Tecnobitsis so long in the tooth, that it actually pines for the days of manually peeking and poking games into a Vic 20. Anyone wearing a blank expression has not been around long enough. These days, having amazing graphics, story line and plot development is not enough. Gamer want to battle each other, online, 24×7 and in great numbers. Tecnobitsbattles the elements to bring you a devilish update.

One of the most eagerly awaited games of recent times, Diablo III, had (part of) its launch party in London last night. With Tuesday being the new ‘sexy day for launches, stores across the country had shelves laden with product – just waiting for the official Blizzard ‘bend over, pause, engage’ instructions to come through.

The genuine front line for this launch has been the totally unprepared supermarket chains. Checking through the online postings by folks like OMG Thor, Diablo III wannabes were being directed with info like: Asda (Walmart) Opening Time: 23:00 Brighton Marina, BN2 5UT Opening Until: 23:00

Unfortunately, gamers arriving at this and other stores in Farnborough etc, were met by sales assistants who swore, “Asda does not sell games, have you tried Game?”

OK, it’s not Harry Potter in terms of global numbers and knowledgeable Asda shop assistants, but this game is already making a name for itself.

Can Tecnobitsquantify just how popular will the game be?  Well, according to Amazon, it has smashed all previous ‘pre order records’ – and that’s for the regular version. The special Collector’s Edition that Blizzard is making available for the launch only, is ever so slightly over-subscribed. Well, a 208 page art book and ‘behind the scenes’ Blu-Ray disc can have that effect.

The new system of Battle Tags being implemented for Diablo III will mean that multiple players can have the same name – while still being recognised as different people by the Battle.Net servers [That should save millions of gamers from having to learn how to pronounce Welsh - Ed].

Despite improvements in server technology that Blizzard has implemented ahead of the launch, the tech gurus from the World of Warcraft have been warning people that ‘an initial 40 second delay in being seen by the servers, is quite normal’.

Not convinced? Well you can check out the age-blocked Collector’s Edition here and then watch a trailer.

Tecnobitshas been told that there is a ‘Free 30 day guest pass’ system in operation, to attract noobs. If you want to check out the free/pay options, visit www.diablo3.com

The need for Diablo III had some gaming enthusiasts climbing the walls

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Looking back over the past 6 months, there have been a lot of stories about product availability – for both nVidia and AMD. Most of it centres on the lack of production capacity available at TSMC for the latest processes. Tecnobitsponders just how hard it is to buy the latest cards, with a little help from Overclockers UK and a wide angle lens.

Tech firms, generally, have quite a sense of humour. To be in a business that declined the way the PC business did in 2008 – you’d have to preserve the ability to smile – or you’d end up crying. A lot.

Over at Overclockers, the logistics team has been taking delivery of the new nVidia GTX 670 – in some volume.

Ahead of the actual launch date, unsure how best to use these shiny new boxes, the primordial urge to ‘Lego’ everything in sight, took over and there were colleagues with wide angled lenses on hand to capture the glory of creation.

Here’s the result.

While the Overclockers GTX670 fortress looks strong, apparently you can pull any brick out of this wall – using just a credit card

Comment below or in the Tecnobitsforums.

Fresh on the heels of releasing Ubuntu 12.04 LTS, Canonical has delivered an updated version of its Ubuntu Business Desktop Remix. As found in previous versions, this new update features applications likely to be appreciated by business users, and doesn’t include various games and other entertainment-focused options. The update is based on Ubuntu 12.04 LTS, and here’s more on what you’ll find in it.

Canonical, of course, has made much noise recently about how it wants more enterprises and businesses of all sizes to adopt Ubuntu. The 12.04 release expanded long-term support and added cloud computing options for just that reason. The new Business Desktop Remix is squarely focused on business users, as noted on the Canonical blog:

"Designed for corporate and government organisations evaluating Ubuntu for their desktop infrastructure, the Business Desktop Remix is a simple base image that can be deployed into your corporate environment or used as a starting point for further customisation."

The post also clarifies some of the choices regarding bundled applications:

"To save time in deployment, we’ve removed games, social networking programs, file sharing apps and technical tools. In their place, you’ll find software more appropriate for a corporate environment, including VMware View, the Adobe Flash Plugin and the OpenJDK 6 Java runtime environment. Ubuntu Business Desktop Remix provides full language support in both 32 and 64-bit builds, just like the standard Ubuntu. Users also benefit from the great new productivity features introduced in Ubuntu 12.04 LTS, including built-in support for Microsoft Windows RDP 7.1 and the Microsoft Visio diagram importer in LibreOffice Draw."

