some items playing wrong pickup message (e.g. clips claiming to have 50 bullets)
- made crosshair green by default
- Added a "ServerInfo" screen that can be accessed by hitting F2. Has various info about the server including contact info and the message of the day.

Direct3D
- Implemented 32-bit color texture support in Direct3D
- Optimized Direct3D code for DirectX7 vertex buffers
- Fixed Direct3D z buffer selection
- Optimized D3D texture uploading a bit
- Matched D3D brightness to Glide brightness

Audio
- Got A3D and EAX support back in (thanks Carlo and Aureal).

De fusie tussen S3 en Diamond heeft nu eindelijk de goedkeuring gekregen van de S3 en Diamond aandeelhouders, en kan nu dus doorgevoerd worden. Hier heb je wat spul uit de press release bij Savage Daily News:

S3® Incorporated (Nasdaq:SIII - news) and Diamond Multimedia Systems, Inc. announced today that the merger of the two companies has been approved by both S3 and Diamond's shareholders.

Under the terms of the merger, shareholders of Diamond Multimedia will receive .52 of a share of S3 stock for each share of Diamond Multimedia stock held.

``With the addition of Diamond Multimedia, S3 immediately expands its technology leadership beyond PC graphics and into several new, high-growth markets including Internet audio, broadband communications and home networking,'' said Ken Potashner, Chief Executive Officer of S3 Incorporated.

``S3 now has several key elements in place -- comprehensive technology, strong distribution channels and an established brand name to play a leading role in the rapidly evolving personal computing and Internet appliance markets.''

Restructured Business Model

Based on the completed merger, S3 will be comprised of four distinct business units:

-- Communications -- Designing the information infrastructure for tomorrow's home and small office environments, S3's Communications technology includes home networking products, broadband communications products and Internet appliances, including the Rio players. S3's Communications business unit is headquartered in Vancouver, Wash.

-- Multimedia -- Building on S3's historical leadership in PC Graphics, the Multimedia business unit is responsible for desktop and mobile graphics products, audio products and other forthcoming consumer and PC-based graphics and video initiatives. S3's Multimedia business unit is headquartered in Santa Clara.

-- Professional Graphics -- Based on exclusive access to IBM's high-end graphics technology, S3's Professional Graphics unit is committed to bringing superior price/performance solutions, such as the Fire GL1 accelerator, to the workstation-level graphics market. S3's Professional Graphics business unit is based in Starnberg, Germany.

-- RioPort -- Providing the ultimate online site for digital audio content, RioPort is seeking to revolutionize the way people access and listen to music and spoken word audio. RioPort is headquartered in San Jose, Calif.

Check de volledige press release voor meer info.

David McNett (aka Nugget) van Distributed.net heeft een .plan update gepost over de trage statsbox updates van de afgelopen dagen (het duurt tegenwoordig tot minimaal 17:00u voordat de statistieken zijn geupdate, terwijl dat normaal gesproken al om 6:00u gedaan zou moeten zijn):

There is something quite unhealthy on statsbox at the moment which is causing daily updates to take an extremely long time to complete. Last night we disabled the phistory queries to see if that would alleviate the problem, and it didn't seem to help. I'm hoping to have time tomorrow to really take a close look at the issue. In the meantime, we're going to temporarily start restricting access to stats during portions of the update.

I'll post more as I know what's going on. It might turn out to be something simple... no way to know yet. [break] Ennuh, join de Dutch Power Cows voor het geval je dat nog niet gedaan hebt . Ik zie net dat we nu al 405 leden hebben!

Tevens een historisch feit in de geschiedenis van het RC5 grazen: Slashdot heeft Team EvangaLista (Mac club) van de eerste plaats verdreven in de overall stats!

*Update*: thanx to RemCow die ff aan gaf waar wél staat wat er fout is met de statsdoos: .plan update van Jim Nasby (Decibel): [/break] Well, there's good news and there's bad news. The good news is that I think we found out what was causing the major slowdown on stats-box (yesterday's stats-run took about 20 hours to complete, obviously not a good thing.

Working off of a NuggetHunch, I've disabled the participant history functions. It's too soon to tell for sure, but this seems to have brought the currently running update back up to normal speed. Of course, this means that you can't check your history right now.

The good news is that if this is the problem, we can probably cure it by adding memory to the box (256 meg ECC DIMMS, for those of you in a generous mood ;8P ). The current theory is that the history query is killing our caching, since it has to sift through all ~20 million records in the main rc5 table.

We should be able to tell in a few hours if this actually solved the problem or not. Thanks for your patience!

Billy van Voodoo Extreme vroeg 3dfx om een reaktie over de gedelayde release van de Voodoo4 (nu gepland voor ~februari 2000):

Some of 3dfx Interactive's executives have stated publicly that our next generation product may be delayed until Q1 and may not ship in Q4 in time for Christmas. Because of a few minor setbacks (that have been corrected), the Q4 date is admittedly very aggressive. With a technology product like this, it is not uncommon for unforeseen circumstances to arise in the final stages of product development. As a result, we are steering the public to expect our next generation product in Q1, because we believe this is the most probable result. We are standing by our statements that our next generation product will be head and shoulders above competitor's products and will solidify the technology lead for 3dfx. Additionally, our internal roadmap will maintain that lead for 3dfx well into the future.

Brian Burke
PR Manager
3dfx

Ik kwam deze redelijk grappige posting tegen bij Slashdot: Microsoft werknemer die onderzoek doet naar de gebruiksvriendelijkheid van Linux belt de Loki Entertainment support voor hulp bij het installeren van de Linux versie Civilization: Call to Power:

I am one of the support technicians for Loki Entertainment Software. This afternoon I received a message on my voicemail to call "Nick"--name changed to protect the victim--who was having trouble starting CivCTP for Linux on his Pentium III RedHat 6.0 system.

When I called him back, he thanked me for my quick response and said that he was new to Linux and wasn't sure if he'd installed the game right. He then said, "This machine is going to used for... well, I'm a Microsoft employee and my group is doing a usability study on Linux." [break] ...verhaaltje gaat verder met voorbij vliegende Tarballen en andere Linux installatie zooi... [/break] Ordinarily, I am very respectful to newbies. I don't even laugh at them behind their backs--especially if they have been looking through man pages and reference books trying to figure things out. This time I almost peed my pants.

Then the big question dawned on me:

What does it mean when Big Bill gives brand new P-III 450's running Linux to game-playing newbies who don't read reference books, manuals, How-To's or README's for a usability study?

Can you say "viable desktop environment?" [break] Slashdot is vooral leuk vanwege het comment systeem. Hier een reaktie van een /. lezer : [/break] Microsoft's doing a usability study on Linux. Okay.

I'm going to whack anyone who's asking why they're using clueless newbies. Microsoft is doing it for two reasons; one, a clueless newbie is the typical Microsoft customer. Two, a clueless newbie will easily get frustrated and say that Linux sucks, giving Microsoft more FUD ammunition. Both of those points should be obvious.

Microsoft is loading for bear with this. They're going to put all these total idiots on overpowered machines. They're going to have them use Linux for a few weeks. Then Windows 2000 for a few weeks. Release the 'study' as 'fact' and genuine 'scientific research' in their battle against all unixes.

Even Linus says Linux isn't ready or meant for the desktop. *sigh* Oh well. More Microsoft FUD on the way.. excuse me while I put on my PR Flak Jacket.

Penstart Systems heeft een review gepost van de FIC SD-11, een Athlon plankje gebouwd rondom de AMD 751 Northbridge, met 5 PCI slots, 1 ISA slot en 3 DIMM gaten:

All in all I am impressed with this board. It is the first Athlon product that we have seen from FIC, and it definitely won’t be the last. VIA will be releasing the KX133 chipset this November and FIC is planning to release the SD-12 to utilize this advanced chipset. Until then we have the SD-11.

Its stability, relative performance, and ease of use really put it up there. It also worked with 3 different types of memory, with different combinations of each. The use of the AMI bios is somewhat annoying, but it is a very fast BIOS on bootup. The manual is basic and does not explain many of the advanced features in the BIOS, but it does a decent job on identifying everything and giving you a good idea of the capabilities of the board.

When holding this board up against the latest BX based motherboards, it is found sorely lacking. The 120 and 133 Mhz bus speeds were available in the bios, but when either were used (in conjunction with PC 133 memory), the computer would not even boot up. So while those settings are present, they are not useful (or even work for that matter).

