General Gaming Article

General Gaming Article

Windows Phone 7 App of the Week: SkyDrive

Posted: 04 Jan 2012 04:47 PM PST

One of the huge benefits of using a Windows Phone is how it integrates with Microsoft's cloud services like Zune, SkyDrive, Hotmail, and Xbox Live. All of these services are integrated directly into the Windows Phone OS, but a few have also been targeted with secondary apps to increase the level of integration.

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SkyDrive is Microsoft's cloud storage solution, offering 25 GB of online storage to users. The service is integrated directly into the Office and Pictures hubs in Windows Phone, allowing you to manually or automatically synchronize your pictures or office documents to the cloud for use on other devices. Unlike these integration points, the SkyDrive app for Windows Phone provides you access to all of the files and folders in your SkyDrive account, allowing you to view, download, delete, or share your files and folders.

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We'd like to see the SkyDrive app become more music-friendly in the future. With both Apple and Google providing services which allow users to upload their music collection to the cloud for convenient mobile access it's a shame that the SkyDrive app only allows you to listen to one mp3 file at a time.

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The SkyDrive app is available from the Windows Phone Marketplace.

Chile Mandates All Phones be Sold Unlocked

Posted: 04 Jan 2012 02:43 PM PST

openDown in the Republic of Chile, government regulators have made a bold move to increase openness in the nation's wireless industry. As of January 2nd, all phones sold in the country must be unlocked for use on any compatible carrier. This rule change will go along with mandatory number portability set to go into effect January 16th.

Even devices that were sold before the new regulations will be taken care of. A website will be available that takes a device IMEI number and device info, then spits out an unlock code. Chile is not the first country to ban SIM-locking. Singapore and Israel both forbid carriers from locking handsets. 

There are various methods of unlocking devices without carrier approval around the world, but Chileans won't have to worry about that anymore. In the US, most phones are locked, but carriers will usually unlock a device at the end of a contract. There is also the problem of CDMA networks in the US, which require carrier provisioning for phones to work. 

File Sharing is Now an Official Religion in Sweden

Posted: 04 Jan 2012 02:24 PM PST

file sharingFile sharing: it's not just a way to get free stuff anymore. In Sweden, it's now an officially recognized religion. Philosophy student Isak Gerson has tried and failed several times to get his Missionary Church of Kopimism recognized as a religion, authorities have relented. Kopimism holds as its central principal, that copying data is a sacred act.

The Church of Kopimism counts among its members roughly 3000 souls (or whatever Kopimists believe). "I think that more people will have the courage to step out as Kopimists. Maybe not in the public, but at least to their close ones," Gerson said to TorrentFreak. This milestone does not make copyright infringement legal in Sweden, but it says a lot about the mentality of such things in the region. 

Kopimism is at lest serious enough to seek official status, but it also seems more than a little tongue-in-cheek to us. CTRL+C and CTRL+V are considered sacred symbols in the Kopimist church. So, planning to convert?

Kodak to File for Bankruptcy

Posted: 04 Jan 2012 02:09 PM PST

filmThere was a time when film was king, and Kodak was riding high in the camera market. What a difference a decade can make. Kodak is now rumored to be planning an orderly Chapter 11 Bankruptcy filing. The paperwork could be official as early as later this month. Kodak employs 19,000 people, but layoffs are likely in the event of Chapter 11.

The company is currently negotiating with lenders to secure around $1 billion to keep it afloat during the bankruptcy process. Kodak has little actual income currently, with its main assets being patents on several technologies integral to digital cameras. Kodak is reportedly still trying to sell the patents to avoid bankruptcy in the first place. Auctioning off these patents would also help Kodak get back on its feet after a bankruptcy filing.

Kodak's last strategy of note was to sue over patent infringement, then sign licensing deals. Those cases petered out earlier in 2011. With its stock in the tank, creditors knocking at the door, and no consumer products to speak of, Kodak might have no choice but the courts. 

