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MIT to launch MITx learning platform, offer free teaching materials in 2012
Want a degree from MIT without the expense or notoriously selective application process? Well, you're still out of luck, we're afraid, but the Massachusetts Institute of Technology's new MITx online learning system will at least give you a chance to access a variety of course materials for free. The institution will also make the MITx platform available to other schools for publishing their own content, and will even offer assessments with the option of earning a certificate of completion -- issued by a not-for-profit entity with a "distinct name to avoid confusion," of course. Naturally, "online-only non-MIT learners" will not have the same level of access as MIT students, who will also use the platform to access their own course material, but won't have the option of replacing an on-campus experience with exclusively online classes. MITx is scheduled to go live next spring, but you can get a head start on that fictional MIT degree by checking out OpenCourseWare, which has been serving up similar content for the better part of a decade.
CyberPower gets diminutive with LAN Party EVO SFF desktop family
Look out, Shuttle -- CyberPower's getting all up in your territory with its new LAN Party EVO series. Introduced today, this foursome of minuscule monsters relies on mITX and mATX motherboards and plenty of high-end internals to deliver solid gaming performance in a desktop that's at least somewhat portable. The Party EVO Mini is wrapped in a Silverstone SG-07B enclosure, while the Xtreme, Commander, and Ultra tout In-Win's Dragonslayer. Aside from integrating its Max Airflow Package to keep things a couple of notches below "Molten Lava," the whole crew is equipped with a 64-bit copy of Windows 7, a three-year warranty and free lifetime phone support. As for specs, the Mini ($1,079) gets a Core i7-870 CPU, 4GB of DDR3 memory, a 1GB ATI Radeon HD 5770 GPU and a 1TB HDD, while the Xtreme ($799) steps down (oddly enough) to a Core i5-760 and an HD 5670 on the graphics front. The Commander ($999) includes a Core i7-950, 6GB of DDR3 RAM and NVIDIA's GeForce GTS 450 (1GB), and finally, the Ultra ($759) branches out with an AMD Phenom II X4 955 CPU, 4GB of DDR3 memory, ATI's Radeon HD 5670 GPU (1GB) and a full terabyte of hard drive space. So, which is going to be, buster?
