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SuperMegaUltraGroovy announced an update for its audio and acoustical measurement application, FuzzMeasure Pro 3.1. The update offers new A- and C-weighted acoustical measurements, along with clipping indicators on the input level meters. Also included are improvements to the performance and display of the Waterfall plug-in, which presents a 3D layout of changing frequency response, and the Reverb...


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Hey my friends ..

We're all hungry for our release units, and we all know everyone is dieing for more info and news, and we all know the boys are too busy to fill our demands But there are a few of us devkit lads on board now, so likely some more info will get leaked.

This is unofficial; I'm not speaking for the devs, and may make errors. I'm not intending to step on the toes of any of the very fine devs for any of the devices (disclosure, I've got dev units of all of them!). Craigs statement about saying something that is true for only 3 days being bandied about for 3 months is ever so true It is also tough to post performance numbers without people thinking its a diss to the non-topmost machine. I don't want to say that, since there are other factors (price, portability, screen preferences, add-ons, support, controls, weight, and so on.)

You might recall my past thread http://www.gp32x.com/board/index.php...opic=44373&hl= comparing gp2x to GP2x Wiz. See that for some commentary on what is accurate or inaccurate for those tests (ie: optimized code on gp2 versus unoptimized code on the Wiz, including SDL versus framebuffer, meaning the Wiz numbers are artificially lower and the gp2x ones are pretty high, so the Wiz should actually perform higher in relation to the gp2x than I showed.) Defining a 'fair' benchmark is hard since everyone has a different idea (all running at their best or worst? the type of test.. be it math, graphics, bus intensive .. it is easy to have a test that hits a weakness in one but a strenght in another, and is that a fair thing (typical use) or a cheat (atypical use)? Hard questions.)

Suffice to say my number is a _SINGLE_ (yet repeatable) test; a good benchmark is comprised of many benchmark tests so you can get a good picture from many perspectives.. not just a 'throwing this out there' number.

Still, it is a pretty telling number sometimes as well!

All that said..

Given OutcaST (an emu for which many of you have seen and used for some 6+ years from me in various forms), in a emulated CPU-torture test. (ie: Atari ST sitting at the GEM desktop with a stock TOS image will be in a tight CPU grind loop.) Doesn't really hit the ST's graphic system hard or the like, but the ST wasn't really a complex machine for graphics anyway. So it tests the emulation pretty well, in a situation that makes the mu perform worse than average. (ie: If it normally woudl run 60fps for a game, it'd run this GEM situation at 40-45fps at a guess.) Its also easy to auto-boot into, so no keyboard or audio or the like making the test more situational.. its pure out emulation with the machine not even trying to play audio.

GP2x stock F100, 200MHz IIRC. Highly optimized code.

GP2x Wiz dev unit (not final hardware but pretty close); The code is on GPH slow software only SDL. (no acceleration.) 533MHz.

Pandora Mk2 (version 1.1) devboard; 500MHz. Notaz quick SDL port using framebuffer. ie: Not optimized, but I think its prolly better than the GPH version on the Wiz. (GPH stuff tends to be slower for some reason, perhaps they don't compile with optimizatoins on in the compiler, or add debugging stuff, or the mouse support is in the way, or something.)

Sony PSP original FAT version. Not optimized for multi-cpu core, not really using the separate GPU for anything in this test. (ie: alpha blendsing UIs and such are in the code, but not during this test.) Essentially the PSP is chugging along at 333MHz if memory serves.. I don't recall if I'm clocking down or not in this case .. didn't loo back at the code to see.

Latest version of Outcast fro mthe gp2x, converted crappily to SDL on the non-F100 machines.

GP2x 49fps

GP2x Wiz 70fps

Pandora dev board mk2 180fps

Sony PSP 53fps

During actual game emulation the numbers are all higher by about 20-25%, but thats out of scope for this.

It is hard to explain the pandora being so far out in front of the others; my guess is the less congested bus, the processor being a multigenerational gap (the Pandora CPU is a far far newer design than in the GP2x), and the big cache on the CPU in the pandora.

Note my comments above; the 70 versus 49 (Wiz to gp2x) may not seem so impressive in relation to the pandora, but going back to the origiunal post I was pretty impressed. The Wiz _IS_ a snappy beasty (and this is a bit of a torture test, not a typical emu gameplay test!), so it is a very exciting device.

