General Gaming Article |
- Sprint Rescues Clearwire with $1.6 Billion Cash Infusion
- Medical Professionals Increasingly Asserting Copyright to Your Online Reviews
- 15 Futuristic Display Technologies That Will Change The Way You See The World
- 10 Practical Reasons Not to Pirate
- Gamers Create Pixel-Perfect Zelda, Mario and Pac-Man Videos Using Stop-Motion And Millions Of Minecraft Blocks
- iBuyPower Gamer Paladin HS11 is a Liquid Cooled System for Under a Grand
- VIA Pens eBook Celebrating 10 Years of Mini-ITX, Outlines Awesome Mod Projects
- Browser Extension of the Week: Personal Blocklist
- Is AMD Preparing To Shift Focus Away From The Desktop?
- Heads Up: Daily Wishlist Giveaway Begins Today on Steam
| Sprint Rescues Clearwire with $1.6 Billion Cash Infusion Posted: 01 Dec 2011 03:03 PM PST
Sprint's move is as much out of shameless self-interest as it is a business deal. Sprint needs the wireless spectrum that Clearwire has licenses to in order to build its next generation 4G LTE network now that WiMAX has proved to be a flop. Clearwire was previously considering skipping its $237 million interest payment to conserve funds for the network upgrades, but that would have alienated investors that the company will be needing later. About $926 million of the cash comes in the form of advanced payments for WiMAX usage through 2013. Sprint will continue selling WiMAX devices through 2012, and will support them for at least 2-years. At least now Clearwire can begin building that LTE network in earnest. |
| Medical Professionals Increasingly Asserting Copyright to Your Online Reviews Posted: 01 Dec 2011 02:39 PM PST
One New York dentist, Stacy Makhnevich, is taking this practice so far that she reportedly began billing a patient $100 per day when he refused to remove a negative review. She and other medical professionals are making use of forms provided by the advocacy group Medical Justice. Many legal experts that have looked at the forms consider them to be borderline illegal. Perhaps due to the extreme case in New York, a group called Public Citizen has filed a class action against Makhnevich. As we live more and more of our lives online, we are all coming to the realization that the things we put on the internet are forever. It's not just a passing complaint around the water cooler that vanishes into the ether any more. Interestingly, it was Makhnevich's billing practices that the patient in this case complained about, not her dentistry. Do you think any professional should hold copyright to things you write about your interactions with them? |
| 15 Futuristic Display Technologies That Will Change The Way You See The World Posted: 01 Dec 2011 02:10 PM PST After watching Captain Picard solving all those Victorian murder mysteries on the Enterprise's holodeck, we have to say that staring at a basic, flat-panel monitor is sooooo 20th century. Wasn't the future of television watching supposed to be way cooler than this by now? Yeah, it was, but don't worry; those spiffy high-tech displays have only been delayed, not scrapped entirely. A veritable army of hard-working engineers have been laboring day and night to bring flexible phones, holograms you can feel, physical 3D interfaces, and touchscreen, well, everything to your living room, car and workplace sometime soon. And hey, we've got actual pictures to prove it! Actually, about those pictures: still images just don't do justice to a lot of these futuristic displays. We've provided links below each image so that you can check out this tech for yourself in full low-def YouTube video glory. Also, if this journey through futuristic outputs piques your interest about what's barreling down the pipeline, be sure to check out our Futuristic Interfaces gallery for a look at the input side of things. But enough babble: let's dive headfirst into the world of tomorrow. Hope you brought a time stabilizer! |
| 10 Practical Reasons Not to Pirate Posted: 01 Dec 2011 11:49 AM PST
Stability
You know that feeling of unbridled rage gnawing away at the cockles of your soul when you buy a new piece of software on the first day it becomes available, open it, and then discover you have to wait another hour and a half for a launch day patch to download and install in order to make the application useable? A lot of pirated software will allow you to relive the the experience every time you launch them. It used to be that rocking a pirated game or application was as simple as finding a viable serial number to work with a given program, but as many of you likely know (don't worry, we're not here to judge you) modern software piracy often involves a lot of work on the part of hackers, who spend a great deal of time reverse engineering applications to see what makes them tick, and inevitably, how that ticking can be translated into a crack to allow anyone to use the software for free. Such a crack can often stymie the software's stability, making it a crash-prone bag of hurt.
