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Moscow airport gets rental sleepboxes

September 26th, 2011

Moscow airport gets rental sleepboxes

Designed by Russian architecture and design firm Arch Group, the Sleepbox is an interesting concept turned reality. The company first released its concept design of the Sleepbox back in 2009 and has now officially released trial units to be installed at Moscow’s Sheremetyevo International Airport.

Moscow airport gets rental sleepboxes

The Sleepbox is a small sleeping chamber meant to be rented out in large airports or other popular transportation hubs. These small structures would provide passengers with a place to relax and rest while waiting for their flights. Arch Group has begun installation of its trial units which have been given a “hostel edition” design.

Moscow airport gets rental sleepboxes

The design features two small beds in a bunk bed position complete with its very own ventilation system, power and lighting. Although the original proposed design featured an internal vending machine, Wi-Fi and an alarm clock, the hostel edition lacks these features. The Sleepbox definitely sounds like a great way to have a nice and quiet nap while waiting for a delayed flight, but we can definitely see a quick nap turning into a long nightmare without the use of a trusty alarm clock.

SOURCE via Core77

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Master Yoda

September 26th, 2011

Master Yoda

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Mass Effect movie will have a different storyline from the actual game

September 26th, 2011

Mass Effect movie will have a different storyline from the actual game

During this year’s San Diego Comic-Con convention in July, Legendary Pictures revealed that a full-blown, live-action Mass Effect movie was in the works. The studio asked for fans to tweet questions which a pre-production film panel would answer. The questions were never addressed, the convention ended, and fans didn’t receive any feedback from the submittals. The company supposedly forgot to tell anyone that the answers went live on August 2, so the details are just now making their way through the news channels.

According to the studio, the Mass Effect movie will feature a completely new story that focuses on the male version of Commander Shepard. The studio added that it’s working closely with BioWare, backing up a previous comment made by the film’s screenwriter, Mark Protosevich (I Am Legend), who said his script would be “following and honoring the story.”

Right now there’s no indication that Legendary will go beyond this movie installment, claiming that the team is really focused on making this a great movie. “So we’ll see where it takes us,” the studio said, deflating any possible rumors of a film-based trilogy. “We have to get the first one right to know whether there will be more.”

Other reports state that Seth Green, the actor who voiced the ship pilot Joker, will not by repeating his role in the upcoming movie. There’s also some question about the overall plot given that Shepard’s story begins with Mass Effect and ends with Mass Effect 3. Will this be an alternate timeline, or a story that resides within the game trilogy? Based on Legendary’s response, the film may ignore everything that’s happened in the three games.

Other reports state that Legendary has hired on Daft Punk to provide the film’s soundtrack. Daft Punk previously worked on TRON: Legacy.

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VIA wants iPad and iPhone banned in the states

September 26th, 2011

VIA wants iPad and iPhone banned in the states

What goes around comes around. Apple just won a battle against Samsung which resulted in the banning of the latter company’s Android-based Galaxy Tab 10.1 in Germany. The German courts agreed with the fruity iPad developer in that the company owns exclusive rights to minimalist tablet designs (and apparently Stanley Kubrick does not). Citing patent infringement, the Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1 cannot be imported or sold within the German borders.

But now Apple is facing a patent infringement lawsuit filed against it by Taipei-based motherboard, CPU, and chipset maker VIA Technologies, Inc. Submitted to the U.S. Federal Court in Wilmington, Delaware, VIA is crying patent infringement (who isn’t anymore) and seeking a jury trial along with a plea to the court to ban the sale of Apple’s iPad, iPhone, iPod and Apple TV products.

According to the lawsuit, these devices infringe upon three of its U.S.-based patents — two filed in 2001 and the third in 2004 — that “generally provides efficient loading of data in the microprocessors and efficient conversion and transfer of data in the microprocessors.” The three patents specifically cover a technical “instruction set for bi-directional conversion and transfer of integer and floating point data” and “method and apparatus for double operand load.”

“Microprocessors that include this technology can rapidly load data from memory, directly move data between floating point and integer registers, and rapidly convert data from one another, thereby increasing the operational speed of the microprocessors,” VIA said in its suit.

Unfortunately, Apple may have a tough battle ahead. The Delaware Court is supposedly known as a “plaintiff-friendly region,” similar to the Eastern District Federal Court of Texas. Banning the sale of Apple products seems a little far-fetched, but if anything, the Cupertino company may have to shell out some big bucks if found guilty.

