cyborg

Know The Difference: Phasers vs Blasters And 8 Other Distinctions Every Nerd Should Know

Seamus Bellamy — Wed, 22 Feb 2012 19:11:45 +0000

No one likes sounding stupid. Unfortunately, it’s dead simple to do exactly that when you’re talking about computer hardware or popular culture. One slip of the tongue or a single misused piece of terminology can land you a one-way ticket to Moron Hollow with six days and two delightful nights of luxury accommodations. In an effort to keep you from having to take such a shameful trip, we’ve put together this list of commonly misused and misunderstood terminology from the worlds of computing and geek culture.

Computer vs CPU

If you’re a regular reader of Maximum PC, we’re betting that you’ll already have an understanding of the difference between a computer and a CPU. Your mother and co-workers, however, might be a different story.

Should you hear them confuse one with the other, be gentle when you tell them that CPU stands for Central Processing Unit. Typically, the CPU is a silicon chip that can be found attached to a computer’s motherboard. In essence, it acts as the brain of a computer. In order to run a program, all CPUs preform the same four basic functions: fetch, decode, execute, and writeback. In the simplest terms, these four functions allow the CPU to receive, understand, and order the rest of the computer to fulfil the parameters set forth by whatever program a computer happens to be running at any given time, be it a function of your operating system, retrieving your email or settling a new city during a game of Civilization V.

A computer on the other hand… is a computer. We’re not talking about the brains of a laptop or the mouse attached to the rig on your desk at work, it’s the whole enchilada from soup to nuts, internals and peripherals included.

GB vs Gb

This one has been burning the face off of copyeditors for years. GB stands for gigabyte, which as any computer user will tell you, one can never have enough of. Depending on the context it is being used in, gigabyte can mean a number of things. If you’re talking digital data storage which is measured in bytes, a gigabyte is 1, 000, 000, 000, bytes. That’s 729 3.5” floppy disks worth of data. The term is also used as a standard of measurement for RAM size and Depending on who you talk to, a gigabyte may also be the name applied to 1, 073,741,824 bytes. Go figure.

The term Gigabit is also a quantitative measurement for digital data—one gigabit is equivalent to 128 megabytes—but more commonly, it is used in reference to the transfer of information over the a Local Area Network (LAN). Gigabit internet is based on the Ethernet Frame format protocol, providing a scorching fast data transfer rate of one billion bits per second.

Transformers vs Gobots

Transformers was an awesome line of toys, comic books, video games, cartoons, and of late, movies, that follows the saga of a race of warring, sentient robots from the planet Cybertron that can disguise themselves as innocuous earth technologies, such as a car, a fighter jet or a boom box. Imported to North America in 1984 by Hasbro, Transformers revolutionized the action figure industry, by giving kids two toys in one. With its intriguing backstory, colourful palette of characters, and the sheer genius of combining two things most kids love—robots and awesome real-life hardware—Hasbro and their Japanese partner Takara created a timeless toy line that has captivated generations of children and the young at heart.

Gobots, on the other hand… We’ll just say it. Gobots are just all kinds of awful.

Also a Japanese import, The Gobot toy line was brought to North American shores by Tonka just before Transformers hit the scene. The toys, while similar in spirit, lacked the soul or mechanical complexity of Hasbro’s Transformers, and as such, failed to capture the imaginations of consumers. Clunky looking and boasting unfortunate names like Dumper, Dive-Dive and Small Foot, Gobots were the last things any red-blooded child of the 1980s wanted to find under the tree on Christmas morning. Not surprisingly, the toy line fizzled out of existence by 1987.

Memory vs Storage

Storage refers to whatever medium is used to store information on a computer, be it a hard drive, a solid state drive or a hybrid drive. Any information you install on a computer—documents, images, programs, music, ANYTHING—is saved to the computer’s storage. Storage is designed to hold data for long periods of time, unlike memory, the AADD poster child of the data wrangling world.

