July 2nd, 2009

iBUYPOWER has launched Paladin XLC the “Extreme Liquid Cooling” gaming desktop computer systems, the desktop computers come with oversized fans and double-sized 240mm radiator liquid cooling system for gamer lovers, available in three models are XLC V1, XLC V2 and XLC V3, gets a Core i7-920 processor.

More features, up to 12GB of DDR3 RAM, as many as three NVIDIA GeForce GTX 285 GPUs, upwards of 1TB of HDD space, optional Blu-ray support and Windows Vista Home Premium, you can start order at $1,399 for XLC V1, $2,159 for XLC V2 and $4,299 for XLC V3.

While the M865TU gaming laptop has launched in early June, it’s most powerful 15 Inch WXGA widescreen LCD display with a 1680×1050 high definition resolution, the processors base on 2.93GHz Intel Core 2 Duo T9800, up to 4GB DDR3 memory, the NVIDIA GTX 260 1GB graphics card, you can even configure their systems with the Intel X-25-M SSD for blazing fast load times, the M865TU gaming laptop price starting at $1,499.

A new website that contains news and reviews of mobile phones, digital cameras and other electronic toys, has been launched by Ryan Block and Peter Rojas, after the predecessors,  namely Gizmodo and Engadget like Gadgetwise which is owned by The New York Times or AMJ Gadgets Magazine it self.

GDGT, the new website, is different from Engadget or Gizmodo as it is meant to be a gadget-oriented social network, where users of the site will be able to create profiles and specify which consumer electronics devices they have, had or want to buy. Besides, then they will be able to talk about those devices with other owners, discuss new trends and tips, and decide how and when to replace them.

Gadget sites mostly provide only to 5% of a gadget’s lifecycle while 95% of the time we have the product there is no place to go, so the new website is a place where we can live with our gadgets online in eternity.

The GDGT founders, whose expertise in consumer electronics has earned them a significant online following, will not review gadgets by themselves. Instead, they will link to news and reviews on other sites, and will invite GDGT users to evaluate their devices. All reviews must be over 200 words, to guard against succinctly uninformative reviews.

Besides, GDGT will have information that will help users compare devices and links to online stores where they can make purchases. The site plans later to develop a marketplace for people to sell their devices once they are done.

For its advertisers, GDGT will know what devices its users own and which ones they want. Research in Motion, maker of the BlackBerry, has signed on as the exclusive advertiser for the first month.

It will run banner ads made to look similar to other content on the site - inviting people to add a RIM phone to their wish list, for example. The ads are clearly labeled as a sponsorship. In short, this is the final act. “Gizmodo was the prototype. Engadget extended the idea. AMJ Gadgets a gadgets magazine this could possibly be the last great gadget site.”

The Chinese government has postponed its controversial regulation that requires manufacturers to include Web-filtering software in all new personal computers sold in the country.

The government’s noticeable retreat, only one day before the rule was to be enacted, follows intense criticism of the software plan at home and abroad since it was first reported online June 7 by The Wall Street Journal.

Chinese government’s Xinhua news agency said late Tuesday quoting a spokesman at the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology that some PC makers had said they had too little time to prepare for the Wednesday deadline. “Based on this factual situation, postponing of pre-installation is allowed,” the spokesman said. But the report did not say how long the delay could last, and officials couldn’t be reached for comment.

The Xinhua report is a clarification that the government is not explicitly abandoning the filtering software, which is called Green Dam-Youth Escort. “We will encourage PC makers who have already pre-installed the software to actively expand the market,” the spokesman said in the Xinhua report, and added that the government is “adhering to our path” and plans to continue providing the software free online in schools and Internet cafes.

“As for how to do pre-installation on other PCs, MIIT will further solicit opinions from various sides, perfect the plan, improve our methods, and complete the relevant work,” the spokesman said further.

The postponement has caused relief for global PC companies. They had feared that implementing the rules would leave them open to legal liability and charges of abetting censorship — especially with so little time to test the software. But they were also reluctant to openly defy the government, as China is the second-biggest PC market by unit sales after the US and also home to much of the world’s PC production.

In China, “green” is a term used for online content free from pornography and other illicit material. The government said the software was intended to block children from viewing online pornography and other “harmful content.”

Isaac Mao, a fellow at Harvard University’s Berkman Center for Internet & Society, said the delay showed that the Green Dam plan “has lost legitimacy” and that the government wouldn’t be able to enforce it. “Of course, the face-saving way is to say ‘postpone,’” he said, but Internet users “are declaring their victory.”

Tuesday’s announcement follows complaints from the U.S., the European Union and other governments, as well as from global PC makers and Internet users in China and abroad. Some critics said the plan appeared to be aimed at extending the government’s massive Internet censorship into people’s homes and offices, and others worried it could expose PCs to hackers or cause technical problems. Researchers who studied the software found evidence that it blocked a range of content including sites covering sensitive political issues.

The ministry spokesman on Tuesday repeated the government’s position that the software is designed only to block “poisonous content” from young people, and said that it “definitely has no capability for collecting users’ information or monitoring their Internet behavior.”

