[H]ard|OCP

Russia Cracks Down on .ru Domain

Russia has finally realized that they may have a problem with it's .ru domain registration process. They are tightening the restrictions and increasing the difficulty in obtaining a domain name. In Mother Russia domain cracks down on you.

Starting April 1, anyone who registers a .ru domain will need to provide a copy of their passport or, for businesses, legal registration papers. Right now, domains can be set up with no verification -- a practice that has allowed scammers to quickly set up .ru domains under bogus names.

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Get Your PC DIY Fix In Tonight!

Long time [H]'er "im_electronic" is getting his build on tonight and letting us all watch. As I am typing this he is getting all his parts laid out and ready for installation. Here is a forum thread that will give you a link to his build list. Here is the UStream link to watch him go. If he pulls it out and starts jerkin' it, don't hold me responsible.

Microsoft Pulls Bing App From Non-U.S. Stores

Not wanting to be left out of all the app controversy on the internet today, Microsoft pulled it’s Bing app from all international app stores. When asked for a comment, a Microsoft executive said "it’s because those other app stores smell funny." Okay…I made that last part up.

The good folks in Redmond are quoted as saying that the app was never intended for international markets, and was instead supposed to be destined for the United States alone. The company claims that it is working on international versions of Bing for iPhone, but it remained mum on when these would be made available.

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Food Fight: Greenpeace Invades Nestle’s Facebook Page

Environmental activist group Greenpeace, hot off of last week’s protest of Facebook, is now using Facebook to protest Nestle (the candy bar people). Apparently one of Nestle’s reps got pissy with the protesters over altered company logos and then all hell broke loose from there.

Putting aside all judgment on who's right and who's wrong in this situation, we are seeing the dark side of the Facebook fan page: when what was intended to be an open way for fans to show their support was turned into a billboard of outrage on behalf of critics, and with a company representative in obvious panic over how to tame the mob. It's rare that public opposition will reach a truly uncontrollable level, but when it does, it's ugly.

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[H]ardware Round-Up II

Cases & Modding

Aerocool PGS Qx-2000 Cube Case @ ThinkComputers

ETC.

MSI Wind12 U230 Netbook @ TestFreaks

Trust SoundForce USB Powered Portable Speakers @ DSM

Video

HIS Radeon HD 5670 Video Card @ Tweaknews

Apple Bans Game After Dev Disses App Store

Last week a developer talked trash on Apple’s app store but the company took the criticism in stride and implemented changes to its store to better serve developers. Just kidding, Apple banned his game from the app store.

Last week, game developer Tommy Refenes publicly called Apple's app store "awful" and "horrible." This week, Apple yanked his game from their store. There are a couple of reasons that may have compelled Apple to remove Zits & Giggles, a pimple-popping game for the iPhone and iPod Touch, from the App store.

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My Mom's on Facebook

Do you have a Facebook page? Yes? Well, your worst nightmare is about to come true…your mom is on Facebook.

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Modern Warfare 2 In Real Life

Not only did this guy build a real-world replica of "The Pit" level in CoD: Modern Warfare 2, he actually challenged a real Special Forces soldier to a race…video game versus reality. The video isn’t available in the U.S. but you can see a bit of the level this guy built in this video. Thanks to Al for the link.

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Judge Orders Website To Delay Copying of Broker Reports

A U.S. District Judge ordered a web site to stop disseminating the stock recommendations of financial services firms until its clients can be notified first.

"Fly's core business is its free-riding off the sustained, costly efforts by the firms and other investment institutions to generate equity research that is highly valued by investors," the judge said. She said the company did no equity research of its own.

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Gaming [H]eadlines

Dissecting the Splinter Cell: Conviction Demo @ Joystiq

Jamie Foxx Joins Kane & Lynch Flick @ Kotaku

MAG Getting Free 'Trooper Gear Pack' DLC @ Shacknews

Paradox Sues SouthPeak @ Blue’s News

AMD's ATI Catalyst 10.3a Driver Performance

Our evaluation of AMD's ATI Catalyst 10.3a driver performance is now online. If you want to know what this new non-WHQL "performance" driver has to offer, hit the link above, we have all the information you need in one easy location.