When you’re talking about computer memory, you’re talking about RAM, which stands for Random Access Memory. In simplest terms, computers use RAM as an instant storage facility used to store the information required to ensure the smooth operation of processes and applications. What’s contained in a computer’s RAM depends on what the computer is being ordered to do at the time.

Storage and memory work like this: Let’s say you decide to watch a movie on your netbook during a flight. As soon as you started the movie, it’s information was pushed from your computer’s storage to your to the RAM as part of the system’s preparations for processing the movie’s data in order to present it on your netbook’s screen. How smoothly that information is conveyed to your screen is dependant upon how much RAM you have installed in your computer.

This is why it’s so often suggested that the cheapest, easiest way to speed up a slow computer is to install more RAM.

Phaser vs. Blaster

Phasers and blasters are two of the most coveted fictional weapons of all time. While similar in function, they couldn’t be more different—just like the film and TV properties they originate from.

Phasers are a directed energy weapon made famous introduced by the Star Trek television back in the 1960s, and seen in every iteration of the franchise since. The business end of a phaser deals death, destruction and headaches by emitting a beam or burst of rapid nadions, which is an imaginary sub-atomic particle. In order to weaponize the rapid nadions, a phaser refracts them through superconducting crystals. Depending on the task at hand, a phaser beam can be altered to produce a number of effects, allowing the individual wielding the weapon to stun, kill, incinerate, melt or atomize a target. That said, over the course of the past five decades, Star Trek characters have managed to modify phaser weapons to produce many other effects as well. The variety of phaser weapons is just as varied as what the effect of the device’s rapid nadion beam, and range from devices small enough to hide in a pocket to ones so large that they can only be mounted on a starship or weapons platform.

Blasters are a death dealing animal of an all together different variety. Arguably finding their roots in the Star Wars trilogy (there were no other movies, got it?), blasters are typically pistol or rifle shaped weapons that fire bolts of particle beam energy or plasma, with power drawn from a replaceable power source not dissimilar from a conventional handgun or rifle magazine. According to Star Wars canon, blasters are the most common weapon in use throughout the galaxy. As with Star Trek’s phasers, blasters also come in larger sizes, suitable for use in fixed positions, on fighter craft mounted on the huge warships employed by the Rebel Alliance and the Galactic Empire.

Modem vs Router

Let’s keep this one short and sweet: A modem, which is shorthand for MOdulate/DEModulate, is piece of hardware that can translate information from a digital source into an analog carrier signal and send it via phone line, over the air or through a fibre optic network for interception by another computer equipped with a modem. The receiving party’s modem then demodulates the analog carrier signal generated by the sender, translating it into digital information that the computer on the receiving end can understand. Magic!

A device designed to forward data between computer networks, a router acts as a go-between for a modem and the various computers and web-connected devices it’s connected to. The router’s function is to examine incoming and outgoing data and determine where it should be sent.

Firmware vs Driver

Firmware, which is present in everything from your desktops’s keyboard to your smartphone, refers to the typically small, data structures or programs that resides inside of a piece of hardware on a chip, telling it how to behave. Even though it’s baked into hardware, firmware can be updated in order to provide the hardware with new functionality or rid it of bugs. A driver is a piece of software designed to tell a computer how to interact with a piece of hardware.

So, in putting it all together, when you sit down in front of your computer to send an email, your keyboard’s firmware informs the keyboard that the depression of each key should send a particular signal to your computer. The driver software for your keyboard then in turn defines how the computer should translate the signals sent by the keyboard, making it possible to type out a message, thus ensuring that your cursive writing skills will continue their slow slide into oblivion.

Lag vs Bad Framerate

If you’ve ever played an MMO or other online multiplayer game and experienced a frustrating pause in the action that suddenly rectified itself at a blisteringly high speed, you’ve been victimized by lag. Lag occurs when there is too much latency (fancy geek talk for a delay) between your computer and the server/host it is communicating with. In online games, latency translates can translate into a slowdown or complete stop to the action that should be occurring onscreen.

