Tech Olive

An interesting BSOD graced the screen of a projector at GDC this week (see above). It seemed completely harmless until gamers looked closer. It seems GLaDOS was behind it all and was offering to fill the area with deadly neurotoxins. Upon closer inspection, the BSOD had even more information to offer. When a dedicated gamer over at the Penny Arcade forums got ahold of the image, he had the following light to shed on the mystery:

“The hex converted to decimal: 226 228 226 : 215 197 213 196 228 213 227 ( 201 ) + 211 197 197 197
If it’s ASCII it’s extended ASCII. Could it be EBCDIC (common mainframe encoding)?
Edit: It IS EBCDIC. It spells: S U S : P E N D … U N T ( I ) L … E E E (colon, dots for spacing, and parens added to roughly locate them in the source image.)
Hey, being QSECOFR on an AS/400 many years ago finally pays off!”

So, there you have it. All that work and excitement and we get a simple message: “Suspended until E3.” Perhaps we’ll actually get some real, non-cryptic details come mid June?

via [Steam Forums]

It seems that the stream of free Mass Effect 2 DLC has ended. Bioware announced that the next DLC release pack for the game will come to gamers at a cost. Yes, even us beloved PC gamers. The new DLC, titled “Kasumi’s Stolen Memory,” will release April 6th and bring with it a new Locust SMG, along with adding a new 30-minute mission, new party companion and some other additions. Unfortunately, Bioware is still in discussions on what the final price for the DLC will be. We’ll keep you posted.

via [Joystiq]

Dell’s proudest laptop creation is no more, no longer. The Adamo XPS has been given the axe after only four months of existence. A lot of us our scratching our heads as to why the 0.4-inch thick, flagship notebook from Dell was booted shortly after its launch. It seemed like Dell put a lot of money and energy into marketing this thing. Dell had this to say as to why they ended the notebook’s life:

“It [Adamo XPS] has not been “discontinued” as such, but was meant to be a proof point to Dell’s design and engineer capabilities. Because of this, it was similar to a “limited edition”, and most of the original supply has since been accounted for.”

So, it seems that Dell just wanted to show off their mad skills, but I think I would be more impressed if Dell actually continued with the XPS, showing that they could provide support for the device and continue to improve it.

via [CrunchGear]

Good news for all the bicycle junkies like myself. Google Maps now has added bicycle directions on top of the car, walking, and public transit options. Not only that, but Google Maps also features bike trails, bike lanes, and bike-friendly roads. Google has partnered with Google Rails-to-Trails “to provide information on bike trails in more than 150 cities.” Thanks to Google, there won’t be any excuse for you not to bust out that two-wheeled piece of hardware.

[Press Release]

Razer has announced a new product…if you can call it that. The Razer Salmosa Pro-Gaming Edition is a very limited run (50 units total) of a shrunken-down Salmosa. Other than that, it’s exactly the same hardware, color and price; $39.99.

It’s a very confusing and underwhelming announcement considering the Salmosa isn’t a very popular mouse, so wouldn’t it make more sense to give the Diamondback or Lachesis a new, improved and/or limited edition release? At any rate, the new version of the Salmosa is only available to North American buyers while the limited supplies last.

[Announcement]

As expected, Codemasters announced this week that their next upcoming racing game is F1 2010, which (according to Codemasters) will be the first F1 game on the PC in 8 years. The game is planned for release this September on PC, Xbox 360 and PS3. Read the full press release after the break.

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For the first two months of 2010, Gigabyte is said to have sold between 3.1 million and 3.3 million motherboards, which is up to par with the 3.2 million to 3.3 million of Asus’ sales. However, Asus won’t go down without a battle. It’s said that they are looking to slash prices of their motherboards to increase sales. The company thinks they’ll be able to ship 5 million motherboards for the first quarter.

via [DigiTimes]

Image Credit: Mike Babcock

Personally, I thought I’d never see this coming, but seeing the swarm of modders fitting their netbooks with HD decoders has persuaded Asus to go ahead and put their own HD decoder in their upcoming 1005PR Eee PC. Other notable features include the new Atom N450, a 10.1″ 1366×768 display, 11 hours of battery life, 250GB HDD, up to 2GB of DDR2 RAM, Bluetooth, WiFi, USB 2.0, Ethernet, 0.3MP webcam, multitouch trackpad, and the Broadcom BCM 70015 HD decoder, which will be able to play full 1080p HD video without a hiccup, something older netbooks can’t brag about. Sadly, no official word from Asus yet on pricing and availability.

[Asus via Hot Hardware]

Redmond’s newest operating system, Windows 7, has sold 90 million licenses since its release in the Fall of 2009. This makes Windows 7 the fastest-selling operating system of all time. The announcement came early last week at the Morgan Stanley Technology, Media & Telecom Conference by Microsoft CFO Peter Klein.

[Windows Blog via MCV]

While most of us are doing the smart thing by utilizing torrents, stragglers still using LimeWire will be thankful to know that AVG will be heading their way to make the LimeWire file sharing client more secure. Using licensed AVG Antivirus SDK, LimeWire will scan files that are downloaded to the user’s PC and let them know if they grabbed a virus on accident. One of the downsides is that the integrated AVG will only be available to LimeWire Pro users. The rest of you using the free version will have to continue doing virus scans of your downloads the traditional way.


via [Download Squad]