Storage
If you're anything like us, your rig's drives are already full of photos, games, music, movies, applications, and work-related files. Space is at a constant premium, and unless you plan on investing in additional storage hardware, you'll be mulling over whether or not you've got enough room to download or install additional content, and if not, pondering what you could get rid of in order to create enough space so that a new application can be shoehorned in. When you're dealing with pirated software, not only will you have to contend with the amount of data the installation chewed up, but you'll also have to consider whether or not the installation files are worth holding on to. After all, just because you were able to find and torrent a program once, doesn't mean it'll be easy to find or download again, right? When you buy a boxed copy or digital download of a piece of software, you're not only forking over dough you're paying so that you'll never have to worry about obtaining another copy of your software again. Boxed software can be stored on a shelf in your office, and more likely than not, you'll be allowed to download a copy of any previously purchased software from an online vendor like Steam, Direct2Drive or Microsoft time and time again.
Updates
Many moons ago, buying a piece of software was very much a WYSIWYG experience: Whatever came out of the box is what you were stuck with, whether it worked as you'd hoped it would or not. If you long for such whimsically frustrating times, pirated software's the way to go. In most cases, no matter whether you're using a bogus serial number or a cracked copy of an application, you can likely kiss any and all updates and additions goodbye. With today's Digital Rights Management technologies, it's getting harder and harder to authenticate pirated software with the publishing house servers.
DRM
Few subjects in in the geek circles cause more drama, venom, or troll-baiting than Digital Rights Management. Created as a direct response to digital piracy by individuals and organizations who, instead of paying the suggested retail price for software, digitally distributed music or movies, prefer to pay the low, low price of absolutely free. While DRM might seem a reasonable way to deal with the freeloading thieves of the world, DRM oriented anti-piracy efforts have caused a good amount of splash damage to those who choose to pay for their digital content too. There's no regulation in place to limit how companies implement DRM for their products. This has lead to quaint practices like requiring games be constantly connected to the internet for DRM verification, which, as anyone who planned on play Diablo 3 on a cross country flight will tell you, sucks. As pirates become more adept at bi-passing current DRM methodology, there's little doubt that new, DRM technology will be developed to protect corporate interests and frustrate consumers. So, enough with the pirating already, if you please.
Viruses & Malware
Software obtained via P2P sites and torrents are an awesome delivery system for viruses and malware. Knowing that no sane PC user would want to intentionally install a virus or malware application, many a wily blackhat hacker and scriptkiddie has piggybacked their malignant work on to the back of cracked software, anticipating that in your eagerness to get your hands on a program you've had a hankering for, you won't notice it's there until it's installed on your system. In some instances, digital ne'er do wells, don't even bother to try and hide their payload amidst a mess of software—they'll simply label their wares something tempting like 'Microsoft Office 2010' or 'Crysis' and watch unwary pirates do what they do. Not cool, man. Not cool.
No Tech Support
If you're rocking pirated software, you can still ask for help online from other users through any number of forums, but beyond that you'll be out of luck. In order to grab the attention of any publisher sanctioned helplines, chats, or other resources, software users require either a legitimate activation key or a support code provided after activation. While this might not be a big issue for most users, it's definitely a let down for individuals unable to overcome software related glitches, freezes, and fails. That's what you get when you procure something for nothing.
Legal Issues
It doesn't matter whether you're talking video, audio, or software (or audio/video software for that matter,) piracy can land you in a whole lot of hot water. In 1998, the United States passed the Digital Millennium Copyright Act - a piece of legislation that makes it illegal to circumvent DRM measures put in place by content creators and publishers. To keep things more or less on the same page, the European Union passed a similar set of laws in 2001. Despite changes made to the American DMCA last year to legitimize the ripping of CDs, DVDs and other select forms of digital media for personal use, make no mistake, big business is still deadly serious about suing to protect their investments. Don't drop a ton of coin on your legal defence: just pay for what you play instead.
Killing PC Gaming (Sorry Gordon.)
While the rumours of the death of PC Gaming may be greatly exaggerated, software piracy has definitely left the industry looking a little browbeaten. This past week, word came down from the DRM-loving scamps at Ubisoft that one of their most anticipated titles won't be released for PC due to—you guessed it—piracy concerns. Looking at the numbers, you have to admit, those fears are well founded. When 2D Boy's World of Goo was released for the PC sans DRM, the developers noted that as reward for trusting gamers not to pirate their creation, they were suffering a 90% piracy rate. Then there's Crysis: A title pirated to such epic proportions that the game's development, which was at one time devoted solely to developing for the PC, was forced to swear off PC-only development if it wanted to stand a chance of securing anything resembling fiscal sustainability. If you're tired of crappy console-to-PC ports, Xbox 360 or PS3 exclusives titles and long for the days when PC Gaming reigned supreme, stop torrenting and start buying. It's still not too late to turn things around.