Timing of the complaint isn’t coincidental. Apple is reportedly gearing up to reveal the iPhone 4S on October 4 along with the new iPod Touch model and perhaps even the rumored iPhone 5. A temporary injunction barring Apple from selling “infringing products” would cripple Apple’s pre-holiday season sales.

The patents at issue cover microprocessor functionality featured in Apple iPhone, iPad, iPod, and Apple TV devices, namely:

  •  US Patent No. 6253312, Method and apparatus for double operand load,
  •  US Patent Nos. 6253311 & 6754810, Instruction set for bi-directional conversion and transfer of integer and floating point data.

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Forza 4 announces Indy track, Season Pass, Day One DLC and demo date

September 26th, 2011

Forza 4 announces Indy track, Season Pass, Day One DLC and demo date

Gamers, Turn 10 Studios is about to have you say goodbye to your family and friends. Forza Motorsport 4 is nearly available for purchase, and the creative team has let slip a few goodies that will be included with the game. We’ve already heard about the involvement of Top Gear’s Jeremy Clarkson, and how the developers turn a real track into a virtual one. Today, however, we’ve learned that there’s a whole lot more in store for us.

The game hits stores on October 11th, but XBox Live Gold members can grab a demo version starting on October 3rd. Everyone else needs to wait until the 7th for their shot at the demo. When the full version of the game hits a few days later, fresh downloadable content will be available.

Now, DLC will be offered throughout the game’s life cycle. To make sure you have access to it as it becomes available, Forza 4 offers a season pass. Paying $29.99 ensures that you get access to all six of the soon-to-be-released content packs. Buying in bulk also saves you 30 percent over buying each pack individually. This plan also provides you with a bonus American Muscle car pack.

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Snake calibration

September 26th, 2011

Snake calibration

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Diablo 3 may get gamepad support

September 23rd, 2011

Diablo 3 may get gamepad support

Diablo 3 game director Jay Wilson has said in the past that the studio isn’t necessarily a PC developer despite its current library of titles. Instead, Blizzard is a games developer — it just so happens that the titles they do develop work best on the PC platform.

“We don’t believe you can make a Starcraft style RTS and make it Blizzard great on a console,” he told PC Gamer. “We do believe you could make an RTS that would be on a console, but we would have (to have) that idea, and that spark and that passion to make it.”

Still, that doesn’t mean Blizzard doesn’t have an experimental flare when it comes to consoles. We’ve seen one or two of Blizzard’s creations venture out beyond the PC realm, but they never met the same reception as the original PC incarnations. Yet Wednesday Wilson admitted that the team has recently experimented with Diablo 3 using an Xbox 360 controller, seemingly verifying previous reports that Blizzard is bringing the upcoming action-RPG title over to the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3.

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Cute superdog

September 23rd, 2011

Cute superdog

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D-Link announces DSN-4000 series iSCSI SAN arrays

September 23rd, 2011

D-Link announces DSN-4000 series iSCSI SAN arrays

D-Link announced the DSN-4000 Series xStack Storage iSCSI SAN Array, which targets secondary server applications such as disaster recovery, backup, surveillance, and archiving in small to mid-size businesses.

D-Link is offering the DSN-4100 and DSN-4200 arrays in a 3U form factor with up to 32 TB of capacity in 16 SAS/SATA drive bays. Customers can expand the system to 48 drive bays and 96 TB of capacity. The 4100 includes four 1 GbE ports delivering a combined bandwidth of 425 MB/s, while the 4200 provides eight ports and 850 MB/s.

The 16-bay base DSN-4100 array is available for $5000, while the 16-bay DSN-4200 unit is priced at $6200. The DSN-4000 expansion unit sells for $3200.

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Nvidia: Console Software Sales Flat, PC on the Rise

September 23rd, 2011

Nvidia: Console Software Sales Flat, PC on the Rise

I’m not quite sure how it happened, but PC gaming seems to have gotten a bad rap over the last several years. All of a sudden, there’s a war between the PS3 and Xbox, and at some point “they” decided that the PC should play second fiddle to the Xbox and PlayStation, instead of the other way around…or at the very least, seeing every player in the gaming space as equal.

Nvidia certainly has something to say about that, and the company’s response isn’t a sleek new near-$3,000 gaming laptop, nor is it some hot new PC title…despite Battlefield 3, Skyrim and Rage being right around the corner. Instead, Big Green is bringing cold, hard facts to the table. In short, it’s all about the almighty dollar and how that cash is wielded by you, John Q. Consumer.

And oh, we heard that Nvidia might just announce some new hardware next month!

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