It's a battle of the Congressional antipiracy acronyms. In one corner are SOPA and PROTECT IP, the House and Senate bills that would bring site blocking, search engine de-listing, and more to the US in an effort to stop "rogue" sites. In the other corner, today's challenger : the Online Protection & Enforcement of Digital Trade Act, called the "OPEN" Act (PDF). [......]
EVGA this week rolled out a new version of its Precision overclocking software. Now in version 2.1.1, EVGA's Precision utility comes with an integrated GPU Voltage Tuner, and it's now capable of auto-detecting GeForce GTX 580 graphics cards[......]
There are enough bad drivers on the road as it is, do we really need the added distraction of texting while behind the wheel? We're not crazy about either one, and when you combine the two, it makes us want to stay off the road altogether. [......]
AT&T Chief Financial Officer John Stephens is putting a brave face on his company's beleaguered bid to acquire T-Mobile. Speaking at the UBS Conference on Global Media in New York City on Wednesday morning, Stephens promised that the telco would "continue to move forward" with its efforts "to complete the T-Mobile transaction." AT&T and T-Mobile owner Deutsche Telecom are "motivated to complete a transaction and we continue to pursue the sale," he confidently told the conference panel. "Not much more that I can tell you this morning, but it's important to remember why we did this deal in the first place," Stephens added[......]
Hewlett-Packard joined the growing Ultrabook fracas back in November when it announced the HP Folio 13. Weighing in at 3.3 pounds and wielding a 13.3-inch display, the Folio 13 was to be one of just a few Ultrabooks with a starting price below $1,000. HP said it would be available to order beginning December 7, 2011, and true to its word, the Folio 13 is live and in stock. [......]
In a presentation at TakeDownCon in Las Vegas today, security researcher Georgia Weidman demonstrated how malware on smartphones could be used to create smartphone "botnets" that could be used in the same way as PC botnets, providing hackers with a way to insert code between the operating system's security layers and the cell network. [......]
Time to start firing the PR guys! As is the case with all technical products these days, AMD used a lot of lofty-sounding numbers and specs to make its new 8-core Bulldozer chips sound friggin’ awesome in the company’s press releases. Eight cores, four modules, a 315mm die area, two billion transistors – actually, scratch that last one[......]
.xxx domain names are now available for the public to purchase. Read More: BBC Read the comments on this post [......]
Apple, Motorola, and three major wireless carriers are the latest to face a class-action lawsuit over a smartphone privacy scandal, with Carrier IQ, HTC, and Samsung also facing allegations that they spy on users with software installed on smartphones. While Carrier IQ makes the software, it is installed on phones manufactured by hardware companies and sold by carriers, providing plenty of targets for lawsuits. We noted the existence of two class-action lawsuits targeting Carrier IQ, HTC, and Samsung last week[......]
Ivy Bridge has been on our radar for almost a year now, but with the 2012 release date fast approaching, leaks from the partner channel were inevitable. According to documents obtained by X-bit labs , Intel’s new Ivy Bridge chips will be shipping in Q2 2012, and eighteen parts are listed. [......]
US judge orders hundreds of sites "de-indexed" from Google, Facebook : Luxury goods maker Chanel has convinced a judge to order the seizure of hundreds of Internet domain names and to order the names blocked from "all" search engines and social media networks. Startup hopes to hack the immigration system with a floating incubator : American immigration law makes it difficult for foreigners to found businesses in the United States[......]
AMD has released another performance driver (yes, again) for its Catalyst 11.11 package. And once again, improved performance in Elder Scrolls: Skyrim takes center stage. New in Catalyst 11.11c is better CrossFireX performance scaling for AMD Radeon HD 5000/6000 series cards in Skyrim, 2-7 percent better performance in single GPU configurations, and a resolved corruption issue when enabling MSAA on Radeon HD 6970 cards[......]
Readers of Maximum PC know that our own Gordon Mah Ung hates social networking. But he loves to rant, as evidenced by our podcasts, and if he ever chose to embrace Facebook, he could spout off whatever injustices he feels like raging about, 60,000 characters at a time. Actually, Facebook bumped up the posting limit to 63,206, and we're sure Gordon would have no trouble ranting for an additional 3,000 characters[......]
Verizon Wireless has struck a $3.6 billion deal to buy wireless spectrum covering 259 million Americans from Comcast, Time Warner Cable and Bright House Networks. The deal comes just as rival AT&T's $39 billion attempt to buy T-Mobile USA flounders in the wake of opposition from the Federal Communications Commission[......]
Acer tells us its upcoming Iconia Tab A200 will debut "at an affordable price," a claim that's impossible to substantiate until the company actually announces how much it will cost (which it hasn't). [......]
