It seems that the rumors of a formal investigation were true and less than 30 minutes ago, at time of posting, four of the owners of The Pirate Bay were ordered to pay over $180,000 dollars in copyright damages each. The four said that they knew this would happen eventually, so they made sure that The Pirate Bay’s servers were spread throughout the world. Read the rest of this entry »

*Dead on Arrival

Gamers, rejoice! If you enjoy games that are challenging, adventurous, progressive, and exciting, Next Life is not for you!

The game begins with an awesome storyline about Adam Raichl, who was killed in a car accident. When he is “resurrected”, he finds himself on a small island with other lost souls. These souls seemed to come from every place and time. Who were these people? Why were their? Is Adam dead? Is this a lost episode of Lost?

By the end of the first chapter, I didn’t really care about the answers. The makers of the game seemed to base it on a very cool game, No Exit, but didn’t know that games were supposed to be fun, exciting, or at least engaging. The main character sadly just runs all over the place to complete different quests. The only thing that prevented me from quiting the game was the fantasy-based warfare that was going on between the ghosts. However, there wasn’t any kind of warfar. Thus, I quit the game and threw it away. It wasn’t even good enough to be sold on Ebay.

Garmin has announced the Nuvifone on Wednesday this week. The Nuvifone is a lot like the iPhone, but with cool GPS features. According to Garmin, the Nuvifone will be released in the third quarter of this year.

The Nuvifone will have a 3.5 inch touch screen with three icons: call, search, and view map. With the Nuvifone, you will have access to maps of the U.S. and Europe. But the Nuvifone does more than show you maps. When you use it as a GPS, the Nuvifone will give you audible directions. If you miss a turn, it will create new directions for you. If you touch the screen, the Nuvifone will display your latitude and longitude, nearest street addresses and intersections, and the closest hospitals, gas stations, or police stations. Read the rest of this entry »

A new game engine is coming out for Codename: Panzers in the Cold War series, the Gepard3 engine. Evidently it features pools of water reflecting the sky, rain, glistening ice on aircraft, and overall a much more graphical experience, combined with visibility effects. I guess this means a single cloud could slightly decrease the brightness of the HUD. It will also affect weapon speeds and ranges, etc. 

“Developers continue to squeeze more and more out of PCs, Xbox 360s, and PS3s. Games like Crysis and Call of Duty 4 look to make every detail look as life-like as possible. And on the Wii, although the graphics aren’t always top-notch, there are real weather effects; at least, you can set games such as Madden NFL 08 can have snow or sunshine based on real-world conditions.”

We don’t really notice the weather much in video games, but I suppose we will soon. I notice the skyboxes, though. We really need more graphics for skies, most of them really suck and then when you stick birds in they suck too. Suck on that.

The MPAA has never been too high on college kids — remember the dishonor roll? — but it looks like Hollywood set is bummed about not being invited to that last kegger, because the MPAA is now admitting that it drastically overstated the effect of college downloading in previous studies. Back in 2005, the MPAA claimed that a whopping 44 percent of revenue losses came directly at the hands of carefree coeds nationwide, and used that number to pressure colleges into enforcing harsher downloading policies and even propose legislation currently before Congress that would tie federal education funds to copyright enforcement requirements. We’re not sure why the industry is now backing off that 44 percent number, but it’s now saying that “human error” resulted in a miscalculation, and the revenue loss from college piracy is more like 15 percent — a number which is further disputed by campus IT groups, who say it should be more like three percent. Of course, while it’s good to see the MPAA take an upfront stance on this, simply admitting you’re sleazy doesn’t actually wipe the slime off, so let’s see how the industry approaches future studies, shall we?

Thanks Engadget.

MAKE THIS YOUR SIG: Human error: An excuse for lying and justification for nigh-extortion, but not for downloading a movie you would never pay for.

Need to finish that work project, and wish you had the mental intensity to do it? Just take a synapse-regulating inhibitor, induce temporary autism, and you’ll want to ignore your friends and do nothing but number-crunching for days. Autism-inducers could become as popular as Provigil among the geek set by 2020. Last night, in fact, a group German researchers announced they’d perfected the method for inducing autism. (They can also cure it.)

Over the past year, researchers have demonstrated several times that they can turn mice autistic by messing with brain chemistry — and then “cure” them using the same techniques. The discoveries could lead to a scenario similar to the one in Vernor Vinge’s novel A Deepness in the Sky, where people are given a brain treatment called “focusing” that essentially turns them autistic and makes them obsessive, detail-oriented workers.

It might also lead to recreational autism, where people who want to take a break from having messy emotions about other people decide to unplug and enter a state where human relationships are no more important than inanimate objects.

Read about how scientists can induce autism [PNAS] and how they can cure it [BBC News].

Right-o, so here I am, to make a review on Team Fortress 2. Now, you’ve probably heard about this game. If you haven’t, you are not a true gamer/geek, and should be executed at sundown. Anyways, this game became famous after being delayed for 8 years. It was announced as a sequel to the still-popular Team Fortress Classic, a mod for Half-Life, and went into development hell until 2007, when it was eventually released on October 10, 2007. In the developer commentary on Dustbowl, one of the maps, an employee stated that it took so long because they were trying to find a version they were happy with. Apparently, there was an idea for a commander, but it was scrapped due to the fact it could ruin the players’ fun if there was a terrible commander, or vice versa.

I picked up the Orange Box from my local Best Buy on Black Friday, when it was priced at a measly $20. I also got a copy of BioShock, which is pretty fun too. (I have yet to finish it.) I played Portal while waiting for Team Fortress 2 to download, which took a while. Portal was epic, and I suggest you play it if you haven’t already. Read the rest of this entry »

HP has edged out Dell in this quarter, selling the most computers in this quarter. HP has an 18.2% market share, Dell , which is in second, has a 14.3% market share, and Acer, the third place finisher, has a 8.9% market share. Lenovo is in fourth with a 7.4% market share, and Toshiba is in fifth with a 4% market share.

HP sales increased by 30% from last quater. Dell increased by 17%. Read the rest of this entry »

The creator of the Sims, Will Wright, has been working on the game spore for what seems to be forever. I hate to disappoint you people, but the promising game is probably going to be delayed yet again. The game is predicted to not arrive till the second half of ‘08.

This game seems to be very promising. In this game, players begin as a single-cell organism at a microscopic level (no you are not an egg). You continue to evolve to the creature phase. You are one organism fighting for survival. As the game goes on, you enter the tribe phase. In this phase, you lead a tribe of your organisms. The next level is the civilization level. The point of this level is to conquer your planet. Finally, you enter the space phase, which ends with you conquering the galaxy.

Read the rest of this entry »

Podcasts are one of my favorite types of media to consume, as they are both informative and usually humorus in some way. What is a podcast you say?

Wikipedia defines a podcast as: a collection of digital media files which is distributed over the Internet, often using syndication feeds, for playback on portable media players and personal computers. The term, like “radio“, can refer either to the content itself or to the method by which it is syndicated; the latter is also termed podcasting. The host or author of a podcast is often called a podcaster.

I would say that a podcast is a weekly or daily radio show that is only released digitally and can be found through iTunes or the site of the respective podcast. The show can be ported to a slew of portable devices easily such as an iPod, Zune, or an Archos. It can also be watched on a computer. Read the rest of this entry »