After a Gizmodo reader sent us a photo of his amazing Star Wars-meet-CTU-meet-Firefly computer setup at the end of his LEGO Collectors Millennium Falcon unboxing images, we thought it could be a good idea to do a mini-contest to know what kind of cool rigs do you have.

Reader Participation: Giz Readers’ Best Computer Rigs Contest – Gizmodo

From Engadget:

Peter Moore of Microsoft has gone on record by saying that the Xbox 360 could also join the project, although he made sure to include a jibe at Microsoft’s primary competitor by mentioning the 360’s much larger install base, and quoting Xbox 360 processor’s “equal power to the PS3.” He even went so far as to cast doubt regarding the value of the 250,000 currently registered PS3’s on the program, saying that “we’ll continue to look at this and see whether there’s real value.” We’re forced to ask: how is this kind of attitude in aid of the project? By reducing something as noble as the Folding@home project to a PR battle, Moore’s indication sounds bitter and petty. He might as well have said, “ok, we’ll fight disease, but only ’cause the Xbox 360 is better than the PS3.” The irony is, it probably isn’t.

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Once again Microsoft doesn’t get the point of the Wii.  They are trying to disregard it’s graphics capabilities:

“The video graphics on it aren’t very strong; the box itself is kind of underpowered; it doesn’t play DVDs; there are a lot of down-line components [that] aren’t actually that interesting,” Bach said in an eWeek interview. “They don’t have the graphics horsepower that even Xbox 1 had.”BachÂ’s comments meant no disrespect to Nintendo, as he stressed heavily his admiration for the rival companyÂ’s innovation and even predicts success for the Wii. What has raised a few eyebrows, however, is his comment that the Wii wouldnÂ’t even be able to produce graphics that we saw from the original Xbox – a system released five years ahead of the Wii.

J. Allard-dreadlock-pusher N’Gai Croal of Newsweek sought to test the validity of BachÂ’s claim and polled a couple third party developers for their anonymous comments. One of the original XboxÂ’s greatest strengths was its NVIDIA GPUÂ’s programmable shader capability – something that the WiiÂ’s ATI GPU does not have.

“The Wii’s GPU has fixed functions for vertex, lighting, and pixel operations,” said one of the developers. “All ‘programmable shaders’ means is that the code you write for the shader gets run on the vertex and pixel hardware of the GPU. This is how it works on the high-end ATI and Nvidia GPU parts. The Wii is an older fixed function design where you have lots of operations but the pipelines are not programmable in the sense of downloading shader code to run [on them].”

The point of the Wii is that it doesn’t need super-powered graphics to be fun.  The gameplay is what matters.  Graphics are always secondary to gameplay (not that graphics don’t matter, but they aren’t the most important thing).

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The Cenix GMP-M6 looks like a cross between a PSP, and a 90’s portable TV mockup. It’s actually a cross between a radio, MP3 player, and a handheld, such as the PSP.

At first glance the unit is tiny, like mobile phone tiny. Great for MP3 usage, but as far as gaming is concerned, a little bit bigger would be better. The GMP-M6 measures 90 x 13 x 45.5 mm, the weight is 55grams, so It’s small.

A game console is only as good as the games available. And in the gaming world, quantity is no substitute for quality. That said, while the roster of titles available at launch time is not known, there is a reported 50,000 2D / 3D games available for download. Surely there is something in there worth playing. The GMP-M6 comes with 2 games preloaded.

It seems like it does a little bit of everything, but nothing very well.

Full Story

Nintendo’s recently announced naming of their next gen console, Wii, has sparked debates all over the internet. While the majority of the debates can be summarized with a “WTF,” some do have positive things to say about the new name. This quote pulled off of www.slashdot.org is the best explanation of what I believe was Nintendo’s intentions with Wii.

Subject: Hold On…

So, because of the name everyone’s talking about Nintendo’s console.

Two stories in two days on Slashdot about the name alone – first one got almost 1000 replies.

Blog articles are popping up left and right about it.

Even months from now, when you hear the name you’ll smile or chuckle – because you think the name is funny, because you think it’s refreshing, because you think it’s colossally stupid and find it amusing that a company can make a mistake this big. In the meanwhile, the names “PlayStation” or “XBox” will just elicit a shrug.

Already – in one single day – Nintendo has managed to set itself apart from its competitors, and generate a huge amount of buzz about its console – without a massive ad campaign or billions in R&D. Just by releasing three letters to the public.

So, remind me again… why is this name bad?

The gaming crazies over at Razer have a new product for you to drool over. They announced the Tarantula Gaming Keyboard and it is obviously built to compete with the Logitech’s latest gaming keyboard. We recently took a look at the competition in gaming mice between Logitech and Razer, and we found Logitech’s offering a clear winner. Well, it looks like the tides have turned. The Tarantula offers everything that the Logitech G15 offers, plus more. Razer’s new keyboard features illuminated keys, on-board memory for macro storage, and a sweet 256×64 color high res OLED display that trounces the 160×43 bitmap LCD on the G15. All of these features are powered by USB 2.0. No word on pricing or availability.

[via everythingusb.com]

CNet.com got their hands on the Atari Flashback 2 system. They dont say too much about it other than it is smaller, and keeps Atari’s classic look. It comes with 2 vintage looking joysticks, and has 40 built in games. You can play these classic games for only around $30. It can be picked up at bestbuy.com and is available right now.

Check out the video review here.

