The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) filed suit against Apple Inc. today to defend the First Amendment rights of an operator of a noncommercial, public Internet “wiki” site known as BluWiki.

EFF and the San Francisco law firm of Keker & Van Nest represent OdioWorks LLC, which runs the BluWiki website. Like many “wiki” platforms, such as Wikipedia, it is open to the public for collaborative authoring and editing on any topic. The site is entirely noncommercial, operated by OdioWorks as a public service.

Late last year, after BluWiki users began a discussion about making some Apple iPods and iPhones interoperate with software other than Apple’s own iTunes, Apple lawyers demanded removal of the content. In a letter to OdioWorks, the attorneys alleged that the discussions constituted copyright infringement and a violation of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act’s (DMCA’s) prohibition on circumventing copy protection measures. Fearing legal action by Apple, OdioWorks took down the discussions from the BluWiki site.

OdioWorks filed the lawsuit today in order to vindicate its right to restore those discussions. Filed in federal court in San Francisco, the suit seeks a declaratory judgment that the discussions do not violate any of the DMCA’s anti-circumvention provisions, and do not infringe any copyrights owned by Apple.

“I take the free speech rights of BluWiki users seriously,” said Sam Odio, owner of OdioWorks. “Companies like Apple should not be able to censor online discussions by making baseless legal threats against services like BluWiki that host the discussions.”

The discussions on the BluWiki site focused on how hobbyists might enable iPods and iPhones to work with desktop media management software other than Apple’s own iTunes software. The discussions were apparently spurred by Apple’s efforts prevent the iPod Touch and iPhone from working with competing media management software such as WinAmp and Songbird.

“Apple’s legal threats against BluWiki are about censorship, not about protecting their legitimate copyright interests,” said Senior Staff Attorney Fred von Lohmann. “Wikis and other community sites are home to many vibrant discussions among hobbyists and tinkerers. It’s legal to engage in reverse engineering in order to create a competing product, it’s legal to talk about reverse engineering, and it’s legal for a public wiki to host those discussions.”

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Verizon and Apple are again rumored to be discussing the possibility of a CDMA iPhone with the goal of introducing it next year, according to a USA Today report.

People familiar with the situation say that the New York-based telecom entered into “high-level” discussions with Apple management a few months ago, when CEO Steve Jobs was overseeing day-to-day business. They declined to be named because they aren’t authorized to speak publicly.

Though Jobs is currently on medical leave until June its said the talks are still continuing.

AT&T has exclusive iPhone rights into 2010 although its widely said that AT&T is trying to extend the contract for at least another year.

A Verizon iPhone would be a big loss for AT&T, says Roger Entner, head of telecom research for Nielsen. “Breaking the (iPhone) exclusivity with AT&T is a huge thing,” he says. “That would send shivers into AT&T’s stock and senior leadership.”

Apple on the other hand does have a lot to gain by linking with 80 million potential customers.

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A while ago we already reported that on some AMD Phenom II 720BE processors the 4th core could be enabled. It seems that the very popular Dual Core AMD Athlon X2 7750BE has four cores as well as it is Phenom based, though with two of them disabled.

Yet all can be enabled

This new’ phenomenon’ works exactly the same as back then with the Phenom II 720BE processors. In some older BIOSes you can enable Advanced Clock Calibration on your AMD 790 motherboard and after a reboot … you might end up lucky with four active CPU cores.

Yeah it’s really that simple, your processors will come back as AMD Phenom FX-7750 Quad-Core. Mind you that the two active cores ‘might’ be damaged and that it only works with some AMD 790 motherboards from ASROCK and BIOSTAR.

It’s a bit of a luck of the draw really, can’t hurt to try though. If it doesn’t work, clear CMOS and yu are back to normal.

The biggest challenge however will be finding a 7750 BE to purchase. Currently I can’t find it anywhere in the price lists.

via. Guru3D

It won’t be very long anymore before AMD’s six-core Istanbul server processors will become available in high volume, and you know what ? That’s the start of a new multi-core race. AMD unveiled it aims to release a 12-core part in 2010 already, and a model with 16 cores in 2011.