3D Soundsurge heeft een review gepost van de Absolute Multimedia Outrageous 3D Sound. Yet another Vortex II geluidskaart... De verschillen zitten 'm bij die Vortex II kaartjes vooral in de S/PDIF uitgang: de een heeft coax, en de ander doet het optisch. 3D Soundsurge zet ze op een rijtje:

Its nice to have choices and that’s just what you have in the Vortex 2 scene. We can sum it up with the following. If you want a COAX out then look to the Voyetra Turtle Beach Quadzilla or Aureal's new Vortex2 card SQ2500 as your best bet or maybe Home Studio Board with optical/coax i/o if you demands more than just digital out and got the cash. Homestudio also comes with a nice music bundle. The main disadvantage of choosing TB's boards are you can't use the reference drivers and you need two slots (just one PCI).

If you want optical out your choice stands between the Xitel's, Videologic's, Terratec's or Absolute Multimedia's Vortex 2 card. The only difference between these boards are the bundle where Xitel's has the TakStar headphones (can also be purchased alone for $40) or a price of $80 with no bundle while both Videologic and Terratec choose to include a music focused bundle and Absolute Multimedia went for a true gaming bundle and also included the excellent software DVD player WinDVD. Finally we don’t want to forget the first one out of the block. Diamond’s MX300 come with the retail version of Recoil, Zoran's softDVD player and some other nice software and the MX300 has the optional MX25 coax board for $39.95. With Aureal's new soundcard with Coax out the MX300 can only be considered a good choice if it's the cheapest you can find and don't care about digital out or if you really want Recoil or Zoran's softDVD player.

Nog maar vlak na de release van het kaartje heeft GA-Source al een review van de Marvel G400-TV. Hier wat info over de video-editing features van deze kaart, daar draait het immers allemaal om bij de Marvel G400:

With time and practice, you can definitely get professional results. The still shots above show just how good the image quality is when you don't need to worry about file size (dumping it back out to tape, or burning it on a CDR). The Marvel G400 is the only consumer grade and priced card that is capable of capturing full screen (704x480) full motion (30fps) video. The others can only maintain that framerate at MUCH lower resolutions. This is because Matrox includes a hardware video codec (compression/decompression) engine on the Marvel. The other manufacturers do theirs in software.

Het ding kost trouwens 300 dollar (~700 hollandse florijnen). Hopelijk werkt de Marvel wel op alle mobo's en krijgen we geen problemen zoals bij de Asus V3800TV, die heel veel problemen geeft (plank kan voltage niet trekken).

Alsof Intel de laatste tijd nog niet genoeg blunders heeft gemaakt, strooien ze ook nog eens dit disaster over ons heen: er blijkt een kever in de Camino chipset te zitten, waardoor het ding niet overweg kan met een derde RIMM slot. Dit stelt de fabrikanten van PC's met Camino borden voor de keuze of zij een computer met een bug gaan shippen, of dat zij al hun reeds gebouwde PC's met Camino planken gaan vervangen, wat een enorme kapitaalvernietiging zou betekenen. News.com doet verslag:

Intel has acknowledged a major problem involving Rambus memory technology that could delay for months computers that were scheduled to debut Monday, sources say.

[...] "This is so very close to the ship date for these machines that it must have been an absolutely terrible last-minute decision to make," said Peter Glaskowsky, an analyst with Microdesign Resources.

"It's going to be very, very expensive," he said. "Every machine put together has to be taken apart. The motherboards have to be taken apart and destroyed, and they have to build new motherboards."

The problem stems from how much memory the computers can use, Glaskowsky said. The systems built so far have three slots in the motherboard for Rambus memory, but now Intel has said that systems should only have two, he said.

The existence of the third memory slot can cause data to get lost while being transferred between memory and the main processor, Glaskowsky said. According to sources, Intel has notified manufacturers that the third slot is a problem, even if it's empty.

Some manufacturers may still ship affected computers, but others will scrap the guts of the systems they have built so far and start over, sources familiar with the problem say.

[...] Glaskowsky said that any system with three Rambus memory slots "isn't going to be shippable." However, another source said: "Most people are going to go ahead and ship with the bug," then update the computer innards when new parts are available.

Glaskowsky estimated that between 100,000 and a million systems already have been built with the defective parts.

Intel heeft het dus weer eens lekker voor mekaar... Check News.com voor het complete verhaaltje.

Matrox heeft de Matrox Marvel G400 aangekondigd, die net zoals de oude Marvel G200 van allerlei leuke video-editing features voorzien is. Hier heb je een schep uit de press release:

Matrox Graphics Inc. today announced the newest addition to the award-winning Marvel product line, the Matrox Marvel G400-TV.

