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Mac users will be able to download Portal, Football Manager 2010 and Torchlight at launch, with more titles added every Wednesday. "We're very excited to be bringing Torchlight to the Mac," said Max Schaefer, co-founder of Runic Games, the company behind the title. "Having Steam for the Mac solves so many problems for us as a developer."

When US Air Force researchers last year created the mother-of-all-processors using Sony PlayStation-3 game consoles, it seemed like a stroke of cost-saving genius.To deliver a 53-TerraFLOP processing cluster, the Air Force Research Laboratory in Rome, N.Y., hoovered up 1,700 PlayStation-3 game consoles, then harnessed the power of their combined processors to evaluate new breakthroughs in technology for synthetic aperture radar, high definition video and something called "neuromorphic computing". At the time, the researchers noted that two PlayStation-3 consoles provide 150 GigaFLOPs of processing power for $600, but a single 3.2GHz cell processor delivers 200 GFLOPs for $8,000. Why spend the...

Well, that is part one of our Ubuntu 10.04 LTS vs. Windows 7 testing. As much as we would have liked to see Ubuntu's Lucid Lynx handily beat Windows 7, this was not the case, but to some extent the opposite. Windows 7 in some of the tests possessed definitive leads over Ubuntu 10.04 LTS with the OpenGL performance when using the proprietary ATI/AMD and NVIDIA graphics drivers, which have largely shared code-bases between Windows and Linux. Ubuntu 10.04 LTS also had its leads in some areas while in many of the tests the differences between the two operating systems...

May 07, 2010 Free Software and Tech Progress By Keith Curtis Moore's law has been humming along for four decades now, doubling our CPU power every eighteen months. Cellphone-sized devices today have more capacity than a stadium of computers from twenty years ago. Networked digital computers are giving us new forms of collaboration on a massive scale, causing our society to enter the digital renaissance. We now have the tools to solve some very tough problems; one might argue that we never could cure cancer without creating computers and the internet first. While the shiny hardware always gets all the...

It seems that every time Ubuntu gets an update there's talk about how the new version will finally usher in the era of user-friendly Linux and turn the open-source operating system (OS) into a serious competitor to OS X and Windows. We've been running the latest version, 10.04 (code-named Lucid Lynx), since it first hit beta in mid-March. While we have a hard time seeing it replace Windows 7 anytime soon, the regular six-month intervals of serious improvements are finally paying off in an arguably consumer-ready OS. A Completely New Look *********************snip***************************** image at website***************************************************** The other major new feature...

After months of wrangling within the company, Lexmark has stepped up to become a Linux and open-source friendly company. We are seeing how far this Linux support extends as we try out the Lexmark Pro905 Platinum multi-function printer.

Yesterday, April 1st, brought the inevitable round of high-tech hijinks, as individuals and companies jockeyed to see who could be funnier. My personal favorite was Google renaming itself to Topeka, a move sure to consternate anyone not in the know and amuse those who were. One tech company, however, released a software update that was decidedly unfunny. In a March 28 announcement on the PlayStation blog, Sony revealed that a new firmware patch (v. 3.21) for the PlayStation 3 would disable the “Install Other OS” feature on existing PS3 devices. In other words, no Linux on any PS3s. This follows...

It's over. The jury has found that the copyrights did not go to SCO under the APA or anything else. The verdict is in. Novell has the news up on their website already, but I heard it from Chris Brown also. Here's the brief Novell statement:Today, the jury in the District Court of Utah trial between SCO Group and Novell issued a verdict. Novell is very pleased with the jury’s decision confirming Novell’s ownership of the Unix copyrights, which SCO had asserted to own in its attack on Linux. Novell remains committed to promoting Linux, including by defending Linux on...

Ubuntu is Linux for the rest of us. It is simple to install and use. Despite that, not that many users are on board with estimates of 1-2% of all computer users running various Linux operating systems. But with the release of Ubuntu 10.04, there might be a few reasons to give it a try. It is currently in beta, so you may not want to install it on your primary computer. The stable release will come on April 29 according to the Ubuntu web site. You can download a live DVD image to give it a try. A live...

These graphics processors may not be as powerful as the discrete ATI/AMD and NVIDIA offerings, but they're low-power and there is no limit to how many can be connected to a single system (besides USB 2.0 bandwidth deficiencies). This is also running a fully open-source driver stack. AMD previously showcased a 24 monitor setup on Linux using their Eyefinity Technology, but that required four high-end ATI Radeon graphics cards and their proprietary driver stack in an unreleased form.

