The Federal Communications Commission last Friday formally ruled that Comcast's traffic throttling practices were illegal, setting a precedent for US Internet providers. The decision acts on a recent report of the FCC's plans and requires that the the cable company stop the filtering it has used so far, which uses a Sandvine program that automatically breaks the connection between Comcast users and others running BitTorrent clients and certain peer-to-peer software. The ruling also requires that Comcast disclose how it performs any future throttling, which the provider already plans to do but in a more general form.

The FCC bases its decision largely on a non-binding 2005 statement that high-speed Internet access should be open and widely available, a framework that both the FCC and advocates have said establishes a basis for net neutrality that gives all content the same level of access. By punishing certain forms of file sharing traffic simply through their format, Comcast is violating the principle of that statement, critics charge.

Voting for the ruling resulted in a narrow 3-2 decision that saw significant opposition from FCC chairman Kevin Martin's fellow Republicans in the Commission as well as repeated opposition from Comcast itself. The telecoms firm first denied its throttling practice but has since been forced to acknowledge its existence, now claiming it to be a "reasonable" measure to prevent heavy downloaders from bogging down the rest of the network.

A statement issued by Comcast in the wake of the ruling tries to minimize the perceived impact of throttling, saying that it engages only in "very limited" management of peer-to-peer uploads and says that the "overwhelming majority" of traffic is unaffected. The firm also points to its partnerships with BitTorrent and other companies, though these were formed primarily after Comcast's secret throttling methods were exposed.

Martin has added that Comcast's clear attempt to hide and deny its behavior made the offense especially serious.

While the FCC's move has been criticized for the absence of a financial penalty, it nonetheless sets a precedent that may see similar penalties launched against other American providers that either slow down certain types of traffic or else favor traffic to others, such as a company's own websites. Cox and other providers are suspected as following in Comcast's footsteps.

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Just for the sake of it, instead of hyper-cooling your PC gear, did you ever wonder what would happen if you throw a bowl of liquid nitrogen in a pool? No ? Me neither .. but check out this video:


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The folks from Akasa unveiled two new cases: the infinti and infinti ZOR. The main difference between the two is that the ZOR edition has blue LED fans and a sidewindow. The case is made out of steel and features an aluminum front. There's room for eleven 5.25" devices, six HDDs (2x 3HDD cage) and one FDD drive. The case ships with three fans and features two washable air intake filters.

Taking the gaming experience to a completely new level, the exciting Infiniti ZOR delivers exceptional cooling performance and plenty of user friendly features.

Hard core gaming stresses PC hardware; keeping cool is crucial for system stability therefore every element of the case has been engineered to provide maximum cooling performance. CPU, GPU, memory, VRM

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PC.IGN and ShackNews has posted their impressions of Wolfenstein, the upcoming first-person shooter. The game is planned to hit simultaneously on PC, Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3, though no release date has been set.

The demo began with a machinegun-armed B.J. blasting away at swastika-bearing soldiers, making his way to an objective amidst an urban battlefield. After some standard gun play, we got a taste of the "Veil" powers, special abilities that B.J. can activate to give him an edge in combat. The first revealed was a time-stopping power, which naturally slowed combat down to a snail's pace. When used, these powers will shift B.J. into the Veil world, the green-hued, energy-filled realm that Hitler is after. The Nazis are the only ones who have been meddling in this world, so enemy structures will exist in the Veil--a sort of Soul Reaver-esque changing of level geometry.

Strange bee-like aliens also inhabit the Veil, collecting some kind of energy for a mysterious purpose. These fat alien bees can be shot and killed, their amassed energy exploding outward and damaging the soldiers around them. While the bees were all we saw, Raven noted that other types of creatures will show up later in the game, and they may be utilized to accomplish objectives. Outside of the Veil, combat seemed to be typical Wolfenstein fare, though enemy AI is now smart enough to make use of cover. As such, that cover can be exploded and dispersed via Havok physics. B.J. can also get hands on with enemies, using weapons in melee fashion. A Raven rep made mention of a sledgehammer weapon, indicating that pure melee arms will be featured.

The presentation ended with a short boss fight featuring a "heavy trooper," an armored humanoid with an impenetrable forcefield protecting him. To defeat him, B.J. had to enter the Veil to bypass the shield, then attack several weak points on the hulking trooper. After killing him, our hero picked up the enemy's weapon, a Ghostbusters-like laser beam that incinerated enemies on contact, blasting cover out of the way.