Bad framerates have nothing to do with the time it takes for data to be sent to or from your computer over a network and everything to do with how much muscle your computer has under the hood. As a rule, gamers want to pull the best graphics performance out of any title they sit down to play. Show us a PC gamer who can stand to play a game using its default settings without the urger to tweak them, and we’ll show you someone who’d be better off rocking an Xbox. The more advanced graphical effects you switch on in a game, the harder your computer’s internals will be forced to work. Set the graphics too high in a game, and your computer, faithful hound that it is, will attempt to provide you with the visuals that you’ve asked for. Unfortunately, instead of the smooth, enjoyable eye candy you were hoping for, the game plods along with content that looks like a disjointed, drunken sideshow conducted by someone you wronged in a past life.

While you might not have any options other than changing ISPs or upgrading your Internet service to include superior upload/download speeds, there’s a number of things computer users can do to correct lousy framerates: lowering a piece of software’s graphical settings, installing more RAM and upgrading your PC’s graphics card or processor can all contribute to a less jarring viewing experience.

Android vs Cyborg

With the fervour surrounding shows like Downton Abbey and books like Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter reaching a crescendo of popularity, the number of cyborgs and androids appearing in pop culture are on a decline, making it hard for casual viewers and readers to tell the difference between them. Let’s make sure that this precious geek knowledge is not lost to future generations by spelling it out for everyone to see right here, right now.

An android is a robot designed to look, and in many cases, act like a human. Despite their lifelike looks, they are completely artificial constructs. Some examples of androids include Data from Star Trek The Next Generation, Bishop in James Cameron’s Aliens, and Kryten from Red Dwarf.

Unlike Androids, cyborgs needn’t be human in form. A cyborg being comprised of living tissue that has been integrated with mechanical, digital or robotic parts. Some examples of a cyborg are DC Comics’ cleverly named Cyborg, Robocop, Doctor Who’s Cybermen and Jones the cyborg Dolphin from William Gibson’s Johnny Mnemonic.

Obviously we haven't even scratched the surface of the world of geeky distinctions--hit the comments and tell us what we missed!

Mad Catz Cyborg MMO 7 Mouse Now Available

Brad Chacos — Mon, 30 Jan 2012 18:10:47 +0000

Having trouble swinging your lightsaber while simultaneously casting Force Lightning and juggling the gear you've taken from the cold, dead bodies of Sith Lords across The Old Republic? Fear not, Padawan; Mad Catz's most ridiculous mouse yet, the Cyborg MMO 7, may just be the peripheral you need to cure screen-shuffle-it is. The 13 programmable buttoned beast went up for sale today.

We've already given you a brief glimpse of the Cyborg MMO 7 (just click the link for more details and a slew of pics), but here's a quick recap: in addition to those 13 programmable buttons, the MMO 7 includes a shift button and a three toggle mode, 78 custom bindings per profile, a 6400 DPI sensor, weights you can add or remove to make the mouse heavier, and a unique "Action Lock" mode that can lock the left and right mouse buttons into an "Up" or "Down" state, so you won't have to physically hold the right-button down to run across the land.

Like we said before, the Mad Catz's website is taking orders now if the Cyborg MMO 7 sounds like your cup of tea. Thanks to The Verge for pointing out the mouse's availability!

Exclusive Sneak Peek: Mad Catz' Most Over-The-Top Mouse Yet

Alex Castle — Sat, 12 Nov 2011 00:37:23 +0000

It's been a little more than a year since we first reviewed the R.A.T. gaming mouse from Mad Catz, and called it the best mouse we’ve ever played with. Since then, there’s been a couple of incremental upgrades to the line (the cordless R.A.T. 9, the white "Albino" R.A.T. the 6400 DPI Contagion Edition), but nothing that fundamentally altered the design. They’re about to do just that, though, and we got to take a sneak peak at the result.

The Cyborg M.M.O. is (for all the terribly bad guessers out there) a version of the R.A.T. designed for MMO gaming. Where the original R.A.T. had 6 programmable buttons, the M.M.O. has 13, plus a shift button and a three-mode toggle, allowing for a maximum of 78 custom bindings per profile.

