Alienware’s latest PC is an attempt to fire a salvo right across the bows of Sony and Microsoft’s gaming flagships. It looks like the (slightly overweight) lovechild of the pair; like an alternate universe console. The X51 borrows liberally from the design schools of both the Xbox (matte sides) and the PlayStation 3 (slot-loading optical drive, front panel gloss). The Alienware logo rotates to suit both vertical and horizontal setups. The device is around the size of the original PS3, but it looked pretty petite in comparison to There’s a litany of holes on the back of the X51, including plenty of USB ports and audio options. Reacquaint yourself with some technical specifics after the break, alongside our hands-on impressions with Super Street Fighter IV.

Continue reading Alienware X51 gaming PC: We go hands-on at the London launch event

Alienware X51 gaming PC: We go hands-on at the London launch event originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 08 Feb 2012 07:03:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Alienware X51 gaming PC: We go hands-on at the London launch event

Hackers aligned with Anonymous have exposed hundreds of e-mail messages from the webmail server of Syria’s Ministry of Presidential Affairs, the support ministry for Syrian President Bashar al-Assad. Among the exposed e-mail messages was a set of talking points for Assad’s interview with Barbara Walters in December 2011.

A translation of the e-mail sent by Sheherazad Jaafari, a press attaché at the Syrian mission to the United Nations, to Assad aide and former Al Jazeera journalist Luna Chebel, provided helpful hints for Assad to manipulate American opinion about what was going on in Syria. The message suggested that “it is hugely important and worth mentioning that ‘mistakes’ have been done in the begining of the crises because we did not have a well-organized ‘police force.’ American psyche can be easily manipulated when they hear there are ‘mistakes’ done and now we are ‘fixing it.'”

Jaafari suggested comparing what was happening in Syria to US law enforcement’s response to the Occupy Wall Street protests.

Along with the release of these e-mails, Anonymous also exposed the passwords of 78 accounts on the Ministry’s servers. Of the passwords revealed, 31 were “12345” and a number were minor variations on that. Some of the other passwords in the set included:

• iloveyou
• 123vivasyria
• system
• honda2011
• testing

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Anonymous exposes e-mails of Syrian presidential aides

redletterdave writes “Proview Technology, which currently uses the ‘iPad’ name on several of its products including computer monitors, stands to win up to $1.6 billion and an apology from Apple for allegedly infringing upon Proview’s trademarked name to use on its bestselling tablet. Proview International, which owns subsidiaries Proview Technology in Shenzhen and Proview Electronics in Taiwan, originally registered the name ‘iPad’ in Taiwan in 2000 and mainland China in 2001. Proview eventually sued Apple in 2011, and even though the Cupertino-based company retaliated with a counter-suit of its own, Apple lost the case in local Chinese courts. Depending on the court’s findings, Apple could be fined anywhere from $38 million to the $1.6 billion that Proview is seeking. In addition to the money, Proview also wants Apple to apologize. ‘We have prepared well for a long-term legal battle,’ said one of Proview’s lawyers.”

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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Apple Could Lose $1.6 Billion In iPad Lawsuit

Facebook is the place we look at photos online. And for years, those photos have been constrained to tiny boxes and ugly, low-resolution uploads. No more! Facebook’s new picture browser is here: your life is now giant and pretty. More »

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Facebook’s (Huge) New Photo Viewer Is Its Best Ever [Facebook]

nationalpost:

Photos from inside the deadly European cold snap that’s killed hundreds
Temperatures touched new lows in parts of Europe, including Switzerland, which reported the mercury dipping to minus 35.1 Celsius overnight in the eastern Graubuenden canton, and the Czech Republic, where the town of Kvilda recorded a winter low of minus 39.4 Celsius. More photos here. (AFP/Getty Images;Reuters)

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Photos from inside the deadly European cold snap…

It has been nearly 200 years since we became aware of the Neanderthals, an extinct form of humans that once shared Europe and Asia with the modern humans. But it has been less than two years since we discovered that the Neanderthals were not the only archaic modern human around at the time. In short order, researchers in Germany produced a draft of the Denisova genome, which showed that the ancestors of some modern human populations had interbred with the Denisovans at some point in the past.

However, the genome sequence that was published in 2010 was only a draft, which is expected to contain errors and areas of very poor coverage. The folks at the Max Planck Institute have continued sequencing away, though, and have greatly expanded their coverage of the Denisova genome; they’re apparently preparing a paper to describe the expanded sequence right now. But to keep the research community from waiting for the paper to clear peer review, they’ve decided to release the sequence, both on the Max Planck website and through Amazon’s web services. The release includes both the raw sequence itself, as well as alignments to the human and chimp genomes.

To protect their ability to publish a paper, the Max Planck team is releasing the sequence under a license that prohibits anyone else from doing an analysis of the complete genome. But anyone interested in looking at specific genes is able to do their analysis without waiting. People interested in doing something in between these two extremes are invited to get in touch with Svante Pääbo, who is directing the work, to sort out an agreement.

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Genome of extinct human relative placed on Amazon web services

If you thought Intel’s super-charged Core i7 CPUs were only for desktops, then AVADirect reckons it can change your mind. The company’s Clevo P270WM notebook comes strapped to the back of either a six-core i7-3930K or an over-sized i7-3960X, while still leaving plenty of room for dual GeForce GTX 580M graphics, a Bigfoot Killer WiFi adapter, three hard drives and four memory slots offering up to 32GB of RAM. Topping it all off is a 3D-capable 17.3-inch Full HD LED glossy display and backlit keyboard. The base configuration with the 3930K processor, single graphics card and 750GB HDD will set you back over $3,000, and if you have to ask how much the NVIDIA Quadro graphics option costs then you’re probably better off with something like this.

Sandy Bridge E squashed into $3,000 Clevo P270WM gaming suitcase originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 07 Feb 2012 13:13:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Sandy Bridge E squashed into $3,000 Clevo P270WM gaming suitcase