Slows R&D Efforts
No matter how you spin it, for the most part, software development is a business like any other. When a developer's product flies off of store shelves or is downloaded through legitimate channels, developers and publishers are motivated to cultivate improvements to their wares, be it in the form of additional content or service packs or an entirely new edition of a popular application. Conversely, more piracy means less money for developers and publishers. This translates into less motivation to produce add-ons, patches or hot-fixes for existing titles, and in some cases, as too few people are buying what they're selling, there's no money in the pipe to be used for future development efforts. You're Screwing Developers
Perhaps out of all of our legitimate reasons not to pirate, the fact that you're screwing hard working developers over every time you download a pirated ware is the most important. When it comes to software, most titles represent months, if not years of someone's daily work. If you've opted to swipe a copy of an indie house gem, you're benefitting from the passions of perhaps a few individuals without paying them a reasonable dollar value for the the hours and hours of their personal time poured into their product. If enough people illegally download software from large publishing houses like EA or Ubisoft or Microsoft, the dollar value of the revenue lost to pirating is often compensated for by initiating lay-offs of the development teams that worked hard enough to make something awesome enough to steal in the first place. With tough economic times quickly becoming the norm, rather than the exception, it's easy to justify the theft of intellectual property, but screwing over your fellow geeks in the name of saving a few bucks? That's harsh.
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| Posted: 01 Dec 2011 11:24 AM PST There's a two-way street of animosity that runs between many console gamers and PC gamers – but at the heart of things, aren't we all just gamers? Can't we all just get along? If our high-horse appeal to reason doesn't sway you, consider this: a trio of multinational Minecraft freaks has showed us The Good that can happen when we set our virtual pickaxes aside and embrace both console and PC games, in the form of pixel-perfect recreations of Super Mario Land, Legend of Zelda: Link's Awakening and more, using only stop-motion and millions of Minecraft blocks. These videos will boggle your mind. Kotaku pointed us towards the amazing feat. James Wright, Joe Ciappa and "Tempusmori" created a replica Gameboy in Minecraft, with a screen that's 160-by-144 blocks. That makes the ratio of blocks to Gameboy pixels a solid 1:1. Then the fun began: the trio recreated the games using dyed wool blocks. The replica Gameboy screen contains 23,040 blocks, and they must be rearranged each frame to create the smooth animated look you see in the videos below. The team puts in a full month of seven hour days – with no days off – in order to create the videos. The videos above are the Super Mario Land and Links Awakening masterpieces: for even more old school Minecraft goodness, check out the trio's YouTube page, which includes behind-the-scenes videos and recreations of Tetris, Pac-Man, the first level of the NES Mario Brothers game, and Space Invaders. |
| iBuyPower Gamer Paladin HS11 is a Liquid Cooled System for Under a Grand Posted: 01 Dec 2011 11:18 AM PST
iBuyPower's goal is to offer gamers a "solid entry level rig at a great value," while also leaving plenty of room for future upgrades. Like any other iBuyPower system, the Gamer Paladin HS11 is configurable, but if you opt for the stock build, here's what you get:
Not a bad machine for the money, on paper anyway, The Gamer Paladin HS11 is available to configure/order now through the end of December. Image Credit: iBuyPower |
| VIA Pens eBook Celebrating 10 Years of Mini-ITX, Outlines Awesome Mod Projects Posted: 01 Dec 2011 11:01 AM PST
"Small is Beautiful is above all a celebration of the tremendous creative spirit shown by the modders and enthusiasts who got their hands on a Mini-ITX board and made their visions realities," said Richard Brown, Vice President of Marketing, VIA Technologies Inc. "It was they who demonstrated that PCs no longer needed to be big, beige and boring, rather they could be small, stylish and silent instead." The Mini-ITX form factor is immensely popular among the modding crowd due to its small size (17cm x 17xm), which opens the door to all kinds of creative projects, including a mini Millennium Falcon PC. It also helped usher in an era of compact, power efficient computing, and even played a part in killing off those ugly beige boxes that used to dominate the desktop. The eBook is a free download and is available in ePub and PDF formats. If nothing else, it's worth the download to skim through the many projects detailed inside. |
| Browser Extension of the Week: Personal Blocklist Posted: 01 Dec 2011 10:44 AM PST
Personal Blocklist allows Chrome users to create a personalized blocklist of search results from specific domains. Residing quietly under your browser's hood, the extension only shows itself once your search's results have been returned to you. See a return that you'd rather not stumble across again? Simply click the "Block" link to ensure that your target domain is excluded from future search queries.