7. The first time your entire family died in Oregon Trail. As a fifth grader; this game was the greatest. You basically take your family through the wilderness to get to the west during pioneer times in the United States. The shocking moment in this game was when your family died off due to some strange illness that a fifth grader couldn’t comprehend. Why the hell did my family just die from Dysentery? What the hell was Dysentery? These moments shocked me, and also made me quite angry when I was in fifth grade.

6. Mortal Kombat fatalities. Who can forget the first time that you ripped out Sub-Zero’s heart with Kano’s fatality? The fatality moves were extremely disturbing for a 13 year old kid. It was one of the first games that you could fight to the death, and then rip their beating heart out of their body. You were only given a few seconds to pull off the fatality move, and it was an excellent way to rub it in your friends face when you beat him.

5. Grand Theft Auto: Hot Coffee. This is one of those moments in video gaming history that probably won’t be forgotten. The Hot Coffee Mod didn’t shock gamers as much as it did society. It is something that any gamer recognizes, and most non-gamers as the mod that made Grand Theft Auto get pulled from shelves; while making parents shudder across the globe. The code was always in place for the nudity, but the developers didn’t intend to flip the switch to activate the nudity. The Hot Coffee mod basically flipped the switch, and caused an uproar in society.

4. The Unveiling of Samus Aran. By the time Nintendo released the original Metroid, I was already one of those Nintendo minions. I played any game that got even the tiniest bit of hype. I read every issue of Nintendo Power, and even ripped out the posters to hang on my wall. Keep in mind, I was very young here; not an 18 year old college freshman or anything. Metroid was another masterpiece by Nintendo that grabbed my attention, and forced me to put long and hard hours into it, until it was finished. Samus Aran, the protagonist, was the ultimate badass. He worked alone, and traveled through the unknown to beat each mission. In the finally, I was absolutely dumbfounded when Samus finally revealed…herself. Up until this point, women were only featured in games as objects that needed saving. This was a huge jolt to the normal video game gender roles. Samus Aran is still one of the greatest female video game characters of all time.
3. The End of Hyrule. I have always been a follower of the Zelda series. When Nintendo unveiled Wind Waker, I was a little taken back by the new design, and play style. Being the dedicated Zelda fan that I am, I gave it a try. The game was a nice change for the Zelda series, and I quickly learned to love the new game. While many will dispute that this isn’t one of the greatest shocking moments in gaming history, it really brought a huge piece of Zelda history to an end. In the beginning of Wind Waker, I was stunned to find out that the lands of Hyrule were flooded by the gods. Hyrule had appeared in every Zelda game until this point. I knew every nook and cranny of Hyrule from all of the Zelda games, and now it is gone. On a possitive note, at the end of Wind Waker, Zelda sails off to find another Golden Land. After all, Hyrule was beginning to feel a bit small.

2. Lord British Dies by Firewall. Probably my favorite game of all time is Ultima Online. To me, this is the game that started the MMORPG era. I had put more hours into UO than any other game to this day. There was so much to do in the world of Ultima Online. For me, it reigned king until the Trammel/Felucca expansion came out, and much of the fun of UO was lost. Way back in beta, Lord British (Richard Garriot) held a little meeting to talk about the game to whatever testers showed up. He was standing along side Lord Blackthorne in the game, and a group gathered accross a wall from him. One of the beta testers known as Rainz cast a firewall on Lord British, and due to a bug, killed him. He got so mad that he unleashed tons of Daemons on the crowd killing most of them. Rainz was later banned from the game for violating the beta tester terms and conditions. This is by far the greatest moment in the history of MMORPGs.

1. The Death of Aeris. There are three video game series that will never die. Zelda, Mario, and Final Fantasy. You can ask a person who despises video games (God forbid), and they will more than likely know about the Zelda, Mario, and Final Fantasy series. The reason for this is simple, these three series have popped out more quality video game titles than any other. One of the greatest gaming moments of all time happened in Final Fantasy VII. One of the most memorable and beloved characters in the Final Fantasy series was Aeris Gainsborough (Aerith was her original name in Japan, but was changed to Aeris in America due to poor translation). At the end of Final Fantasy VII Aeris was killed by Sephiroth, and this moment is considered by many to be the most shocking moment in video game history. Rumors still emerge now and then that she will somehow be resurrected in future Final Fantasy titles.
Edit: I stand corrected. Aeris dies in the middle, thanks for the hundreds of reminders.

Sources:
http://www.wikipedia.org
http://www.aschulze.net/ultima/stories9/beta.htm
http://www.mobygames.com
http://www.gamespot.com
http://ian-albert.com/misc/gamemaps.php

I am in the process of installing a massive new World of Warcraft patch, and decided to read the details of the patch. By now, you probably know that you can get by WoW’s previous cheater sniffer with the use of Sony’s Rootkit. Could this be Blizzard’s answer to Sony’s Rootkit? Here is the actual patch explanation:

New Blizzard Launcher

A new launch utility has been created to enhance your entry into World of Warcraft! The Blizzard Launcher will provide up-to-date news and important event- and support-related updates. In some regions, the Blizzard Launcher also scans for Trojan viruses and third-party cheat programs and notifies you if it has located any on your machine. In addition to providing you with the benefits of additional anti-virus protection, the scan that the launcher conducts represents another security measure to protect your World of Warcraft account information and gameplay experience. For further details, please go to http://www.blizzard.com/support/wow/?id=aww01907p1.

So, if you are one of the dirty ones who installed a cheat program, and used Sony’s Rootkit…consider this a heads up. Ahh, now I can enjoy WoW knowing the orc next to me isn’t cheating.

Logitech has released another product in it’s arsenoal of high-quality keyboard/mouse combos. this time it is the MX5000 keyboard and mouse.

Here is a quick summary of the review for you: