Rob Williams
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Recent posts
The wait has been long, but Futuremark has finally announced a release date for its latest 3DMark benchmark: February 4th. Unlike previous 3DMarks, this one foregoes a suffix - it's not "3DMark 13", but simply "3DMark". This simplification might be due to the fact that for the first time, this software isn't exclusive to Windows....
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Before reading on, we must warn you that your next 20 minutes should be free, because once you discover the Flash tool "Scale of the Universe", that's just about the amount of time you'll need before you'll be able to focus on other things. Its goal is to help put the universe into perspective, size-wise, from...
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With the "Big Game" happening in just a couple of days, many of us have a bunch of last-minute things to tackle. There's the beer, snacks, extra chairs if you're hosting the party, beer, an address in case you're going out for a party, a clean jersey and of course, that one little thing every Super Bowl party needs: beer. With all of this...
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Linux users have long had the right to be concerned about UEFI's "SecureBoot" feature, and this is a perfect justification for it. It seems that on select Samsung notebook models, merely booting into Linux via UEFI can brick it. We're not just talking about something that an OS re-install could fix, either - it...
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In the earlier days of the Web, our browsers were simple. If one crashed, it was likely due more to poor programming than whatever content you were viewing. The opposite can be said today, where many websites have the potential to crash any number of plugins you've got equipped - especially true for...
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Despite the fact that the company offers truly competitive products, NVIDIA has had a rough time penetrating the mobile market like it wants to - or perhaps needs to. Finding a Tegra-based smartphone requires a fair bit of patience, if you can find one at all for your particular market or carrier. Things are a lot...
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It goes without saying that where durability, stability and endurance are concerned, few organizations care quite as much about the products they deploy than the military. The term "Military-Grade" exists for a reason, after all. Rugged laptops are common there - they need to withstand dirt and an occasional bump -...
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In advance of its BlackBerry 10 launch, Research in Motion has made some much-needed changes to how its store handles pricing. It's still not ideal, but those using British £ or Euro € currency stand to see fairer prices. Currently, the lowest price someone in the UK can see is £1; after the change...
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The do-it-yourself Raspberry Pi boasts some pretty modest specs, but it's been proven time and time again that it's no slouch where gaming's concerned. In November, it was announced that Minecraft is being ported to the platform (it's still not here as of the time of this post), and not long after, the Raspberry Pi App Store was rolled-out...
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We reported on Valve's roll-out of the original Half-Life for Linux and Mac yesterday, but it doesn't look like the fun was meant to stop there. Today, Valve followed-up with a release of the original Counter-Strike, or "1.6" as it's commonly known. That puts the total number of games based on the GoldSrc...
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Want or need to run Android 4.0 apps on your PC? Chinese start-up SocketeQ has got you covered with its just-released "WindowsAndroid" - perhaps not the most creative name out there, but it's fitting. Given what it's capable of, WindowsAndroid directly competes with BlueStacks, however it goes a step further. What...
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When NVIDIA released a limited beta of its GeForce Experience software last month, 40,000 gamers wasted no time in jumping on top of it. Not long after its release, NVIDIA pulled access to the download, in order to let testing and bug-fixing commence. Now, just a month later, NVIDIA has issued a slew of bug fixes and updates, and has officially...
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Content delivery company Akamai has just issued its Q3 2012 "State of the Internet" report, and with it comes some promising signs that "high broadband" Internet connections are on the up. The report doesn't mention what caused the growth, but between Q2 and Q3 of last year, the number of people equipped with a...
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Bloomberg last week revealed Dell's desire to go private, and this week, we learn that Microsoft is one of the companies looking to make that happen. It's unclear exactly how much money Microsoft would have to invest in order to seal the deal, but it's said to be between $1 and $3 billion - almost a modest figure...
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Mozilla's upcoming phone OS, Firefox OS, has seemingly matured a lot these past six months, and with today's announcement of developer phones soon to be available, its final release can't be too far off. Developed by Geeksphone, the "Keon" and "Peak" models are designed to allow developers to dive head-first into getting their apps ready for...
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Hot on the heels (in the worst possible way) of THQ filing for bankruptcy last month comes Atari's US-based headquarters doing the same. It's the company's goal to break free from its France-based overlord Atari, SA and then get bought out to reform as a private company and subsequently continue business under a...
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It's been a long time since we've last been able to play a proper new release of a SimCity game, with SimCity 4 having been released a staggering 10 years ago. If you happen to feel lenient and place SimCity Societies in the running, then it's still been a full six years since we've been able to indulge in...
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Over the course of the past few years, you might have noticed that component vendors have been working hard to shed some old technology that's been keeping us from progress. We've seen EFI replace the typical BIOS, for example, and GPT become more prevalent to allow us to use hard drives greater than 2.2TB...
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Unfortunately, it's not uncommon to learn of music stores closing shop nowadays, but when a major retailer with stores across the UK, Ireland and Canada goes into administration - the situation almost seems dire. HMV isn't just some regular music store - its seeds were planted in the late 1890s alongside the disc...
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Are you the sort of drinker who simply doesn't know when to stop? Sometimes, even the best of us can fall into the trap. When you're having a good time, the hours just fly by, and so do the drinks - only to catch up to you as soon as the fun stops and it's time for bed. You close your eyes, the room is spinning, and...
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Well... I'm sure this isn't what the designers behind IBM's Watson supercomputer had in mind when it came to human interaction. As it turns out, Watson, as smart as it is, cannot tell the difference between English words that are appropriate, and then not-so-appropriate. You might immediately realize when a word is derogatory - even...
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In the Web browser world, WebKit is a force to be reckoned with. It began life as a couple of KDE libraries (KHTML and KJS), but was then forked and further developed by a bevvy of companies including Apple, Nokia, Google and RIM. While KHTML's initial focus was to support the popular Linux Web browser Konquerer, the...
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