US government officials said they welcomed the postponement. “We understand that the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology is delaying the implementation of the Green Dam software requirement. The United States welcomes the opportunity to engage with the relevant Chinese authorities on our concerns regarding the software,” a US Trade Representative spokeswoman said in a statement.

The US government applied pressure on the Chinese government to reconsider the mandate in recent days, with agencies including the office of the Trade Representative and the Department of Commerce actively lobbying on behalf of PC makers, according to people familiar with the talks.

But it was not clear whether the companies would have been able to meet the requirements by the deadline. “I sincerely don’t know what would have happened” if the mandate wasn’t delayed, said Dean Garfield, president of the Information Technology Industry Council, a trade group that was one of 22 business groups that sent a letter to Premier Wen Jiabao last week urging that the plan be reconsidered.

Computer makers and the US government were worried not only about the deadline, but about the nature of the mandate. The computer industry supports giving parents the ability to block access to offensive content, but is opposed to any requirement that specifies a particular company’s product, Mr. Garfield said.

The delay has not made the issue go away, said Mark Bohannon, general counsel and senior vice president of public policy for the Software and Information Industry Association, another trade group tracking the effort.

On Tuesday, a spokeswoman for Hewlett-Packard Co which is No. 1 in global PC shipments and revenue, said it is working with the Information Technology Industry Council “to seek additional information, clarify open questions and monitor developments on this matter.”

In a statement, Dell Inc did not address the delay explicitly, but said that the company respects the Chinese government’s stated goal of protecting children by filtering access to pornography through the Internet. “We will continue to advise customers worldwide about widely available Web-filtering software that has been thoroughly tested and we know performs well on Dell computers,” the company said.

Chinese officials plainly failed to anticipate the intense backlash against their plans, which grew out of efforts in recent years to use similar filtering software on school PCs. Local media have carried heavy criticism of the plan, prompting repeated government attempts to defend its decision.

The government’s effort to control the Internet - including sophisticated network software, government monitors, and sometimes harsh punishment for breaking rules - does keep out much information, and occasionally helps the government ferret out dissent.

But the Internet has enabled levels of individual expression and discussion that are unprecedented in Communist China. Users who want access to blocked content usually easily find ways to circumvent the system.

Of course, the Green Dam plan seems to have widened public interest in China in questions about government intrusiveness and censorship. Rebecca MacKinnon, a journalism professor at the University of Hong Kong who studies the Chinese Internet, said that searches for the term fan qiang, or “climbing over the wall” - shorthand for circumventing China’s “Great Firewall” - surged after news of Green Dam became public in early June.

NASA has introduced a rocket engine called TR202 lunar descent engine made by  Northrop Grumman, in an effort to continue developing its future moon landing program.
TR202 which is is funded by NASA’s Propulsion and Cryogenic Advanced Development Project within the Exploration Technology Development Program, is likely to be used by the spacecraft that will land humans on the moon, and therefore NASA has increased the budget for the spacecraft.

Northrop said the engine demonstrated stable combustion over a broad throttling range, utilizing what it calls high-performance pintle injector technology to control the spacecraft and allow a soft, precise lunar landing.

Northrop pintle injector technology was used on the original Apollo Lunar Module Descent Engine and the company is working with NASA to develop the technology as a candidate propulsion option for the Altair lunar lander.

NASA said Altair will be capable of landing four astronauts on the moon, providing life support and a base for weeklong initial surface exploration missions, and returning the crew to the Orion spacecraft that will bring them home to Earth. Altair will launch aboard an Ares V rocket into low Earth orbit, where it will rendezvous with the Orion crew vehicle.

Meanwhile, NASA bumped up the contract money it will spend to develop lunar spaceflight vehicles by US$20 million to US$58.75 million. The contract which is being split amongst Northrop, Boeing and others is intended to develop materials and aerodynamic, aerothermodynamic and acoustics technology for aerospace vehicles, NASA said.

Such budget increases and surely many more like it in the future will only generate more concern over future manned space ventures.

The White House recently set up a panel of experts to conduct a wide-ranging review the future of human space flight. The “Review of United States Human Space Flight Plans” is led by Norman Augustine, the former CEO of Lockheed Martin and the panel is expected to look at ongoing and planned NASA development activities, as well as potential alternatives, and offer options for advancing a safe, innovative, affordable, and sustainable human space flight program in the years following Space Shuttle retirement. The panel should reach some conclusions by August 2009.

A Government Accountability Office report last year said there were considerable unknowns as to whether NASA’s Constellation Program, which includes the Ares I Crew Launch Vehicle, the Orion Crew Exploration Vehicle, and the Ares V Cargo Launch Vehicle, can be designed and built within schedule goals and what these efforts will ultimately cost.

This is primarily because NASA is still in the process of defining many performance requirements. Such uncertainties could affect the mass, loads, and weight requirements for the vehicles.

More than US$7 billion in contracts has already been awarded to the Constellation Program-and nearly US$230 billion is estimated to be ultimately spent over the next two decades, the GAO said. Moreover, NASA is under pressure to develop the vehicles quickly, as the Space Shuttle’s retirement in 2010 means that there could be at least a 5-year gap in our nation’s ability to send humans to space.