As the most powerful all-in-one graphics, video capture and video editing card for the PC, the Marvel G400-TV delivers the industry highest 3D, 2D and multimedia performance plus the unparalleled quality of hardware Motion JPEG (MJPEG) video capture and editing, an onboard TV tuner with audio decoding, high quality DVD playback and the best PC out to TV functionality on the market. In addition to achieving the fastest 3D gaming acceleration with the flagship Matrox G400 chip, this all-in-one graphics plus video editing card adds to the most comprehensive all-in-one solution with unique features that include DualHead Display and support for Microsoft DirectX 6 Environment-Mapped Bump Mapping.

Targeted at video editors, PC enthusiasts, multimedia authors, family users and other demanding home and business users, the Marvel G400-TV builds on the Marvel G200-TV phenomenal success, which includes winning PC Computing Breakthrough Technology of the Year award (1998) and Best Video Editing Product of the Year from PC Magazine (1998). The new 16 MB Marvel G400-TV is an AGP card equipped with a 300 MHz UltraSharp RAMDAC, an easy-to-use Marvel connector box that simplifies connecting all audiovisual cables, and a value-added software bundle that includes the award-winning Avid Cinema video editing software.

Matrox is the only manufacturer to feature hardware MJPEG video capture and editing as part of an all-in-one solution, said Dan Wood, Vice President of Technical Marketing, Matrox Graphics Inc. This means that in addition to the most comprehensive feature set, the highest levels of speed and the most stunning image quality in the industry, the Marvel G400-TV offers exceptionally high quality video capture and editing that will continue to satisfy long after people tire of the shortcomings of a software solution.

En zo blaten ze nog een paar kilometer verder. Check AnandTech Webnews voor de complete press release.

Tweak3D heeft een aantal Shadowman screenshots gepost die demonstreren wat een T&L engine kan doen voor de beeldkwaliteit. Echt heel schokwekkend ziet het er niet uit, maar dat komt IMO vooral omdat de 3D engine van Shadowman gewoon lelijk is :

Fiets richting Tweak3D voor de 1:1 screenshots. Tevens vind je er een paar leuke wireframes die wat makkelijker laten zien waar alle polygonen zijn gebleven.

3DHardware.net heeft het eerste deel van hun Creative Labs Annihilator review gepost. De review is gebaseerd op een beta engineering plank en ook de drivers bevinden zich nog in alpha stadium:

As the drivers are still in alpha stage, we experienced heavy problems when trying to run simple game benchmarks. Currently, after extensive testing, we found that only Quake III Test seemed to give "accurate" results and it also seems as if nVidia has focused its attention on this particular game. [break] 3DH heeft de kaart getest onder Quake3 en afgaande op de slechte resultaten vermoeden ze dat de T&L engine op dit moment niet actief is: [/break] The thing about this card, and the GeForce 256 in general, that made us jump of surprise, and will probably upset a whole deal of people that read this review, is that even though the T&L of the GeForce 256 is in there, ready and waiting to be used, there is currently not ONE full software title that can use it! Our benchmarks with the popular Quake III Test indicate that T&L is not enabled on the GeForce 256 as a pretty distinct CPU scaling is present. Why is this so? We e-mailed John Carmack of ID Software and asked for clarification and this is what he replied:

"We don't use lighting, but the GEforce does do full transform and clip for us."

So, the problem seems to reside within the OpenGL drivers for the GeForce256 OR even worse, maybe this IS how the GeFoce256 T&L should perform which would be a total disappointment. Time will tell as we get new drivers.

Ik kwam via Voodoo Extreme bij deze posting van Mark Rein, op het GT Unreal Tournament Forum. Lijkt erop dat we de D3D/OpenGL demo ergens begin volgende week kunnen verwachten:

We're probably looking at some time over the week or perhaps Monday. There are few little bugs (from the earlier demo) still left to fix and test.

Gamecenter.com heeft het tweede deel van hun nVidia interview online gezet. Hier een belangrijke vraag, met een voorspelbaar antwoord:

GC: Let's postulate that around the holiday season, users can buy a GeForce with geometry acceleration, or a product that has considerably higher fill rate, but no geometry processing. Which should they buy, and why?

DK: It depends on what they like to do. If they want to play the leading-edge games, they're going to need geometry processing because a lot of the games coming out during the next 6 months are going to be pushing significantly higher levels of geometry. We've been working with about 20 developers for about a year to develop either custom versions or configuration options in games to provide up to 10 times the geometry of last year's games.