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GGmania reported that Activision today revealed that it is planning to release more of franchise titles Guitar Hero and Call of Duty in 2009. Activision Blizzard CEO Bobby Kotick said that the publisher will "leapfrog" studios, which we'll assume to mean that, since Treyarch is hard at work on Call of Duty: World At War, that Call of Duty 4 developer Infinity Ward will be taking the reins on this one. Kotaku mentions a rumor that Infinity Ward is working on a science-fiction shooter, and speculate whether CoD 6 will be fought with ray guns, though it was also recently reported the developer is cultivating an entirely new intellectual property. In related news, CVG has a nice lengthy write-up of Call of Duty: World at War. The team had a chance to sit down with a demo of World at War:

Treyarch's Noah commented that players in the dev's offices had begun playing World At War in the same manner as real US troops would move through a battlefield; advancing slowly, scouring the tree tops for enemies and firing into the long grass to spook hidden enemies. Backing up this gameplay is COD's latest weapon - the flamethrower. This enables you to burn trees, grass and almost anything on the battlefield. It was demoed to me in the game's new Co-op mode, with Noah and Treyarch's creative director Richard Farrelly teaming up to showcase the fiery death-dealer.  It looked a little cheap. Every step was met with a vicious burst from the scorching flamethrower, which instantly set everyone and anything on fire. Grass would burn, spread and torch trees; flaming enemies would run screaming into gun turrets and cause havoc. It looked all too easy and Noah admits that getting this balance right, especially for online, will be vital.

COD4 sung online. It changed everything. So handily using the COD4 engine means everything you and I loved about playing online will be retained for World At War, including Perks, team modes and old-school set-ups. Noah was being coy about the Perks system for World At War, after all these are WWII weapons, but upgrades such as powerful shots, mid-mag reloads on the M1 Grand and new grenade classes (Molotov cocktails) will be on offer.

Interestingly, Treyarch are pushing the idea of a vehicle-based online mode. There will be specific maps and Perks created just for skirmishes involving tanks, jeeps and armoured cars. This is something of a gamble, especially considering the game's limited development time. It's debatable whether online vehicle combat will add anything to the series over being a niche side event.  The second campaign is set at the end of the European war as Russian forces pushed into Berlin. This looks to resemble the tightly contested street skirmishes of COD4. Expect something similar to the Middle-Eastern stages of Modern Combat with a smattering of new weapons, including the return of the fire effect used in the Pacific campaign with the introduction of Molotov cocktails and combustable environments to make use of.

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You just need to set your wished clock and it calculates all other settings, for example. It automatically sets the correct CPU-RAM-ratio and Referenceclock:HTT-Ratio.

It

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The S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Clear Sky Website now shows the system requirements for GSC Game World's upcoming shooter prequel:

MINIMAL

• Microsoft Windows 2000(SP4)/XP/Vista (SP1) 
• Intel Pentium 4 2.0 Ghz / AMD XP 2200+ 
• 512 MB RAM 
• 10 GB free hard disc space 
• 128 MB DirectX 8.0 compatible card / nVIDIA GeForce 5700 / ATI Radeon 9600 
• Keyboard, Mouse 
• LAN / Internet for Multiplayer 
• Microsoft Windows XP/Vista (SP1) 
• Intel Core 2 Duo E6400 / AMD 64 X2 4200+ 
• 1.5 GB RAM 
• 10 GB free hard disc space 
• 256 MB DirectX 9.0c compatible card / nVIDIA GeForce 8800 GT / ATI Radeon HD 2900 XT
• Keyboard, Mouse 
• LAN / Internet for Multiplayer

RECOMMENDED

• Microsoft Windows XP/Vista (SP1) 
• Intel Core 2 Duo E6400 / AMD 64 X2 4200+ 
• 1.5 GB RAM 
• 10 GB free hard disc space 
• 256 MB DirectX 9.0c compatible card / nVIDIA GeForce 8800 GT / ATI Radeon HD 2900 XT 
• Keyboard, Mouse 
• LAN / Internet for Multiplayer

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The good folks over at G4TV obtained over seven minutes of new footage from Far Cry 2. Check it out if interested:


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That's always good news. Hitachi is developing a new generation of lithium-ion battery packs that should significantly extend the running time of portable devices without requiring a radical breakthrough in technology, the company said when discussing its financial results. The Japanese electronics maker plans to swap the graphite used in the electrodes of today's batteries with a silicon alloy material that would increase the effective capacity of a battery by 20 percent without making additional changes.

It also has a lower expansion coefficient that potentially reduces the susceptibility of the battery to overheating and triggering the battery fires that prompted a global recall by Sony in 2007.