Laptop Maker Quanta Sues AMD, Claims AMD Supplied Defective Chips

Posted: 04 Jan 2012 11:38 AM PST

What's it look like when two 800 lb. gorillas engage in brutal battle? Literally, it's probably pretty scary, but we'll find out the figurative answer soon enough, because today Quanta – the world's largest contract notebook maker – slapped AMD with a breach of contract lawsuit. The company claims that AMD (and ATI) sold them defective chips that overheated and caused NEC-branded laptops Quanta made to malfunction, dealing Quanta "significant injury to prospective revenue and profits."

That's not all; Bloomberg reports that Quanta's suit also alleges all kinds of fraud, breaches, negligence and more. The company is looking for damages and a full jury trial. On its end, AMD says Quanta is, well, full of crap.

"AMD is aware of no other customer reports of the alleged issues with the AMD chip that Quanta used, which AMD no longer sells," Silverman told Bloomberg. "In fact, Quanta has itself acknowledged to AMD that it used the identical chip in large volumes in a different computer platform that it manufactured for NEC without such issues."

By the way, that's not an image of one of the malfunctioning notebooks. Quanta simply says the AMD chips didn't meet heat tolerances -- no exploding involved.

Intel Discontinuing Old CPUs To Make Room For Ivy Bridge

Posted: 04 Jan 2012 11:18 AM PST

Time to clear the road(map)! It looks like Intel's doing its spring cleaning a bit early this year in anticipation of Ivy Bridge's launch. Reports say the company's winding down production of 27 different CPUs from several product lines and sockets over the first two quarters of 2012 in order to make room for their fancy new chips.

DigiTimes reports that Intel told its partners it plans on knocking off the Pentium E6600, E550, E5700 and G960; the Celeron E3500, 450, 430 and E330; the Core Duo E7500 and E7600; the Core i3-530; the Core i5-661, 660, 670, 680, 2300, 760, 750S and 655K; and the Core i7-960, 950, 930, 870, 875K, 860S, 880S and 870S.

If any of those models still strike your fancy – and why would they, with second gen Sandy Bridge chips available? – be sure to rush out and snatch them up before they disappear for good.

The Game Boy: Best Games You Missed in 2011 -- BioShock 2: Minerva's Den

Posted: 04 Jan 2012 11:05 AM PST

My favorite games of the year were Bastion, Skyrim, and the Witcher 2. Wow, that was easy. And hey, I already wrote extensively about all of them. Convenient! So, for the next few days, I'm gonna discuss some of 2011's lesser-known greats. First up, the PC version of BioShock 2's ages-in-coming story DLC, Minerva's Den. Oh, and I'm also gonna go ahead and slap a Big Daddy-sized SPOILER WARNING on this one -- just to be safe.

I shoot first and ask questions later. I'm not much of a talker. I just do what I'm told. Who am I?

Give up? OK, fine, I'll uncover my nametag. Yep, that's right: "Hello, my name is... Every First-Person Shooter Main Character Ever." Yeah, my parents had an odd sense of humor. (If you think that's bad, you should meet my brother, Racist 14-Year-Old's Xbox Live Gamertag.) Anyway, I have a teensy bit of a problem: My entire existence makes no sense.

Main characters who communicate almost entirely through cricket chirps and whatever sound a tumbleweed makes have always been something of a silly conceit. Yes, we as players are supposed to become the brain our scarecrow of an avatar sings showtunes about, but it's only possible to suspend your disbelief for so long in the face of complete silence. On top of that, it's generally pretty boring -- especially in the context of highly scripted, otherwise character-centric stories where everyone else acts like you're Mr/Ms Charmer McCharisma.

Don't get me wrong: If Gordon Freeman ever speaks, I'll hold the world's entire supply of crowbars hostage until Valve's act of sacrilege is nothing but an unpleasantly unholy memory. However, as a general rule, I don't want to be the disembodied brain manning a floating gun. I can be me any time. Games give me the chance to think and act like anyone else.

