General Gaming Article

General Gaming Article

Google Music Users Receiving Two Invites Each

Posted: 29 Jul 2011 02:14 PM PDT

musicThere hasn't been a lot to report regarding Google's cloud music service in recent weeks, but Mountain View took a major step today. Google is in the process of rolling out an invite system to the beta Google Music service. Each user will have two invites to give to friends. It is still US-only, but this could be a sign the service is moving toward a real release.

Google Music allows users to upload as many as 20,000 tracks to Google's servers, then play those tracks back via the web or Android phones. Unlike Amazon's Cloud Player, there is no MP3 store integration with Google Music. A desktop helper program can watch folder to automatically upload tracks as they are added, but Amazon's system doesn't even require a download.

We aren't seeing invites attached to our account as of yet, so you may have to wait to dole yours out. Have you been using Google Music? How does it stack up in your eyes?

Cool Site of the Week: Newspaper Map

Posted: 29 Jul 2011 12:08 PM PDT

Traditional print publishing may have been in some choppy waters these past few years, but the ship's no where close to going down just yet. Ironically, the best proof of this out there comes to us from the interwebz. Thanks to a site called Newspaper Map, those of us who still love the smell and feel of newsprint with our morning coffee will always know where to find a newspaper, no matter where in the world we might be.

The website offers its visitors a map of the world, with markers indicating Cities and towns print newspapers where--as well as their online presence--are still published. Each of the markers is color-coded to coincide with the newspaper's printed language. This as it is, would be a throughly useful tool, but newspaper map does its users one better: Just click on any of the markers, and you'll be presented with the option to read that newspaper's online edition in a wide variety of languages, with the translation provided by Google.

Going to the extreme, we translated Moskovskiy Komsomolets, a newspaper published out of Surgut, Russia into Gaeilge and English, and found to our surprise that what we ended up with in both instances was surprisingly readable. For dedicated news hounds, expatriates or those that looking for a new window on world events, Newspaper Map is a must-visit site.

Be sure to check back every Friday for another edition of Cool Site of the Week.

NYPD Captures Criminal After He Taunts Police With His Location On Facebook

Posted: 29 Jul 2011 11:25 AM PDT

Hey bad guys, here's a news flash: unless you're Robin hood – and you're not – rubbing your fugitive status in the face of law enforcement doesn't make you cool, it only makes you stupid. Cracking jokes on social media networks may draw some traffic to your Twitter feed, but it also draws cops like white on rice. Victor Burgos is the newest member of the Dumbest Criminals club after using Facebook to taunt NYC police with his location.

Burgos, age 29, was wanted by Utica Police because he apparently was in the habit of beating and harassing one of his ex-girlfriends. Rather than doing time, the Brooklyn-born Burgos fled. Maybe the adrenaline got to his head: after seeing his face on the list of Utica's most wanted, Burgos posted "Catch me if you can, I'm in Brooklyn" on his Facebook account.

So, um, they did.

The NYPD quickly tracked down and arrested Burgos in an apartment the Bedford-Stuyvesant neighborhood in Brooklyn. In a deliciously ironic turn of events, he was hunched over his computer and cruising Facebook when police kicked in the door.

Utica Police Sgt. Steve Hauck gets our award for straightforward explanation of the month: "He told us via Facebook to come and get him and we did," he told the Daily News.

Twitter's Changing Things Up With A New "Sensitive" Tag And Sponsored Tweets

Posted: 29 Jul 2011 10:51 AM PDT

Even if you're lucky enough to toil away in an enlightened work places that lets you Tweet away to your heart's content during the day, your boss might not be very understanding if your feed's full of porn links from your potty-minded pals. Your days over hovering over bit.ly links, paralyzed in fear may soon be over. Twitter's rolling out a new tweak to its API that will let you block your friends' linkbombs from even showing up.

"Beginning today you may notice a new boolean field in API responses & streams containing tweets: "possibly_sensitive," Taylor Singletary and the Twitter Platform team announced on its developer blog. "This new field will only surface when a tweet contains a link. The meaning of the field doesn't pertain to the tweet content itself, but instead it is an indicator that the URL contained in the tweet may contain content or media identified as sensitive content

So rather than having to point out a NSFW link manually, you'll be able to tag a post as "sensitive" at some point in the future. Yahoo News reports that you'll be able to choose to block any sensitive-tagged posts from entering your Twitter feed, and if a chucklehead buddy of yours passes along a NSFW link without tagging it, you can tag it yourself and Twitter will review it. It's not censorship; it's all optional.