The company also plans to use a different alloy for the positive electrode, made of cobalt, magnesium and nickel, that would also improve capacity by an unspecified amount. It would also reduce the dependence on potentially costly cobalt, which makes up the bulk of the electrode in today's batteries, Hitachi says.

Silicon alloy should be implemented in Hitachi's batteries by the end of 2009, while the cobalt mix should be ready elsewhere in the year. No mention is made of the company's exact plans for the invention, though lithium-ion packs are most often used for cellphones as well as notebooks and are likely to replace older nickel-metal hydride (NiMH) batteries in electric and hybrid cars.

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Sam Knows publishes its long awaiting performance report, published today sam knows limited published the results of its long awaited broadband performance reports from the UK's ISP's.

http://www.samknows.com/broadband/pm/PM_Summer_08.pdf
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Dell customers are unhappy with the BIOS patch released by Dell to counter the problem with faulty NVIDIA GPUs. Here

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Let me firstly state that there's nothing more unsubstantiated than this rumor from Digitimes. Yet NVIDIA may quit the mainboard chipset industry entirely just as it's rumored to be expanding into new areas, if a claim from companies producing the final mainboards themselves.

The California-based creator of the nForce line has allegedly held a meeting this week to determine whether it should continue producing chipsets at all but has been met with "silence," hinting both that NVIDIA was already considering an exit but also that weak demand gives it little reason to continue. Some of these partners have already made their intentions clear by canceling mainboards that would use the nForce 7-series chipset, the report argues. The line is NVIDIA's flagship and gives both AMD- and Intel-based computers support for advanced performance features such as quad SLI, which teams up four video cards to accelerate 3D on one display.

SLI's future would be uncertain without a company dedicated to supporting it and would potentially hand a victory to AMD, which already ensures CrossFire support not just on mainboards that support its Athlon and Phenom processors but also certain Intel-based reference designs.

Updated - A response from NVIDIA's Bryan del Rizzo:

1. The story on Digitimes is completely groundless. We have no intention of getting out of the chipset business.
2. In fact, our MCP business is as strong as it ever has been for both AMD and Intel platforms:
   1. Mercury Research has reported that the NVIDIA market share of AMD platforms in Q2 08 was 60%. We have been steady in this range for over two years.
   2. SLI is still the preferred multi-GPU platform thanks to its stellar scaling, game compatibility and driver stability.
   3. nForce 790i SLI is the recommended choice by editors worldwide due to its compelling combination of memory performance, overclocking, and support for SLI. . . .
3. We're looking forward to bring new and very exciting MCP products to the market for both AMD and Intel platforms.

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This download is a driver providing Microsoft Windows Vista and Windows XP support for Creative Sound Blaster X-Fi series of audio devices.

This download supports the following audio devices only:

• Creative Sound Blaster X-Fi XtremeGamer Fatal1ty Professional Series
• Creative Sound Blaster X-Fi Platinum Fatal1ty Champion Series
• Creative Sound Blaster X-Fi XtremeMusic
• Creative Sound Blaster X-Fi XtremeGamer
• Creative Sound Blaster X-Fi Platinum
• Creative Sound Blaster X-Fi Fatal1ty
• Creative Sound Blaster X-Fi Elite Pro 
• Creative Sound Blaster X-Fi

Added Features:

For systems using Windows Vista

• Dolby
  

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In Germany a 128-bit version of a GeForce 8800 GT was spotted in e-tail yesterday. The product appears to come from NVIDIA's Dutch AIB partner Point of View. First off, POV makes excellent products, and is a long time review partner from Guru3D. They decided to intro a low cost GeForce 8800 GT for OEM purposes. Here's the deal, according to reference specifications the GeForce 8800 GT is supposed to have it's memory locked at a nice 256-bit memory bus.

The particular G92 based product that POV released is however a 128-bit version. This effective cuts memory bandwidth down in half, and for the 8800 GT that's a lot to coop with. If I run some theoretical numbers you could likely expect the performance drop by 40% overall. It would literally mean say GeForce 8600 GTS / 9600 GSP performance, though you'd think you'd have some more shader processor power and thus would benefit from that here and there. But it doesn't stop there though, the GeForce 8800 GT supposedly should have 112 Stream processors activated, this model has 96 (which the old 8800 GTS had).

Screenshot courtesy of computerbase.de

I asked POV for their take on this product:

"With the introduction of the GeForce 9800 GT we (POV) decided to make a low cost version of the 8800 GT with 32x32 memory which indeed runs at a 128-bit bus. The product was intended for an OEM client of POV, yet made it's way though to e-tail right now. As far as the 96SP's go .. POV right now is checking to see what went wrong in the fabric, as they claim .. it should indeed be 112 SPs.

