Tech Olive

Though the game’s existence was far from a secret, we’ve finally gotten official word of incoming information regarding the third Battlefield title, thanks to Game Informer. Their March issue will feature a massive and exclusive Battlefield 3 cover story. According to the cover art, “DICE sets its sights on Call of Duty.” Wasn’t that the plan for Bad Company 2 and Medal of Honor, only to be greatly overshadowed by Black Ops?  Perhaps EA DICE can put Call of Duty in its place this time around.

Yesterday, media giant News Corporation unveiled The Daily iPad-only newspaper during a press event. Afterward, founder and CEO of News Corporation Rupert Murdoch sat down for an interview where he told the interviewer that Steve jobs doesn’t just create, but he also destroys the things that he creates.

“I think this is the end of the laptop. Here we have the man who invented the personal computer, then the laptop.  He’s now destroying them.  That is an amazing life.”

While I’m sure Apple’s CEO doesn’t want to directly destroy the things that he created, it’s really all part of the circle of life. When you create new things, older creations simply become less important and eventually vanish naturally.

[paidContent via Gizmodo]

Image Credit: BusinessWeek

We’ve all heard the Call of Duty. Millions of us have responded to this Call over the years, but what happens when Duty Calls? That, my friends, is up to you. Whatever you choose, I hope it includes reading this quick review.

Continue Reading »

According to NetMarketshare.com, Google Chrome has hit a 10% browser market share for the first time ever. Of course, this is at the expense of Firefox and Internet Explorer, which both took a slight hit. They are now at 22.75% and 56.00%, respectively. Safari has been ever so slightly increasing over the past year to gain 6.30% and Opera is keeping a steady share at 2.28%.

via [Maximum PC]

I know we’re all excited about the release of Crysis 2, but do you think your rig will even be able to play the game? The minimum system requirements for Crysis 2 were revealed on the official German Crysis Facebook page and Nvidia was nice enough to translate them and post it on their site. See them below.

• OS: Windows XP/Vista/7
• CPU: Intel Core 2 Duo 2Ghz, AMD Athlon 64 x2 2Ghz or better
• 2 GB RAM
• HDD: 9 GB
• DVD ROM: 8x
• GPU: NVIDIA 8800 GT 512MB Ram or better
• Audio DirectX 9.0c compatible

They’re actually not that bad. I would say most gaming machines nowadays will be able to at least play Crysis 2. Hopefully the upcoming MP demo will give you a better idea.

[GeForce.com]

Epic Vid of the Week is a weekly series that showcases an awesome video that we or our readers discover. Some you may have seen before and others you may have not. If you’ve discovered any videos that might be worthy of an Epic Vid of the Week title, let us know!

In this short segment of The Today Show back in 1994, Bryant Gumbel and Katie Couric try to figure what exactly the internet is, as well as explain their confusion about the “@” symbol. Must watch!

You’ve undoubtedly heard about the craze of “green” hard drives from companies like Western Digital and Seagate. They promise that these drives will consume less power and cost less (since they only run at 5400RPM or 5900RPM), but from what Ars Technica reports, these “green” drives don’t differ all that much from regular drives.

“In terms of cost, using a green hard drive compared to a normal one makes very little difference. Assuming your drive spends 4 hours reading and writing and 20 hours idle per day, switching from the WD Black to Green saves you only 45 kilowatt-hours per year. The national average cost of a kilowatt-hour is 11.93 cents, netting you a whopping $5.38 per year for your sacrifice of 1800 RPM. For comparison, changing one 60-watt lightbulb used 4 hours a day to a 7-watt fluorescent one saves you more, about $9.23 per year.”

They’re obviously not completely useless since they’re still relatively quieter and stay cooler than regular drives, making them ideal for HTPCs and backup storage.

[Ars Technica]

This won’t solve any of the privacy issues that Facebook’s been accused of by any means, but by enabling HTTPS (S = Secure) in your Facebook settings, you can prevent hackers from logging into your account if you happen to be in a public place with an open connection.

From the Facebook homepage after logging in, click on Account in the upper right-hand corner of the page. Then click Account Settings. Click the change button to right of Account Security and check the box that says Browse Facebook on a secure connection (https) whenever possible. Hit Save and you’re good to go. Now, whenever you log in and surf Facebook, it will be over an encrypted connection.

The fear of running out of IP addresses has stalked us for years, but in a few days, the internet will completely run out of IPv4 addresses. However, IPv6 addresses will be the new thing sooner or later. Basically, IPv4 addresses range between 4 to 12 digits and have a size of 32 bits. IPv6 addresses will have a size of 128 bits and can be 32 digits long. This allows for 340 undecillion unique addresses (that’s 36 zeroes), compared to 4.3 billion possible combinations with IPv4.

IPv6 is still young and we probably won’t see it widely implemented for a couple more years. Until then, the recycling and reusing of IPv4 addresses will occur.

via [WSJ and CNET]

Howdy, folks. To get a better idea of what our readers (you guys) are like, we’re going to be conducting a survey to gather demographic information about our audience. This includes the basics like age, residency, education, employment, etc. Not only are we doing this for kicks, but we should also say that it’s going to be for potential advertisers in the future. The survey should only take you about five lousy minutes (ten minutes tops) to complete and it’s completely anonymous! We will have no idea who you are, so your privacy is completely safe. Please help us out and hit up the link below to start taking the survey!

Click here to take the survey