The Pandora is freaking goddamned fast.

jeff

L'économie marocaine continuera à résister face à la crise internationale en 2009. Elle fera même légèrement mieux, d'après les prévisions, que cette année, grâce aux bonnes performances du secteur agricole. Mais plusieurs secteurs importants de

La performance restera dans les annales de la médecine moderne. En République Démocratique du Congo, le chirurgien britannique David Nott a réussi une amputation du bras, opération très délicate, en se faisant guider par les SMS de son collègue resté à

pFiled under: a href="http://www.joystiq.com/category/ps3/" rel="tag"Sony PlayStation 3/a, a href="http://www.joystiq.com/category/xbox360/" rel="tag"Microsoft Xbox 360/a, a href="http://www.joystiq.com/category/business/" rel="tag"Business/a/pdiv align="center"img vspace="4" hspace="0" border="0" src="http://www.blogcdn.com/www.joystiq.com/media/2008/12/magic.8ball.focus.490.jpg" alt="" //div Speaking at the Reuters Media Summit in New York this week, Shane Kim confessed that Microsoft's Magic 8-Ball is as broken as everyone else's magic crystals, bird baths, mirrors and good old wild guesses have been during these volatile times. The VP was optimistic about the games industry in general, though, suggesting that consumers are "still looking for entertainment," specifically, of the stay-at-home variety. Despite a href="http://www.joystiq.com/2008/12/02/microsoft-black-friday-xbox-360-sales-trump-ps3-3-to-1/"walloping/a Black Friday sales in the U.S. and a a href="http://www.gamesindustry.biz/articles/360-enjoys-highest-sales-month-ever-in-europe"record month/a in Europe, Kim remained concerned about 2009's outlook. "Who knows, maybe flat performance will be considered a remarkable achievement," Kim prayed aloud. Amen?br /br /Meanwhile, Sony shucked word of Microsoft's dominant November and took a a href="http://www.mcvuk.com/news/32597/Sony-Were-ahead-of-Xbox-in-Europe"thunderous lead/a in the back-and-forth shouting match for the European crown. "I am confident that in PAL territories our installed base is 300,000 units ahead of Xbox 360," SCEE president David Reeves insisted to MCV, adding, "No we are not going to go down in price; neither are we going to go down in price on PS3 in spring time either." So there.br /br /Source - a href="http://www.reuters.com/article/Media08/idUSTRE4B25SS20081203"Microsoft cautiously optimistic about Xbox sales/a [Reuters]br /Source - a href="http://www.gamesindustry.biz/articles/360-enjoys-highest-sales-month-ever-in-europe"Xbox 360 enjoys highest sales month ever in Europe/a [GI.biz]br /Source - a href="http://www.mcvuk.com/news/32597/Sony-Were-ahead-of-Xbox-in-Europe"Sony: We're ahead of Xbox/a [MCV]p style="padding:5px;background:#ddd;border:1px solid #ccc;clear:both;"a href="http://www.joystiq.com/2008/12/04/microsoft-optimistic-as-xbox-360-has-record-euro-month-sony-cla/"Microsoft optimistic as Xbox 360 has record Euro month; Sony claims overall lead/a originally appeared on a href="http://www.joystiq.com"Joystiq/a on Thu, 04 Dec 2008 14:26:00 EST. Please see our a href="http://www.weblogsinc.com/feed-terms/"terms for use of feeds/a./pp style="clear: both; padding: 8px 0 0 0; height: 2px; font-size: 1px; border: 0; margin: 0; padding: 0;"nbsp;/ppa href="http://www.joystiq.com/2008/12/04/microsoft-optimistic-as-xbox-360-has-record-euro-month-sony-cla/" rel="bookmark" title="Permanent link to this entry"Permalink/anbsp;|nbsp;a href="http://www.joystiq.com/forward/1391499/" title="Send this entry to a friend via email"Email this/anbsp;|nbsp;a href="http://www.joystiq.com/2008/12/04/microsoft-optimistic-as-xbox-360-has-record-euro-month-sony-cla/#comments" title="View reader comments on this entry"Comments/a/p pa href="http://feedads.googleadservices.com/~at/c5eNtZ9fRKFhg1vwAv6QMbZXJ6s/a"img src="http://feedads.googleadservices.com/~at/c5eNtZ9fRKFhg1vwAv6QMbZXJ6s/i" border="0" ismap="true"/img/a/pdiv class="feedflare" a href="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/weblogsinc/joystiq?a=SSFc9reO"img src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/weblogsinc/joystiq?i=SSFc9reO" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/weblogsinc/joystiq?a=38uvx8hS"img src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/weblogsinc/joystiq?i=38uvx8hS" border="0"/img/a /divimg src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/weblogsinc/joystiq/~4/Srx2cO80Z08" height="1" width="1"/

I’ve been following Opera’s new releases quite closely, and whether it’s one of the mobile versions of the browser or the desktop Opera, one cannot say they aren’t active. The numbers, unfortunately, just aren’t on their side: regardless of having a great feature set and being very fast, the desktop version of Opera just isn’t gaining significant traction.