Quite simply, we are going to compare the latest officially released driver, Catalyst 10.2 WHQL to the newly released ATI Catalyst 10.3a Preview driver. We will be running five games in an apples-to-apples scenario, meaning all in-game settings, resolution, AA and AF are set at the exact same settings.

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Multitasking Criminal of the Day

It would seem that the path to becoming a successful thief isn't possessing the ability to multitask. Seriously, after breaking into a store, the guy starts surfing porn on the store computer before logging on to MySpace and then trying to sell stolen goods online. This guy wasn’t arrested to protect the public, he was probably arrested for being a threat to himself. What an idiot.

A burglar who spent about five hours on a store's computer after breaking into the business gave police all the clues they needed to track him down. Investigators said the 17-year-old logged into his MySpace account while at Bella Office Furniture and that made it easy for them to find him. He also spent time looking at pornography and trying to sell stolen items, all while using the business' computer.

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Disgusting Computer Award

And the award for the most disgusting computer of the week goes to this guy. I wouldn’t recommend viewing these picture if you just ate. You’ve been warned. Blame Izzy R. for this one.

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[H]ardware Round-Up

Cases & Modding

Level 10 Super Gaming Case by Thermaltake @ Legit Reviews

NZXT Tempest Evo Crafted Series Case @ Pro-Clockers

ETC.

NVIDIA ION vs. Radeon HD 4330 Graphics @ Phoronix

Memory/ Storage

OCZ Agility Series 60 GB SSD @ LanOC

Motherboards

4-Way Intel H55 Motherboard Shootout @ TechSpot

Windows 7 SP1 To Have "Minor Updates"

The official Windows 7 blog was updated yesterday with details of the upcoming service pack for Windows 7. According to the blog entry, things are going well with the service pack which currently only needs "minor updates."

For Windows 7, SP1 includes only minor updates, among which are previous updates that are already delivered through Windows Update. SP1 for Windows 7 will, however, deliver an updated Remote Desktop client that takes advantage of RemoteFX introduced in the server-side with SP1 for Windows Server 2008 R2.

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Intel Declares Quarterly Cash Dividend

Intel Corporation's board of directors has declared a 15.75 cents per share quarterly dividend on the company's common stock. The dividend will be payable on June 1, 2010 to stockholders of record on May 7, 2010.

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Google to Leave China on April 10

I think we can all agree that Google’s decision to leave China is a far better option than continuing to censor searches in that country.

"I have received information saying that Google will leave China on April 10, but this information has not at present been confirmed by Google," the China Business News quoted the agent as saying. The report also said Google would reveal its plans for its China-based staff that day.

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Cyberbullying Threats Are Not Protected Speech

Feeling like talking a little smack in the forums today? You might want to read this first.

A California appeals court ruled this week that threatening posts made by readers of a website are not protected free speech, allowing a case charging the posters with hate crimes and defamation to proceed.

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Internet Piracy is Taking Big Toll on Jobs

Yes, this is another study on internet piracy that says illegal downloads are costing people their jobs. What makes this article different from the others is this juicy quote that claims stuff is pirated because we want to be cool…like Johnny Depp. Huh!?!?

"To me, piracy is something adventurous, it makes you think about Johnny Depp. We all want to be a bit like Johnny Depp. But we're talking about a criminal act. We're talking about making it impossible to make a living from what you do," she said.

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Tech Equipment Tax Deduction Tips

Since it is tax season, I thought I would pass on a link to this handy article on tax deductions for your tech equipment.

Your computers, your cell phone, Internet services, Web hosting--your business depends on technology to run, so at tax time it's natural to want to deduct all your tech expenditures. And accountants agree--but only up to a point.