Unfortunately, at the time that this story was written, Personal Blocklist only worked when searches were conducted using Google. Whether or not Google will opt to allow Yahoo, bing or any other search engines to access the extension remains to be seen. Be sure to check back next week for another edition of Browser Extension of the week. |
| Is AMD Preparing To Shift Focus Away From The Desktop? Posted: 01 Dec 2011 10:42 AM PST
The first ominous rumblings occurred in an article published by the San Jose Mercury news. In that report, AMD spokesman Mike Silverman said something that made tech followers' ears perk up with interest. "We're at an inflection point," Silverman said. "We will all need to let go of the old 'AMD versus Intel' mind-set, because it won't be about that anymore." Wait, what? It won't be about that any more? What does that mean? Late yesterday afternoon, AMD sent a statement about its future to The Verge. AMD is a leader in x86 microprocessor design, and we remain committed to the x86 market. Our strategy is to accelerate our growth by taking advantage of our design capabilities to deliver a breadth of products that best align with broader industry shifts toward low power, emerging markets and the cloud. So AMD may not be ready to throw in the x86-based towel just yet, but it lloks like the company plans on refocusing many of its efforts on servers and other low-energy markets. To our ears, "low power" screams netbooks, tablets and smartphones – areas that might not yet be dominated by Intel, but still field plenty of other competition in the form of ARM, Nvidia, Qualcomm, Texas Instruments and more. Could AMD actually manage to establish a firm foothold in such a crowded market? AMD told the San Jose Mercury News that it would outline its future much more clearly in a February 2012 strategy update – we'll just have to wait (and hold our breath) until then. |
| Heads Up: Daily Wishlist Giveaway Begins Today on Steam Posted: 01 Dec 2011 10:39 AM PST
Entering is easy and starts with a Steam account (obviously). Once you're logged in, you need to create a wishlist of at least 10 games. After that just hop over to the page for the featured daily deal (today it's Terraria at 75 percent off) and you're entered to win. Easy-cheesy. There is, of course, some fine print, which you can read in its entirety here. Good luck! |
Remember yesterday when we wondered aloud if Clearwire was about to default on its loan payments? Well, the day has come and big-daddy Sprint has 
It feels like a scene out of some manner of satirical dark comedy. Medical professionals are increasingly requiring new patients to sign forms that purport to give the doctor 
You make a finite amount of money. Typically, that money gets spent on essentials, like paying the rent, your bills and procuring fine single malt scotches. With so many needs to attend to, by the end of the month, most folks find themselves with precious little scratch left over to spend on their wants, meaning that decisions and sacrifices will have to be made. Will you be going out to dinner or seeing a movie? Socking away a bit of coin for a rainy day or for a vacation? Buying software or… not? After all, why buy when you can pirate everything most of today's popular titles for the low, low cost of free? Well, we'll tell you. Before you decide to go torrent an application or game you've been keen on, consider our 10 practical arguments against piracy, and always try to remember — you get what you pay for.
Liquid cooling isn't nearly as complicated, expensive, or downright scary as it used to be, or at least it doesn't have to be. Self-contained liquid cooling setups are becoming fairly commonplace, and they're especially popular in pre-built systems. iBuyPower's new Gamer Paladin HS11, for example, brings liquid cooling within reach to the average user for less than $1,000.
It's hard to believe, but it's been a whole decade since VIA created the Mini-ITX form factor with the launch of its Mini-ITX VT6010. The rest is ongoing history, but what's really cool is how VIA is celebrating the occasion. It's doing so with the launch of its "Small is Beautiful: 10 Years of Mini-ITX" eBook, and while that might seem like a ho-hum read at first, it's not often that we're given an inside glimpse of things straight from the source.
Thank the internet gods for search engines. Without tools like bing, Google or blekko, no one would stand a chance of finding anything online. Prompted by just a few keystrokes, their powerful blend of math, ingenuity, and unicorn tears bring the world to our doorsteps. Unfortunately, search engines are so good at their jobs that they sometimes bring us way more of the world than we want them to. Thanks to content farms, reblogging, and other search result padding endeavors, it's getting more difficult by the day to locate the information that you're after. To solve this issue, you can dust off those Boolean skills of yours and input a set of search parameters as long as your arm, or if you're a Google Chrome user, you can install Personal Blocklist, our Browser Extension of the Week.
When it comes to PCs, AMD processors are the only thing keeping Intel from complete and utter market domination. But could the plucky little David (OK, AMD's actually pretty pretty big) be preparing to throw in the towel against Intel's x86 Goliath? A couple of comments by AMD spokesmen over the past few days makes the company's future on the PC seem much more hazy than it did just a few weeks ago, when Bulldozer launched.
We love getting free things, especially when those free things are videogames. And because we think you probably like getting free things too, we thought we'd share some details about Steam's Daily Wishlist Giveaway that begins today. In short, Steam is awarding 10 randomly selected gamers 10 top games on their wishlist, and will pick a new winner every day.| You are subscribed to email updates from Maximum PC - All Articles To stop receiving these emails, you may unsubscribe now. | Email delivery powered by Google |
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