Can a combination of long-term support, and a set of applications optimized for business users help Ubuntu become more entrenched in businesses? Many businesses are standardized on Microsoft’s platforms, and in some cases extricating these businesses from those platforms is a tall order. However, just as Red Hat has found success aggressively supporting open source software, Canonical can definitely increase Ubuntu’s footprint in businesses.

The Business Desktop Remix requires registration, and you can register and download here. 

Over the weekend, The Hill reported that U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee members will look into claims from Mozilla that Microsoft is weilding monopoly power by making it difficult for non-Microsoft browsers to to run efficiently on Windows devices with ARM processors. Many mobile phones use ARM processors, so the dispute is similar to the browser-related disputes that Microsoft has gotten into in the past, except updated to apply to phone platforms. If The Hill’s report is correct, Microsoft may need to change its practices immediately.

Browsers have been at the center of scrutiny from the government toward Microsoft for many years, ever since the U.S. Department of Justice pursued its antitrust case against the company. The latest claims from Mozilla surround Microsoft allegedly withholding APIs needed to make non-Microsoft browsers competitive on Windows RT. According to Mozilla’s Asa Dotzler:

"For Windows on X86, Microsoft is giving other browsers basically the same privileges it gives IE. It’s not great that you don’t get those privileges (certain API access) unless you’re the default browser and I think that’s deeply unfair (a post for later,) but at least we’re able to build a competitive browser and ship it to Windows users on x86 chips. But on ARM chips, Microsoft gives IE access special APIs absolutely necessary for building a modern browser that it won’t give to other browsers so there’s no way another browser can possibly compete with IE in terms of features or performance."

In all likelihood, if members of the Senate Judiciary Committe even begin sniffing around this issue, it will prompt action in the direction of compliance from Microsoft. The company doesn’t want to immerse itself in a replay of the browser-centric government investigations that it has endured in the past. For much more on what to expect here, see Asa Dotzler’s updated post on the matter, found here.

This week, the Citrix Synergy conference is going on in San Francisco, with lots of news related to Citrix’s CloudStack strategy coming out, and more. Through today, Friday, you can still access live keynotes and sessions from the conference, available by webcast here. Here is a roundup of some of the major news out of Citrix Synergy.

Citrix announced the launch of Citrix CloudPlatform, the first commercially supported cloud orchestration system based on Apache CloudStack. With the new commercial release, Citrix says "customers can quickly and easily evolve virtualized datacenter resources to automated, elastic, self-service IT delivery models."

Last month, Citrix submitted its CloudStack platform to the Apache Software Foundation, and, with support from over 50 key ecosystem partners, the Apache Software Foundation accepted CloudStack into its a major battle with OpenStack on the open source cloud computing scene. 

In conjunction with the conference, Citrix has also launched Project Avalon, discussed here.  Project Avalon enables windows desktops and windows applications to be delivered as cloud services, which can help give Citrix’s cloud platform an inroad into appealing to many enterprises. Citrix’s post on Project Avalon notes that it has “taken major engineering efforts to transform the XenDesktop product, which was designed to run on enterprise virtualization architecture, to work seamlessly on Apache CloudStack and Amazon Web Services.” Project Avalon is a big, Windows-focused bet on virtualization and the cloud.

At the conference, Citrix is also swe covered here. Citrix is positioning Podio as a new part of its GoTo line of products, which includes GoToMeeting, and if you consider Podio alongside both GoToMeeting and CloudStack, it becomes clear that Citrix has its eye on end-to-end cloud platform tools, including approachable front-end applications. While Podio isn’t open source, its freemium model and user-configurable cloud collaboration environments have an open and flexible ethos to them. There is a good discussion of this week’s Podio demos here.

With all of Citrix’s CloudStack moves, it’s becoming clear that CloudStack will do direct battle with OpenStack, but we’ve noted that there is room for both of these open source cloud platforms.  We’ve covered Citrix’s decision to cut its support for the open source OpenStack cloud computing platform and move full steam ahead with the next phase of its CloudStack strategy. Both OpenStack and CloudStack have many big backers, so it’s natural that these two platforms are being characterized as engaged in a high-profile fight.

The ReadWriteCloud Channel extrapolated on the notion that multiple cloud platforms can succeed in an excellent point in a post titled "It’s Not Highlander: There Can Be More Than One Open Source Cloud":

"Assuming even one-third of the companies that pledged to support CloudStack become serious contributors, CloudStack should have a bright future. It takes little away from OpenStack for CloudStack to succeed…After all the dust settles, it would be best for everyone from the open source cloud communities to figure out how they can work together. The "there can be only one" approach isn’t going to help anybody, and may benefit Amazon, VMware and other proprietary vendors who can market their wares without any drama."

We’ll round up more news from Citrix Synergy, but through the end of today, you can still catch the free webcasts of events from the conference.