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- Microsoft proves Atari dumped E.T.
- Google about to be given a Gallic bollocking
- Lenovo shows off Windows Tablet
- Boffins build 3D glasses for praying Mantis
- AMD rolls the Kabini die
| Microsoft proves Atari dumped E.T. Posted: 28 Apr 2014 04:43 AM PDT A legend that Atari dumped excess copies of E.T. for the Atari 2600 at the height of its troubles has finally been proven true. According to Bit-Tech an excavation of a New Mexico rubbish dump has finally put the urban legends surrounding the 80s video game crash and Atari's part in it to rest,. The Atari 2600 game E.T. is infamous. It was part of a multi-million dollar licensing agreement with filmmaker Steven Spielberg, the game was authorised in late July to be ready for a Christmas launch. Howard Scott Warshaw, completed the game in just five and a half weeks - compared to the nine months that Raiders of the Lost Ark had taken and it should have been great. But Atari was already struggling and the game cost it $21 million. It also decided to mass-produce the E.T. cartridges in volumes that exceeded the number of Atari 2600 consoles in the market. It hoped that the game would sell hardware, but it did not. Atari shut its factories and apparently, the existing unsold stock was sent to a landfill in Alamogordo, New Mexico. The dumping was seen as a sign that the industry was buggered. But the thing was Atari denied all this. They claimed that the material was merely faulty hardware from the plant's repair work, dumped at a fee of between $300 and $500 per truckload. However, the story of thousands of cartridges representing a range of titles became 3.5 million cartridges of E.T. alone. Microsoft teamed up with film company Fuel to excavate the Alamogordo landfill in an attempt to prove or disprove the myth. The dig took place this weekend, with the public invited. Apparently, after 30-years, despite claims to the contrary by historians, it would appear that the rumours surrounding the Alamogordo tip were indeed mostly true. |
| Google about to be given a Gallic bollocking Posted: 28 Apr 2014 02:51 AM PDT The search engine known as Google is about to be sent to Madam Guillotine for failing to pay enough tax in France. Despite its insistence that it always pays its tax according to law, Google is believed to have underpaid Monsieur Taxman more than a $1 billion over the last few years. Word on the street is that the French government has notified the toothless old crones to start knitting while a good scaffold is set up in the Place de la Concorde. Google has been put on notice of its delinquency by the French tax authorities, and the company has acknowledged that it might be issued a large penalty for non-compliance by the French Direction Générale Des Finances Publiques. According to a Google earnings report filed for the quarterly period ending March 31, 2014, the company confirmed that France has started pressuring the company as a result of what the French government sees as Google's evasive tax practices for several years. "In March 2014, we received a tax assessment from the French tax authorities," the company wrote in its earning report. "We believe an adequate provision has been made and it is more likely than not that our tax position will be sustained. However, it is reasonably possible that resolution with the French tax authorities could result in an adjustment to our tax position." Google reports huge earnings in Ireland (€12.4 billion) and a tiny figure in France (€138 million) and even if it does a roaring trade. Ireland has a much lower corporate tax rate of 12.5 percent and Inspector Taxman apparently smells le rat. While Google has maintained that the company has operated in compliance with French law, the French think Google is passing off French contracts as if they were Irish ones in order to be subject to a lower tax rate. |
| Lenovo shows off Windows Tablet Posted: 28 Apr 2014 02:49 AM PDT Chinese maker of the Thinkpad, Lenovo has leaked details of a large tablet based around Microsoft’s latest version of Windows on its Aussie site. Lenovo appears to be enthusiastically working with Vole lately and has released several small tablets based around Redmond’s Windows 8.1. But over the weekend Lenovo accidently put up details of much larger tablet called the Thinkpad 10. It was quickly removed but not before it was seen by Her Majesty’s Loyal Press. The German site TabTech managed to grab the information and images from the site before it was taken down. It would appear that the Lenovo ThinkPad 10 will have a 10.1 inch IPS display with a 1920x1200 resolution. Under the bonnet there will be a Bay trail 1.6 GHz Intel Atom Z3795 quad-core processor, support for either 2 or 4GB of RAM and