Also like the original, the M.M.O. has a feature we’ve never seen on a mouse before. Special buttons on either side of the scroll wheel allow you enter “Action Lock” mode, where any right- or left-mouse-button click toggles between the button being in the “up” position and the button being held down. The idea is that you use this feature for MMOs where holding right click causes your character to run forward, or enter mouselook mode. Tri-color indicator LEDs in each mouse button keep you from losing track of whether Action Lock is on or off.

And of course the mouse comes equipped with the latest 6400 DPI sensor—a feature that might be more useful to RTS or FPS gamers. We’ll be looking forward to testing out the M.M.O. for a full review, but so far we like what we see. Check out our gallery of the M.M.O.’s snazzy new paint job below, and less us know what you think of Mad Catz’ latest.

World-Exclusive Review: The R.A.T.7 is the Best Gaming Mouse Ever

Alex Castle — Fri, 11 Jun 2010 14:08:27 +0000

It can be sort of hard to review gaming mice. Problem is, all the major brands pretty much have it down—they make mice with excellent sensors, responsive hardware, and a set of feature that’s rapidly becoming an industry standard. They might have a couple of extra buttons here or there, or a superfluous LCD screen tucked away somewhere, but it’s been a long time since we’ve seen something actually revolutionary. Well, here you go.

This is the Cyborg R.A.T.⁷ from MadCatz. We’d seen early pictures of the mouse, and we had our doubts—to say it looked “gimmicky” is a bit of an understatement. Well, we’re very pleased to have been proven wrong. The R.A.T.⁷‘s futuristic stylings aren’t just for show—they’re a product of a startling number of customization options and features. We’re going to walk you through these features, one by one. When we’re through, we think you’ll understand why this is our new favorite gaming mouse.

The Chassis

Normally, when reviewing a mouse, one of the make-or-break factors is feel. Does the mouse fit nicely in the hand? Does it get tiring to use after several hours? Are all the buttons easily accessible? It’s an incredibly important consideration, but it’s also one that’s hard to be objective about. After all, everyone’s hand is a different shape and size, and there are several different ways to hold a mouse. One person’s dream mouse could be another person’s last pick.

The R.A.T.⁷ turns all that on its head. Rather than trying to pick a single shape that pleases as many people as possible, the R.A.T.⁷ is completely customizable and adjustable, allowing you to swap out parts and adjust differences until it fits your hand perfectly.

The R.A.T. in all of its customizable glory

The base of the mouse is a solid steel chassis, which makes the mouse feel incredibly solid, and lends it a not-inconsiderable amount of weight. The R.A.T.⁷ comes with additional weights, which can be slotted into the back of the mouse for some extra heft. We like ours heavy, so we used a couple of the weights, although the mouse is pretty weighty all by itself, so if you like a super-light mouse, you’re out of luck with the R.A.T.⁷

The replaceable elements of the R.A.T.⁷ are its palm-rest and pinky grip. The palm rest comes in three flavors—slick black, grippy rubber, and elevated slick black (giving a taller overall mouse). The distance between the palm rest and the buttons can be adjusted by holding down a small lever, allowing you to make the mouse as short as 4 ¼” or as long as 5”. The included pinky grips include two regular side-panels (one matte and one grippy) and an oversize wing-style grip that makes the mouse look a bit like some sort of futuristic hovercraft. The wing grip is our favorite, as it allows you to use your pinky for a little extra precision in controlling the mouse.

The left-side panel, which contains three of the mouse buttons, is also adjustable. By turning a knob using the R.A.T.⁷’s built-in Allen wrench, you can slide the whole panel forward and backward, allowing you to position the buttons perfectly under your thumb.

The R.A.T.⁷ is, then, tremendously customizable in height, width, length, weight and texture. Of the people who tried the mouse out here, only the person with the smallest hands found it unwieldy. We think anyone with at least average-sized hands will be able to find a configuration of the R.A.T. that works for them.

