altair

Assassin's Creed Revelations: Cut from a familiar cloth

Perhaps one of the overlooked accomplishments in gaming is what Ubisoft Montreal has been able to do with the Assassin's Creed franchise.

For the fourth time in five years, the team has put out another title in the series that doesn't necessarily change the combat and gameplay formulas, but pushes Assassin's Creed's historical fiction lore into a more comprehensible and ultimately tighter narrative, all while humanizing the main characters more so than in previous entries.

For me, that's always been the series' Achilles heel; its difficulty in presenting its complexly layered storyline in a cohesive … Read more

Altair ProductDesign joins Studio X-Gene on Avant GT concept

Altair ProductDesign announced a partnership with Studio X-Gene to develop a new electric concept vehicle, the Avant GT.

The Avant GT is the brainchild of Taiwan-based Studio X-Gene along with partners Delta Electronics, Wistron, and Qisda.

Altair ProductDesign joined the project to offer engineering development of the vehicle. "Altair was given responsibility for providing a simulation driven design approach for the vehicle's crash, durability, vibration, vehicle dynamics, and computational fluid dynamics drag evaluation along with supporting Studio X-Gene during the architectural design phase," an Altair spokesman said in a press release.

The Avant GT, described as "… Read more

Buzz Out Loud 1198: Tong tied? Frayed not (podcast)

With Molly out covering the iPad launch for your local CBS stations, we're free to make wanton puns about knot theory. And we do. Plus Brian Tong gets his brain in knots trying to explain how it applies to tangled headphones. We also have the explanation for why iPad apps are ridiculously expensive. And we compare the JooJoo which is actually here, and explain why it's getting trumped by Apple.

Subscribe with iTunes (audio) Subscribe with iTunes (video) Subscribe with RSS (audio) Subscribe with RSS (video) EPISODE 1198

How Long Will It Take iPad App Prices To Drop? … Read more

Ed Roberts, creator of early PC, dies

Ed Roberts, whose early Altair 8800 computer helped inspire Bill Gates and Paul Allen to start Microsoft, died Thursday. He was 68.

Though Roberts' name is less well known than some other computing pioneers, the Altair is widely credited as the first personal computer and for helping inspire the modern computer industry. Roberts established Micro Instrumentation and Telemetry Systems (MITS), which introduced the Altair in 1975. An article on the Altair in the January 1975 issue of Popular Electronics caught the eye of a young Allen, who showed the story to Gates.

Gates and Allen quickly reached out to Roberts, … Read more

CNET News Daily Podcast: Altair precursor comes out of hiding

It turns out the Altair 8800 was years behind another microcomputer, one that might have turned the computing world on its ear if a few things had gone differently. CNET reporter Daniel Terdiman has more on an Altair predecessor that was all but lost to history.

That, and other news of the day, on Friday's CNET News Daily Podcast.

Today's stories:

Judge: Subway system can't ban violent-game ads

Sarkozy's 'New Year's wish': Investigate Google

Google launches local search for mobile

Viacom, YouTube inch toward courtroom showdown

CES: Nokia talks up business in the developing world… Read more

Inside the world's long-lost first microcomputer

BOULDER CREEK, Calif.--I have seen the world's first microcomputer, and it is not the Altair.

For years, any serious discussions about the earliest microcomputers had to include the Altair 8800, the creation of Albuquerque, N.M.'s Micro Instrumentation and Telemetry Systems (MITS). That computer, as has been well chronicled, inspired legions of hobbyists, including Bill Gates and Paul Allen, who, upon seeing the Altair on the cover of the January 1975 issue of Popular Electronics, began a mad rush to create Microsoft BASIC, their first smash hit and the beginning of their empire.

But it turns out … Read more

DIY server farm? Check!

Need a little extra computing power, but don't want to pay for it? Sure, we all do.

Altair was probably thinking along the same lines Monday when it announced its Personal PBS. It's a free turnkey application that purportedly leverages multicore CPU technology to transform any desktop computer into a miniature compute farm or cluster system.

In addition, for an (undisclosed as of yet) fee, PBS provides an upgrade option path that lets customers submit jobs from their personal desktop to back-end server systems running PBS Professional.

Altair expects this new product to appeal to the open-source community, … Read more

Car roundup: VW looks at electric cars in Mexico and more money for batteries

Volkswagen, the German car giant, will participate in a joint venture with Phoenix Motorcars to build electric vehicles for Latin America and India.

The plant for the venture, called Pristine International, will be built in Puebla, Mexico. It is unclear what kind of vehicles these cars will be. Phoenix, though, specializes in all-electric SUVs and Trucks. The company has taken orders for over 500 electric vehicles and hopes to start delivering some to customers in 2008. Earlier, it had hoped to get cars out in 2007.

Phoenix plans to insert batteries from Reno's Altair Nanotechnologies into its cars. Altair'… Read more

The Lightning: Britain's take on electric sports cars

The Lightning GTS, an all-electric sports car coming from England next year, will go 0 to 60 in four seconds, the company says.

But what I like is the '60s styling and the Union Jack license plate.

The car is one of several relatively new entrants into the electric auto market. They can be roughly divided into three categories: sports car specialists (Tesla Motors, Lightning, Lightspeed) and the sedan makers (Zap, Miles Automotive, etc.) and economy cars (Riva, Think). Some will make cars for different categories. Established companies like Nissan, of course, are tinkering at this too.

Right now, Tesla … Read more