I am looking for some help. I have an older application that is not 64-bit. It will run on Win 7 32-bit and also in virtualization on Win 7 Pro & Win 7 Ultimate. The problem is Win 7 64-bit Home - the most popular version.

The North Korean government has developed its own operating system based on the open source Linux OS. The "Red Star" operating system has apparently been in development since 2006 but came to light after Russian news channel, Russia Today, covered a blog post by Russian college student "Mikhail". The student claims that the North Korean OS can be purchased in Pyongyang for $5 and looks very similar to Microsoft Windows, with a similar user interface. The system has both server and client versions, and separate application programmes can be purchased at $10 a pop. Mikhail also mentions that some North...

Another day, another botnet. This time, it has the rather pretty name of Mariposa - it means butterfly - and is believed to be one of the world's largest. More than 13 million PCs were infected by Mariposa, which apparently infected more than half the world's 1,000 largest companies and at least 40 major financial institutions. The botnet was , and three men have been arrested. According to Panda Security, the three men used the aliases Netkairo, Ostiator and Johnyloleante. "Designed for information theft, Mariposa has stolen personal data from millions of compromised computers," says Defence Intelligence. "Amongst this personal...

MWC Intel and Nokia have joined forced to create a new platform to take on Google's Android - MeeGo. MeeGo, announced this morning, is to be constructed from the best bits of Maemo and Moblin: Nokia and Intel's existing Linux-based platforms respectively. It will be available later this year with the avowed intention of taking on Android in everything from smartphones to tablets, and all those other form factors we haven't thought of yet. Clearly, Symbian hasn't been punching its weight in the fight against Android. When asked directly what MeeGo means for the world's most-popular smartphone platform, Nokia responded...

I had the free version of AVG on my computer but these past few days things started messing up all over the place (processes getting slower and slower, couldn't download, mouse right click stopped working, among others). Went online and followed the suggestion on one site to remove AVG, which worked! Everything is running blazing fast, no hiccups, mouse is working again. Only problem is my computer isn't protected from viruses, malware, etc. Looking for a FREE product that works without all the unnecessary bells and whistles. Any recommendations, FReepers? TIA!

I'm a long time Firefox fan, but I've also grown fond of Google's Chrome browser. In fact, I've pretty much switched to Chrome as my browser of choice on my Windows PCs. Up until now though I've stuck with Firefox on Linux, but now that Chrome is available as a beta on Linux, I'm being tempted to switch. I've been using the Chrome developer builds on Linux for months. It was fast, but it was also unstable so I never seriously considered it as a Firefox replacement. With the Chrome beta, though Chrome is proving to be both faster than...

CrunchBang Linux is an Ubuntu based distribution featuring the lightweight Openbox window manager and GTK+ applications. The distribution has been built and customised from a minimal Ubuntu install. The distribution has been designed to offer a good balance of speed and functionality. CrunchBang Linux is currently available as a LiveCD; however, best performance is achieved by installing CrunchBang Linux to your hard disk - CrunchBang Linux comes with the ability to play most popular media formats, including but not limited to MP3, DVD playback & Adobe Flash. CrunchBang Linux also comes with many popular applications installed by default, including but...

Mac clone maker defends Rebel EFI, likens it to 'reading a book in the bathroom'Mac clone maker Psystar last week indefinitely suspended sales of its only product, a $50 utility that lets customers install Apple's Snow Leopard operating system on generic Intel-based computers. The company also said it would resume selling systems "in the coming days." Those machines will run Linux rather than Mac OS X. Psystar, which began selling Mac clones in April 2008, has been battling Apple in federal court in California since July 2008, when Apple sued the Doral, Fla. firm, saying it violated copyright laws by...

If there was one word that could get Open Source readers more passionate than Microsoft in 2009, it was Ubuntu. Ubuntu is not the most profitable Linux, and it’s not the distro with the biggest penetration of any major market. But partly due to its commercial arm Canonical, based officially on the Isle of Man but actually located in London, Canonical’s charismatic CEO, Mark Shuttleworth, and to its desktop ambitions, it is the Linux distro you most liked reading about. I was only dimly aware of this at the start of the year. But I learned. Ubuntu 9.04 to be...

Linux Vendors Need To Get Off the Stick to Compete with Windows