Opera’s next big release, Opera 10, raises expectation merely by its round version number, and now there’s an alpha version for everyone to try out. The new Presto 2.2 engine should bring speedier browsing, and even better adherence to W3C standards. Furthermore, there’s an inline spelling checker and auto updating, but these features are hardly a novelty since Firefox already has them both. Finally, Opera Mail has been improved, as well as widget support for Linux.

Will these new features bring Opera to the web browser spotlight? I’m afraid not. Google Chrome has pleasantly surprised us, and it’s fast as hell; the new Opera could prove to be faster, but I doubt that the performance can be drastically better. As far as other improvements go, they’re either minor features, or catching up with the competition, and that won’t be enough to gain significant market share.

If you’re brave enough to try Opera 10 Alpha 1 yourself, you can download it here.

---
Related Articles at Mashable | All That's New on the Web:

Opera Gears Up to Release Opera 9.5 Alpha, with Several Upgrades
Opera 9.5 Will Protect You Against Malware
Opera 9.5 is Out, Faster Than Ever
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Opera Mini 4.1 Beta Is All About Speed
Opera To EU: Boo-Hoo, Microsoft Is Evil
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hubert barkate Incontournables, les certifications sont désormais omniprésentes. Mais qu'entend-t-on par certifications et quelle est réellement leur valeur aussi bien au niveau de l'employabilité des ingénieurs et, in fine, de leur performance ?img width='1' height='1' src='http://rss.feedsportal.com/c/741/f/9583/s/27ff5eb/mf.gif' border='0'/div class='mf-viral'table border='0'trtd valign='middle'a href="http://res.feedsportal.com/viral/sendemail2_fr.html?title=Par Hubert Barkate (Adhara) : Certifications d'éditeur, business ou réelle plus-value à l'emploi ?link=http://www.journaldunet.com/developpeur/algo-methodes/actualite/par-hubert-barkate-adhara-certifications-d-editeur-business-ou-reelle-plus-value-a-l-emploi.shtml" target="_blank"img src="http://rss.feedsportal.com/images/partagez.gif" border="0" //a/tdtd valign='middle'a href="http://res.feedsportal.com/viral/bookmark_fr.cfm?title=Par Hubert Barkate (Adhara) : Certifications d'éditeur, business ou réelle plus-value à l'emploi ?link=http://www.journaldunet.com/developpeur/algo-methodes/actualite/par-hubert-barkate-adhara-certifications-d-editeur-business-ou-reelle-plus-value-a-l-emploi.shtml" target="_blank"img src="http://rss.feedsportal.com/images/bookmark.gif" border="0" //a/td/tr/table/divbr/br/a href="http://da.feedsportal.com/r/25853588145/u/0/f/9583/c/741/s/41940459/a2.htm"img src="http://da.feedsportal.com/r/25853588145/u/0/f/9583/c/741/s/41940459/a2.img" border="0"//a

Velocity is a Java-based template engine. It permits anyone to use the simple yet powerful template language to reference objects defined in Java code. When Velocity is used for Web development, Web designers can work in parallel with Java programmers to develop Web sites according to the Model-View-Controller (MVC) model, meaning that Web page designers can focus solely on creating a site that looks good, and programmers can focus solely on writing top-notch code. Velocity separates Java code from the Web pages, making the web site more maintainable over the long run and providing a viable alternative to Java Server Pages (JSPs) or PHP. Velocity also provides template services for the Turbine Web application framework, making a template service that allows Web applications to be developed according to a true MVC model. hr / strongLicense:/strong The Apache License 2.0 hr / strongChanges:/strongbr / New directives: #evaluate, #define, and #break Vararg method support. List methods can be called on arrays. Major performance enhancements (both memory and speed). A new strict reference mode. Many other changes. pa href="http://feedads.googleadservices.com/~a/YsRXZ1ve-bCgaMzTkeY_dD3PcVM/a"img src="http://feedads.googleadservices.com/~a/YsRXZ1ve-bCgaMzTkeY_dD3PcVM/i" border="0" ismap="true"/img/a/pimg src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/freshmeat/feeds/fm-releases-global/~4/blwlyzxbpuw" height="1" width="1"/

