Posted 11/19/09 at 12:30:18 PM by Will Smith

If I asked you in 1993, “What’s a PC?”, you’d probably have pointed to the beige box sitting under your desk at work. In 1999, if I asked you the same question, the odds are good that you’d have shown me a grey box in your den. In 2005, you would probably have shown me a shiny new notebook. But, as I sit here in 2009, I’m finding it difficult to answer this seemingly simple question.

Sitting on my desk, I have four extremely powerful computing devices, each with its own strengths and weaknesses. Let’s decide which of these are personal computers together.

Machine A features four CPU cores, and a host of GPUs and coprocessors. Machine B is more modest, with three CPU cores and a decent GPU. Machine C is even more modest, with a dual-core CPU, but a woefully inadequate GPU. Machine D pushes a lot of its workload onto dedicated processors, but still sports a dedicated GPU.

So, what’s all this powerful hardware? A home-built gaming PC, an Xbox 360, a Lenovo X200s notebook, and an iPhone 3GS.

Continue reading after the jump.

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Posted 11/17/09 at 01:47:35 PM by Loyd Case

In the past year, AMD seems to have been taking a sort of “strategy du jour” approach. We ship low cost processors! We do low power CPUs! Our parts are great for overclockers! We love home theater PCs!

Those messages weren’t really different from anything Intel, the 900 pound velociraptor in the CPU  business, would offer up, but there was always a tinge of desperation. This became more noticeable as Intel slowly and methodically stripped away whatever technology edge AMD had. Intel’s Nehalem was really the last straw: AMD couldn’t even claim “true quad core” any longer.

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Posted 11/12/09 at 02:30:00 PM by David Gerrold

Alan Turing should have been knighted. He should have been Sir Alan Turing. Instead he was prosecuted for being homosexual and committed suicide in despair. The British government conveniently forgot that Turing was the genius behind the Allies’ code-breaking efforts during WWII. The “Ultra Secret” is generally credited as the single most important advantage the Allied Forces had against the Axis powers, to the point that Eisenhower was sometimes reading Hitler’s mail even before Hitler.

Fifty-five years after Turing’s death, in response to an Internet campaign, the British government finally got around to acknowledging Alan Turing’s contributions and apologizing for its failure to honor him appropriately.

Sorry, guys, but an apology does not erase an egregious wrong.

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Posted 11/10/09 at 01:00:00 PM by Veronica Belmont

Since most of the projects and jobs I work on are online, that’s where I tend to pick up the most feedback. About a week ago, I came across a blog post where the author was musing on whether or not I was abandoning one of my shows, and I chimed in on the comments to clear the air. To my surprise, some of the other people who commented started pontificating on if I had “Googled” myself to find the blog post. Wait, haven’t we moved past that stigma? I mean, who doesn’t Google themselves these days?

That last question is a little unfair; clearly there are people in the world who haven’t bothered to set up a Google alert in their RSS reader for their own name, nor have they spent any time on the Technorati blog search page. Sometimes it’s virtually impossible for that to be a feasible way of finding information about oneself online (I’m looking at you, Will Smith). As our lives move increasingly online, the benefits of knowing what information about you is being put on the public internet are huge. When “Googling” has become a verb, we’re past the point of concerning ourselves over a vanity search here and there.

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Posted 11/05/09 at 02:30:00 PM by Nathan Grayson

You’ve probably seen the headlines. They’re pretty hard to miss. After all, when two of mainstream media’s favorite buzzwords – “violent videogames” and “terrorism” – cross streams, things get messy. If you’ve somehow managed to position yourself smack in the eye of the media storm, however, here’s the story: Last week, someone leaked a scene from Modern Warfare 2 in which you, the player, take up arms and gun down some people. As a terrorist. And those people? Innocent civilians who just happen to be in the wrong place at the wrong time.

And I’m perfectly ok with that. Why? We’ll get to that in a bit.

What I do take issue with, though, is Infinity Ward’s treatment of the whole fiasco. Moments after every videogame blog on the planet’s normal programming was interrupted to bring you this special report, Infinity Ward issued a statement. “Players have the option of skipping over the scene,” it read. “At the beginning of the game, there are two ‘checkpoints’ where the player is advised that some people may find an upcoming segment disturbing. These checkpoints can’t be disabled.”

Which is PR-speak for: “We’re afraid that the mainstream media’s going to tear us to shreds for this one, but we’ve handily built in this failsafe. You’ll never take us alive! Mwahahahaha! *Rockets into the sky using a concealed jetpack*.”

See, while stirring terrorists, innocent slaughter, and videogames into the same stew may initially leave a bad taste in people’s mouths, I think Infinity Ward’s taking a big step in the right direction. It’s a shame, then, that they’re so quickly scrambling to cover their tracks.

The rest is after the break!

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Posted 11/03/09 at 11:45:00 AM by Loyd Case

Whenever I think about Games for Windows Live, I feel like Charlie Brown, trying to kick the football that Lucy is holding. Ever optimistic, Charlie runs at the ball, only to have it jerked away at the last second. Games for Windows Live is like that – heavy on of promises, light on delivery. Someone needs to wrestle Windows gaming from the gaming group at Microsoft and give it back to the Windows team.

In other words, give the Games for Windows task to someone at Microsoft who actually cares about the PC. Windows 7 has been an impressive success, and it would be great of the team that’s responsible for making a better Windows for the PC take on the chore of making a better gaming experience for Windows.

Right now PC gaming at Microsoft lives in the Entertainment and Devices division, those edgy folks who brought you the Xbox, Xbox 360, Zune, Windows Mobile and Windows Automotive. While the Xbox 360 is finally profitable, the system has certainly has had its issues – red ring of death, anyone?

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Posted 11/02/09 at 11:30:14 AM by Quinn Norton

Like the other media industries, newspapers are having a hard time finding people that still want to give them money. Unlike music and film, newspapers aren’t selling to the customer so much as selling the consumer to the advertiser. But with circulations dropping and basically infinite new ad space becoming available on the Internet, advertisers aren’t signing up in droves. This being the news biz, there’s no lack of people to talk about why or what to do.

Some media pundits think readers who might pay are defecting to blogs. Others think Google News is being evil. Still others blame Craigslist.org for the death of classifieds.

Whatever the cause, my colleagues are running to the government for a bailout. Unlike car makers and banks, they aren’t asking for huge piles of money. They want a legislative bailout.

Continue reading after the jump.

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Posted 11/01/09 at 02:00:12 PM by Tom Halfhill

In August, Nikon introduced the world’s first digicam with a built-in video projector. The Coolpix S1000pj has a tiny projector—called a picoprojector—that can display photos and videos at 640x480-pixel resolution. In a dark room, projected images are visible up to six feet away, up to 40 inches wide.

Although picoprojector technology has been appearing in small video projectors and a few other devices, the S1000pj moves this revolutionary technology into a mainstream consumer product. Soon, “embedded” picoprojectors will be everywhere.

An embedded picoprojector is one that’s built into a device other than a stand-alone video projector. Digital cameras, video camcorders, and camera-equipped cell phones are obvious candidates. Embedded picoprojectors will probably become as common as webcams in notebook computers. Hand-held videogames, media players, portable TVs, and ebook readers are additional possibilities. Picoprojectors will be used for advertising displays, vehicle entertainment systems, heads-up control panels, and other applications that can benefit from their space-saving properties.

Continue reading after the jump. 

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