Street Fighter IV won’t come to USA arcades
For the first time in the beat’em up saga par excellence history, the arcade version of the fourth Street Fighter episode won’t formally pass the Japan borders. Chris Kramer, Capcom’s senior director of communications and community tells the news to Edge using heavy words on the situation for the arcade games in the North American market. That is essentially non existent for several years now.
Will Blu-ray die at Christmas 2008?
The worldwide recession is getting worse, wasting economies and laying off employees that will find themselves with no salary hence without money to spend in home entertainment. In such a scenario what was a balance leaning between hope and pessimism turns in a sword of Damocles dangerously close to deadly hit Sony’s Blu-ray, that maybe will get through this Christmas but could not be able to see the dawn of the next one.
HDD vs. SSD, data encryption vs. speed
The tense fight between microchip and the pair plate+head has reached a new high in these days, as manufacturers have announced the introduction of technologies able to make on the one hand more desirable and secure the traditional magnetic hard disks, on the other hand more performing the always expensive solid state disks (SSD) based on NAND flash memory chips.
Browser war, Firefox at 20%. Google Chrome what?
After more than two months since the Chrome launch, the made-by-Google browser that should have revolutionized the whole market and the Internet perception itself among the users, the nowadays scenario is very much different from what the events anticipated then. Not only Chrome hasn’t been able to take a significant amount of netizens, but even its undoubted performance leadership will soon be called into question by the new releases from the competitors.
MESS, a doomed emulator?
Dark clouds await on the horizon of MESS, the all-inclusive emulator of home systems that shares a great part of the MAME base code and that above all embraces its philosophy of great fidelity to the inner workings of the hardware reproduced within the software. According to Haze, one of the eldest mamedevs that has been a long-time coordinator of the development on the Nicola Salmoria’s emulator, “the MAME framework is too fundamentally flawed to actually emulate these things properly“.
Obama’s victory seen by an Italian
When, in the night between the 4th and 5th of November, Barack Hussein Obama II has been elected the 44th President of the United States of America, the world has suddenly stopped. It has been crystallized in the thing by itself, feeling the whole gravity and the importance of an historic moment, and then it has started over to whirling run accelerating and burning down lives and stock markets. What remains is the hope that the promises by Mr.President haven’t been useful only to harangue the crowd, and looking at the matter from the poor Italy in ruin I can’t help to make some considerations also and above all in regard of technology and computing.
Run Firefox & Firefox Portable side by side
One of undoubted benefits of open source software is its incredible adaptability to usage modes pretty different from the ones originally expected by the developers. If, in that regard, it’s ok to the majority of the users to permanently install the Mozilla Firefox browser on the system, the “transportable” version developed for the PortableApps.com suite can be exploited by whom have the need to use a testing environment at no cost for the Windows Registry or to compare the last build of the Mozilla code with the one currently installed on the PC.
Will Stardock’s security solution kill the DRM?
He is a long-time supporter of the utter uselessness of intrusive protection technologies against videogaming piracy, and now Brad Wardell, Stardock’s CEO, takes up the challenge turned to him by the industry by working on a minimal security system that could be good for the labels and at the same time would satisfy the users’ need to not to be pointed out as pirates dangerous for society and business.
Videogames highlights - October 2008 (part 2)
With the complicity of the software houses parade during the Japanese expo Tokyo Game Show, October has been a particularly prolific month for the release of fresh videogaming stuff. After the first round of monthly highlights, hence, this new series is even richer and visually luxuriant covering consoles exclusives, multi-platform games, certainly interesting sequels and so on.
Good Old Games betatesting goes public
A few weeks after the announcement of the private beta program broadening, the Good Old Games folks are officially stating the public opening of the site in these hours. The retrogaming digital store is now ready to receive the orphans of the good ol’ games and who struggles in the abandonware and the incompatibilities between old software and new OSes, hoping that the economic results will be enough to attract new publishers willing to a embrace the peculiar business model chosen by the CD Projekt guys.
The Italian Pirate Party to magistrates: we want the truth on The Pirate Bay block
The Italian Pirate Party, a non-profit association born in the wake of the broader European initiative to reform the intellectual property, wants to look very closely at the investigations occurred during the Pirate Bay block, turning away the many, still lasting doubts on the behaviour of the tax police agents thereupon the connections redirection toward an Internet address owned by the recording labels.