Velocity is a Java-based template engine. It permits anyone to use the simple yet powerful template language to reference objects defined in Java code. When Velocity is used for Web development, Web designers can work in parallel with Java programmers to develop Web sites according to the Model-View-Controller (MVC) model, meaning that Web page designers can focus solely on creating a site that looks good, and programmers can focus solely on writing top-notch code. Velocity separates Java code from the Web pages, making the web site more maintainable over the long run and providing a viable alternative to Java Server Pages (JSPs) or PHP. Velocity also provides template services for the Turbine Web application framework, making a template service that allows Web applications to be developed according to a true MVC model. hr / strongLicense:/strong The Apache License 2.0 hr / strongChanges:/strongbr / New directives: #evaluate, #define, and #break Vararg method support. List methods can be called on arrays. Major performance enhancements (both memory and speed). A new strict reference mode. Many other changes. pa href="http://feedads.googleadservices.com/~a/iikQ6mc1jo9TqZQCGB_1N9GqYwQ/a"img src="http://feedads.googleadservices.com/~a/iikQ6mc1jo9TqZQCGB_1N9GqYwQ/i" border="0" ismap="true"/img/a/pimg src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/freshmeat/feeds/fm-releases-unix/~4/blwlyzxbpuw" height="1" width="1"/

div style="float:right;"img border=0 title="Vodafone Updates Its HTC Touch Diamond" alt="Vodafone Updates Its HTC Touch Diamond" src="http://www.uberphones.com/photos/2008/12/vodafonetouchdiamond.jpg" hspace="5" vspace="5" //div pVodafone has released an update for its HTC Touch Diamond, bringing the version up to 1.97.161.4. If you’re wondering what the update is all about, Vodafone has provided a (very unhelpful) description of the update, stating that “updating the software (firmware) will usually give you improved performance and often extra functionality”./p pPermalink: a href="http://www.uberphones.com/2008/12/htc/vodafone_updates_its_htc_touch_diamond/"Vodafone Updates Its HTC Touch Diamond/a from a href="http://www.uberphones.com"Uberphones/a | a href="http://www.uberbargain.com/"Good deals/a | Hot: a href="http://www.ubergizmo.com/15/archives/2008/11/blackberry_storm_review.html"BlackBerry Storm/a/p pa href="http://feedads.googleadservices.com/~a/5FpLLSVR0Vm8-ARpf2o-0ooO_nE/a"img src="http://feedads.googleadservices.com/~a/5FpLLSVR0Vm8-ARpf2o-0ooO_nE/i" border="0" ismap="true"/img/a/p

Disponible depuis le 14 novembre dernier sur consoles (Playstation 3 et Xbox 360), Mirror's Edge n'a semble-t-il pas remporté le succès escompté par ses développeurs. Cette relative contre-performance [...]

Societe : SOPRA GROUP - Lieu de travail : PARIS - Type de contrat : CDI - Salaire : Selon Profil - Detail : Groupe européen de Conseil et d'Intégration de Systèmes, 11 320 collaborateurs, Sopra Group guide les entreprises dans leurs projets de transformation, depuis la définition des stratégies jusqu'à leur réalisation. Ses atouts : l'expertise de grands projets, la connaissance des métiers des clients, la maîtrise des technologies et une large implantation européenne. Dans le cadre de notre activité d'intégration de progiciels Bancaires, nous recherchons un(e) Chef de projet (H/F) Vous serez le garant de la réussite des projets de l'un de nos clients en Banque et vous pourrez avoir en charge des projets dans un environnement Mainframe (cobol). Vous êtes responsable du management de votre équipe (motivation des collaborateurs ; qualité des performances?), du respect des délais et du budget et du suivi du bon déroulement de l'ensemble du projet. Vous êtes l'interlocuteur privilégié de notre client et des sous-traitants. Profil : De formation Bac +5, vous avez au moins 5 ans d'expérience (dont 2 en tant que chef de projet) dans le cadre de projets informatiques en environnement Grands Systèmes. Une connaissance fonctionnelle bancaire serait appréciée. Vos aptitudes de synthèse et d'arbitrage, votre sens du résultat, votre capacité à construire une relation « gagnant-gagnant » avec le client, ainsi que vos compétences en animation d'équipe seront vos atouts pour réussir dans cette fonction. Une bonne maîtrise de l'Anglais est nécessaire. Nous vous proposons des missions passionnantes, une rémunération attractive et de nombreuses opportunités d'évolution au sein de notre groupe en forte croissance. Merci d'adresser votre candidature (CV et lettre de motivation) sous la référence CP/553/EVO/HVE à Sopra Group 9 Bis rue de Presbourg 75116 PARIS, ou par e-mail : emploi@sopragroup.com.