Without a GeForce-class product, you will not be able to play those games with those geometry options turned on. It's very clear that for characters and for model detail, there is a night-and-day difference with more geometry [than with less geometry]. Pushing resolution one notch [higher] is definitely better but it's not a night-and-day kind of difference.

Voodoo Extreme heeft twee screenshots gepost waarin de beeldkwaliteit van NFS3 mét en zonder T-Buffer anti-aliasing wordt vergeleken. Zoals wel vaker zijn de JPEGjes weer zo hard gecompressed dat er van enige kwaliteitsvergelijking al bijna geen sprake meer kan zijn. Er is een klein verschil te zien, vooral bij de strepen op de weg (links zonder, rechts met):

Uitleg van 3dfx:

Thought you might like to post these shots of the full scene AA ability of the 3dfx t-buffer. These are before and after shots of NFS3. See what we mean when we talk about the t-buffer upgrading your entire game library. Look at the tops of the buildings, the lines on the street and the top of the bunting. These shots do not even highlight the flashing of the trees and fence that the full scene AA addresses. Now imagine this image quality at 60 fsps at 10 x 7 x 32. Pretty stunning. We used the a regular copy of NFS3, and no the shots are not doctored. One is a Voodoo3 3000, the other is t-buffered.

Check de 1:1 screenshots bij Voodoo Extreme.

Silicon Graphics heeft bekend gemaakt dat het van de amerikaanse regering financiële support krijgt voor de ontwikkeling van een nieuwe Cray supercomputer met een performance van tientallen teraflops! Da's nog eens wat anders dan zo'n wit-granieten doos :

SGI (NYSE:SGI) today announced that it will be receiving significant financial development support for the company's Cray SV2TM supercomputer system from several U.S. government agencies, including the National Security Agency (NSA). The Cray® system, currently in development, will dramatically extend the capability of supercomputers. Specifically designed to meet the needs of the high-end user, SGI's Cray SV2 will provide exceptional memory bandwidth, interconnections and vector-processing capabilities.

[...] In addition to critical government applications, the Cray SV2 supercomputer will contribute to advances in areas such as automotive design, aerospace engineering, weather and climate prediction, and academic research. The supercomputer will feature powerful vector processors while exploiting SGI's ccNUMA (cache-coherent non-uniform memory access) architecture. Plans call for the system to scale to peak performances of multiple tens of teraflops, many times faster than any supercomputer in existence today. One teraflop is equivalent to a trillion calculations per second.

William Henning van CPU Review heeft z'n Athlon vs PIII price comparison van een update voorzien. De Athlon prijzen zijn afgelopen week omlaag gegaan en vooral het 600MHz model is nu beduidend goedkoper dan z'n PIII tegenhanger:

Biggest drop was on the K7 600Mhz; followed by the K7 550Mhz and the K7 500Mhz. Pentium 3 prices dropped by 3% at 600Mhz, 6% at 550Mhz, and actually rose by almost 2% at 500Mhz. [break] Dankzij deze prijsverlaging is een Athlon-600 + moederbord nu goedkoper dan een PIII-600/mobo combo! [/break] AMD is sitting pretty. Looking at the current pricing suggests that AMD is now trying to take the high-end single processor market away from Intel; they are no longer content. trying to sell their chips for about the same dollars as Intel; establishing price parity with the Pentium 3 while offering better performance at the same clock rate appears to no longer be the policy; beating Intel on price AND performance is the name of the new game.

It still looks like we will still be paying a bit more for an Athlon based system than for an equivalent clock speed Pentium 3 at 500Mhz and 550Mhz - but as motherboard manufacturers ramp up production and lower prices on their motherboards (which has started to come into play) that will no longer be the case.

ActiveWin weet ons te vertellen dat Download.com de shareware versie van WindowBlinds 1.0 op hun servers heeft gemikt:

WindowBlinds (see screen shot) is a utility designed to change the way you look at Windows. It allows you to completely customize your desktop by changing the style of title bars, buttons, and toolbars. You can change the look of buttons and check boxes by assigning them skins, or personalities, and you can assign buttons to toolbars that will launch programs. You can create your own skins, choose from the four that are included in the program, or download additional ones. You can also choose to exclude certain programs from WindowBlinds if you don't want to change their appearance. The cost to register this program is $19.95.

Trek 't proggie hier naar binnen.