The 6000 series processors will see the 45nm 8-core to 12-core Magny-Cours next year, while the 32nm 12- to 16-core Interlagos will arrive one year later. The 4000 series platform on the other hand will see the 45nm 4- to 6-core Lisbon in 2010, and the 32nm 6- to 8-core Valencia in 2011.

Fun fact, the new DCA 2.0 architecture will allow quad-channel memory configurations as is has a four channel integrated controller.

Intel’s Nehalem architecture might have generated a lot of excitement and rave reviews, but it turns out that Nvidia isn’t that impressed with its impact on gaming performance. In fact, yesterday the company described Intel’s claims about Core i7’s gaming performance as “disingenuous” in a presentation to introduce Nvidia’s concept of an optimised gaming PC.

In the presentation, Nvidia’s technical marketing director Tom Petersen said “I have a copy of Intel’s latest deck that they share with press and customers, and on there they have a slide that is called The Intel Core i7 920 Processor, where they claim that gaming performance goes up by 80 percent when you use a Core i7. Now, I was impressed by that claim, and I was trying to figure out how they could possibly say such a thing, and it turns out that Intel is basing that claim on only 3DMark Vantage’s CPU test.”

As Petersen points out, this test “is designed to show CPU difference, it doesn’t actually measure gameplay, it doesn’t actually measure anything about game performance. Sure enough, if you do that test you will see Core i7 running faster, but I think it’s a little disingenuous to call that game performance.”

To prove his point, Petersen outlined two types of PC, which he likened to cars – the Hummer and the Beamer. Petersen described the Hummer, saying that it “has got to be big, and it’s got to be expensive and of course it’s infused with Hafnium, which is kind of a dig at Intel. It has a Core i7, which is Intel’s latest, greatest CPU that they claim is the best for gaming.” The Hummer features a Core i7, 4GB of RAM, an X58 motherboard and a single GeForce GTS 250. Meanwhile, the Beamer swaps out the Core i7 CPU for a basic Core 2 Duo E8400, an nForce 750i motherboard and a pair of GeForce GTS 250 cards in SLI.

The cost difference between the two is massive, with a Core i7 965-based Hummer costing $1,501 US based on pricing from US etailer Newegg, and the Beamer costing just $715 US. Petersen also noted that even a Core i7 920 setup with a single GeForce GTS 250 would still cost more than the Beamer SLI rig at around $790 US. The prices were based on the core components only, and didn’t include features such as the case or PSU.

“You’re paying a pretty dear price to follow the Intel story of how to build the fastest PC for gaming”, said Petersen, as he showed a graph of how gaming performance scales with CPU upgrades. Petersen got his test results by adding together the frame rates from Crysis Warhead, Fallout 3, Call of Duty: World at War and Far Cry 2 at 1,920 x 1,200 (no AA or AF) and taking an average. With a Core 2 Duo E8400 and a GeForce GTS 250, the average was 41.6fps.

He then showed how this increased as you upgraded the CPU (the blue line in the graph above), and compared it to how the frame rate increased when you added another graphics card in SLI. The frame rate only increased to 42.4fps after upgrading to a Core i7 965, but jumped all the way up to 59.4fps after upgrading to a GeForce GTX 260 (216 stream processors) SLI setup.

This might seem obvious to those of us who know about how 3D acceleration works, but Petersen claims that the result is still “surprising to most people”. Petersen says that “it is a fact, that when you’re gaming and you’re running at resolutions of 1,920 x 1,200 or better, the Core 2 Duo is perfect for running all of today’s games. In real gaming, there’s no difference between a Core i7 and a Core 2 Duo.”

Petersen accepts that some gamers want the very best of everything, and likens the combination of a Core i7 and SLI graphics to a Ferrari. “If you’ve got money to burn, and you want to get the latest Core i7, and you want to get great graphics cards, then sure you can get the best of everything. There is some small benefit to having a Core i7 965 over a Core 2 Duo when you’re buying the best graphics cards and running at the highest resolutions, so a Core i7 has a place and it does have a benefit in what I’m going to call the Ferrari configuration. But the truth is that when you’re trading off money, there’s nothing like the Beamer configuration.”

“Particularly in today’s economic climate, people are concerned about getting the most value for their money,” says Petersen. As such, Petersen advises PC gamers to ignore Core i7 and instead set up a Core 2 Duo system using an nForce SLI motherboard. “With the leftover $800 I can go out and buy 16 games,” says Petersen, “it’s not even close.”