p Clermont tentera de rééditer sa performance de l’an dernier lors de la réception des champions d’Europe du Munster dans la poule 1 dimanche. Plus tôt dans l’après-midi, Glasgow essayera d’arracher sa première victoire dans la poule 5 à Bath. /pdiv class="feedflare" a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~f/sport24?a=SxNvO"img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~f/sport24?i=SxNvO" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~f/sport24?a=ysAxO"img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~f/sport24?i=ysAxO" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~f/sport24?a=LUSTo"img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~f/sport24?i=LUSTo" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~f/sport24?a=js1pO"img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~f/sport24?i=js1pO" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~f/sport24?a=XvB2O"img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~f/sport24?i=XvB2O" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~f/sport24?a=aMgrO"img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~f/sport24?i=aMgrO" border="0"/img/a /div

pFiled under: a href="http://www.tuaw.com/category/hardware/" rel="tag"Hardware/a, a href="http://www.tuaw.com/category/odds-and-ends/" rel="tag"Odds and ends/a, a href="http://www.tuaw.com/category/apple/" rel="tag"Apple/a/ppimg vspace="5" hspace="5" border="0" align="right" alt="" src="http://www.blogcdn.com/www.tuaw.com/media/2008/12/prox-293482048.png" /Two Apple patent filings have piqued interest this week: One for a touch surface that detects where your finger is hovered above it, and another for a liquid-cooled laptop. /p pThe a href="http://appft1.uspto.gov/netacgi/nph-Parser?Sect1=PTO2amp;Sect2=HITOFFamp;u=%2Fnetahtml%2FPTO%2Fsearch-adv.htmlamp;r=3amp;p=1amp;f=Gamp;l=50amp;d=PG01amp;S1=Apple.AS.amp;OS=an/Appleamp;RS=AN/Apple"hover surface/a works by measuring light reflected off your finger at various wavelengths to figure out where it is over the surface. Apple uses a basic proximity sensor in the iPhone (so it knows when it's up against your ear), but this new technique would allow more precise recognition of objects hovered above a touch-sensitive surface. Unlike a graphics tablet, which requires a stylus, your finger or hand is likely the intended tool for this surface, as evidenced by the drawings. /p pSecond, the a href="http://www.appleinsider.com/articles/08/12/02/apple_looking_into_liquid_cooled_macbooks.html"liquid-cooled laptop/a, as with similarly-cooled Power Mac G5s from a few years ago, is designed to improve performance by reducing the temperature of the components of the computer. The patent describes wrapping a small heat pipe around various components in the computer that contains a liquid coolant. /p pLiquid-cooled G5s, though, were prone to leaks, which led to heavy damage and dismay for users of the systems. Apple entirely replaced many of the systems that leaked, rather than trying to repair them./p p[Via a href="http://www.electronista.com/articles/08/12/04/apple.hover.touchscreen/"Electronista/a and a href="http://www.appleinsider.com/articles/08/12/02/apple_looking_into_liquid_cooled_macbooks.html"AppleInsider/a.]/pp style="padding:5px;clear:both;"a href="http://www.tuaw.com"TUAW/aa href="http://www.tuaw.com/2008/12/04/patent-roundup-hover-touch-surfaces-liquid-cooled-laptops/"Patent Roundup: 'Hover' touch surfaces, liquid-cooled laptops/a originally appeared on a href="http://www.tuaw.com"The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW)/a on Thu, 04 Dec 2008 12:54:00 EST. Please see our a href="http://www.weblogsinc.com/feed-terms/"terms for use of feeds/a.br style="clear:both;"/ph6 style="clear: both; padding: 8px 0 0 0; height: 2px; font-size: 1px; border: 0; margin: 0; padding: 0;"/h6a href=http://www.electronista.com/articles/08/12/04/apple.hover.touchscreen/Read/anbsp;|nbsp;a href=http://www.appleinsider.com/articles/08/12/02/apple_looking_into_liquid_cooled_macbooks.htmlRead/anbsp;|nbsp;a href="http://www.tuaw.com/2008/12/04/patent-roundup-hover-touch-surfaces-liquid-cooled-laptops/" rel="bookmark" title="Permanent link to this entry"Permalink/anbsp;|nbsp;a href="http://www.tuaw.com/forward/1391191/" title="Send this entry to a friend via email"Email this/anbsp;|nbsp;a href="http://www.tuaw.com/2008/12/04/patent-roundup-hover-touch-surfaces-liquid-cooled-laptops/#comments" title="View reader comments on this entry"Comments/a pa href="http://feedads.googleadservices.com/~at/ztPfKauj-vGCtGzRyM5QeHk9yrc/a"img src="http://feedads.googleadservices.com/~at/ztPfKauj-vGCtGzRyM5QeHk9yrc/i" border="0" ismap="true"/img/a/pdiv class="feedflare" a href="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/weblogsinc/tuaw?a=m3bDgntg"img src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/weblogsinc/tuaw?i=m3bDgntg" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/weblogsinc/tuaw?a=UA7b44Mr"img src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/weblogsinc/tuaw?i=UA7b44Mr" border="0"/img/a /divimg src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/weblogsinc/tuaw/~4/8SQZ-G6HdSg" height="1" width="1"/