Ik lees bij AnandTech Webnews dat Asus een zooitje BIOS updates voor z'n P2B en P3B moederplanken heeft gereleased. Hier krijg je de FTP locaties:

- P2B-D (Intel 440BX chipset) M/B, PnP BIOS Version 1011
- P2B-D2 (Intel 440BX chipset) M/B, ACPI BIOS Version 1011
- P2B-DS (Intel 440BX chipset) M/B, PnP BIOS Version 1011
- P3B-1394 PnP BIOS Revision 2001

3DFiles heeft een patch gepost voor de Rally Championship 2000 demo, waarmee het mogelijk wordt om een (force feedback) joystick/stuurwiel in de demo te gebruiken. De pets kun je vanaf onderstaande locaties naar binnen hengelen:

The following is a patch that will turn the current demo of rally 2000 into one with front-end menus that will allow controller/force feedback support.

Patch Primary Download Sites:
- ftp://ftp.cdrom.com/pub/3dfiles/games/rally_patch.zip
- http://ftp.telepac.pt/pub/3dfiles/games/rally_patch.zip

Patch Mirror Sites: (24 Hours For New Files)
- ftp://ftp.epix.net/pub/3dfiles/games/rally_patch.zip
- ftp://mirror.aarnet.edu.au/3dfiles/games/rally_patch.zip
- ftp://ftp.saix.net/pub/3dfiles/games/rally_patch.zip
- ftp://ftp.iol.it/3dfiles/games/rally_patch.zip
- http://www.task.gda.pl/pub/games/3dfiles/games/rally_patch.zip

Jeff Lawson (aka 'Bovine') van Distributed.net heeft een .plan update gepost met info over de verdwijning van de RC5 Win32 GUI client. Nieuwe leden van de Dutch Power Cows zullen gemerkt hebben dat de huidige clients alleen via een command line interface geconfigureerd kunnen worden, en dat gaat iets lastiger dan via een GUItje. Hier heb je de info uit de .plan file:

As some of you have noticed, the classic "win32gui" clients have recently been removed from the clients.html and select.cgi link pages. The separate "GUI" client was originally deemed necessary because the only alternative was a console-based version that had a number of significant limitations:

- required significant user involvement for installation.
- no user interface for client configuration.
- could not be used in environments needing an unobtrusive, hidden mode of operation that did not interrupt normal logouts
- inability to minimize to the system tray
- no extras, such as "moo sounds" or "log graphing" or pretty percentage bars.

HOW IT WAS
----------
We have maintained separate releases of both the GUI and CLI Win32 clients for quite awhile now, with our client development focused around the common CLI-based source code, and the GUI client involving a fair amount of clever wrappers around it. Although this made development of the separate versions easier than they would have been otherwise, there was always a significant delay in the release of the Win32GUI relative to the equivalent Win32CLI. Additionally, the GUI client has always suffered from numerous obscure operational bugs ranging from benign to severe issues.

[...] WHAT IS HAPPENING NOW
---------------------
A new "self-installer" version of the Win32CLI will now be available for download to make installations simplified. This installer is nearly identical to the installer that the Win32GUI came packaged in. Significant effort has been put into making "upgrading" from a prior Win32GUI installation easy.

[...] THE FUTURE
----------
It had always been part of our plans to try to slowly move away from producing a separate GUI and CLI versions. This included the Win32GUI and Win32CLI, the MacOS GUI and FBA clients, OS/2 GUI and CLI clients, RiscOS GUI and CLI, and possible X11/Gnome/etc-based clients. Instead, we planned to create "detached" front-end GUI applications that could be run alongside the traditional CLI clients. This would prevent the complexity of various OS-specific GUI programming requirements from affect the design of the common client source pool. Additionally, this detached mechanism might allow for remote configuration and monitoring to occur over a local network, which has always been a popularly requested feature for our clients.

So with all of this said, we will now be diverting our efforts from attempting to maintain separate GUI-specific versions of our clients and toward achieving our separated GUI frontend and CLI back-end model. We are beginning development of an extensible communications interface that will allow multi-platform GUI configuration utilities to be constructed and arbitrarily configure and monitor remote or local clients. The projected availablilty of these new clients cannot be easily estimated at this time, though we will definitely make future announcements when further information is known.

Wat er dus basicly gaat gebeuren is dat het hoofd losgerukt gaat worden van de koe, zodat je het achterwerk van de koe kunt updaten zonder er een heel nieuw hoofd voor te moeten ontwerpen...of zoiets .