Samsung wants to ban iPhone, iPad, and iPod sales in the U.S.

Samsung is escalating its legal tussle with Apple with an ITC complaint aimed at barring the iPhone, iPad and iPod from being imported and sold in the U.S. The move comes about two months after Apple sued Samsung for copying the look and feel of its iPhone and iPad with its Galaxy S line of smartphones and tablets, to which the latter responded with a countersuit that alleges Apple is infringing on five patents relating to wireless networking technology.
The Korean manufacturer is hoping the U.S. International Trade Commission steps into the ongoing battle, requesting the government agency to open an investigation on Apple regarding "certain mobile electronic devices, including wireless communication devices, portable music and data processing devices, and tablet computers."
The ITC first hasn't yet agreed to look into Samsung's allegations, but if the complaint moves forward, the entire matter could still take 15 to 18 months to complete before a ban can be enacted -- or discarded, for that matter. In the meantime, Samsung is not putting its guard down in court. The company has filed a new patent lawsuit against Apple in a Delaware federal court, in addition to the ones in Seoul, Tokyo, San Francisco and Mannheim, Germany.
Despite the legal claims and counter claims, the two companies remain dependent on each other. Apple bought nearly $6 billion worth of Samsung components for its iPhone, iPad and iPod products last year, and according to COO Tim Cook's recent comments, this patent dispute should not affect their ongoing business relationship. That said, there are already rumors that Apple plans to move A6 SoC production away from Samsung in 2012, favoring TSMC instead.

Source: http://www.techspot.com/news/44486-samsung-wants-to-ban-iphone-ipad-and-ipod-sales-in-us.html

Blizzard offers free copies of WoW - Techspot.com

"
Blizzard just made it a little easier to persuade your most reluctant friends to take their first hit of WoW. Last week, the company announced a new "Recruit-a-Friend" promotion that allows veteran players to give away free copies of the aging MMORPG. It's unclear precisely what constitutes a "veteran" player, but if you're worthy enough to don that title you should've received an email notification along with a code that'll grant your buddy a fully functional copy of the original World of Warcraft title along with their first 30-day subscription.
Although the free copy technically comes without restrictions, the base installation of WoW only covers levels 1 through 60. To access the maximum level of 85 and all the WoW content Blizzard has published since 2004, newcomers will have to cough up about $65 for three separate expansions: The Burning Crusade ($10), Wrath of the Lich King ($35), and Cataclysm ($20) -- not to mention the subsequent $15 monthly subscription. In other words, you're only saving about $10 (you can buy WoW and The Burning Crusade together for $20).
To accompany its Recruit-a-Friend campaign, Blizzard announced today that it would loosen the time constraint of its trial program. The company previously allowed new players to explore Azeroth for 10 or 14 days, but that time limit has been removed. Folks can now play WoW for an unlimited amount of time without paying, but only up to level 20 -- a cap that has always been a part of the game's demo period. Again, if you want progress beyond that point (which shouldn't too take long to reach), you'll have to pony up for the full experience."

Source: http://www.techspot.com/news/44459-blizzard-offers-free-copies-of-wow-removes-demo-time-limit.html

Google releases new developer and beta versions of Chrome

Keeping up with its breakneck development pace Google released new versions of Chrome yesterday for beta testers and developers. The beta release officially hit version 10, bringing a notable speed boost of 66% on the V8 benchmark suite over the current stable release, while also incorporating an early implementation of GOU-accelerated video decoding, which on supported video cards can reduce CPU usage five times when viewing full screen video.
Aside from improvements to JavaScript and video playback, Google has also revamped the settings interface, which now appears in a tab as opposed to a dialog box and includes a handy search feature you can use in case you're not sure where to find a particular option. Just enter a keyword, like "password" for example, and Chrome will display anything related while making the options directly available from the search results.
Google also made some security improvements, with a new mechanism for disabling outdated plugins, and introduced additional password syncing features that allow users to synchronize saved passwords across multiple computers and have them encrypted with a secret passphrase.
Meanwhile, those in the developer channel received the first preview of version 11, which offers enhancements such as a new implementation of the XSS Auditor to assist web authors in finding code segments that are vulnerable to cross-site scripting attacks. Google isn't talking much yet about its plans for Chrome 11, but according to Cnet, one interesting feature on the way is the so-called chromoting that will allow users to control "legacy PC applications" running on other computers. The feature is expected to work like a remote desktop application only from the browser itself.

SOURCE:
 http://www.techspot.com/news/42478-google-releases-new-developer-and-beta-versions-of-chrome.html

VIDEO:
 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jOxGL29-t_4&feature=player_embedded

AMD says their chips are ready, willing and stable

 AMD has launched a new marketing campaign to encourage component channel companies and home users to turn to them as their source of chips. Dubbed "Ready. Willing. And Stable", the new campaign is designed to capitalize on Intel's Cougar Point chipset flaw by letting partners and enthusiasts know they can build their dream PCs today.

There will be three major components to it: a global advertising program, an online marketing campaign, and a Twitter-based contest that will run over the next 8 to 10 weeks. All activity in the "Ready. Willing. And Stable." campaign is designed to drive partners and customers to a newly launched web page that contains suggested platform alternatives to Intel's Sandy Bridge parts as well as links to online stores like Amazon, Newegg, and others.

To drive end-customer awareness, AMD will launch a Twitter contest the week of Monday, February 21, where participants can win AMD products and PC games. Details will be available at amd.com/tweettowin next week.

The company believes the Cougar Point misstep represents an opportunity for the company and it hopes to pick up some business through aggressive marketing. AMD's director of marketing, Tim Martin, acknowledged that there is no way to tell if the campaign is going to bring any material revenues to their business, and Intel is not going to concede much of a window as it has begun shipping the bug-fixed "B3 stepping" of 6-series chipset to notebook and mainboard manufacturers. If anything, he's confident that the campaign is going to move some momentum in AMD's direction.

SOURCE:
http://www.techspot.com/news/42475-amd-says-their-chips-are-ready-willing-and-stable.html

 My view: I love AMD. I have a computer now that I built with a AMD 9850 Phenom Quad-core Black Edition. LOVE IT. Once they start coming out with more netbooks with the AMD Fusion's, I'm totally going to buy one!

These are similar to what I have.

 

Apple grabs 60% of touch panel capacity, hurting supply for others

Apple has an internal goal of shipping 40 million iPad products this year. To manufacture all of them, the company has occupied close to 60% of the global touch panel capacity, according to sources from upstream component makers for tablets cited by DigiTimes.
Touch panels are thus suffering the most serious shortage, which has hurt supply for Apple's competitors since the component shortage means shipment volumes are unable to keep up with orders, especially for second-tier players. Apple is holding control over the capacity of major touch panel makers such as Wintek and TPK.

RIM, Motorola, and HP are also competing for related components, leaving out second-tier players. As a result, Samsung Electronics, Acer, and HP have all started turning to smaller touch screen suppliers such as Sintek Photronic, Egalax-empia Technology, AimCore Technology, and J Touch.
Apple's iPad 2 entered production earlier this month. There are no details as to when the new version of the device might be hitting store shelves or what the pricing will be.
The company hasn't even announced the device yet. In the meantime, it is still selling the original iPad. In this respect, Samsung has beat Apple to the punch by announcing the successor to the original Galaxy Tab: the Galaxy Tab 10.1.

SOURCE:
http://www.techspot.com/news/42466-apple-grabs-60-of-touch-panel-capacity-hurting-supply-for-others.html

I think iPads are a waste of money...
What do you guys think?

This year looks to be packed with highly anticipated titles that will arrive to the PC. Crysis 2 is no doubt one of those games, and one in particular that has lived in our minds considering that the original game (2007) to this very day can put a mid-range machine to crawl.
As much as we admire developers' efforts to make newly released games accessible to a majority of PC gamers, Crytek's ambition to push the graphics envelope was confirmed last year when they claimed Crysis 2 would have “the best graphics you've ever seen”. Soon after we got word that Crysis 2 would be made graphically superior on the PC versus its console counterparts, which was great news as we worried that Crytek may not remain loyal to their PC fans.

Crysis 2 is slated for release this March 22, however as it is of public knowledge, an early incomplete build of the game was leaked to Torrent sites last week. So, before we get started let's get a few things straight:

1) Our testing is based on the leaked, unfinished build of Crysis 2. Our intention with this article is to provide an early look to the game's GPU and overall system requirements. Of course, we were keen to see how the game runs on certain hardware given how demanding the original title was. 2) We don't believe this leak can be called a final representation of the game that will ship next month. It's obvious further optimizations will be made as we encountered bugs and had to recur to a few tricks to circumvent crashing to the desktop.
3) Ever since we played the original Far Cry, we became huge fans and supporters of Crytek's work. We encourage all readers who planned to buy the game to hold off and wait for the finished version, rather than spoiling what will surely be one of the best games of 2011.

With that out of the way and keeping in mind that this "beta" build of the game is still missing numerous features, we have run a brief set of tests comparing AMD and Nvidia graphics cards. We expect Crysis 2 performance to vary from now to the time the game is actually released, so please only accept this article as a rough guide.


SOURCE:
http://www.techspot.com/review/367-crysis2-beta-performance/

AMD for sale, Dell is interested.

As far as the stock market is concerned, Advanced Micro Devices may be up for sale. AMD's shares were significantly up yesterday, apparently on rumors that Dell is interested in buying the American multinational semiconductor company. Barron's reported on the rumor first:

I would say the recent departures of senior executives — COO Robert Rivet last week, CEO Dirk Meyer back in January — is still unexplained and can lead to all kinds of speculation. There's not a lot of color on the rumor at this point. Is Dell considering making a more integrated kind of product line? Talk about a change in strategy.

CFO Thomas Seifert is acting as interim CEO but he has said that he doesn't want the promotion to be permanent. Bloomberg followed up on the rumor with quotes from an industry analyst:

"There is no management team there," said Patrick Wang, an analyst at Wedbush Securities in New York. There is some "chatter" that the company is up for sale, he said. "It's a far- fetched possibility."

If AMD ends up being bought out, the purchase by Dell, or any other company for that matter, would be among the biggest the technology industry has seen. It would be of course bigger than when AMD bought ATI in 2006.

Source:
http://www.techspot.com/news/42411-rumor-amd-is-up-for-sale-dell-may-be-interested.html

My take:
I really don't want to see Dell buy AMD. Dell already bought Alienware, which made people mad.
AMD is a HUGE company, why would they be for sale?