pa href="http://www.myspace.com/timesnewviking"strongTimes New Viking/strong/a will plant a sloppy kiss on a href="http://www.rockhall.com/inductee/the-velvet-underground"strongthe Velvet Underground/strong/a catalog at a Valentine's Day show in their hometown of Columbus, Ohio./p pThe February 14 performance is at the closing party for the a href="http://www.wexarts.org/"strongWexner Center for the Arts/strong/a' Andy Warhol exhibition, a href="http://www.wexarts.org/ex/?eventid=2893"strong"Andy Warhol: Other Voices, Other Rooms,"/strong/a and it will feature Times New Viking playing a set of Velvet Underground covers./p pAll the Valentine's Day sweetness without the chalky taste of candy hearts!/p p(Full disclosure: A few weeks ago, Pitchfork managing editor Mark Richardson spoke on a panel at the Wexner Center about the Velvet Underground, in conjunction with the Warhol exhibit.)br /br /Thanks to reader Jared Hamilton for the tip.br /br /Times New Viking are currently wrapping up a a href="/article/news/142875-deerhunter-tour-now-with-added-times-new-viking"strongtour with Deerhunter/strong/a./ppa href="http://www.pitchforkmedia.com/node/147897" target="_blank"read more/a/p pa href="http://feedads.googleadservices.com/~a/6_7C81W934x0xNunxqz8CAn_oTs/a"img src="http://feedads.googleadservices.com/~a/6_7C81W934x0xNunxqz8CAn_oTs/i" border="0" ismap="true"/img/a/pimg src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/pitchfork/today/~4/ZhvYy2NJRl8" height="1" width="1"/

Hello everyone...

I trust you are all as excited as I am about playing GTA 4 on the PC. I've read there are some optimizations making it look better as well as gameplay. I have tried this on the PS3 and can't get enough of it. My concern is about the system requirements. I would have preferred that my computer meet the recommended requirements but I fail in the CPU and GPU categories. I went to the "Can You Run It" website which makes the process of correlating the requirements of any game simple by pressing a button.
For system specifications please refer to the system specs tab. I have an E8400 and a Sapphire 3850 512. Of these two items which should I upgrade the most because I can't afford both? I was thinking it's more important to upgrade the video card since I've been playing games recommending quad core processors such as UT3 at maxed settings. I guess there's no way of truly knowing until I have this game in my hands which should be soon :-).