Is Nvidia just stating the obvious here, or do you think the general PC gamer thinks that they’ll get a big boost in gaming performance from a Core i7 CPU? Would you rather have a Core i7 system with one GPU, or a Core 2 Duo system with an SLI setup? Let us know your thoughts in the forums.

SOURCE

G.Skill certainly jump the bandwagon when needed. Today they are announcing the Falcon SATA II 2.5″ MLC-based Solid State Drive (SSD) Series based on the latest, Indilink controller, which we know from OCZ Vertex SSD products.

With a huge 64MB dram buffer, the Falcon series represents the best read/write performance stability while avoiding OS stutter. The Falcon series is available in large capacities of 64GB, 128GB and 256GB: the read/write performance of the 128GB and 256GB drives are an industry leading 230/190 MB/Sec, while the 64GB drives are capable of 230/135 MB/Sec.

” G.Skill is a dedicated provider of the best PC enthusiast computer storage and memory solutions, and the Falcon SSD once again reaffirms this, providing both desktop and laptop users the best choice of data storage device, retaining reliable quality and a highly power efficient nature. G.Skill SSDs are designed to yield an impressive 1.5 million hour mean time before failure (MTBF) and include an international 2 year warranty as well as ever ready technical back-up.”

No pricing is available at this time.

via. Guru3D

It is rumored that NVIDIA’s GeForce GT 300 new flagship graphics card won’t arrive until October this year, a source leak with one of NVIDIA’s partners may have hinted to this . They tell the Inquirer that the first actual production models will be ready October 15th following a tape out, or a first submission for manufacturing, in June.

Whether or not NVIDIA will make its target is nonetheless called into question. The company is likely to have the first revision of fully testable silicon on August 1st but may take as much as 3 months after testing to manufacture enough for the first batch, putting an actual release in mid-November at the soonest. Any need to significantly revise the card would likely push the actual release further.

GT 300’s feature set hasn’t been leaked, though it makes sense to bring support for DirectX 11, OpenCL and newer OpenGL and will likely use NVIDIA’s version of 40 nanometer manufacturing to improve performance and reduce heat versus today’s 55nm parts.

via. Guru3D

The Commercial Times believes that Foxconn Electronics is in the running to land orders for a netbook from Apple, according to a DigiTimes report.

The paper adds that Apple’s MacBook will become Foxconn’s major notebook shipment growth contributor in the second quarter

It is believed that Taiwan’s Wintek Corp has been contracted to make the touch-screen displays that will be used in the device.

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Apple has responded to the new Microsoft PC Hunter ads with four new ‘Get a Mac’ ads.

Biohazard Suit
- PC is wearing a bio hazard suit to protect himself from a major new virus that is on the loose.

Legal Copy
- As PC makes claims about his ease of use legal copy is displayed on the screen.

Stacks
- PC is having a difficult time find his friend by looking through stacks of photos one by one.

Time Traveler
- PC travels into the future to see if PC has fixed their stability problems. Future PC freezes.

Apple has advised resellers to begin placing on clearance both the Apple Composite AV Cable and the Apple Component AV Cable, according to a PhoneNews.com report.

The site has learned that Apple will replace these with a single cable, which is known simply as the Apple AV Cable. The consolidated cable will support both component and composite output on the same cable.

More interestingly, PhoneNews.com has learned that the next generation of iPhone and iPod touch will offer at least one version of the iPhone and one version of iPod touch with an even higher resolution screen and capable of full HD video output.

Currently the iPhone and iPod touch do not exceed 480i and 480p (respectively) in terms of video resolution. However, the next iPhone and iPod touch will enable full HD playback, with 720p and 1080i output modes.

It is also believed that Apple will provide the ability for users to access their entire iTunes Library from the iPhone via Wi-Fi.

The end result is that a user can sit at their HDTV, using an Apple AV Dock and an Apple Remote, controlling their iPhone much as they do an Apple TV today. This ensures that a new iPhone owner will be able to purcase, for under $100, all the equipment needed to access (via the iPhone) all of their computer-stored HD content, on their HDTV.

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