Techie Topia

Before you get all excited, please understand this is a rumor at best as of right now. Nvidia is supposidly ready to launch its next-generation of GPUs. Nvidia plans to launch it’s GeForce 9 GPUs after the Lunar New Year in February. The first set to appear will be the D9E, high-end and boasts 65nm manufacturing. The new products will also support Direct 10.1 and Shader Model 4.1, as the newer ATi cards already do. Other than the D9E, Nvidia will launch a mid-range product, D9P, in June 2008. This one will boast 55nm processing also. If you’re looking for competition, the new ATi Radeon HD 3850 and 3870 has had $20 cut off their original price, making them priced at a respectable $159, and $199. DX10.1 will also not be released until early next year, or until Vista has it’s first service pack, with major performance fixes.

[RegisterHardware]

You might have heard about Viacom putting up every episode of Daily Show on the internet, for free. Which I bet most people enjoyed. Now they’re doing the same thing with the famous South Park, with plans to put every single episode of the animated series online next year, absolutely free. It’s a bolder move than putting up Daily Show for free, simply because South Park does sell a lot of DVDs, and these episodes will directly “compete” with episodes available for sale in stores. If this is sucessful, look for more MTV and Comedy Central shows to get this kind of special treatment. The more free TV shows online, the better.

[Reuters]

Well, this certainly is a first. The recent game of Guitar Hero on an ancient system, Commodore 64. This is Toni Westbrook’s project called Shredz64. The game isn’t done yet, but when it is the soundtrack will be played with those awful beeps that the Commodore will consider as “music.” I doubt it will be as fun as playing it on a PS2 or 360, but hey, those of you literally still living in the 80’s, keep an eye out.

So far the project has been going well! As you can see, the interface, which I call the “PSX64″, is 98% functional (There are some tiny bugs which don’t really impact functionality on the whole). Not only are all guitar functions mapped over successfully, but it works great for playing C64 games with a normal dual shock controller. What’s more, since the same DB9 port is used, the PSX64 can be used on the Amiga, Atari and Sega Master System (All tested except SMS).

That is a small passage from his project site, which you can check out by clicking the link below. He does have an Update News page on it, so look out for his updates. If this works, maybe we’ll see Crysis soon on one of these systems.

[Shredz64]

A lot of creative people, or just bored ones for lack of a better word, have been inspired by iPhone commercials, because they’re quite effortless to remake. SNL even did some of their own, but YouTube is full of videos made by amateurs which are just as funny as professional ones. Here is one that was actually made after this guy was mugged and beaten down in Brooklyn for having an iPod Touch. After he filed the police report, he went home and made this commercial. Yes, he was really beat up. After that, there’s a couple more amateur videos from YouTube, that are iPhone commercials, that you can watch by click the links below.
Videos: 1 - 2 - 3 - 4

[Gizmodo]

Comcast has confirmed that we will see DOCSIS 3.0, next-generation data over cable standard that allows 160Mbps down and 120Mbps up, starting next year. They confirmed this at the CableNEXT Conference this week in Santa Clara, California. Comcast expects to see 20% of their footprint to be placed in DOCSIS 3.0 by the end of 2008. Still, markets where there is FiOS are probably still going to get the fortune. Competition is good, for the people in those areas, but bad for the rest of us. You can be sure though that users will not see full capacity at first. The starting offerings are in the 20-50mbps range. They haven’t forgotten the up stream of things, but the upgrades will mainly focus on the downstream first. We probably won’t see a major impact on upstreams until we’re far into 2008, or even early 2009.

. Although the full Docsis 3.0 specification calls for the bonding of at least four upstream and four downstream channels, initial Comcast deployments will be a downstream-only affair. That’s more a reflection of the status of upstream channel bonding technology than one of Comcast’s Docsis 3.0 service strategy. Docsis 3.0 upstream channel bonding won’t likely won’t be ready for prime time until late next year or possibly 2009.

That’s probably going to hurt Comcast’s fight against FiOS, since Verizion has just started offering symmetrical 15Mbps and 20Mbps service to wherever FiOS is available, dulling the edge DOCSIS 3.0 was suppose to bring against Fiber.

[Gizmodo]

Grand Theft Auto IV’s original release date was meant for October 2007, which left many fanatics sad. Not to fear though, the wait will only create a bigger hype for those anticipating the release. The very promising, next installment in the GTA series is planning it’s arrival for the first half of 2008. And if you haven’t checked Rockstar’s website, we can expect a new trailer on December 6, 2007 at Noon PST (3pm EST). Check back here next Thursday to see the new trailer. Also as the title says, Rockstar unveiled the official boxart. Like the other covers, this one seems to feature several main characters. No doubt we’ll see it on magazine ads, posters, and whatever else you could print things on. Hit the link below to check out the official GTA IV site by Rockstar. The game will be released for the XBox 360 and PS3. Maybe we’ll see a PC port as well.

[Rockstar]

With new technology comes more bugs, and T-Mobile had to pull their new Sidekick Slide after complaints of it powering off unexpectidely when you slide the screen open and closed. A T-Mobile representative sent out an e-mail on Friday talking about the Slide’s bugs, and promising that Motorola is “working to identify the root cause” of the problem, which also was said that it also wipes all data from the phone. The e-mail also states the other new models of the Sidekick, like the LX, fortunately aren’t affected by the glitch. You’re stuck with a glitchy phone, what do you do? You should contact T-Mobile, and the carrier will most likely let you exchange it for the pricier LX, or apply the cost to a different T-Mobile phone. No details on a cash refund, apparently, but expect T-Mobile to honor such a request. I do not own a Slide, but any Slide owners experiencing this problem?

[Yahoo!]