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Games

Submission + - Build Your Own Left4Dead Map With Google Sketchup

Submitted by notthatwillsmith
notthatwillsmith writes: Do you love Left4Dead? Ever wanted to build a zombie-filled map of your hometown, office, or grocery store? Maximum PC just posted a how-to that shows you how to convert photos of real world locations into ready-to-play L4D 1 or 2 maps. It's everything you need to know in order to kill zombies with your friends, in the comfort of your own backyard.
Software

Submission + - Twitter on Scala (artima.com)

Submitted by
machaut
machaut writes: "Twitter, one of the highest profile Ruby on Rails-backed websites on the internet, has in the past year started replacing some of their Ruby infrastructure with an emerging language called Scala. Although they still prefer Ruby on Rails for user-facing web applications, they have started replacing Ruby daemon servers with Scala alternatives, and plan to eventually serve API requests, which comprise the majority of their traffic, with Scala not Ruby. This week several articles have appeared that discuss this shift at Twitter. A technical interview of three Twitter developers was published on Artima. One of those developers, Alex Payne, Twitter's API lead, gave a talk on this subject at the Web 2.0 Expo this week. His talk was covered in articles at Technology Review, Internet Evolution, and The Register."
Hardware Hacking

Submission + - Build Your Own Multi-Touch Tabletop "Surface&# 1

Submitted by notthatwillsmith
notthatwillsmith writes: We've all seen the nifty demos of Microsoft's Surface PC, but you may not have known that you can build your own multi-touch tabletop PC today. Maximum PC details the process, showing how you can build the cabinet and combine that with a standard PC, a decent projector, about $350 worth of assorted hardware (cameras, lenses, mirrors, and screens), and a handful of free apps to build your own Surface-like PC--without giving Microsoft $10,000.
Wireless Networking

Submission + - SPAM: Largest high-tech tornado chase ever set to spin

Submitted by
coondoggie
coondoggie writes: "Next month, with the help of a variety of high-tech gear, researchers will begin a wide-ranging project to better understand the origin, structure and evolution of tornadoes with the ultimate goal of being able to better predict when the destructive storms will happen and get people out of harms way faster. The National Science Foundation has given $9.1 million to the project known as Verification Of Rotation in Tornadoes EXperiment 2, or more simply, VORTEX2, which will take place from May 10-June 13. Researchers say Vortex2 is the largest attempt in history to study tornadoes, and will involve more than 50 scientists and 40 research vehicles, including 10 mobile radars covering 900 square miles of ground in southern South Dakota, western Iowa, eastern Colorado, Nebraska, Kansas, the Texas panhandle and western Oklahoma. [spam URL stripped]"
Link to Original Source
Hardware Hacking

Submission + - Oil-Immersion Cooled PCs Goes To Retail

Submitted by
notthatwillsmith
notthatwillsmith writes: "Everyone's seen mods where someone super-cools a PC by submersing it in a non-conductive oil. It's a neat idea, but most components aren't designed to withstand a hot oil bath; after prolonged exposure materials break down and components begin to fail. Maximum PC has an exclusive hands-on, first look at the new Hardcore Computer Reactor, the first oil-cooled PC available for sale. Hardcore engineered the Reactor to withstand the oil, using space-age materials and proprietary oil. The Reactor's custom-manufactured motherboard, videocards, memory, and SSD drives are submersed in the oil, while the dry components sit outside the bulletproof tank. The motherboard lifts out of the oil bath on rails, giving you relatively easy access to components, and the overall design is simply jaw-dropping. Of course, we'd expect nothing less for a machine with a base price of $4000 that goes all the way up to $11k for a fully maxed out config."
Graphics

Submission + - Facts and Fiction of GPU-Based H.264 Encoding

Submitted by notthatwillsmith
notthatwillsmith writes: We've all heard a lot of big promises about how general-purpose GPU computing can greatly accelerate common tasks that are slow on the CPU--like H.264 video encoding. Maximum PC compared the GPU-accelerated Badaboom app to Handbrake, a popular CPU-based encoder. After testing a variety of workloads ranging from archival-quality DVD rips to transcodes suitable for play on the iPhone, Maximum PC found that while Badaboom is significantly faster than X264-powered Handbrake in a few tests that require video resizing, it simply can't compare to the X264-powered Handbrake for archival-quality DVD backups.

Comment Re:This could kill PC gaming (Score 1) 5

by Ars-Gonzo (#23207888) Attached to: Phantom Lapboard May Actually Ship
I really think this type of peripheral is more for the PC gamers who want that "big screen" console experience. I know (back in my single days, at least) that I used to love hooking up my high-end gaming PC to the living room TV, so I could play Quake 3 on the 50-inch HDTV instead of my old 19-inch monitor. I don't think it's realistic to think that any console manufacturer is going to support mouse and keyboard, unfortunately.
Input Devices

Submission + - Phantom Lapboard May Actually Ship 5

Submitted by notthatwillsmith
notthatwillsmith writes: Despite never actually releasing the Phantom console, it looks like Phantom Entertainment (the company formerly known as Infinium Labs) may actually ship its sofa-friendly mouse/keyboard combo controller, the Lapboard, sometime this decade. The Lapboard is currently scheduled for a mid-June release at a price of $130, with the included laser mouse. Might this be enough to recoup the $73 million Infinium squandered on the Phantom console?

GameStop Short PS3s For Launch Day 134

Posted by Zonk from the so-close dept.
GameSpot reports that GameStop will have too few units for preorders on launch day. Employees are being "asked" to wait until the second shipment of consoles to purchase units, to ensure customers can receive what they paid (and waited in the cold) for. From the article: "For launch day, preorders will be filled in the order they were received, and those who had a preorder but are denied a system on day one will receive something for their troubles. GameStop will give those unfortunate customers (as well as unfortunate employees) a free used game or DVD valued at $19.99 or less when they eventually wind up purchasing the system. Those who reserved a system won't need to wait long to find out if they can expect a system on launch day. Starting tomorrow, customers who preordered a PS3 will be contacted personally by phone and updated on the status of their reservation, the rep said."

Dvorak On Microsoft/Novell Deal 218

Posted by CmdrTaco from the they-all-wear-party-hats dept.
zaxios writes, "John C. Dvorak has weighed in on the recent Novell-Microsoft pact. Among his insights: 'Microsoft has been leery of doing too much with Linux because of all the weirdness with the licenses and the possibility that one false move would make a Microsoft product public domain at worst, or subject to the GPL at best.' But now, 'the idea is to create some sort of code that is jammed into Linux and whose sole purpose is to let some proprietary code run under Linux without actually "touching" Linux in any way that would subject the proprietary code to the GPL.' According to Dvorak, it's only a matter of time before Linux is 'cracked' by Microsoft, meaning Microsoft figures out a way to run proprietary code on it."

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