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ASUS Introduces Designo Series LED Monitors

ASUS today unveiled brand new additions to its Designo Series range—the MS248, MS238, MS228 and MS208 LED monitors. These eco-friendly, ultra-slim monitors feature 16.5mm profiles and 20" to 23.6" displays that deliver uncompromised performance and mind-blowing visuals. The cutting-edge MS Series LED monitors deliver a benchmark 10,000,000:1 contrast ratio for more lifelike images. Retaining the binary state-inspired concept that incorporates the numbers 1 and 0 into an ultra-slim design, these LED monitors come with a glittering sapphire blue rear bezel. They also retain the original's iconic Ergo-Fit Technology spherical ring stand that lets users adjust the monitor's tilt angle with just one finger. Each of these mercury-free LED monitors reduce energy consumption by up to 45%*, and lowers annual CO₂ emissions by 23.6kg

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VIA Announces Integration with Microsoft RemoteFX Technology

VIA Technologies, Inc, a leading innovator of power efficient x86 processor platforms, today announced plans to support Microsoft RemoteFX, a feature being developed for Windows Server 2008 R2 Service Pack 1. "VIA is excited to work with Microsoft in bringing the latest virtual desktop technologies to the fast evolving thin client sector," said Richard Brown, Vice President of Marketing, VIA Technologies, Inc. "Adding Microsoft RemoteFX to our media system processor technologies will deliver a more visually compelling, multimedia-rich virtual desktop experience."

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Creditors Turned Off by Sex.com Auction

Look, I know some of these domain names go for big bucks and all but this is getting ridiculous. Endless lawsuits, lawyers, bankruptcy, creditors, equity holders and a one million dollar deposit just to bid in the auction? Wow.

An auction in New York of the hotly desired Sex.com Internet domain name scheduled for Thursday was halted at the last hour when creditors forced the previous owner into bankruptcy.

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[H]ardware Round-Up II

ETC.

10 Things to do with a New Computer @ TechwareLabs

MusicSkins Custom Netbook Skin @ DSM

Memory/ Storage

Patriot Viper II Sector 5 2000MHz 4GB Memory Kit @ Legit Reviews

Motherboards

MSI 890GXM-G65 AMD Motherboard @ OCIA

Power Supply

Chill Innovation 450W Power Supply @ HardwareHeaven

Google, Intel, and Sony to Join Forces

According to a new report, Google, Intel, and Sony are going to join forces to build a set top box called "Google TV." Thanks to Rick E. for the linkage.

The search giant is believed to be working with Sony and Intel to develop a system called "Google TV", and has built a prototype set-top box in an effort to provide a better way for people to surf the web through their televisions.

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AMD Phenom II X6 Clocks Leaked

The crew at Tech Connect say they have leaked information and clock speeds for the AMD Phenom II X6.

Courtesy of a couple BIOS updates released by Gigabyte (and leaked CPU support lists), we now know that the X6 1035T will have its six cores set to 2600 MHz / 2.6 GHz, while the X6 1055T will be set @ 2800 MHz / 2.8 GHz. Expanding on the info available it's clear that the highest-end hexa-core prepped by AMD for next month, the Phenom II X6 1075T will be clocked at 3.0 GHz, 333 MHz under Intel's own Core i7 980X EE.

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Xbox 360 Getting USB Storage Ugrade?

We covered this earlier in our Gaming [H]eadlines post but, after all the e-mail you guys have sent me about this, I figured it deserved a post of its own. The quick and dirty version of the rumor is that Microsoft will allow USB storage devices (up to 16GB) to be used as storage devices. I haven’t heard back from MS on this one yet but I will keep you guys up to date if and when I do.

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Viacom, Google Air Dirty Laundry in Court Docs

I know most people claim they don’t like it when companies air their dirty laundry like this but, even the most jaded would have to agree, this is some pretty good stuff.

"We believe YouTube would make a transformative acquisition for MTV Networks/Viacom that would immediately make us the leading deliverer of video online, globally," according to an internal Viacom slide that Google filed with the court.

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Fastest Book Scanner Ever

Check out this new book scanning system that can scan a book as you flip through it. You have to watch the video to really appreciate it.

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