POV also states that only a handful of these products actually made it into e-tail somehow, they are looking into the fact how the product ended up in e-tail/retail. The one person that actually received and complained about this card, already got it replaced by POV for a proper version."

• SKU code 128-Bit Interface: R-VGA150868
• SKU code 256-Bit Interface: R-VGA150858

It all sounds like a big booboo somewhere down the line of communication. My advice -- if you spot the product, and you get hooked into buying this product completely hypnotized by the price ... check the memory, please make sure it says 256-bit GDDR3 on the box. This product by reference specifications doesn't even come close to a real GeForce 8800 GT in terms of performance.

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Ggmania reported via Shacknews reports that id Software's upcoming shooter, Rage (PC, PS3, 360, Mac) will suffer from asset compression on the Xbox 360 version due to Microsoft's high licensing fee's for each DVD.

According to Carmack, the royalty fees to include a third disc in the Xbox 360 version would be so high that it simply isn't a feasible solution, with the programmer hoping for Microsoft to make a concession. He stressed that the issue is merely a storage problem and has nothing to do with the power of the Xbox 360 hardware, while adding that the PlayStation 3's Blu-ray format is Sony's one leg up on the competition. Carmack also noted his belief that neither Doom 4 or Rage will be digitally distributed online, as id isn't looking into that sort of distribution for its major titles at this point.

id Software's John Carmack also announced that work on the technology behind the company's upcoming shooter Rage is almost finished. Carmack said that a change to the animation system is coming soon, and that a few tweaks need to be made to the MegaTexture system, but that the heavy lifting is mostly over. The programming wizard reflected on the long development period for the id Tech 5 engine, which first began some three years ago. Carmack mentioned that the Rage code will mostly be carried over to Doom 4, where the focus will then be mainly on level design and creative aspects.

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This processor model popped up the radar a couple of times now. Yet it's confirmed that the Intel Core 2 Duo E7300 is to be released by Intel on August 10th.

The processor is a 45nm-based Core 2 Duo chip with 2.66GHz frequency 1066FSB support and 3MB cache. This is a faster version of the recently launched E7200 with 2.53GHz frequency 1066FSB support and 3MB cache.

The E7300 is expected to be selling for $133 at launch, while E7200 will drop to $113 on the same date. These are very decent processors and it's good to see the pricing now match complketely to mainstream.

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It really is quite an achievement .. Corsair announced today that its Dominator DDR3 memory modules shattered the record for frequency. The record was set using the Asus ROG Rampage Extreme motherboard (Intel X48 chipset) and Corsair Dominator memory, utilizing Corsair
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NVidia publisher POV decided to modify the stock 8800GT with an 128Bit memory interface. NVidia said, it wouldn
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CPUCalc is an overclocking-calculator able to "simulate" overclocking with many Intel and AMD processors.

You just need to set your wished clock and it calculates all other settings, for example. It automatically sets the correct CPU-RAM-ratio and Referenceclock:HTT-Ratio.

It

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In roughly three weeks from now a big NVIDIA event will take place in San Jose California, it's called NVISION and definitely is going to be huge.

The big NVIDIA visual event is looking pretty impressive as some big names are showing up at this event. A large selection of conference attendees will be there like Buzz Aldrin who will debut a 3D Film "Fly Me to the Moon". There are more names for keynote speeches though. Shuttle Commander Eileen Collins, first women ever piloting the Space Shuttle, is going to speak likely about the fast evolution of technology within that cockpit.

Actress Tricia Helfer (yes the gorgeous blonde) from Battlestar Galactica is to Speak at NVISION 08 as well together with NVIDIA's CEO in likely the opening speech. In the lineup the MythBusters just have been added as well as Jamie Hyneman and Adam Savage now been announced as special guests at NVISION 08 and rumor is .. there's some sort of world record to be broken at NVISION.

The Guinness attempt is quickly shaping up to be a flagship event at NVISION with a separate area for LAN Game record attempters.  The will play continuous for 36 hours with an allotted 10 minute break per 60 minutes played. Oy .. i can smell the energy drinks and coffee already.

Also the World's top professional gamers land in downtown San Jose to compete in ESWC grand final at NVISION 08. Next to all this there will be several workshops in several segments, from gamers, 3D professional, press, channel members and investors.

The NVISION 08 event goes from August 25 to the 27th, more info can be found here. There is lots of exciting stuff going on there.

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