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Thursday, July 17, 2008

The iPhone is More Powerful Than the DS, But Sucks As a Controller [Iphone Gaming]

Source: http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/gizmodo/full/~3/337372782/the-iphone-is-more-powerful-than-the-ds-but-sucks-as-a-controller

You know that the iPhone is powerful enough to render 3D games like Star Wars: The Force Unleashed, as well as various other ones we covered in the marathon review session, but just how powerful is it? How does it compare to actual gaming handhelds like the Nintendo DS and PSP? An EA developer put it this way. On a scale of the three, it's in between the DS and the PSP, but sliding more towards the PSP. That's right. In terms of power, you can expect to see games that look at least as good as the DS once developers get enough (read: more than four months) development time with it.

But how good is the iPhone in terms of being a game console? How good are the tilt controls for accepting input for programs that you to make small adjustments with the phone in 3D space? Here's what the same developer from EA said to better help you conceptualize its accelerometer. "Think of it as a loose analog stick...you get lots of random data." Developers need to create smoothing algorithms in order to take random data points and interpret them into a curve which can then be used as movement info. Think about the Wii Remote before the MotionPlus add-on in Wii Sports Baseball. Remember all that jiggling your bat did? Yeah, this is that.

Photonic breakthrough could mean 60x faster internet speeds

Source: http://feeds.engadget.com/~r/weblogsinc/engadget/~3/337100749/

Filed under: Networking

Every so often, we get wind of some new "breakthrough" from a few guys / gals in a lab that promises to simply revolutionize the web. A team from the University of Sydney is the latest bunch to do so, claiming that a piece of scratched glass (or a Photonic Integrated Circuit, if we're being proper) could enable internet speeds 60 times faster than "current Australian networks." Essentially, the "circuit uses the scratch as a guide or a switching path for information," and the resulting product is "photonic technology that has terabit per second capacity." Call us when you folks get everything ironed out -- we'll be over at Sigbritt Löthberg's house.

[Via The Future of Things, thanks iddo]

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Sony VAIO Z-series vs. MacBook Air: fight!

Source: http://feeds.engadget.com/~r/weblogsinc/engadget/~3/337117710/

Filed under: Laptops

Like we mentioned in our hands-on impressions, the new Z-series laptops from Sony are in many ways impressive, but in ultimate thinness they leave a bit to be desired. This is perhaps best demonstrated best by Journal du Geek's comparison shots here with the MacBook Air. Sure, the Z wins all over the place on specs, with Centrino 2, discreet graphics, a full-size laptop hard drive bay, and what was that? Oh yeah, a Blu-ray drive. The Z also manages a smaller footprint, thanks in part to a smaller 13.1-inch screen in that shorter 16:9 aspect ratio, but also due to its slim bezels surrounding the screen and keyboard -- something the Air could do well to take note of -- but the actual 1-inch thickness seems dramatically fat compared to its ultrathin competition. Overall, it's all about what kind of laptop you're really gunning for, but if thin is the ultimate goal, you're going to be much better off with the X300, X200 or Envy 133 on the PC side.

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Legion Hardware offers advice for building the best Crossfire rig

Source: http://feeds.engadget.com/~r/weblogsinc/engadget/~3/337301453/

Filed under: Desktops

Choosing the right graphics card / chipset combo to give you the most bang for the buck is always tricky business, and even moreso when you're looking to get the most out of some brand new hardware like AMD's Radeon HD 4000 series cards. Thankfully, the folks at Legion Hardware have now stepped in to help out a bit, although, as is often the case, it's not entirely a clear cut choice. If it's a bargain you're looking for though (relatively speaking), it seems like pairing an ASUS P45 motherboard with a couple of Radeon HD 4850 graphics cards (for a total of about $550) will give you enough performance to impress all but the most demanding gamer. If you want to push those benchmarks as far as possible, however, you'll have to go up to an ASUS X48 board, although even the folks at Legion Hardware question whether the mere 5% performance gain is worth the extra cost. If you want to make your own decision though, you can hit up the link below and dig through the numbers yourself.

[Via PC Perspective]

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Researcher claims to have discovered universal attack code for Intel chips: no one is safe

Source: http://feeds.engadget.com/~r/weblogsinc/engadget/~3/337345888/

Filed under: Desktops, Laptops

Also, he says he found Intel's diary and is totally telling everybody about that one thing. But seriously, we think Kris Kaspersky is being a bit of a tease here. He claims to have found a flaw in Intel's processors that would allow a hacker to bust up on a computer using JavaScript or TCP/IP, with no regard for what operating system the computer is running... only he won't say what it is. He's planning on unveiling the attack at the Hack In The Box conference in Malaysia this October, where he says he'll show working code that can take control of computers, all of which he plans to release publicly. The attack takes advantage of known errata in chips, which most vendors have a workaround for in BIOS, but not all. XP, Vista, Linux, BSD and Mac operating systems are all vulnerable, so we all get to run around panicking until October -- unless somebody figures it out first.

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