divimg alt="" src="http://hits.guardian.co.uk/b/ss/guardiangu-feeds/1/H.15.1/7527?ns=guardianpageName=Business%3A+US+retail+sales+figures+confirm+bleak+outlook+for+consumersch=Businessc3=guardian.co.ukc4=US+economy+%28Business%29%2CWal-Mart%2CBusiness%2CUS+newsc5=Not+commercially+useful%2CBusiness+Markets%2CUS+Economyc6=Dan+Milmoc7=2008_12_04c8=1129049c9=articlec10=GUc11=Businessc12=US+economyc13=c14=h2=GU%2FBusiness%2FUS+economy" width="1" height="1" //divpThe US consumer is in full-scale retreat, retailers confirmed today, as dire sales figures confirmed a bleak outlook for the peak shopping season./ppMajor retailers such as Macy's, Abercrombie Fitch and GAP reported sales declines of more than 10% in November. Retail figures are a bellwether for the US economy with consumer spending accounting for more than two-thirds of economic activity. Shops hoped that Black Friday, the day after Thanksgiving and traditionally the biggest shopping day of the year, would jump-start consumer outlay but industry experts were downbeat./pp"The American consumer is a train wreck," said Howard Davidowitz, chairman of Davidowitz Associates, a New York-based retail consultancy. "We don't know when it is going to get good but I think the worst is yet to come. The results are terrible and will continue to be terrible."/ppShopperTrak, a retail monitoring firm, said total sales at US retailers rose 1% during the Black Friday weekend but analysts believe much of that gain will have been stoked by deep discounts and will hit profits. Black Friday earns it moniker from the fact that most retailers move into an annual profit in the month between Thanksgiving and Christmas./ppA leading retail trade group said the decline in November sales hit every section of the industry, affecting performances at previously robust sectors such as bargain stores and drugs outlets. The International Council of Shopping Centers, which represents stores including GAP and JCPenney, said sales at 37 major retailers fell 2.7% over November ndash; the worst start to the holiday season in 35 years - and is forecasting an overall dip of 1% in the final two months of the year./ppRetailers said the late timing of the Thanksgiving holiday of this year had also dented November figures, with more sales pushed into December as a result. However, the ICSC said it added up to two percentage points to the sales decline, which still left sales in a deficit overall./pp "We have never seen anything as weak as this. It is simply the recession and it is really taking its toll on consumer spending. And it is not just discretionary spending. It is across the board, with every segment showing a decline," said Michael Niemira, chief economist at the ICSC./ppThe best performer today was Wal-Mart, which beat expectations with a 3.4% sales rise at stores that had been open more than a year. The world's largest retailer added some gloss to the ICSC's figures. Without Wal-Mart's contribution, November sales would have fallen 7.7%./ppThe worst performers among individual retailers included Limited Brands, owner of the Victoria's Secret lingerie stores, which saw a 12% fall in like-for-like sales. Target, a close Wal-Mart competitor, posted a 10.4% decline and Abercrombie Fitch, the clothing retailer, said sales fell 28% as it refused to join competitors in aggressive discounting./pdiv style="float: left; margin-right: 10px; margin-bottom: 10px;"ullia href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/useconomy"US economy/a/lilia href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/walmart"Wal-Mart/a/lilia href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/usa"United States/a/li/ul/diva href="http://www.guardian.co.uk"guardian.co.uk/a copy; Guardian News Media Limited 2008 | Use of this content is subject to our a href="http://users.guardian.co.uk/help/article/0,,933909,00.html"Terms Conditions/a | a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/webfeeds/1,,1309488,00.html"More Feeds/a pa href="http://feedads.googleadservices.com/~at/JpBtvUkQ5ZTESTmlfI-91Y9arD4/a"img src="http://feedads.googleadservices.com/~at/JpBtvUkQ5ZTESTmlfI-91Y9arD4/i" border="0" ismap="true"/img/a/p