Features

Although the shape of a mouse is important, it’s far from the only thing that matters. The other huge consideration is functionality—what set of features does the mouse bring to the table. The R.A.T.⁷ manages to stand out here, as well, delivering all of the features we expect from a high-end gaming mouse, and a few very handy ones that we’ve never seen before.

First, the standard stuff: The R.A.T.⁷ has a 5600 DPI laser sensor that’s exactly as precise (or imprecise) as you need it to be. The sensitivity can be adjusted on the fly (cycling between four customizable sensitivity levels), using a two-way switch located behind the wheel, and a red LED meter next to the profile button shows the current sensitivity setting.

The profile button switches between up to three different profiles, allowing you to bind different buttons to different keystrokes for different games. All the buttons on the mouse are extra-clicky and responsive.

That’s all well and good, but we haven’t seen anything new yet. Here are our favorite two new features seen in the R.A.T.⁷:

First, there’s the thumbwheel. Although the R.A.T.⁷ isn’t the first mouse to integrate more than one scroll wheel, we think it is to do so in a way that’s as functional as this. The thumbwheel on the R.A.T.⁷ is a big, ridged steel affair, with just the right amount of tension. It can be configured in the profile manager (clockwise and counterclockwise rotation can each be bound to a key), though we found that it was an excellent choice for switching weapons in shooters, allowing us to cycle through our options without getting in the way of us clicking to fire.

The other new feature that we love is the “sniper button,” a non-configurable button on the thumb panel that reduces your mouse sensitivity (you can choose the amount) for as long as it’s being held down. This addresses our biggest gripe with the traditional DPI selector button: in most games, you’re not going to be sniping all the time, and in the middle of a heated firefight in Modern Warfare 2, you’re not going to want to fiddle with the DPI selector every time you stop running and gunning and go for a longshot.

The sniper button is an excellent solution to this problem. Rather than having to commit to “sniping mode” or “action mode,” you simply press the button whenever you want to virtually hold your breath and line up a delicate shot. We hope this one becomes standard on all gaming mice.

Models

The R.A.T.⁷ is part of a new line of gaming mice from MadCatz’ Cyborg brand. There will be 4 models total, the R.A.T.³, R.A.T.⁵, R.A.T.⁷, and R.A.T.⁹. At $50, the R.A.T.³ has a lesser 3200 DPI laser sensor, and lacks most of the features and customization that we like about the 7. The R.A.T.⁵ has a better sensor than the three, as well as the sniper button and thumbwheel, but lack the interchangeable palm and pinky surfaces. The R.A.T.⁹ will essentially be the same as the R.A.T.⁷, but will be wireless. Currently, only the R.A.T.⁵ and the R.A.T.⁷ are shipping, with the R.A.T.³ and the R.A.T.⁹ planned for later this summer.

In Conclusion...

This is a bad-ass mouse. The $100 price tag puts the R.A.T. at the higher end of the gaming mouse spectrum, but you're not going to find a mouse that's more feature-packed or customizable than this.

Mad Catz R.A.T. Gaming Mice Look Mean, Ready for Pre-Order

Paul Lilly — Thu, 08 Apr 2010 15:18:31 +0000

We've seen some funky looking mice before, but nothing quite like Mad Catz's Cyborg R.A.T. lineup first introduced at CES earlier this year. If you've been waiting for one of these contraptions, they're now available for pre-order.

There are several models to choose from, including the R.A.T.⁹ built around zero-latency 2.4GHz wireless technology. According to Mad Catz, their flagship gaming rat boasts a 1ms response time. It also comes with two custom built lithium-ion battery cells, one of which powers the rodent while the other charges in the dock.

Taking a cue from Logitech, the ninth rat also includes five 6-gram weights so you can make it as heavy or light as you see fit. Other features include a 5600 DPI, four custom DPI settings, five programmable buttons, and interchangeable pinkie and palm rests.

View all the rodents here.

Image Credit: Cyborg