Twitter's playing around with their posting structure a lot these days. The new sensitive feature comes just days after Twitter announced it was testing out sponsored "Promoted Tweets" on a limited basis. If you're following a brand that's paid for a Promoted Tweet, it will appear near the top of your timeline, MSNBC reports. As crappy as that sounds, it could be worse; you won't see ads from accounts that you aren't following, and you'll be able to banish them forever with one quick mouse click.

Purdue Researchers Inch One Step Closer To Quantum Computing

Posted: 29 Jul 2011 10:15 AM PDT

We've already covered a new ThinkGeek gadget today, so let's keep the "Think Geek" ball rolling and talk about a concept that keeps real-life geeks awake at night, jittering at the thought of its awesomeness: quantum computing. Even though Lockheed Martin signed up to buy an underperforming "Maybe it's a quantum computer" from D-Wave One a few months back, the face-melting power we think of when uttering the words "Quantum computer" is still a long ways off. A pair of researchers at Purdue University just inched it a little bit closer to reality, however.

Engadget pointed us towards the Purdue Newsroom, where a press release announced that professors Michael Manfra and Gabor Csathy created a "high-mobility gallium-arsenide molecular beam epitaxy system" that allows them to create ultrapure gallium arsenide semiconductor crystals. The cutting-edge machine outputs crystals that are a perfect lattice of gallium and arsenide atoms, precise down to the atomic level.

That's not a lollipop, it's ultrapure gallium arsenide made from the machine in the background.

This exacting precision lets the team eliminate the ability for electrons to travel on a third plane, restricting mobility to only move back and forth or side to side movements. After cooling the gallium arsenide to absolute zero – about -460 Fahrenheit – and applying a magnetic field to the material, the electrons inside break the laws of single-particle physics and enter a correlated state, in which changes to one electron reflect in the other electrons. The whole theory of quantum computing is based upon particles in correlated motion.

Don't expect to find quantum computers on the shelves of your local Best Buy anytime soon, though. There's still a lot of science left to figure out before correlated electrons help you keep track of your spreadsheets. "These exotic states are beyond the standard models of solid-state physics and are at the frontier of what we understand and what we don't understand," Manfra admitted in the press release.

ThinkGeek's New Electronic Rock Guitar Bag Melts Faces While Protecting Laptops

Posted: 29 Jul 2011 10:05 AM PDT

Face melting solos aren't quite as skin-peeling when you're rocking an air guitar. We know nothing feels more badass than simulating Angus Young's power chords in "Back in Black," but to everybody else, you just look silly. ThinkGeek strives to make wannabe strummers cool again. It just unveiled a new accessory that achieves the perfect blend of usefulness and awesomeness; the laptop-carrying Electronic Rock Guitar Bag.

This awesome little accessory uses the same basic design and premise as ThinkGeek's Electronic Rock Guitar Shirts, only you stuff computers inside of it rather than your pale, flabby stomach. It's capable of carrying a 17-inch laptop, a cellphone and "other necessities" simultaneously in addition to rocking your socks.

The fun part – the working drawing of an electric guitar on the bag's outer flap – is powered by 4 AAA batteries. Simply clip the supplied mini amp speaker to the outside of the bag, crank the volume (it goes all the way to 11. Eleven!) and blast out the grooves. Each button on the neck of the guitar corresponds to one of the major chords, and it plays in perfect tune every time. There's even a separate tone knob.

This $50 bad boy's only available for preorder right now: ThinkGeek promises to have it "just in time for back to school at the end of August." To us non-school types, that's approximately August 28th.

Thanks to SlashGear for pointing this out!

Avast: Windows XP Accounts for Nearly 75 Percent of Rootkit Infections

Posted: 29 Jul 2011 08:46 AM PDT

Users still clinging to Windows XP like that fast and gnarly Trans Am from yesteryear that's just too familiar to part with have yet another reason to consider a new ride. According to security firm Avast, XP is a fertile breeding ground for cyber infection, especially for rootkits, of which 74 percent of infections originated from in a recent six-month study cataloging over 630,000 samples.

Windows XP is the most common operating system among Avast users with nearly half sticking with the nearly decade old OS. It's also one of the easier OSes to pirate, and according to Avast, un-patched and pirated versions of XP make up the main vector for rootkit infections.

"One issue with Windows XP is the high number of pirated versions, especially as users are often unable to properly update them because the software can't be validated by the Microsoft update," said Przemyslaw Gmerek (PDF), the Avast expert on rootkis and lead researcher. "Because of the way they attack -- and stay connected -- deep in the operating system, rootkits are a perfect weapon for stealing private data."