And yet, the main character of Minerva's Den is one of my favorites of all time. He never speaks a word.

That's because Minerva's Den is the silent protagonist perfected. It creates a story in which a non-speaking main character makes perfect sense, and then it turns the whole thing on its head entirely.

I'll admit that I was initially skeptical. Incredibly so, in fact. The game unceremoniously sealed me inside the diving suit of some random Big Daddy, and chattering voices in my ear told me everything short of when I should draw my next breath. Translated from Big Daddy whale sounds, that's about as close to "Hi, I'm Every First-Person Shooter Main Character Ever" as you can get.

But, as I slowly unraveled the story surrounding a Rapture-running AI called "The Thinker," I also sipped on a gradual trickle of information about the machine's creator, Charles Porter. I picked up plenty, of course, as present day Porter ordered me from place-to-place in an attempt to liberate his creation from Rapture's increasingly insane depths, but the more interesting tidbits -- as per usual -- came from audio recordings scattered around the crumbling undersea utopia.

Porter was a brilliant man. Incredibly ambitious. A pioneer of technology. But he wasn't just another top-of-the-heap, bottom-of-the-barrel Rapturite. Folks pointed out that he -- as a black man living in a time of heavy racial persecution -- refused to "splice white" for better chances of success. Meanwhile, he didn't merely want The Thinker to be a giant, talking calculator. He attempted to give it a crash course in humanity -- for better or worse -- while his closest colleague advocated adapting it for increasingly criminal acts. Ultimately, though, Porter used recordings that he made with his wife to give The Thinker an identity.

But then, Andrew Ryan's pesky case of homicidal madness struck, and Porter got hauled off under suspicions of treason – which, in post-craziness Rapture, translated roughly to "being alive." But why kill a man when he'd make a perfectly good Big Daddy? And then, in that brief moment, it all made sense. Porter wasn't Porter. I was Porter, post-Daddification. The Thinker was only guiding me by reproducing a "familiar" voice: my own. Big Daddies, after all, aren't so big on sophisticated thoughts beyond "Help Little Sister" and "KILL EVERYTHING."

In essence, I'd spent the whole game learning about myself. My avatar was – like me – completely in the dark about the circumstances surrounding the situation. So we had the exact same "Holy sh**" moment. My jaw dropped, and so did Big Daddy Porter's helmet grating... thing. His state of mind mirrored mine. Confusion. Amazement. Shock. Understanding. Grief.

Mostly the last one. After I toppled my/Porter/Big Daddy's arch-nemesis, Minerva's Den slid a final ace out of its sleeve. I picked up one last audio recording. It was Porter testing The Thinker's newly completed personality replication function. The subject? His wife. "No," Porter's recording sputtered and cracked upon hearing her voice. "This isn't right!" "What's wrong, Charles?" Thinker-emulated Pearl replied. "Don't you still love me?" Then the recording came to an abrupt halt.

I walked forward. Eventually, I reached a wall completely coated in newspaper clippings illuminated by a nearly endless row of flickering candles. Also featured: a picture of Pearl smiling serenely while Porter held her close. And an apology note. Porter – long before he grabbed the nearest bathysphere to Rapture – had buried himself in his work, leaving Pearl all by her lonesome in London. There was also another apology – from the desk of Winston Churchill. Pearl, it explained, had died in a Nazi bombing of Britain – just before Porter had the chance to set things right. I may have been in a city under the sea, but I couldn't shake a sudden sinking sensation. My stomach felt like it had just consumed a thousand chocolate bars and then ridden an equal number of rollercoasters. 

So I just stared on. Speechless.

Pioneer Rolls Out Two New Audiophile-Enticing Networked Audio Players

Posted: 04 Jan 2012 10:52 AM PST

Listening to music over your computer's stock speakers usually leaves a lot to be desired (at best). Today, Pioneer launched a pair of new audiophile-enticing networked audio players designed to wirelessly stream your digital tunes via Bluetooth A2DP, DLNA 1.5 and Apple's AirPlay technology.