RIAA appeals against Jammie Thomas
The USA recording companies organization is upset that Michael Davis, District Judge involved in the only case from the legal crusade against file sharing ever gone to court, have reconsidered his decisions ruling for a retrial. RIAA now asks that the Capitol v. Thomas case, being defendant the single mother of three Jammie Thomas, isn’t reopened before the judge have taken into consideration the majors’ appeal request.
Mikko Hypponen calls upon the foundation of the Internetpol
It’s a picture full of shadows and few lights the one outlined in the quarterly security report by F-Secure, a well-known Finnish company that produces antivirus software and integrated protection solutions. By analyzing the striking cyber-crime cases reported during the third quarter of 2008, the wrap-up highlights the difficulty to effectively fight an international phenomenon with the only aid from the local laws and the current cooperation treaties between the police authorities.
The minister-downloader repudiates the anti-piracy committee
Roberto Maroni’s occupation is Minister of the Interior for the Italian government, but in his spare time he enjoys to listen to music and, above all, to download it on the P2P. He has never hided it, and he has confirmed this attitude in the last days too, during a meeting with the press at Varese, where he has attended before his participation to Il Festival del Racconto. Accidentally but not too much, the Minister statements come after the establishment of the well known committee against digital piracy under the Prime Minister’s Office, which would like just to fight the file sharing that Maroni periodically advocates.
Diablo III at BlizzCon 2008
This year edition of BlizzCon, the convention organized by Blizzard Entertainment to properly celebrate its own videogame brands, has had its main focus on Diablo III, the very much awaited third incarnation of the hack’n slash saga par excellence. The software house has shown further details on the gemeplay, the new skill trees, the renewed rune system and much more. Above all, at BlizzCon Blizzard has unveiled the third of the five character classes available to the player, that is the Wizard.
Link & Suggestions # 5: slotMusic, videogame class actions, mafioso states and P2P
Can a multimillionaire industry rely on stupid asses insomuch that there isn’t the awareness of being on the edge of extinction? Of course. Can a sovereign state blur with the organized crime to such a degree that you can’t possibly understand anything of that nation without knowing in details the history of crime through time too? Absolutely. Can George Lucas reduce himself to endlessly recycle an old character because he’s painfully short of ideas? Hum…
The Pirate Bay vs. Italy, the worse is yet to come
As widely reported in the news, the preventive seizure (call it “censorship”, “block”, or whatever) of the access to The Pirate Bay from the Italian territory has finally been revoked by a decree of Bergamo Court. Called upon by the Bay admins’ lawyers, the Reexamination Judges have reconsidered the legitimacy of the previous ruling of the Court, deciding that the seizure was essentially illegal. Many, almost anyone have rushed to crow for TPB and the P2P in general, clearly having no clues on the fact that a new storm is about to appear on the horizon, a storm even more dangerous of the simple block of a single website, potentially capable of making, if possible, more tightening and unfair the yet absurd law against file sharing effective in Italy.
Videogames highlights - October 2008 (part 1)
The Christmas holiday season, surely the most important occasion for consumer electronics and particularly videogames, is near. The industry enjoys a very good health, and while waiting for the marketing of some among the most promising titles of the year it’s worth looking at the substantial amount of multimedia, video clips and images, released by the software houses during the last days.
National Videogame Archive, the historical consciousness of digital culture
It is in Bradford, Middle England, held by the National Media Museum, that one of the first preservation institutions for videogaming culture in the world will sprout. An offspring of the collaboration between the Nottingham Trent University and the Media Museum, the archive will keep everything is related to electronic games from Pong to nowadays, offering a view of how much videogames have contributed and contribute to the pop culture as much and even more of other entertainment media.
700 billions of dollars on Thursday night
The title is somewhat weirdo, I know, but at this time by night I can’t possibly regain that much among the neurons I’ve got still active and so here it is. At bottom the strips are two but the story is always the same, that is the Great Lie of appearance that makes some poor devils to invent any kind of pretext to cover the misery of a poor existence to the others’ eyes, and make others to rag entire nations pulling off money from the taxpayers, with the excuse of having to save the ass of licensed thieves working in the Stock Market.