Rootkit infections dropped off considerably for Windows Vista and Windows 7 in Avast's study, though the security outfit warns that more recent OSes aren't entirely immune.

"Cybercriminals are continuing to fine-tune their attack strategy with the Master Boot Record (MBR) remaining their favorite target for even the newest TDL4 rootkit variant," Avast stated in its report.

What operating system and security software are you rocking?

Phishing Ringleader Receives 12-Year Sentence, 38,000 Victims Rejoice

Posted: 29 Jul 2011 08:25 AM PDT

Thirty-four-year-old Tien Truong Nguyen is finding out the hard way that you shouldn't do the crime if you can't do the time. U.S. District Judge Morrison England Jr. ruled that Nguyen was in fact guilty of scamming more than 38,000 victims by designing copycat banking websites intended to dupe users into inputting their personal information, and ordered him to serve 12 years in prison.

According to DigitalTrends, Nguyen worked with Romanian scammers in a concerted effort to route victims through fraudulent websites through email phishing. He then sold the stolen data to Ryan Price and Stefani Ruland, two men who used the information to open lines of credit at GE Capital kiosks at Walmart in northern California. Credit lines usually ranged from $1,000 to $2,000 per individual. Overall, the scam resulted in about $200,000 of illegally obtained items from Walmart.

When police arrested Nguyen back in 2007, they found a whole bunch of incriminating evidence, including Web templates to build fake versions of banking sites, bank and credit card numbers from 38,500 victims, fraudulent credit cards, and a counterfeit driver's license, DigitalTrends says. Nguyen was also reportedly in possession of a Remington 870 Magnum Express shotgun and nearby ammunition, which violated a previous order resulting from convictions on three felonies, one of which included writing fraudulent checks.

Nguyen's lawyer unsuccessfully tried to blame his client's behavior on his methamphetamine addiction, for which he supposedly no longer suffers from. He was charged with conspiracy, aggravated identity theft, possession of a firearm, and access-device fraud.

Image Credit: thehackernews.com

Google Goes on an IBM Patent Spending Spree

Posted: 29 Jul 2011 08:03 AM PDT

Companies hoping to shield themselves from costly patent lawsuits have no choice but to play the patent game, which entails building up as big of a patent portfolio as possible. It's expensive, but still cheaper than going to court and risking high dollar verdicts. Some consider it a broken system, including Google, which has publicly called for patent reform. In the meantime, Google is forced to play the game, and according to reports, the search giant just purchased over 1,000 patents from IBM.

"Like many tech companies, at times we'll acquire patents that are relevant to our business," a Google spokesman said in a statement, according to The Wall Street Journal.

Google's newly acquired patents cover the "fabrication and architecture of memory and microprocessing chips," various computer architecture such as servers and routers, online search engines, and more.

Facing numerous patent lawsuits for its services, including Android, Google has the money -- some $40 billion in cash, WSJ says -- to go out and acquire patents, however it's not always as simple as making a buy. Earlier this month, Google bid on a portfolio of 6,000 patents owned by Nortel Networks Corp, but it's initial $900 million bid fell way short of the collective $4.5 billion Apple, EMC, Ericsson, Microsoft, RIM, and Sony paid.

MSI Builds Industrial System with Nettop Guts

Posted: 29 Jul 2011 07:37 AM PDT

Few things are as awesome as a custom painted full tower chassis loaded to the hilt with so much high-end hardware that most chiropractors would recommend enlisting the help of a friend when lugging it around. On the flip side, that's going way overboard if you're looking to setup a NAS box or VPN for your small business, which are two areas MSI's new MS-9A85 industrial system was built to handle.

The MS-9A58 is a compact and fanless embedded IPC powered by Intel's Atom D525 processor. It supports up to 4GB of DDR3 memory and features integrated Intel GMA 3150 graphics. Other features include two SATA ports, four 82574L Gb LAN ports (including one pair of single latch support auto-bypass function), one RS-232 and one RS-232/422/485 serial ports with auto-flow control, two COM ports, six USB 2.0 ports, 801.11b/g/n Wi-Fi, and expansion options via two PCI slots, one PCI-E x1 slot, and one mini PCI-E slot.

"With a compact mini-ITX size, MS-9A58 is designed with rich I/O functionality and has the new levels of performance and graphics for the demand in network security applications, such as small business VPN (Virtual Private Network ), VoIP (Voice over Internet Protocol ), SAN (Storage Area Network) and NAS (Network Attached Storage )," MSI says.

No word yet on price or availability.

Image Credit: MSI
Posted by Shri Krishna

Total Pageviews

statcounter

View My Stats