SSD storage options of 64 and 128GB. While the first version of the ThinkPad 10 has the 32-bit version of Windows 8.1, Lenovo will release future versions that will have the 64-bit version. Other hardware features include an eight-megapixel rear camera and a two megapixel front facing camera. According to the site, the battery is supposed to last up to 10 hours and will support its own QuickShot Cover that will allow users to peel off part of the covering to expose the tablet's rear camera. Depending on which version you buy, there are also Microsoft Office 2013 Home & Student for free. Lenovo appear to be looking to provide lots of accessories for the beast including a keyboard which serves as a dock and a stylus. The leak failed to mention a price or a release date for the ThinkPad 10 but if it was leaked on one of the company's official websites, it should not be long. |
| Boffins build 3D glasses for praying Mantis Posted: 28 Apr 2014 02:47 AM PDT While most of us do not get up in the morning and think about sticking a pair of 3D glasses on a praying Mantis, apparently they do in Newcastle. Neuroscientists at Newcastle University led by vision scientist Jenny Read recently outfitted praying mantises with a little pair of 3D specs. The goal was not to corrupt a young and impressionable generation of praying Mantises to 3d porn, they wanted to see if the insects can be tricked by 3D images. Praying mantises have stereoscopic vision, unlike most invertebrates. When they are not at prayer, or biting the heads off their mates, they are sophisticated hunters. By putting 3D glasses on the mantises, Read hoped to fake them out and learn how the insect's vision differs from ours. The big idea is that you could create much simpler algorithms for programming 3D vision into robots. Vivek Nityananda, a neuroscience research associate working with Read said that to conduct the vision testing, the scientists attach what the university says are the world's tiniest pair of 3D glasses to an insect using beeswax. Then the mantis is placed in front of computer monitor that displays images in 3D. One image is a circle that appears to be an object coming right at the insect, intended to elicit a strike. We guess the mantis is asked "does it look more real after the glasses go on or before". Afterward, the specs are taken off and the mantis goes back to a room where it gets fed. If the researchers can fool the praying mantises into making errors in judgment about depth, it will prove that they actually are judging 3D. This is the first major research project investigating these mechanisms following the discovery made by Samuel Rossel in 1983 that praying mantises have 3D vision. Rossel conducted successful experiments by placing prisms over their eyes and creating an optical illusion that an object was within their range, thus triggering a strike from the mantises. |
| Posted: 28 Apr 2014 02:22 AM PDT AMD is trying to make us guess what it will be launching on April 29, but it really does not take much effort. It released a teaser page which shows portions of an unknown die, which will be launched in a day or so. However, the unknown die looks surprisingly similar to previous generation of Kabini systems-on-a-chip: According to CPU World, the top row contains contact pads, and there are also memory contact pads on the left side of the die. The second row - two rectangle blocks and an "A" block between them - contains L2 cache and associated logic. The next row, shown as a dark area on the unknown die picture, contains 4 CPU cores. The GPU is located to the left and below the CPU cores. In other words, there are so many similarities between the unknown and Kabini dies, that it suggests that the Beema core is a tweaked Kabini core with improved IPC and beefed-up graphics. It seems that AMD did not do a complete redesign. What we can expect is better graphics and CPU performance which is sort of the goal of any refresh. Of course, we don't know how much extra performance we will get, there are all sorts of variables which cannot be seen from a snap. AMD has kept a lid on information such as clock speeds of chips. Beema SoCs have been specifications of the Dell Inspiron 15-3541 laptop. The Dell specs listed 4 model numbers: E1-6010, E2-6110, A4-6210 and A6-6310. There were also rumours that AMD may release dual-core E1-6050 and E1-6100, together with quad-core E2-6200, A4-6300, A6-6400 and A8-6500 parts. AMD also appears to be making three SoCs with a bit unusual model numbers: E1L-620T, A4L-640T and A10L-670T. The E1L-620T has 2 cores and 1 MB of L2 cache, while the A4L-640T and A10L-670T have 4 cores and 4 MB of L2 cache. These are almost certainly tablet "Mullins" processors. |
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