pimg alt="opera_logo_dec08.png" src="http://www.readwriteweb.com/images/opera_logo_dec08.png" /Opera today a href="http://www.opera.com/press/releases/2008/12/04/"released/a a sneak peek of the newest version of its desktop browser, a href="http://www.opera.com/browser/next/"Opera 10/a. At the center of this new release is Presto 2.2, Opera's new rendering engine, which, according to the company, offers a considerably faster browsing experience when compared to Presto 2.1./p pOpera has had to face stiff competition in the desktop browser market from a href="http://www.google.com/chrome"Google's Chrome/a, and the company is clearly looking to gain back some ground by emphasizing the speed of the rendering engine over new features in this release./p p align="right"emSponsor/embr /a href='http://d.openx.org/ck.php?n=12816amp;cb=12816' target='_blank'img src='http://d.openx.org/avw.php?zoneid=861amp;cb=12816amp;n=12816' border='0' alt='' align="right" //a/p h2Features/h2 pIn terms of its user interface, the changes between version 9.6 and this alpha of Opera 10 are minimal and mostly cosmetic. /p pimg alt="opera_10_acid_100.png" align="right" src="http://www.readwriteweb.com/images/opera_10_acid_100.png" /As for new features, Opera finally supports inline spell-checking. This feature had been sorely missing from Opera until now. Opera 10 can now also auto-update without giving notification to the user, similar to Google's Chrome. /p pOpera 10 also still includes all the major new a href="http://www.opera.com/browser/features/"features/a of Opera 9, including Feed Preview, Opera Link for bookmark synchronization, and the updated version of Opera Mail./p h2Presto 2.2/h2 pThe rendering engine easily scored 100 out of 100 on the a href="http://acid3.acidtests.org/"Acid 3 test/a (and easily passed the Acid 2 test as well). We benchmarked this alpha version against Opera 9.62 using the a href="http://www2.webkit.org/perf/sunspider-0.9/sunspider.html"Sunspider/a and a href="http://dromaeo.com/"Dromaeo/a benchmarks. In both cases, Opera 10 was clearly faster, but the performance gains were typically around 10-15% and nowhere near the 30% claimed by Opera (though in their defense, Opera's PR material talks about the faster 'browsing experience,' not about benchmarks). Presto also wasn't able to come close to our benchmarks for Chrome./p pimg alt="opera_10_alpha_screenshot.jpg" src="http://www.readwriteweb.com/images/opera_10_alpha_screenshot.jpg" //p h2A Capable Browser/h2 pOverall, Opera 10, at least in its current state, looks like an evolutionary update to previous versions. This preview version, however, was mostly meant to showcase the new rendering engine, so chances are that Opera will roll out additional new features and changes to the user interface in upcoming alpha and beta releases./p pWe have always had a soft spot for Opera, but somehow, the browser never quite found the sweet spot between speed and functionality that Firefox (in large part due to its extensions) and Chrome have. /p pOpera 10 is a capable browser with a number of very interesting features. However, when compared to Google's Chrome, with its unified address and search bar, as well as its speedy rendering engine, Opera 10 still has a bit of ground to cover before it will be able to challenge Chrome and Firefox./p stronga href="http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/opera_10_sneak_peak.php#comments-open"Discuss/a/strong pa href="http://feedads.googleadservices.com/~at/J2iYOtmsbvONk7qbGYfNyvfMT0g/a"img src="http://feedads.googleadservices.com/~at/J2iYOtmsbvONk7qbGYfNyvfMT0g/i" border="0" ismap="true"/img/a/pdiv class="feedflare" a href="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/readwriteweb?a=zMarJvd5"img src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/readwriteweb?d=1035" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/readwriteweb?a=hSHtOTvO"img src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/readwriteweb?d=41" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/readwriteweb?a=QEaOjgOM"img src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/readwriteweb?i=QEaOjgOM" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/readwriteweb?a=QnGt8MtT"img src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/readwriteweb?i=QnGt8MtT" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/readwriteweb?a=QlNcgCaK"img src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/readwriteweb?i=QlNcgCaK" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/readwriteweb?a=1JKsGxSo"img src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/readwriteweb?d=52" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/readwriteweb?a=WBQ6vk5n"img src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/readwriteweb?d=1034" border="0"/img/a /divimg src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/readwriteweb/~4/OV9c8LEPrDU" height="1" width="1"/

div style="FLOAT: right"img title="Nouveaux SSD Pour Dell Inspiron Mini 9 de Buffalo" alt="Nouveaux SSD Pour Dell Inspiron Mini 9 de Buffalo" hspace="5" src="http://www.ubergizmo.com/photos/2008/12/buffalo-ssd.jpg" vspace="5" border="0" //div pSi vous possédez un netbook Dell Inspiron Mini 9 et que vous voulez lui donner un coup de boost (pour le stockage, bien entendu), voici les nouveaux SSD 16Go et 32Go de Buffalo. Il n'y aura peut-être pas d'améliorations significatives au niveau de la performance, mais au moins, vous aurez plus de place pour stocker vos données, musique et vidéo./p pPermalink: a href="http://www.ubergizmo.com/fr/archives/2008/12/nouveaux_ssd_pour_dell_inspiron_mini_9_de_buffalo.php"Nouveaux SSD Pour Dell Inspiron Mini 9 de Buffalo/a d'a href="http://www.ubergizmo.com/fr"Ubergizmo FR/a. Aussi a href="http://www.ubergizmo.com"en Anglais/a/p pmap name="google_ad_map_081204091120" area shape="rect" href="http://imageads.googleadservices.com/pagead/imgclick/081204091120?pos=0" coords="1,2,367,28"/ area shape="rect" href="http://services.google.com/feedback/abg" coords="384,10,453,23"//map img usemap="#google_ad_map_081204091120" border="0" src="http://imageads.googleadservices.com/pagead/ads?format=468x30_aff_imgamp;client=ca-pub-7335032025195922amp;channel=5336763717amp;output=pngamp;cuid=081204091120amp;url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.ubergizmo.com%2Ffr%2Farchives%2F2008%2F12%2Fnouveaux_ssd_pour_dell_inspiron_mini_9_de_buffalo.php"//p pa href="http://feedads.googleadservices.com/~a/Dex-O5roMFAWUnSDayq0N0VJ5qE/a"img src="http://feedads.googleadservices.com/~a/Dex-O5roMFAWUnSDayq0N0VJ5qE/i" border="0" ismap="true"/img/a/pimg src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/ubergizmo_fr/~4/-bD5PpsSDu0" height="1" width="1"/