The N-30 and N-50 networked audio players could function as stand-alone streaming music makers, but they only includes stereo analog ports, so you might want to consider using the digital optical and coaxial out connections to tap into fuller surround sound speaker setups. The players support MP3, WMA, AAC, WAV, FLAC and Apple Lossless formats, and if you get sick of your stash of tunes, there's also vTuner Internet Radio, which lets you listen in on over 16,000 stations from around the globe. Album art and song information is displayed on a 2.5-inch LCD screen on the front of the players, while Pioneer's ControlApp for iOS and select Android devices lets you manage the music from your phone.

The N-50 includes components and technology designed to make music sound even better, such as twin EL transformers, a Hi-Bit 32-Bit conversion processor, gold RCA connections, an armored chassis and the Advanced Sound Retriever and Sound Retriever AIR audio technologies. It also sports digital inputs to match the optical/coaxial outputs.

Both the N-30 and the N-50 are available now for $500 and $700, respectively, although you'll need to pony up an extra $150 for an additional Wi-Fi network adapter and $100 for a Bluetooth adapter if you want to stream music wirelessly using either of those connections. If wireless isn't your thing, the players include USB and Ethernet ports.

Netflix Subscribers Watched 2 Billion Hours of Streaming Content in Q4 2011

Posted: 04 Jan 2012 10:12 AM PST

With all the fuss over Netflix's price hikes and near-catastrophic amputation of its DVD-by-mail arm, after the all the pitchfork wielding, the mass exodus, falling stock price, and everything else company CEO Reed Hastings and the rest of the Netflix crew would like to forget about, subscribers still kicked back on their couches and tuned in to what the streaming outfit had to offer.

According to Netflix, it served up more than two billion hours of streaming TV shows and movies to its members who stuck around in the fourth quarter of 2011, of which there are more than 20 million globally.

"We were thrilled to deliver more than two billion hours of TV shows and movies across 45 countries in the fourth quarter," said Netflix Co-Founder and CEO Reed Hastings. "Netflix delights members by giving them choice, convenience and control over the entertainment they love for an incredibly low price."

Netflix is working to rebuild its reputation after angering subscribers and investors alike with questionable business decisions towards the end of last year. Going forward, Netflix will add original content to its streaming service, including a political thriller called "House of Cards" and a series called "Lilyhammer," which looks to be a mix of "Sopranos" and "Fargo."

MSI Launches 17-inch GT783 Gaming Notebook

Posted: 04 Jan 2012 10:06 AM PST

When it rains gaming notebooks, it apparently pours gaming notebooks. The Razer Blade is due any time now, just yesterday we told you that the MSI GT685 launched, and as it turns out, MSI has launched yet another laptop; the GT783. It's 17.3-inch screen holds an almost 2-inch advantage over the GT685, and MSI put the extra real estate to good use, stocking the GT783 with a Core i7-2670QM, a GeFore GTX 580M with 2GB of VRAM, and a lot of other goodies.

That 17 inch display is anti-reflective and full HD, by the way, with a 1920 x 1080 resolution. The starting version on MSI's website includes 16GB of RAM (configurable up to 32GB thanks to four DDR3 slots) and a 128GB SSD paired with a 750GB HDD. Other features include a Blu-ray player/burner, THX TruStudio Pro audio technology with Dynaudio speakers, a backlit SteelSeries keyboard, two USB 2.0 and USB 3.0 ports, an HDMI output, and a 720p webcam. This bad boy's built for fragging, though, and it caters to gamers with a 9-cell battery, enlarged ALT and CRTL keys, and dedicated buttons that engage MSI's performance-enhancing Turbo Drive Engine technology and its Cooler Boost rapid system-cooling technology.

Are you in the market for a big ol' gaming laptop? The GT783 is available now on MSI's website for a cool $2,500.
Posted by Shri Krishna

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